Two weeks of climate talks in Germany have “ended in acrimony between rich and poor countries over cash for climate damage”, reports the BBC News. The issue of “loss and damage” and has become a “running sore in these negotiations”, the outlet says, with the US and Europe “fear[ing] that if they pay for historic emissions it could put their countries on the hook for billions of dollars for decades or even centuries to come”. It continues: “At last year’s COP26 conference in Glasgow, island states and developing countries agreed to prioritise cuts to carbon emissions on the back of promises that richer nations would finally set up a compensation process this year. It was a compromise they hoped would pay off. But despite two weeks of discussions here in Bonn, they have been unable to get the issue of a funding facility on the agenda for the COP27 conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt in November.” Alex Scott from the thinktank E3G tells the outlet that the “compromise was based on an understanding that countries would be willing to start talking and taking decisions on dealing with how to get that finance flowing for loss and damage”. But, Scott adds, “we haven’t seen that come to fruition here. Instead, we’ve seen a workshop set up to talk about how we can fix some of the problems”. Teresa Anderson of the campaign group ActionAid International tells Associated Press that “rich countries, particularly the EU, spiked the discussion about loss and damage at every single turn”. Finally, Avantika Goswami – programme manager for climate change at the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi – writes in a piece for Down to Earth magazine that loss and damage discussions at Bonn are “nothing but ‘talk shop’”.

Meanwhile, Climate Home News interviews outgoing UN Climate Change head Patricia Espinosa, who says that some rich nations felt her repeated calls for more money for vulnerable countries was “too strong”. She tells the outlet: “I can tell you, on finance, my messages have been felt as too strong by many. When I say climate finance is insufficient, this is a question of trust, this is a question of the credibility of the climate change multilateral system, that has not been so well received by some.“ (Carbon Brief also interviewed Espinosa earlier this week.)

New research has identified a group of polar bears in south-east Greenland that are “surviving despite a lack of sea ice for much of the year”, the Guardian reports. It continues: “The team say the polar bears – which appear to have been isolated from other groups for several hundred years – have clung on thanks to freshwater ice from glaciers that discharge into the sea. The researchers add that despite expectations of a large decline in polar bear numbers in the Arctic, the discovery offers a glimmer of hope, not least as the conditions in south-east Greenland today are similar to those expected in the high Arctic towards the end of the century.” The New York Times says that the “subpopulation, believed to number several hundred animals, was identified during a multiyear study of what was thought to be a single population of bears along Greenland’s entire 1,800-mile-long east coast”. It adds: “Through analysis of satellite-tracked movements, tissue samples and other data, the bears in the southeast were found to be isolated, both physically and genetically, from the others.” Lead author Dr Kristin Laidre tells Bloomberg that “this new population gives us some insight into how the species might persist into the future”. However, she warns that “we need to be careful about extrapolating our findings, because the glacier ice that makes it possible for south-east Greenland bears to survive is not available in most of the Arctic”. In addition, the bears are “not reproducing as much as other individuals” and are “not as healthy as other individuals who are in a better habitat”, study co-author Prof Beth Shapiro tells Associated Press. As a result, south-east Greenland is a “kind of an oasis maybe, but it’s not a happy oasis. It’s a I’m-struggling-to-get-by-but-just-making-it kind of oasis”. And a scientist not involved in the study tells Axios that the pace of ice sheet deterioration will determine whether the population of bears “might do better for a little while” or “end up in jeopardy”. Therefore, Laidre tells New Scientist, “climate action is the single most important thing for the future of polar bears”. The study is also picked up by the Daily Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Times, BBC News and Reuters.

Meanwhile, BBC News reports that Nepal is preparing to move its Mount Everest base camp because global warming and human activity are making it unsafe. It says: “The camp, used by up to 1,500 people in the spring climbing season, is situated on the rapidly thinning Khumbu glacier. A new site is to be found at a lower altitude, where there is no year-round ice, an official told the BBC.”

Russia’s deputy prime minister Alexander Novak has said that Europe will pay an extra $400bn in higher energy prices and could face a shortage of oil products because of its oil embargo, reports Reuters. Speaking at Russia’s international economic forum in St Petersburg, Novak predicted that the embargo could lead to a shortage of oil products in the European market and blamed “poor energy security planning” in the US and Europe for record-high pump prices and surging inflation, the newswire reports. Russia is looking to “switch energy exports away from Europe to countries like China and India in order to cover the loss of lucrative European sales”, Reuters says: “However, Novak said Russia’s energy infrastructure…would need to be developed to ensure pipelines and supply routes could reach new markets and ship increased volumes.”

Meanwhile, Russian gas supply to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline fell further yesterday, reports Reuters, and “Moscow said more delays in repairs could lead to suspending all flows, putting a brake on Europe’s race to refill its gas inventories”. The newswire explains: “Russia’s state-controlled Gazprom said it was reducing gas supply for a second time in as many days via Nord Stream 1, which runs under the Baltic to Germany. The latest move cuts supply to just 40% of the pipeline’s capacity. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said reductions in supply were not premeditated and related to maintenance issues, a reference to earlier comments saying Russia was unable to secure the return of equipment sent to Canada for repairs.” However, “Germany said Russia’s excuse was technically ‘unfounded’ and was instead aimed at driving up gas prices”, the article notes, adding that “Italy said Moscow might be use the issue to exert political pressure”. Italian energy firm Eni said it would receive only 65% of the gas supply volumes it had requested from Russia’s Gazprom yesterday, reports a separate Reuters piece. Sky News reports that comments of German vice chancellor Robert Habeck, who has already launched a campaign for people to save energy last week. He said: “Gas is coming to Europe – we have no supply problem, but the volumes of gas must be acquired on the market and it will get more expensive…Now it is time to do so [save energy]…Every kilowatt hour helps in this situation. It is a situation that is serious, but not a situation that endangers supply security in Germany.” The New York Times and Financial Times also cover the story, while Bloomberg reports that European power prices have “jumped to their highest this year”. And Radio Free Europe reports the comments of Gazprom’s CEO Aleksei Miller said during a panel discussion at the St Petersburg forum. He said: “Our product, our rules. We don’t play by rules we didn’t create.“

Also in Germany, Die Zeit reports that the federal government is examining the establishment of a floating liquid gas terminal in the Baltic Sea off Lubmin near Greifswald. It adds that “clarifying talks are currently underway,” said the president of the federal network agency, Klaus Müller, on the Rheinische Post. However, the outlet continues, nautical conditions still have to be clarified: “The Baltic Sea is not as deep as the port in Wilhelmshaven. And the gas has to come from the ship to land – with new pipes or with the existing ones,” said Müller.

Elsewhere, the Financial Times reports that UK energy group Centrica has “secured enough additional gas from Norway to heat 1.5m British households this winter, as the UK races to find alternatives to Russian supplies”. The Times notes that the deal will cover the next three winters. Another Reuters piece looks at how “rising gas cost could spell more coal use”, while the Financial Times reports that the founder of one of the world’s biggest producers of iron ore has accused western politicians of “propping up the Kremlin” by relying on natural gas imports from Russia.

In other Russia news, Reuters reports the comments of deputy prime minister Viktoria Abramchenko, who said that Russia would have to delay implementation of some climate-related projects due to restrictions on imports of foreign equipment, but would stay in the Paris Agreement. Abramchenko said Moscow would have to postpone some green energy projects by two years, adding: “Russia is deeply integrated into the global economy and there are some types of equipment, technology that Russia did not have; we imported it…America and Europe said they would not trade with us – we need time to diversify.”

Europe’s biggest economies are seeing “near-record amounts of solar power as a heatwave spreads across the southwest of the continent, boosting demand for electricity to keep people cool”, Bloomberg reports. Solar power “met almost a quarter of all energy demand in five of Europe’s biggest power markets on Wednesday”, the newswire says, although the surge in supply did little to ease rising prices. In Germany, solar power hit a record 36,848 megawatts at 1pm on Wednesday, the article says, meeting “more than 60% of demand at one point in the afternoon”. In Spain, “power from the sun provided about 23% of electricity demand just after 2pm on Wednesday”. However, Europeans “are turning up the air conditioning to deal with rising temperatures which reached 39C (102F) in Madrid”, Bloomberg adds.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that the “punishing heatwave” in western Europe is set to continue, with “widespread temperatures near or above 104F (40C) expected through the weekend”. The heat is “expected to peak in France on Saturday and centre over Germany by Sunday, but Spain, Poland and Austria will all feel abnormally high temperatures for the next few days”, the paper says. Reuters reports that “three wildfires have laid waste to 1,600 hectares (3,950 acres) of pines and bushes in eastern Spain”. Agence France-Presse also has the wildfire story.

In the UK, yesterday was the hottest day of the year so far, reports BBC News, as temperatures reached 29.5C (85.1F) in Northolt, west London, surpassing the previous hottest day of the year on Wednesday which hit 28.2C. Earlier reporting by the Independent and Times put yesterday’s high temperature at 29.3C at Heathrow and Kew Gardens in London. Today is “expected to be hotter still with 34C forecast in the south-east and temperatures pushing up to 30C across much of England and Wales”, the Independent says, adding that a “third day of temperatures above regional thresholds would mean the UK was experiencing a heatwave”. In a blog post, Bob Ward – policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics – says that “hundreds of preventable deaths are likely” in the heat and the government “should be working harder to mitigate this risk as the incidence of heatwaves become greater with climate change”.

In the US, the New York Times reports that “millions of people were expected to suffer through blistering conditions again” yesterday as the National Weather Service warned “that it may take weeks to see relief”. The paper notes that “more than 60 million people from southern California to West Virginia and as far south as Florida were under an excessive heat warning or heat advisory”. The Independent says that the extreme heat and humidity have “left thousands of cattle dead in Kansas”. Reporting by the Washington Post says that “the official first day of summer has not even arrived and already the country is overheated, waterlogged and suffering”. It adds: “Extreme weather is here early, testing the nation’s readiness and proving, once again, that overlapping climate disasters are now becoming more frequent and upending Americans’ lives.” An opinion piece by Washington Post contributing columnist Fernanda Santos warns that extreme heat is a “public health crisis”. And Paul Voosen at Science looks at recent advances in “attribution” research that shows how human-caused climate change is affecting weather extremes.

Australian authorities have given themselves the power to block coal exports if the resource is needed to ease the country’s crippling power crisis, which the Financial Times describes as the “latest measure taken to avert the risk of blackouts”. It continues: “Rising coal and gas prices, coupled with outages at ageing coal-fired power stations, have plunged the market into turmoil this week, forcing the Australian Energy Market Operator to take control of the wholesale market to ensure reliable supply of electricity to eastern states. The government of New South Wales invoked emergency powers [today] to oblige miners operating in the state to redirect coal heading overseas to local generators. The precautionary move was taken to strengthen energy security on the advice of AEMO.” Matt Kean, the energy minister and treasurer for New South Wales, said the move would “just giv[e] ourselves all the levers we need to give the community certainty that we’re doing everything we can to keep the system going”. The paper notes that “the energy crisis has highlighted the failure of Australia, one of the world’s largest producers of fossil fuels, to prepare for the transition to renewable energy sources by investing in modernising the country’s electricity infrastructure, analysts say”. At the same time, Reuters reports that “blackout risks eased in eastern Australia” today as “about a third of the coal-fired generation that had been offline in recent weeks returned to service, but the market operator said the power crisis was not over”.

In related comment, an editorial on the energy crisis in the Sydney Morning Herald criticises the “ideological nonsense that has substituted for policy in the past decade”. It says: “This is especially a criticism of the Coalition. After doing nothing for its nine years in power to develop energy and climate policy that could be implemented, it is still throwing around the same tired slogans it used to delay action in the past.” Mike Foley, the paper’s climate and energy correspondent, has a piece looking at how coal is “the burning issue in the energy crisis”. Bloomberg opinion columnist David Fickling warns that “electricity is essential infrastructure” for Australia, but “it’s being held to ransom by a dying coal industry”. And in the Guardian, John Quiggin – an Australian laureate fellow in economics at the University of Queensland – writes that “now is the perfect time to increase coal royalties to fund Australia’s energy transition”.

According to the National Energy Administration (NEA) – China’s top energy regulator – from January to May in 2022, national electricity consumption reached “3,353TWh (terawatt hours), an increase of 2.5% year-on-year”, China Energy News reports. The country’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Wednesday published data on industrial output which showed that in May, “370m” tonnes of raw coal were produced, “up 10.3% year-on-year”, the outlet adds. The outlet also reports on the growth of the country’s power generation capacity, citing the same dataset. By the end of May, capacity reached about 2.42 terawatts (TW), an increase of 7.9% year-on-year, the article notes. Wind and solar power reached about 340 gigawatts (GW) and 330GW respectively, increasing 17.6% and 24.4% year-on-year.

A Bloomberg article also reports on the figures by NEA and NBS, highlighting the coal production figure in its headline: “China’s surprise economic rebound in May propelled by coal”. The publication notes that thermal electricity output – mainly from coal – fell by a substantial 10.9% in May, according to the NBS data, which also showed monthly cement output dropping 17%. It highlights that China’s headline industrial output in May “grew an unexpected 0.7% from a year earlier, but output of electricity was down 3.3% and power consumption was down 1.3% for the same period”. The outlet points out that the “gains” for the industrial sector were “concentrated in energy”, “specifically the output of coal”.

Meanwhile, Chinese vice premier Han Zheng on Wednesday “called for efforts to ensure an adequate supply of power amid growing electricity demand over the summer”, reports Xinhua. Additionally, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) – China’s top economic regulator – said on Thursday that it will do the “utmost’‘ to “ensure a safe and stable supply of electricity during the summer peak season”, reports China Energy News.

Separately, Bloomberg says that so far in 2022, China has approved investment projects “worth three times what was approved by this time last year”. The outlet says the move comes as Beijing “ramps up efforts to boost an economy weighed down by Covid outbreaks and weak demand”. The projects the NDRC has approved are “mainly in the transportation and water conservation sectors”, the outlet notes, citing the agency’s spokeswoman Meng Wei on Thursday.

Finally, Reuters reports: “A rare convergence in China of record rainfall, heatwaves and a tornado hitting the southern megacity of Guangzhou this week displaced millions of people, damaged properties and swamped farmland.”

The amount of bioenergy needed to meet the UK’s net-zero target in 2050 would require burning “the equivalent of 120m trees a year”, the Daily Telegraph reports in an “exclusive” that is trailed on its frontpage. Net-zero plans rely heavily on “capturing the smoke from power plants, which burn wood to create electricity, and piping it under the North Sea using a system known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS)”, the paper explains. These biomass plants are “considered to be carbon neutral, largely because the trees they burn will be replanted, any of the emissions that are captured and stored are counted as negative”. The paper says that “to create enough emissions so that the removal can can balance the books and reach net-zero”, the power plants “the equivalent of the New Forest every five months”. A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy spokesman tells the paper that they “do not recognise this characterisation” of the number of trees being burnt, adding: “We need to generate more home-grown power in Britain and sustainable biomass is widely considered a renewable, low carbon energy source.“ They also pointed out that materials other than wood are currently being considered to create biomass, adding that “no decision” has been taken on the final reliance on BECCS and they are also looking at other greenhouse gas removal technology.

British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous activist Bruno Pereira “have been killed in an undeclared global war against nature and the people who defend it”, writes Jonathan Watts, the Guardian’s global environment editor and former Brazil correspondent, in a piece that makes the paper’s frontpage. The frontlines of this war “are the Earth’s remaining biodiverse regions”, he says, which includes “the forests, wetlands and oceans that are essential for the stability of our climate and planetary life-support system”. In a moving tribute, Watts writes: “My friend Dom knew how important this story was. It is why he took a year off to research a book, How to Save the Amazon, and it is why he took the risk of travelling to the bandit territory of the Javari valley with Bruno, who was one of Brazil’s most effective, courageous and threatened forest defenders.” Their deaths will “chill journalists and editors covering the environmental frontline, but I hope it will inspire rather than deter”, says Watts: “What happened to Dom and Bruno is not a one-off: it is part of a global trend. Over the past two decades, thousands of environment- and land-defenders have been killed worldwide. Brazil has been the most murderous country during that time. Some of the deaths cause a global storm, such as those of Chico Mendes, Dorothy Stang and now Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips, but most go under-reported and uninvestigated. If anything useful can come from the latest horror, let it be a recognition that these are not isolated cases. Let journalists examine the patterns that link these crimes, let us tell stories off the beaten track, and let us try to find solutions to the planet’s problems, as Dom was trying to do.”

The Guardian also has an editorial on Phillips and Pereira, warning that the “relentless targeting of those who seek to protect an ever more fragile world is increasing as the climate crisis grows more intense”. It adds: “Brazil is one of the most dangerous countries for land and environmental defenders, with 20 having died in 2020, according to the watchdog Global Witness, which warns that killings are rising across the global south.”

Writing in the Financial Times, Stephen Cutts – former assistant secretary-general of the UN – warns that while “the OECD recently published figures claiming that overseas aid had reached a historic peak of $178.9bn in 2021”, these figures “cannot be trusted”. He explains that “many problems stem from so-called ‘modernisation’ reforms introduced in 2018, when the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee – essentially a donors’ club – changed its methodology for calculating official development assistance (ODA) in loans”. He adds: “Nowhere is the impact of this incentive to provide loans instead of grants more pernicious than in climate financing, where public loans dominate contributions to the annual $100bn UN climate change target. Many such loans are for projects that yield neither revenues nor direct financial benefits, so add to the debt stress many poor countries are already facing. In effect, developing countries are being made to pay the costs of climate change they haven’t caused, while OECD countries claim credit for aid they haven’t given.”

An editorial in the Economist says that buildings have a “dirty secret” – “they are among the planet’s worst climate offenders”. It continues: “Heating, cooling and powering existing offices, homes and factories accounts for 27% of global energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions. Constructing new ones involves mountains of steel and colossal amounts of cement, and combined with demolition accounts for another 10% of the global CO2 emitted each year. Building debris generates a third of the European Union’s annual waste by weight.” The problem “can be divided into three parts”, the outlet says: “The first goal is to incentivise owners to make existing properties more energy-efficient…The second goal is to facilitate more rational decisions about when to retrofit buildings and when to demolish them and rebuild…The final goal should be to ensure that the construction of new buildings that does take place is far cleaner than it has been in the past.” The piece concludes: “The good news is that there is huge room for improvement: new industrial processes can reduce the emissions from cement and steel. Better construction methods, including prefabricated houses, are more energy- and carbon-efficient but rarely used. The construction industry has a dire record on productivity growth – a sign that there has not been enough fresh thinking. Time to start building a new approach.”

The amount of marine oil pollution that is attributable to humans may have been “substantially underestimated”, according to a new study. Researchers analyse satellite imagery spanning 2014-9 to create the “first global map” of surface oil slicks, as well as a “detailed inventory” of persistent sources, such as oil rigs and natural seeps. About 90% of the oil slicks identified in the images occurred within 160 kilometres of the coastline or along major shipping routes. They also find that only 6% of the slick area can be traced back to natural sources, while 94% of the slicks are due to human activity – a significant change from a previous analysis, covering the period 1990-99, which found that 46% of slicks were due to natural seeps.

A new study suggests that the collapse of Arabia’s Himyarite kingdom – and the subsequent rise of Islam – may have been aided by a period of severe droughts. Using palaeoclimate proxy data, including a new dataset from a cave in Oman, researchers analyse the climate of Arabia during the sixth century. They find a series of “unprecedented droughts” during that time span, with the “most severe aridity” occurring during the first three decades of the century. They posit that the droughts “undermined” the reign of the dominant kingdom of the time, “thereby contribut[ing] to the societal changes from which Islam emerged”. (For more on proxy data, see Carbon Brief’s explainer.)