The US energy market has already shifted away from the most polluting fossil fuels, driven more by investors and economics than federal regulations, reports the New York Times, as coverage continues of Scott Pruitt, president-elect Trump’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Financial Times reports experts saying Trump’s impact on global emissions will be “pretty small”. The Times, the Economist, the Guardian, the Independent, Nature News and BBC are among those still covering the Pruitt pick, along with the Hill and InsideClimate News. Media Matters for America has a rundown of “what the media should know” about Pruitt while Greenpeace EnergyDesk looks at Pruitt “in his own words”. The choice of Pruitt has “both sides of [the] climate divide girding for a major fight”, says the Washington Post. Democrat senator Sheldon Whitehouse said the nomination was “corruption of government” because of Pruitt’s ties to the fossil fuel industry, according to the Hill, which carries a second article describing how the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has links to the Trump transition team, wants to roll back president Obama’s climate legacy, including. Indeed, a memo from Trump’s transition team “hints at [a] broad shake-up of US energy policy”, according to Bloomberg, including identifying lists of staff who attended UN climate meetings or were involved in developing climate rules. In a comment for the New York Times, William W Buzbee sets out why he thinks dismantling US climate rules “isn’t so easy”, citing three Supreme Court decisions establishing the need for federal climate action. One of those rulings, the so-called endangerment finding, “must be reversed”, says Patrick J Michaels in a comment piece for the Hill. Michaels says Pruitt “will make Obama regret his environmental overreach”. If Trump wants to dismantle Obama’s EPA climate rules he will face a number of obstacles, explains Brad Plumer at Vox, in an interview with former Obama climate adviser Prof Jody Freeman. Oklahoma, where Pruitt is attorney general, may have resisted federal regulation, but its environmental record “isn’t terrible”, says FiveThirtyEight.

Plans to create a new North Sea industry burning coal under the seabed to create gas have been killed off by government, reports the Telegraph. The decision follows the findings of an independent review, which found that underground coal gasification would increase emissions for gas power by 40-100%, says the Guardian. In a statement, the government said emissions from the practice would be “too high to be consistent with our commitment to a low-carbon future”. The Scottish government imposed a ban on the practice last year.

Weak La Niña conditions are underway in the Pacific but will begin fading away in the coming months, according to the latest monthly update from the US National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Centre. Conditions are likely to edge back into neutral during January to March but until then will bring higher temperatures than usual but less rainfall to many southern states, with the reverse further north. Japan’s weather bureau has also said there is a 70% chance that La Niña weather will end during the spring of 2017.

Solar panels generate as much energy in their first year and a bit of operation to pay back that invested in their production, says Chris Goodall at his Carbon Commentary blog. He asks a series of detailed questions of the authors of new research on the cumulative environmental costs and benefits of solar. They note that on average, solar panels generate around 20 times more energy over their lifetime than was invested in their production. The Economist also looks at the paper, under the headline “How clean is solar power?”. In a worst-case scenario, it says, “solar energy’s environmental credentials really will be spotless” at the latest by 2018. Carbon Brief covered the research earlier this week.

The British government should not try to weaken climate rules as it exits the EU, says the Greener UK coalition of 13 civil society groups, according to Climate Home. The group’s “pledge for the environment” has been endorsed by 145 MPs from both sides of the aisle, Climate Home notes, making up around a fifth of the House of Commons.

John Holdren, president Obama’s chief science adviser, speaks to Elizabeth Kolbert in a long-form interview for Yale e360. Introducing the transcript, Kolbert says Holdren talks about: “the urgency of the climate challenge and why he hopes the next administration will not abandon efforts to address it.” In the interview, Holdren says he retains “some optimism about the future”, because “there are these fundamental forces pushing us toward doing the right thing”.

A new publication on handling political harassment and legal intimidation will be available to scientists gathering next week for the annual American Geophysical Union conference, writes Elizabeth Kolbert for the New Yorker. The booklet’s author decided to write it the day after the election, she notes, as fears grow among scientists watching the Trump transition team and cabinet picks fill up with “expertise in the dark art of disinformation”.

Climate policy discussions to date have “largely ignored” the need to use negative emissions to stay within globally-agreed temperature limits, write Oliver Geden and Stefan Schäfer in a comment at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SEP Berlin). The EU and Germany need to engage with and shape this debate because they may soon be facing calls to cut their emissions by more than 100%, the authors say. This would necessitate the use of negative emissions, they note, and would mean wind and solar could no longer form the core of energy system transition strategies.

A new analysis of the “Dust Bowl” drought in the US in the 1930s finds that record-breaking summer heat waves were preconditioned by unusually dry springs. Summer heat waves were significantly hotter, longer and developed, on average, 15-20 days earlier after dry springs, compared to wet ones, something the authors say highlights the importance of land surface feedbacks in making events more extreme. An unusual pressure ridge over western states triggered anomalous warming, further amplifying the heat waves, the authors add.