Graham Readfearn

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Graham Readfearn

The Rowley Shoals are on many a diver’s bucket list. The three coral atolls, hundreds of kilometres off the Western Australian coastline, are teeming with pristine coral gardens that for a long time, unlike many of the world’s reefs, had escaped the ravages of global heating. “I’ve seen a fair bit of death and destruction, but Rowley Shoals was always the place that was still standing,” says Dr James Gilmour, a research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Graham Readfearn

Almost 40 million sq kilometres of ocean around south-east Asia and the Pacific – an area five times the size of Australia – was engulfed in a marine heatwave in 2024, a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report has revealed. WMO scientists said the record heat – on land and in the ocean – was mostly driven by the climate crisis and coincided with a string of extreme weather events, from deadly landslides in the Philippines to floods in Australia and rapid glacier loss in Indonesia.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Graham Readfearn Environment |Graham Readfearn

The Albanese government will launch a lobbying campaign in a bid to reverse a Unesco recommendation that an ancient rock art site in Western Australia can’t go on the world heritage list until damaging industrial emissions linked to a controversial Woodside gas development are stopped.

4 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Graham Readfearn

The independent politician Zoe Daniel has conceded the Victorian seat of Goldstein after a partial recount confirmed the Liberal party’s Tim Wilson as finishing 175 votes ahead. Wilson was installed as the shadow employment minister earlier this week and had been 260 votes ahead before a partial recount was finalised by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) on Saturday afternoon.

4 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Graham Readfearn

Australia’s trade minister, Don Farrell, has described Donald Trump’s trade tariffs as “unjustified and not the act of a friend”, after the US president announced he would double import duties on steel and aluminium to 50%. Trump told a steelworkers rally in Pittsburgh that raising the tariff would “even further secure the steel industry in the United States.