The Victorian government is demanding the operator of Australia's main electricity grid explain how the state came close to losing electricity during the recent extreme heatwave to ensure NSW avoided power outages, adding to calls for a wider inquiry.

A former dog breeder from Sydney's north-west has been found guilty of animal cruelty after officers found five dead dogs in freezers on his property and others living in "grotesque" conditions.

A new wave of solar energy is about to crest and it won't just be households benefiting.

Six ocean hot spots that teem with the biggest mix of species are also getting hit hardest by global warming and industrial fishing, a study has found.

There is a mysterious hole in Lake Berryessa in California. It is not a supernatural whirlpool, a demon's mouth or a portal into hell or a fourth dimension. The creepy thing probably won't suck you into it either.

• COMMENT

I'll give it to you cold. Electricity prices are going up.

• EXCLUSIVE

Ballarat and Bendigo faced losing electricity during the recent great eastern Australian heatwave so NSW could avoid power cuts, underscoring the parlous state of the country's grid.

Environmental groups want more time to consider the impacts of Santos' Narrabri CSG project that will include as many as 850 wells, producing more than 100 tonnes of waste salt alone per day.

When a goanna made a surprise appearance at the Mimosa Winery's restaurant one peaceful afternoon, a French waitress quickly took control of the situation. 

Canberrans who were sick of the sweltering heat may have found themselves hugging the doona on Tuesday morning.

Caltex Australia has been fined $400,000 and ordered to pay court costs for an uncontrolled fuel discharge at its Port Botany terminal.

Four newborn kittens have been dumped in a McDonald's bag inside one of its Tasmanian restaurants.

Hundreds of scientists, environmental advocates and their supporters have rallied in Boston to protest what they see as increasing threats to science and research in the US.

A man has been killed after two cars collided on the NSW north coast, as a series of catastrophic thunderstorms swept across the state on Sunday.

Drones, sniffer dogs and land patrols are used in the regions war against noxious weeds.

London is choking from record levels of pollution, much of it caused by diesel cars and trucks, as well as wood-burning fires in private homes.

The Trump administration is preparing to roll back Obame-era environmental safeguards as Scott Pruitt prepares to take head up the Environmental Protection Agency.

"All the arrows are pointing in a very bad direction," says Danny Price, who sits on the government's Climate Change Authority.

Large hailstones as wide as 50¢ pieces lashed Sydney on Friday afternoon as severe storms hit the city.

Boston: Woolly mammoths - or, at least, animals with very similar DNA - could be brought back from extinction within two years, say scientists behind a ground-breaking resurrection project.

Labor's climate change spokesman Mark Butler has dismissed as "rubbish" widely circulating claims that Federal ALP had dropped its goal of achieving half of the nation's electricity will be supplied by renewable sources by 2030.

The amount of oxygen in oceans around the world has declined, a long-predicted result of climate change, scientists have revealed.

Lake Dumbleyung in WA's Wheatbelt is where Donald Campbell broke the world water speed record in 1964 in his iconic 'Bluebird' speedboat.

Unusually warm sea temperatures and the prospect for more to come have reef scientists worried that the Great Barrier Reef may experience another major coral bleaching event. And Sydney is also under threat.

• INVESTIGATION

It's the fight that has become the proxy war between the pro and anti coal forces in Australia and it's entering its fiercest round.

The booming market for home storage could be thrown into disarray if proposed safety guidelines force owners to move their battery units outside.

Fossil fuels will be, by far, the predominant factor in the early deaths of Australians by mid-century.

Thousands of bats have dropped dead from the heat, falling from the trees as scorching conditions enveloped parts of NSW at the weekend.