This week, negotiators are in Bonn to attempt to slim down
the draft document for the UN climate deal, which countries hope to
sign in Paris in December. After the last set of talks in Geneva in
June, the text currently stands at 76 pages. Our Carbon Brief
explainer takes you through the document.

President Obama trekked up to Exit Glacier as part of his
three-day tour of Alaska to call attention to the impacts of
climate change. Standing in front of the iconic glacier, which has
been retreating by 43 feet per year, Obama said: “This is as good
of a signpost of what we’re dealing with when it comes to climate
change as just about anything.”

The current El Nino event could be one of the strongest on
record, says the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). The
climate phenomenon, which originates in the Pacific Ocean but
affects weather around the world, is strengthening and will peak by
the end of the year, scientists say. The event is sending sea
temperatures in parts of the Pacific to levels not seen since the
strongest El Nino on record in 1997-98. The effect that El Nino
events tend to have on the weather could see wetter conditions in
western US – helping alleviate the Californian drought,
reports

The commitment of the Big Six energy companies to tackling
climate change has been called into question after it emerged that
they have all quietly dropped their green electricity tariffs.
Despite making public commitments to tackle climate change by
reducing carbon emissions, none of the major suppliers, which
together provide 90 per cent of UK household power, offers a
renewable energy tariff.

Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the ocean could have a
major effect on blue-green algae, a new study finds. These
microscopic marine organisms play an important role in the marine
ecosystem by ‘fixing’ nitrogen gas out of the water and converting
it into a form that other organisms can use. But under higher
carbon dioxide levels, the algae fix nitrogen much more quickly –
potentially using up other nutrients in the process, the
researchers say. This could pose a threat to its long-term
survivability and its important role in the food chain,
reports

Electricity generated by US wind farms fell 6%in the first
half of the year even as the nation expanded wind generation
capacity by 9%, new data shows. A lack of wind has been identified
as the cause, with some of the slowest wind currents for 40 years.
Wind speeds may continue to be weak into next year, experts say,
because the El Nino event currently underway is likely to cause
below-average winds.

Brent – a global benchmark for oil – has fallen back in line
after a 28% swing since last Thursday saw prices reaching a high of
$54 per barrel. The three-day surge in the price of oil is the
biggest since Iraqi tanks rolled over the Kuwaiti border in 1990,
says The Telegraph. But it ground to a halt as experts predict the
cost of a barrel of Brent crude to continue to remain volatile for
the rest of the year.

Writing in the Guardian, comedian Leighann Lord rails
against US politicians who “blame natural disasters like Katrina on
global warming, but then deny global warming exists when it becomes
too expensive to do anything about it or when they need campaign
donations”. Television doesn’t help, she says, with unassuming
scientists up against “a guy on Fox News screaming (because the
louder you yell, the truer your facts) that global warming is a
lefty, liberal, socialist conspiracy”.

Given the reality of climate change, it is tempting to seek
an anthropogenic component in any recent change in the statistics
of extreme weather, say a team of US authors in a new paper. But
depending on the statistical distribution of how often such events
occur, this can sometime lead to the wrong conclusions, especially
with historical records of limited length and
accuracy.

Using a combination of climate scenarios and economic
forestry models, a new study calculates that the benefits of global
climate change mitigation for US agriculture and forestry could
range from $32.7-54.5bn over the period 2015-2100, relative to a
case with unabated climate change. The study should help inform
policy decisions that weigh up mitigation and adaptation actions,
the paper concludes.