Oil giant BP’s profits have more than doubled this quarter, lifted by rising oil prices and higher production from new fields, the BBC reports. Profits rose to $3.8bn (£3bn) from $1.86bn in 2017 – BP’s best quarterly result in five years. The price of Brent crude reached $77 a barrel this week, up from $66 a barrel in January due to “limited supply in some of the big oil producing countries”, the Independent reports. The Telegraph notes that “the cash boom means [BP] will be able to pay for its multi-billion dollar move into the US shale industry entirely with cash”. BP is nearing the end of its payments for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill after almost a decade of costs, which were $500m in the last three months alone. BP chief executive Bob Dudley said: “Operations are running well across BP and we’re bringing new, higher-margin barrels into production faster through efficient project execution.” Elsewhere, the Times leads with: “Path is clear for BP shale deal as higher oil prices pump up profits”, while the Financial Times describes the oil major as “well to do”. Reuters also carries the story.

Massive glaciers in the Yukon territory of Canada are shrinking even faster than would be expected from a warming climate, scientists have warned. In its annual Arctic Report Card, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called the warming “unprecedented”. “When I first went to the St Elias range, it felt like time travel – into the past,” said David Hik of Simon Fraser University, who co-edited the report. “What we’re seeing now feels like time travel into the future. Because as the massive glaciers are retreating, they’re causing a complete reorganisation of the environment.” Diane Wilson, a field unit superintendent at Parks Canada, commented: “We’re seeing a 20% difference in area coverage of the glaciers in Kluane national park and reserve and the rest of the Unesco world heritage site [over a 60-year period].”

A fleet of new coal plants in Asia is threatening to derail global emissions targets, the Financial Times reports. Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency told that paper that the new plants would “lock in the emissions trajectory of the world, full stop”. Birol continued: “How we are going to deal with this problem is for me the nerve centre of the climate change debate today…It’s one of the blind spots of the climate change discussion”. Asia has 2,000GW of coal-fired power plants that are operating or under construction, the Financial Times says, and most of those currently in use “still have decades left to operate”, unlike the far older coal plants of the US and Europe. In a separate article, the Financial Times reports that the miner and commodity trader Glencore predicts that the price of coal “can remain stronger for longer”. “Glencore said an extra 1bn tonnes of coal fired-power capacity was either under construction or permitted, mainly in Asia, yet supply growth was stagnant”, the Financial Times writes. Elsewhere, Matthew Gray of the think-tank Carbon Tracker writes in the Asia Times that a “low-cost renewables revolution is coming to Southeast Asia”. “New analysis from Carbon Tracker shows it could be cheaper to build new renewable energy sources than to operate existing coal-fired power plants in Southeast Asia within 10 years”, Gray explains.

The chief executive of Cuadrilla – the energy company which is seeking to become the first to frack for gas commercially in the UK – has warned that the UK government’s regulatory system risks “strangling” the nascent industry, the Financial Times writes. Francis Egan asked the government to relax rules that have forced the company to halt work several times after it unleashed earth tremors at its fracking site in Lancashire – news that was first reported by the Times yesterday. Fracking “revolutionised” the US energy industry, but has “encountered strong opposition from environmental protesters”, the Financial Times says. In a column for the Times, Matt Ridley – a Conservative hereditary peer and advisor to climate sceptic lobby group the Global Warming Policy Foundation – argues that “Fracking’s enemies are wrong to call these earthquakes”. Over in Brighton, a Tory councillor criticised Green councillors as having a vision of a ‘Mad Max dystopia’ in their bid to stop fracking.

Coverage continues of the UK’s 2018 Budget announcement, with the Independent reporting that environmental groups have criticised it for a lack of new funding to tackle climate change. “The disparity in investment between grey and green infrastructure contradicts the prime minister’s environmental ambitions, and the urgent need to tackle climate change,” commented Tom Fyans, of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. In a comment piece for the same paper, Josh Gabbatiss highlights that “this year’s autumn Budget coincided with an alarming report…nature is dying, and it’s our fault”. The piece asks: “What will it take for our leaders to do something about it?” Meanwhile, an number of letters to the Times have “hammered” the budget for “‘ignoring’ green issues”. Carbon Brief has taken an in-depth look at the new budget.

“The executive and legislative branches have refused to act [on climate change]. That leaves the judicial branch”, argues Dean Kuipers, a journalist who writes about the environment, in a feature looking at a number of US climate cases. “In theory, courts are a good place for climate science”, he says, since “the facts accepted by 98% of scientists worldwide represent pretty convincing evidence.” The piece concludes: “Like the rest of the country, the courts are starting to feel the effects of climate change. May a sane and science-based policy take root there, and quickly.” Elsewhere, an article in CNN examines how US federal authorities “are ‘trying to silence’ the kids suing the Trump administration over global warming”.

Growing food without plants or animals is “essential to prevent climate breakdown” by allowing “trees to return to deforested land”, argues Guardian columnist George Monbiot. It “sounds like science fiction, but it is already approaching commercialisation”. Monbiot explains: “For the past year, a group of Finnish researchers has been producing food without either animals or plants. Their only ingredients are hydrogen-oxidising bacteria.”

Just a decade ago, “Brazil seemed like a tropical juggernaut that could play a leading part in the fight against climate change”, begins an editorial in the journal Nature. Now, with the election of Jair Bolsonaro – a “right-wing demagogue with an anti-environmental agenda” – as president, there are “many reasons to worry”. Bolsonaro “promotes development at all costs and has at times threatened to follow US President Donald Trump and pull Brazil out of the 2015 Paris climate accord”, Nature says. He also promised to “merge the environment ministry…with the agriculture ministry”. The editorial concludes: “His environmental agenda will face intense domestic and international opposition…Scientists everywhere should add their voices to the protests.”

Mayer Hillman, senior fellow emeritus at the Policy Studies Institute, examines our options for tackling climate change following the publication of the latest IPCC special report. He writes: “the first and only effective course, albeit a deeply unpopular one, would be to stop using any fossil fuels. The second is to voluntarily minimise their use as much as climate scientists have calculated would deliver some prospect of success. Finally, we can carry on as we are…” The piece concludes: “The overriding message located between the lines of the IPCC report is that we must lead our lives within the planet’s means. In all conscience, we are currently locked into a process that will inevitably result in passing on a dying planet to our children and their successors.”

In spite of more than 35 years of research and over 70 individual studies, the upper bound of future global sea level rise (SLR) remains uncertain. A new study presents and analyses the “first comprehensive database of 21st century global‐mean SLR projections”. The range of upper projections decreased from 1.3–1.8 metres during the 1980s to 0.6–0.9 m in 2007, the study finds, before expanding again to 0.5–2.5 m since 2013. The findings also suggest that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports tend to “err on the side of least drama”. This is “a conservative bias that could potentially impede risk management”, the researchers note.

A study of TV weather forecasters in the US finds that around two-thirds have a formal degree in meteorology – something that was much less common when “news broadcasts first started including weather forecasts in the 1940s”. The researchers assessed the educational backgrounds of 421 meteorologists, finding that 64% had a traditional meteorology degree, 2% minored in meteorology or had military training, and 12% listed no or a partial educational background in the field. In addition, around 21% had a “broadcast meteorology degree or certification” from Mississippi State University, the researchers say. These qualifications provide “on-air personalities with a basic understanding of meteorology but without advanced calculus, differential equations, or dynamics”, the researchers note.