There is continuing widespread coverage of Australia’s severe bushfires. Reuters reports that the Australia’s government is “sticking firmly” to a position that there is no direct link between climate change and the bushfires despite “public anger, the anguish of victims and warnings from scientists”. Angus Taylor, the country’s emissions reductions minister, has told Reuters: “When it comes to reducing global emissions, Australia must and is doing its bit, but bushfires are a time when communities must unite, not divide.” The Guardian reports that senior Australian politicians have started “distancing themselves” from MP Craig Kelly after he appeared on the UK’s ITV breakfast programme Good Morning Britain and claimed that there was no link between the bushfires and climate change. Kelly was labelled a “disgrace” and a “denier” by the show’s host Piers Morgan and meteorologist Laura Tobin. A second Reuters story says that the area razed by bushfires has now reached 10.3m hectares, an area the size of South Korea. Satellites show that plumes of smoke from the bushfires have now reached as far as South America, Reuters adds. The Hill reports that US president Donald Trump has offered his assistance in a phone call with Australian prime minister Scott Morrison. Morrison later thanked Trump in a tweet for his “sympathy, support and friendship”. Elsewhere, a second Guardian story reports that Australian actor Yael Stone – who stars in Orange is the New Black – has pledged to give up the green card that allows her to work in the US in order to lessen her environmental impact on the planet. “We’ve come to understand that it’s unethical for us to set up a life in two countries, knowing what we know,” Stone said in a video posted to Twitter and Instagram, calling such frequent travelling “environmentally unjust”, the Guardian reports.

“Growth in low carbon power generation stalled in the UK last year, after doubling in the decade since 2010,” says the Press Association, reporting on new analysis from Carbon Brief. It continues: “Power from renewables grew by nearly a 10th, but that was offset by falling nuclear generation due to ongoing outages at Hunterston and Dungeness reactors…Overall, the amount of power generated by low carbon technologies increased by just 0.6% or one terawatt hour of generation in 2019, compared to 2018.” Also picking up on Carbon Brief’s analysis, the Guardian focuses on renewables, reporting that electricity produced “by the UK’s renewable sector outpaced fossil fuel plants on a record 137 days in 2019 to help the country’s energy system record its greenest year”. The newspaper also notes that renewables – including wind, solar, hydro and biomass projects – “grew by 9% last year and was the UK’s largest electricity source in March, August, September and December”. In other coverage, City AM notes: “In 2019 the UK recorded 83 days when no coal was used to generate electricity, almost four times as many as in 2018.” And NS Energy reports on comments by industry organisation Energy UK, which says the UK must go “much further and faster” in decarbonising its electricity generation if net-zero commitments are to be achieved. It continues: “The warning comes in response to new figures from research group Carbon Brief, which shows that despite significant progress in shifting the UK energy mix to include more renewables, low-carbon power generated in the country during 2019 grew by just 0.6% on the previous year.” In related news, an “exclusive” in iNews reports that “Britain’s efforts to hit its climate targets are being damaged by the decision to scrap a key energy efficiency scheme”. The “Carbon Emission Reduction Obligation” (CERO), which “forced large energy firms to subsidise home insulation” was abolished 16 months ago, the papers says. Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy statistics show the CERO scheme was “reducing emissions by 95,000 tonnes [of CO2] a month”, the paper says, which means, by 2030, “CERO could have saved 11.4m tonnes of CO2 if it had not been abolished…In that year Britain is forecast to emit around 50m more tonnes of carbon than the legal limit set in the UK’s ‘carbon budget’.”

The Guardian reports on a study finding that the shift from coal to gas for electricity generation in the US saved at least 26,000 people from dying in 2005-16. Lives were saved thanks to the reduction in harmful pollutants released by coal plants, which are known to cause health problems, such as heart disease and respiratory issues, the Guardian says. The Hill also covers the study. Meanwhile, Reuters reports on another study finding that China must end the construction of all new coal-fired power plants in order to meet its long-term climate goals in “the most economically feasible manner”. The study, conducted by Chinese government researchers and the University of Maryland Center for Global Sustainability, finds that China must first end new construction and then rapidly close older and inefficient plants. Reuters adds: “As much as 112 gigawatts (GW) does not meet environmental standards and could be shut down immediately, it said.” Elsewhere, Spanish newspaper El País reports that Spain’s CO2 emissions from electricity generation dropped by a third in 2019 as the country rapidly decreased its reliance on coal-fired power.

BBC News reports that new car registrations in the UK last year fell to their lowest level since 2013. It was the third consecutive year of decline, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, and the trend is expected to continue, BBC News says. “Those expectations are largely due to weak consumer confidence and confusion over clean-air legislation. The organisation also says the industry is facing serious challenges adapting to new emissions legislation”, reads the article. However, the Guardian reports that the average CO2 emissions from cars sold in the UK have risen for the third year in a row. The increase could be down to the increasing popularity of SUVs and falling diesel sales, the Guardian says.

Many publications continue to offer their comment and analysis on Australia’s bushfires. An editorial in the Washington Post says the fires should serve as a “warning to the world”. It adds: “This is the future humanity is writing for itself, right now, every day world governments waste failing to respond to climate change.” It then concludes: “Even without human help, Earth can be at times inhospitable. All the more reason to avoid priming the planet for worse…Australia, which has profited off fossil fuel extraction and use, has a responsibility to help lead the world. So does the US, which under the Trump administration is every bit as complicit.” An editorial in the Guardian says that film stars who have highlighted the need to tackle climate change in light of Australia’s bushfires should offer cause for hope. “In an ideal world, it would probably not fall to film stars to advocate for evidence-based policies to protect the planet from catastrophe…But where efforts such as those of Australian comedian Celeste Barber, whose bushfires fundraiser has made £20m, offer a reason to hope amid the grief and horror, is in the proof they offer that, when people truly believe that the future is imperilled, they want to help – and understand that this costs money. Politicians around the world should pay attention.” Meanwhile, an editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald calls for a royal commission to look into the bushfires in New South Wales. “The issue of whether NSW should conduct more hazard reduction burning is important but it is only one of literally scores of issues that need examination if the state is to prepare for a future with a hotter climate and longer and more intense bushfire seasons,” it says. In contrast, an editorial in the Daily Telegraph says, under a headline about “natural disasters”, that “age-old methods” of controlling wildfires must be upheld. “In Australia, for instance, the bush fires that have raged for weeks are blamed on climate change and yet the country, which is hot and dry, is no stranger to such phenomena,” the editorial says. The Sydney Morning Herald also carries a piece examining what Australia could look like in 2050 and an explainer on “prescribed burning” and whether it could reduce the risks caused by bushfires. The Guardian carries a comment piece from writer Brigid Delaney, who calls the bushfires Australia’s “Sandy Hook moment”. She adds: “If we don’t take climate action now we never will.” A second comment piece in the Guardian by Amanda Cahill, researcher and CEO of the Next Economy, asks if fossil-fuel companies should foot the bill for the damages caused by the bushfires. The Daily Telegraph carries a second article examining how much worse the fires could get. And BBC Radio 4’s Today programme has posted a “Beyond Today” podcast on BBC Sounds examining “Australian fires: who is to blame?”, which features an interview with climate scientists Prof Michael Mann.

A column by the Daily Mirror’s “Fleet Street Fox” (Susie Boniface) says that climate change could “kill off” US president Donald Trump. She writes: “You may not believe in man-made climate change, but the climate is nevertheless changing. You might not like intervention in other nations’ affairs, but if you let them fail their problems will become yours. Perhaps you object to the free movement of people, but there’s more of them than you. If things get bad enough, the ‘crisis’ of the past few years will look like a trickle”.

A new study uses a combination of observations and model simulations to estimate physical and chemical changes in the Southern Ocean over the last two decades. The researchers identify a number of changes, including “local warming of over 3C” and “deoxygenation along the Antarctic coast”. An accompanying News & Views article notes the study shows “that warming, deoxygenation, acidification, and increases in ocean carbon content and nutrients can be explained by two main processes: the poleward shift and intensification of westerly winds, and increased melting of the Antarctic ice sheet”.

Water levels in the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna delta have increased by around 3mm per year over the past 45 years, a new study says, which is faster than the 2mm per year of global average sea level rise. Using an “unprecedented set of 101 water-level gauges across the delta”, the researchers reconstruct changes in water level over 1968 to 2012. The combination of land subsidence and sea level rise “could double the projected sea level rise”, the study also finds, “making it reach 85 to 140cm across the delta” by 2100 under the RCP4.5 emissions scenario.

A new paper presents “the first mean ocean temperature record” for the global ocean during the Last Interglacial period 129-116 thousand years ago (ka). The record, developed from noble gas measurements in ice cores, shows that the average ocean temperature “reached its maximum value of 1.1C warmer-than-modern values at the end of the penultimate deglaciation at 129 ka”. This resulted in around 0.7m of thermosteric sea-level rise relative to present level, the researchers note. The maximum in ocean heat content “was a transient feature”, the study finds, adding: “Mean ocean temperature decreased in the first several thousand years of the interglacial and achieved a stable, comparable-to-modern value by ~127 ka.”