Modern Adventure Pro Cycling have announced that British racer Leo Hayter will continue with the squad for 2027.…
A Thames21 charity citizen science project helps track plastic pollution in the capital’s river On a pale-blue Sunday morning on the foreshore of the River Thames, 40 people are searching for what others have tried to lose. Dotted across a 250-metre stretch under Hammersmith Bridge, they are combing through layers of silt, seashells and dirty driftwood to find one of the river’s most stubborn problems: wet wipes.“People come and walk here and it looks just like mud, at a distance,” says the organiser, Dr Felicity Rhodes.
“And then you get closer in and see.” Continue reading...
What happens when a forest loses its birdsong? Following clues hidden in the sounds birds make while asleep, Argentinian physicist Gabriel Mindlin uncovers a hidden extinction – not of species, but of memory – and sets out to revive vanished melodies before they disappear forever.
Part detective story, part cutting-edge science, Mindlin’s mission leads him to the dusty 1960s archives of Buenos Aires naturalist, confirming that some songs no longer echo in the biosphere. So he deploys “robot tutors” to see whether young birds can learn and spread the old songs once again.Read more on this topic: Trill seekers: can scientists use AI and tutors to help birds remember lost songs? Continue reading...
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial newsIn some unwelcome news for shoppers – UK grocery price inflation has risen again, up to 2.5% in the four weeks ended on 4 October, up from 2.3% in the prior month, according to new figures from Worldpanel by Numerator.Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Worldpanel by Numerator, said:With the autumn budget fast approaching, the cost of living continues to weigh heavily on the minds of shoppers.
And the cost of filling up a car is only adding to the pressure on household budgets. More than half tell us they’re very or extremely worried about petrol prices, and almost one in three say it’s already taking a real toll on their finances.Until the chancellor sets out his plans, we expect that caution to carry on showing up at the till, with shoppers leaning more heavily on promotions to keep their grocery spend under control.”We’ve seen rerouting of supplies from the Middle East, increased production outside the conflict region, drawdown of inventories, increases in energy efficiency, and switches to other sources of energy, including renewables-all that played out to contain the shock.But some of these margins are getting really thin, including inventories and efficiency gains.
We are reaching those limits, so it’s very important to start replenishing that resilience, and that’s part of the message. We need to replenish supply-side resilience and also fiscal buffers because they have been used up to contain many of the shocks that we’ve had over the past six, seven years.
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Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Does onshore wind power need subsidies to compete with fossil fuels? Unsubsidized onshore wind is now generally cheaper than building fossil fuel plants.
Cost of energy sources are compared using “levelized cost of energy,” or the average lifetime cost to build and run a power plant divided by electricity produced. A 2026 report estimated the mean LCOE of unsubsidized onshore wind at $68 per megawatt-hour, compared to $90 for new natural gas plants and $124.50 for coal.
Developments like supply chain maturation, improved monitoring, and larger, more productive turbines have allowed the LCOE of onshore wind to decrease by 70% since 2010. While recent inflation, rising interest rates, and trade barriers have increased costs across all energy generation technologies, onshore wind is still cheaper than fossil fuel plants and projected to decrease further in the long-term.
Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact This fact brief is responsive to quotes such as this one. Sources Lazard Lazard Releases 2026 Levelized Cost of Energy+ Report IRENA Renewable power generation costs in 2025 U.S. Department of Energy The Future of Offshore Wind Is Big—Literally IRENA Wind energy U.S.
Department of Energy Experts Predict 50% Lower Wind Costs Than They Did in 2015 Columbia Law School Sabin Center for Climate Change Law Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles Please use this form to provide feedback about this fact brief. This will help us to better gauge its impact and usability.
Thank you! About fact briefs published on GigafactFact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer "yes/no" answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact — a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process.
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Mainland China fell three places this year on a global ranking for trade sustainability, tracking what the compilers of the index described as declines in economic and environmental metrics. The Hinrich-IMD Sustainable Trade Index, which was released on Tuesday, ranked the mainland 19th out of 30 major economies.
The United Kingdom ranked first, Singapore second, New Zealand third and Hong Kong fourth. The 30 economies covered by the annual index are evaluated on their ability to grow...
Indian factories, smelters and households are being hit by blackouts and rising energy costs as the impact of plunging coal stockpiles at the country’s power stations ripples through the economy. The weakest monsoon since 2015 has curbed hydropower output, while hotter-than-normal weather has buoyed demand for air conditioning and farm irrigation.
That has seen coal-fired power stations, which supply about two-thirds of India’s electricity, rapidly burn through their inventories. Smaller...
For those of us who don’t like the chilly seasons, ‘glimmers’ are the way to go. This year mine are woolly, furry, scaly and crunchyIt finally got cold and dark in my neighbourhood last week. While that’s just how I like it, I know not to alienate summer people by celebrating: screw crunchy leaves, soup, cosy sweaters, got it.
I do, actually, sort of get it: fat bear week is over, decay is in the air, we’re dreading what El Niño might do, and somewhere, some content creator is plotting to ruin sofa season with an awful new self-optimisation concept (“Forget the winter arc, lock in for the Shackleton shred: a single rusk and 14-hour sled-pull daily for three months!”).It’s time to find some “glimmers”, which is what we’re calling little fragments of cheer now.
“Micro moments of happiness that can flip the script on your day” have gone “pretty mainstream”, Grazia magazine said last month, but if you missed the memo, me too. I was busy spiralling into heatwave-fuelled existential dread when trend forecasters explored the glimmer concept this spring – it’s been a low-glimmer time for me.
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