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Most Coalition voters do not believe in human-induced climate change – CSIRO

Five years of surveys show 52% of Liberal voters believe in climate change but don’t think human activity is causing it, and 13% do not believe it is happening

Four out of five Australians believe that climate change is happening, but those who do not are much more likely to vote for the Coalition, new analysis of existing CSIRO data has found.

Related: Lack of planning for climate change puts Australia behind its allies, report finds

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Source: Guardian Environment

Idaho hunter accused of poaching famous deer reaches plea deal

State recommends 90-day jail sentence, fine and lifetime hunting license suspension for Jacob Pool: ‘I hate myself for it because I respect animals’

A hunter accused of poaching a well-known and well-liked buck in Twin Falls last winter has reached a plea deal with prosecutors.

Jacob Pool, 34, pleaded guilty last week to a felony count of killing or wasting a trophy mule deer during a closed season and a reduced misdemeanor count of destructing or concealing evidence, the Times-News reported.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Keystone pipeline: TransCanada denies politics prompted call for delay

  • State Department says it will continue to review proposal
  • Company’s delay request could leave decision with next administration

Related: TransCanada seeks Keystone XL delay, taking decision off Obama’s hands

The US State Department said on Tuesday it would continue its review of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline while considering TransCanada’s request for a pause in the review process.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Zimbabwe journalists arrested for linking police with elephant poisonings

Amnesty condemns ‘shocking attempt to threaten freedom of the press’ as trio from state-run Sunday Mail face slander charge

Three journalists from a state-run weekly newspaper in Zimbabwe will be charged with slander for a front-page story that implicated an unnamed top police officer and other officials in fatal cyanide poisonings of more than 60 elephants for tusks.

Sunday Mail editor Mabasa Sasa, investigations editor Brian Chitemba and reporter Tinashe Farawo were arrested on Monday, police spokeswoman Charity Charamba said.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Almost 40% of Americans 'not too worried' about climate change

In a recent poll, two-thirds of Americans say they accept climate change, and the vast majority say human activities cause it – but they aren’t very worried

Most Americans know the climate is changing, but they say they are just not that worried about it, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. And that is keeping the American public from demanding and getting the changes that are necessary to prevent global warming from reaching a crisis, according to climate and social scientists.

As top-level international negotiations to try to limit greenhouse gas emissions start later this month in Paris, the AP-NORC poll taken in mid-October shows about two out of three Americans accept global warming and the vast majority of those say human activities are at least part of the cause.

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Source: Guardian Environment

French energy giant EDF buys Dungeness Estate

Owner of local power station pays undisclosed sum for barren headland in south Kent, once home to the late artist and film director Derek Jarman

Dungeness Estate, the windswept stretch of shingle coastline where the film-maker Derek Jarman spent his final years, has been bought by EDF Energy, the French company that owns a nearby nuclear power station.

The sparsely populated, barren headland on the south Kent coast, home to disused railway coaches and sometimes inaccurately described as “Britain’s only desert”, has been snapped up by EDF for an undisclosed amount after being put up for sale in the summer for £1.5m.

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Source: Guardian Environment

US 'playing catch-up to China' in clean energy efforts, UN climate chief says

Christiana Figueres takes swipe at Barack Obama, saying China ‘has taken an undisputed leadership’ in transforming economy to avoid further climate change

China is now leading the world when it comes to fighting climate change – handily beating the US’s efforts under Barack Obama to move to a clean energy economy, the United Nations climate chief said on Tuesday.

In a swipe at the US president, who has embraced the fight against climate change as his legacy, Christiana Figueres, the UN’s leading climate official, said that when it came to getting off fossil fuels America was still relegated to an also-ran.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Pontoon to nowhere: why the Thames Deckway cycle scheme gets it wrong

The scheme’s creators are seeking money to fund a floating bike lane in London. But like all such ideas, it misses the point of cycling

When last year I first read about a mooted scheme to build a floating pontoon cycleway along the Thames in London, I assumed it was yet another of those design flights of fancy that would generate some speculative media coverage, boost the CVs of those involved, and then vanish.

But it seems they’re serious.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Powerful cyclone causes flooding in Yemen, already hit by civil war

Most intense storm in decades sends thousands fleeing for shelter. UN says of 1.8 million people in cyclone-hit area, 1.4m already need humanitarian support

A cyclone with hurricane-force winds made landfall on Yemen’s Arabian Sea coast on Tuesday, flooding the country’s fifth-largest city, Mukalla, and sending thousands of people fleeing for shelter.

Officials and meteorologists say the cyclone is the most intense in decades in the arid country, whose storm response is hampered by poverty and a raging civil war.

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Source: Guardian Environment