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Analysis: Record UK wildfires have burned an area twice the size of Glasgow in 2025

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Original article by Orla Dwyer, Ho Woo Nam and Tom Prater republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license.

Wildfires have scorched more than 40,000 hectares of land so far this year across the UK – an area more than twice the size of the Scottish city of Glasgow.  

This is already a record amount of land burned in a single year, far exceeding the previous high, Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS) data shows. 

It is also almost four times the average area burned in wildfires by this stage of the year over 2012-24 – and 50% higher than the previous record amount burned by this time in 2019. 

The burned area overtook the previous annual record in April, BBC News reported at the time, and has continued to soar in the months since.

Major wildfires 

The chart below shows that UK wildfires in 2025 so far have already burned by far the largest area of land over any calendar year since GWIS records began in 2012. The previous record year was 2019, followed by 2022, while 2024 saw the lowest area size burned. 

Annual land area burned by wildfires across the UK from 2012 to 2025 (red), alongside the average area burned each year over 2012-24. Source: Global Wildfire Information System.

Climate change can increase the risk and impact of wildfires. Warmer temperatures and drought can leave land parched and dry out vegetation, which helps fires spread more rapidly. Climate change is making these types of extreme conditions more likely to occur, as well as more severe.  

Fire services in England and Wales responded to 564 wildfires from January to June 2025 – an increase from 69 fires in the same period last year, the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) said in a statement in June. 

Most wildfires in the UK are caused by human activity, whether accidental or deliberate, according to the NFCC. Some common ignition sources are disposable barbecues, lit cigarettes and campfires. 

Jessica Richter, a research analyst at Global Forest Watch, says that, while fires are also a key part of some ecosystems, climate change is the “major driver behind the increasing fire activity around the globe”. She tells Carbon Brief: 

“As we see more fires, we’re going to see more carbon being emitted and that’s just going to be, for lack of a better phrasing, adding fuel to the fire.” 

Examples of 2025 wildfires around Galloway (1) and Inverness (2) in Scotland, and a wildfire in Powys (3) in Wales. Source: FIRMS, MapTiler, OpenStreetMap contributors.

The UK has also recorded its highest-ever wildfire emissions this year, according to Copernicus, which was “primarily driven” by major wildfires in Scotland from late June to early July.

These were the largest wildfires ever recorded in the country, reported the Scotsman. They “ravaged” land in Moray and the Highlands in the north of the country, the newspaper added. 

Scotland experienced an extreme wildfire in Galloway Forest Park in April, which was “so intense it could be seen from space”, the Financial Times said. 

Elsewhere, in April, the Belfast News Letter reported that firefighters tackled almost 150 fires on the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland. 

More recently, BBC News reported that firefighters in Dorset, England received “non-stop” wildfire calls in the first weekend of August, with one blaze “engulf[ing] an area the size of 30 football pitches”. 

Wildfires have also caused devastation across many parts of Europe in recent weeks – including Albania, Cyprus, France, Greece, Spain and Turkey – as well as in the US and Canada. 

Words by Orla Dwyer. Analysis by Ho Woo Nam. Charts by Tom Prater.

Original article by Orla Dwyer, Ho Woo Nam and Tom Prater republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license.

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Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Continue ReadingAnalysis: Record UK wildfires have burned an area twice the size of Glasgow in 2025

No arms to Israel: Canada reaffirms Gaza arms ban

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This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand arrives to attend the first day of the NATO Defence Ministers’ Meeting on February 14, 2023 in Brussels, Belgium. [Dursun Aydemir – Anadolu Agency]

Canada on Saturday reaffirmed its ban on military exports that could be used in Gaza, rejecting claims in a July 29 report suggesting that arms still flow to Israel from Canada, Anadolu reports.

“Canada has drawn, and will continue to draw, a hard line: since January 2024, we have refused any new permits for controlled goods that could be used in Gaza. Not one has been approved.

“We went further by freezing all existing permits in 2024 that could have allowed military components to be used in Gaza, and those permits remain suspended today,” the country’s Foreign Minister Anita Anand said in a statement.

The law clearly prohibits any company from exporting controlled goods without a valid permit, Anand stated, adding that the Canadian officials will make sure those who break it will face legal consequences, including fines, seizures, and criminal charges.

“We will not allow Canadian-made weapons” to contribute to this conflict in any form, she highlighted.

After reviewing the July 29, 2025 report, the Canadian Foreign Ministry concluded that several of the report’s claims “are misleading and significantly misrepresent the facts,” Anand said.

READ: Canada to recognise Palestine, joining growing Western bloc confronting Israeli genocide

“The items identified as ‘bullets’ are in fact paintball-style projectiles. They are accompanied by equipment designed to make a firearm inoperable with traditional rounds.

“These cannot be used in combat, and if they were, they would require a permit that would not be granted,” she stated.

No mortars have been sent from Canadian manufacturers to Israel—directly or indirectly—since before the suspension of permits, she noted.

In the July 29 report, researchers from four NGOs—including World Beyond War, the Palestinian Youth Movement, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, and Independent Jewish Voices—uncovered data from the Israel Tax Authority showing Canadian goods labeled as military weapon parts and ammunition continuing to enter Israel.

At a news conference in Ottawa on Tuesday, Yara Shoufani of the Palestinian Youth Movement said the findings reveal Canada’s ongoing material support for Israel despite government denials.

The activists also obtained commercial shipping documents confirming the transfer of ammunition and military equipment from Canadian companies to Israel.

READ: ‘America First’ clashes with ‘Israel First’ as Trump threatens Canada over Palestine recognition

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Continue ReadingNo arms to Israel: Canada reaffirms Gaza arms ban

Carbon Capture ‘Not Going to Happen,’ Top Fossil Fuel Advocate Predicts

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Original article by Geoff Dembicki republished from DeSmog.

Canada Energy Minister Tim Hodgson (left) and climate crisis denier Bjorn Lomborg (right). Credit: Dan Lofton (CC BY-NC 2.0) and CPAC / YouTube

In audio obtained by DeSmog, Bjorn Lomborg told a Fraser Institute event in Vancouver that the technology is way too expensive to be viable.

Bjorn Lomborg has for years promoted the idea that fossil fuels are crucial for humankind through syndicated newspaper columns, best-selling books and appearances on TV shows including HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

He’s been called a “friend” by Trump administration energy secretary and former fracking executive Chris Wright and helps advise an anti-net zero organization known as the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) created by the Canadian conservative podcaster Jordan Peterson.

Yet the Danish political scientist — who acknowledges that climate change is real but denies that it’s a serious crisis — has a dim view of the oil and gas industry’s preferred solution to climate change: carbon capture and storage.

That technology is favored by Alberta premier Danielle Smith and Liberal energy minister Tim Hodgson, both of whom recently floated the idea of a “grand bargain” where Canada’s oil and gas industry gets approval for new pipelines in exchange for moving forward with a $16.5 billion carbon capture project.

It might seem that a prominent fossil fuel advocate like Lomborg would support technology loudly touted by major oil and gas producers and their political allies. But speaking at a private event last week in Vancouver, exclusive audio of which was obtained by DeSmog, Lomborg argued that “carbon capture will always be a net cost” to oil and gas producers and the taxpayers that subsidize it.

“In realistic terms, I don’t think it’s ever going to happen,” he added, referring to the prospect of prices for the technology coming down low enough that it can be rapidly and cost-efficiently deployed worldwide.

On that point Lomborg might actually be in agreement with climate policy experts who are also critical of carbon capture. “There’s a lot of federal money and provincial money that could be thrown at this thing,” Dave Sawyer, principal economist at the Canadian Climate Institute, recently told DeSmog. “We’ve been looking at this option for almost 20 years and it hasn’t happened.”

Speaking at the Fraser Institute

Lomborg was in the west coast Canadian city to speak at a private luncheon hosted by the Fraser Institute, a free-market organization with a long history of disputing the scientific reality of climate change that has received funding from the likes of Exxon and the charitable foundation of oil and gas billionaire Charles Koch.

It’s a leading member of Atlas Network, an influential coalition of more than 500 groups worldwide that promote free-market policies and whose partners in Canada have developed political strategies for fossil fuel expansion. 

“Yes, global warming is real. It’s man-made, but it’s often also vastly exaggerated,” Lomborg claimed at the Fraser Institute luncheon, the same day that the United Nations warned that global temperatures were likely to breach the crucial warming threshold of 1.5 degrees within the next five years. 

During the event he was asked for this thoughts about carbon capture, a technology that Canada’s largest oil and gas companies have for years argued is crucial for achieving “net zero” emissions in their operations.

Those companies, via an industry group called Pathways Alliance, are currently in talks with the federal and Alberta governments to build a multi-billion dollar carbon capture project in the heart of the Canadian oil sands which could be subsidized heavily by taxpayers.

“The problem is you need to store it underground,” Lomborg said, referring to the carbon dioxide captured by the technology. And to do that on a meaningful scale worldwide, he argued, “you have to build at least an infrastructure equivalent to the infrastructure that we built in the last hundred years for oil and gas. And remember back then, we did it because it was incredibly profitable. This time we would just have to pay for it.”

Current costs in Canada could be as high as $150 per tonne of CO2. Lomborg noted that for direct air capture projects — which Pathways Alliance is also proposing and involve sucking carbon emissions from the atmosphere — the costs could be as high as $600 per tonne. At those price points, widespread deployment is “not going to happen,” he said.

Growing rightwing backlash to CCS

Climate experts such as University of Pennsylvania scientist Michael Mann have for years argued that carbon capture and storage is a false solution to the climate crisis that allows oil and gas companies to suck up huge amounts of public money while continuing to pump fossil fuels. “It’s not a meaningful climate solution and it displaces meaningful climate solutions like clean energy, renewable energy,” he told a U.S. House panel in 2022.

But recently there has been growing backlash to the technology from conservatives and fossil fuel advocates, some of whom see it as an egregious government waste.

“We might as well take tax money at gunpoint and burn it,” Peterson, the conservative podcaster, wrote last year on X in response to a CCS project in Wyoming.

At Peterson’s ARC conference in London this February, the climate crisis denier Robert Bryce told DeSmog that carbon capture “will never work at scale.” He added, “Once you get that CO2 super-compressed and you’re pushing it down underground, there are very few places where you can actually sequester it. So it’s a lot of money wasted.”

That skepticism is now translating into federal U.S. policy, with Wright’s Department of Energy recently canceling $3.7 billion in decarbonization awards for carbon capture projects from Exxon and other fossil fuel producers. 

Canada is still pushing ahead, however. Recently appointed Liberal energy minister Hodgson, a previous board member of oil and producer MEG Energy, said during a speech in Calgary in May that “All of us, governments and industry, need to get the Pathways [carbon capture] project done.”

During his Vancouver talk, Lomborg argued that the main reason oil and gas companies are pursuing such prohibitively expensive climate projects is so they can be generously supported by governments.

“What you can do is you can get a lot of subsidies,” he said.

Original article by Geoff Dembicki republished from DeSmog.

Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Continue ReadingCarbon Capture ‘Not Going to Happen,’ Top Fossil Fuel Advocate Predicts

The tangled web of UK ministers’ tales of arms sales to Israel

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by Alex Gordon at https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/the-tangled-web-of-uk-ministers-tales-of-arms-sales-to-israel/

GLAN

Keir Starmer and David Lammy’s remarkable attempts to publicly realign their government’s support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza reflect similar shifts recently performed by political leaders in France, Canada, the US and Germany.

On 20 May, Starmer told MPs that innocent children’s suffering in Gaza was “intolerable”, while Lammy called it “abominable”. Lammy condemned Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich’s call to “purify Gaza” by ethnic cleansing as “dangerous, repellent and monstrous”[1].

By 26 May even the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz admitted that Israel’s actions in Gaza “can no longer be justified”.

Given such politicians’ unstinting support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, we may be forgiven for questioning whether their latest pronouncements indicate a shift in policy, a rhetorical attempt to placate public opposition to state collusion in genocide, or an insurance policy against being named in future legal proceedings.

In fact, Lammy’s suspension of UK-Israel free trade talks on 20 May in response to Israel’s block on aid to Gaza was swiftly followed on 26 May by an official visit to the port of Haifa by UK Trade Envoy, Lord Ian Austin, who as the UK Embassy to Israel triumphantly tweeted was “witnessing cooperation at every stop”[2].

While President Trump’s recent decision not to visit Israel was a signal to US allies to adjust their foreign policy stance, UK arms exports to Israel have been a consistent focus of sustained, pro-Palestine mass protests in Britain since October 2023.

Alongside an unparalleled mass movement on the streets of British towns and cities a quiet but effective legal challenge was launched against the UK government’s policy of arms exports to Israel. Campaigners took the UK government to court, accusing it of failing to uphold domestic and international legal obligations by supplying weapons and components used in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Starmer and Lammy’s performed their volte-face in the House of Commons just four days after a landmark High Court challenge by Global Legal Action Network (GLAN)[3] and Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq[4] against the UK government’s decision on 2 September 2024 to continue licensing export of F-35 fighter jet components to Israel, while suspending other arms exports due to risk of violations of international law.

The High Court case displays a web of contradictions and the hypocrisy of ministers’ public statements on arms sales to Israel. According to GLAN and Al-Haq, it exposed “structural flaws in accountability” in the UK arms export control regime, which “renders it unfit to ensure respect for fundamental legal and humanitarian obligations”.

Al-Haq points out, “In Parliament, the government maintains it is for the courts to decide whether Britain is complying with its legal obligations. Yet in court, their lawyers argued the opposite — they say that such matters are not for the judiciary to examine.”

Charlotte Andrews-Briscoe, representing GLAN points out, “The government has been telling Parliament that it is unable to answer questions regarding its decision to indirectly arm Israel because that decision is being tested in the courts, and at the same time telling the judiciary that it cannot examine that decision because that is the role of Parliament.”

In the High Court, UK government lawyers rejected Al-Haq’s assertion that there is at least a serious risk that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and said there is “a tenable view that no genocide has occurred or is occurring”.

Internationally accepted arguments relating to breaches of the Genocide Convention, in the context of the enormous harms suffered by civilians in Gaza, were dismissed by UK government lawyers as “touchy feely”.

The UK government also claimed it had seen “no deliberate targeting of women and children”, and therefore “no serious risk of genocide”. In its own evidence, the government included a report entitled “Research Report: Long-Range Shootings or Shootings of Minors.” This was withheld from GLAN and Al-Haq, despite a duty to disclose and an explicit request for its disclosure.

The UK government also claimed in the High Court that Israel’s targeting policies were as good as the UK’s. Is that even a defence?

That this happened days before Lammy’s statement to MPs on the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories will lead many to suspect that Lammy’s latest windy denunciations of Israeli politicians and a few settlers is a red herring intended to shield UK government ministers from charges of arms exports to Israel in breach of domestic and international law.

Lammy in his statement to MPs on 20 May referred to “a new, extensive ground operation throughout Gaza”, “renewed bombardment, new displacement and new suffering”, and said “we are now entering a dark new phase in this conflict”.

The emphasis on the new level of Israeli atrocities in Gaza is intended create a bogus political and legal distinction between the ‘normal conduct’ of Israel’s war on Gaza, impossible to conduct without arms exports, military intelligence and diplomatic support from Britain, and the latest ‘unacceptable conduct’ of the siege of Gaza by Israel, the starvation and mass displacement of Palestinians, which David Lammy and Keir Starmer condemn so robustly before TV cameras in the House of Commons.

Given the sustained horror of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians over a period of 20 months and the growing evidence of UK government complicity in immoral and illegal arms sales, it will be a difficult political trick for Starmer and Lammy to pull off.

As Gearóid Ó Cuinn, Director of the Global Legal Action Network says, “The government has now been exposed as being disingenuous in Parliament and in court; this merry-go-round of delay and inaction is facilitating genocide and needs to stop. A decision in our case will come far too late for the people of Gaza who are being starved to death – the government must immediately end arms sales and other forms of military support to Israel and apply sanctions.”

[1] Foreign Secretary Oral statement to Parliament, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, 20 May 2025https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/israel-and-the-occupied-palestinian-territories-foreign-secretary-statement-20-may-2025

[2] https://x.com/ukinisrael/status/1927014394921189849

[3] GLAN and our Palestinian partners, human rights organisation Al-Haq are taking the UK government to court over weapons exports to Israel https://www.glanlaw.org/israel-weapons-sales

[4] UK’s ‘flawed’ assessment of genocide in Gaza revealed in court that contradicts claims made in Parliament, 20 May 2025 https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/26458.html

by Alex Gordon at https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/the-tangled-web-of-uk-ministers-tales-of-arms-sales-to-israel/

dizzy: Hoping that Alex Gordon and Stop the War Coalition do not object to me republishing their article.

UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel's Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don't do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch explains her reality that the Earth is flat, the Moon is made of cheese and that she was born from Unicorn horn dust
UK Conservative Party leader Kemi ‘not a genocide’ Badenoch explains her reality that the Earth is flat, the Moon is made of cheese and that she was born from
Unicorn horn dust

Continue ReadingThe tangled web of UK ministers’ tales of arms sales to Israel

UK must impose sanctions on Israel to meet legal obligations, say more than 800 lawyers

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/27/uk-must-impose-sanctions-on-israel-to-meet-legal-obligations-say-more-than-800-lawyers

An Israeli airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City on Monday is believe to have killed 36 people. Photograph: Mohammed Saber/EPA

[Guardian] Exclusive: Letter to PM signed by retired supreme court justices among others says lack of action will imperil international legal system

The UK must impose sanctions on the Israeli government and its ministers and also consider suspending it from the UN to meet its “fundamental international legal obligations”, more than 800 lawyers, academics and retired senior judges, including former supreme court justices, have said.

In a letter to the prime minister, they welcome Keir Starmer’s joint statement last week with the leaders of France and Canada warning that they were prepared to take “concrete actions” against Israel. But they urge him to act without delay as “urgent and decisive action is required to avert the destruction of the Palestinian people of Gaza”.

The signatories, including the former supreme court justices Lord Sumption and Lord Wilson, court of appeal judges and more than 70 KCs, say that war crimes, crimes against humanity and serious violations of international humanitarian law are being committed in Palestine.

There is mounting evidence of genocide, which is either being perpetrated or at a minimum at serious risk of occurring, the letter states, highlighting recent comments by the Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who said Israel’s army would “wipe out” what remains of Palestinian Gaza.

The signatories tell Starmer: “All states, including the UK, are legally obliged to take all reasonable steps within their power to prevent and punish genocide; to ensure respect for international humanitarian law; and to bring to an end violations of [the right to self-determination]. The UK’s actions to date have failed to meet those standards … The international community’s failure to uphold international law in relation to the occupied Palestinian territory contributes to a deteriorating international climate of lawlessness and impunity and imperils the international legal system itself. Your government must act now, before it is too late.”

…

Original Guardian article at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/27/uk-must-impose-sanctions-on-israel-to-meet-legal-obligations-say-more-than-800-lawyers

UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel's Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don't do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch explains her reality that the Earth is flat, the Moon is made of cheese and that she was born from Unicorn horn dust
UK Conservative Party leader Kemi ‘not a genocide‘ Badenoch explains her reality that the Earth is flat, the Moon is made of cheese and that she was born from
Unicorn horn dust

Continue ReadingUK must impose sanctions on Israel to meet legal obligations, say more than 800 lawyers