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We all know that we can’t afford to burn all of our fossil fuel reserves if we’re to stay within the ‘safe’ climate change of around 2°C average global temperature rise, but a new report last week has revealed just how big the mismatch is between economic and environmental...

Researchers have found a common physical cause behind recent severe weather extremes, such as the heat waves in the United States in 2011 and Russia 2010, and the 2010 Pakistan flood. They say that man-made climate change repeatedly disturbs the patterns of atmospheric flow around the world’s northern...

Helen Blenkharn, Climate Change Policy Officer ' Carbon Bomb' projects threaten explosion in global emissions Yesterday, this was a headline in BusinessGreen. The article was about a new Greenpeace report called ‘Point of No Return’ which suggests that the world’s 14 largest...

Much of the UK is hunkering down for a weekend of expected snow. My friend Andrew, along with farmers across the land, will be bracing himself for a hard slog of feeding animals – he sent me this today from Wiltshire: It is January, when snow probably should be expected here, and it’s...

Jim Densham – Senior Land Use Policy Officer (Climate), Scotland. Way back in July, when the days were long and there were leaves on the trees, I wrote in this blog about Green Travel to Green Places , my RSPB sabbatical. My plan was to travel to RSPB reserves in Scotland to collect stories...

You may have seen the Daily Mail’s seemingly gleeful reporting of record ice levels across Antarctica, with implications about climate change. NASA’s Earth Observatory does indeed show a new largest extent of ice across the southern polar region, as the austral winter starts to fade. You’ll...

The record breaking summer Arctic ice melt last month got lots of media attention. Doubtless you’ll have seen this, so I’ll just report that that the difference between the new record and the old is about the size of Texas, which has a kind of irony, and leave the facts at that – you...

Matt Williams, RSPB Climate Change Policy Officer ‘I never ever want to talk about the science of climate change ever again!’ This was a line from the best talk on climate change I have ever heard, by Jonathon Porritt in 2011. For Porritt, and many others including the IPCC, the debate...

From Jim Densham, Senior Land use Policy Officer, RSPB Scotland Anyone guess what this is? Is it a playground climbing frame? Or a 3-Day-Eventing hurdle from the Olympics? No - it’s a bar apex log jam. And it’s a simple, cost effective measure that farmers in the Scottish borders are using...

Birds, butterflies, other insects and spiders are using protected areas to help them move north in response to climate change. Perhaps this isn’t surprising, but it’s another good reason to make sure that we cherish and protect our protected areas across the UK, and that we have the resources...

Excellent article about our global greenhouse budget in Rolling Stone (a hark back to 1970s student days for me, never thought I’d be reading that in work time!), which outlines that the world’s energy companies are now sitting on fossil fuel reserves which would lead to five times the greenhouse...

Post from Matt Williams Who couldn’t help but get caught up in Olympic fever on Saturday evening? One of the many companies spurring on a wave of patriotism this summer has been British Airways. Its adverts have been patriotically urging the British public not to fly, to stay at home and...

Guest Blogger: Jim Densham – Senior Land Use Policy Officer (Climate) at RSPB Scotland. After 7 years of hard work the kind people at the RSPB allow staff to take a sabbatical. Quite a lot of RSPB staff do bird surveys for their sabbatical but whilst I love nature, I’m only an occasional...

Dominated by the Grangemouth oil refinery and Longannet coal-fired power station, the Inner Forth in Central Scotland might seem like an odd place for a vast area of visionary wildlife conservation. But when the RSPB’s UK climate change team came together on a rainy Scottish morning, the Forth...

Guest post by Rob Cunningham, Head of Water Policy Water has been big news this year, two years of poor winter rains left our rivers and wetlands drying out this spring only for torrential summer rain and floods to grab the headlines. While I’m not going to claim this weather is directly a consequence...

With climate change increasingly affecting wildlife and nature conservation, our new report published with Natural England and WWF-UK shows that the Earth's wildlife and natural systems are already showing significant impacts. It’s a timely to our political leaders - and to us all - just what's...

The polar ends of our world are incredibly special places – cold, wild and remote, little known by most of and yet with an amazing pull on our consciousnesses. Whilst Antarctica is protected by its UN Treaty, the Arctic is open to territorial claims from several countries and commercial interests...

Much excitement has been caused by the first ever confirmed breeding of Cetti’s warblers at our Leighton Moss nature reserve in Silverdale, north Lancashire. This little brown bird is only started to breeding in Britain in the 1970’s. Their numbers have been increasing mainly in areas...

You may remember us asking you to help us put pressure on PM David Cameron last week to show his support for 30% reduction in emissions target in his environmental speech this Thursday 26 th April. Well so far over 13,500 people have emailed the prime minister, including me, plus both Nick Clegg and...

We’ve talked at length on this blog recently about the massive threat climate change poses to birds and other wildlife. Science is revealing example after example of birds, mammals and whole ecosystems that are being harmed by a warming world. Not only that but, we depend on the earth’s...

This week is Climate week and this year it’s all about food! Personally I love food and as a vegetarian I think I can safely say that I am already doing a small part to help lower my food emissions. However there are many other things you can do to help without giving up your beloved bacon! ...

New research confirms what we already knew! This time it’s not that sport is good for your health or smoking is bad for you, but that climate change is happening – and the earth has warmed by about one degrees on average over the last century. This is what the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature...