Climate activists Extinction Rebellion (XR) disrupted rail services in London yesterday morning, reports Reuters, “sparking a clash between angry commuters and a protester who had climbed onto the roof of a London Underground train during rush hour”. It continues: “Footage showed protesters unfurling a banner on top of a stationary train carriage at Canning Town before commuters on a crowded platform began hurling insults and pelting one of them with food.” One protestor “was dragged to the platform” by commuters, adds Reuters, “where he was swallowed by a crowd of people shoving and shouting before a woman and a member of the Tube staff intervened to restore order”. XR activists also climbed on to trains at Stratford and Shadwell, says BBC News, adding that eight protesters in total were arrested. The Daily Telegraph live reporting notes that the Metropolitan Police warned the actions of commuters who “took matters into their own hands” were “unacceptable” and could be investigated by police. London Mayor Sadiq Khan condemned the protests, reports Politico. In a tweet, Khan said: “This illegal action is extremely dangerous, counterproductive and is causing unacceptable disruption to Londoners who use public transport to get to work.” XR issued a statement saying that “those that acted this morning planned their action autonomously”, says Politico. The statement noted that “Extinction Rebellion will be looking at ways to bring people together rather than create an unnecessary division”. Rupert Read, a spokesman for XR said that he was “really sorry” about the incident, adding: “The fact is that the vast majority of XR members did not want this to happen, reports the Times. XR spokesperson Fergal McEntee told LBC radio the action was “a huge own goal”, reports Mail Online. The Independent reports that an internal poll of XR activists had shown that “a huge majority opposed action to disrupt the London Underground”. It continues: “Nearly three-quarters – or 72% – of more than 3,800 respondents said they believed the plan was a ‘bad idea no matter how it’s done’, while a further 14% were ‘opposed if people might be blocked underground’.” One XR member told the Guardian: “We were vehemently opposed to it. We feel that the actions of a handful of protesters have jeopardised our movement, turning public opinion against us and creating a potential schism within our ranks.” The Hill also has the story.

Global warming will not be on the agenda at next year’s Group of Seven (G7) summit hosted by the US, reports the Hill. “Climate change will not be on the agenda,” said acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, announcing that the Trump National Doral resort near Miami would host the gathering of world leaders in June 2020. Mulvaney added that the meeting would focus on “challenges to the global economy”, notes BBC News. But he did not elaborate further, says the Guardian. “Trump’s decision not to raise the topic is not surprising, considering his intent to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement, a treaty the rest of the G7 leaders are committed to,” says the Washington Post. The decision is “in keeping with his treatment of climate change at other G7 meetings and during international forums throughout his presidency”. the Post adds, noting that Trump “skipped the climate session at the G7 meeting in France” in August and “spent 14 minutes at a day-long UN climate summit in September”. Axios also has the story.

President Trump has confirmed that US energy secretary Rick Perry will step down from his Cabinet post at the end of the year, reports the Hill. At a ribbon-cutting event at a Louis Vuitton factory in Texas yesterday, Trump said: “Rick and I have been talking for six months. In fact, I thought he might go a bit sooner. But he’s got some very big plans. He’s going to be very successful. We have his successor, we’ll announce it pretty soon.“ Perry, who ran for president in 2012 and 2016, is one of Trump’s longest-serving Cabinet secretaries, having served 31 months in the administration, the Hill notes. It adds: “Perry took heat early on in his post when in September 2017 he submitted an unprecedented proposal to prop up the struggling coal and nuclear industry. Federal regulators later killed the plan. He was also criticised for a rule that rolled back Obama-era standards for lightbulbs, eliminating energy efficiency standards for nearly half the bulbs on the market.” Axios says that “the actual functions of the Energy Department are unlikely to change much after Perry’s exit. Deputy secretary Dan Brouillette will likely be acting secretary for the time being. Brouillette has a lower profile than Perry but supports the same basic agenda, including nuclear power and exports of liquefied natural gas”. Perry has recently come under scrutiny in the House impeachment inquiry over his discussions with Ukraine, says Bloomberg, but he had been eyeing retirement for months, notes Vox. Much of the coverage – including Politico, Reuters, the Independent and MailOnline – focuses on the inquiry. BBC News says that “US lawmakers are scrutinising Mr Perry’s role in efforts to pressure Ukraine’s president to investigate Mr Trump’s political rival, Joe Biden”. And another Politico piece says Perry’s departure “doesn’t resolve the most pressing question about his role in the Ukraine scandal – whether he will cooperate with House Democrats’ impeachment probe”.

More than one in five voters at the London annual general meeting of mining giant BHP have backed a resolution calling on the company to resign its membership of any industry associations whose advocacy is “inconsistent” with the Paris climate change agreement, reports the Guardian. BHP’s board recommended shareholders vote against the resolution, but 22% of votes in London went in favour, with another 7% abstaining, the Guardian says, adding: “While the resolution failed, campaigners are seeing the strength of the vote as a sign pressure is building on both BHP and the Minerals Council of Australia to bring their advocacy in line with the Paris goal of keeping global heating “’well below 2C’.” The London annual meeting represents 42% of shareholders, notes Reuters. The “ballot will be followed by another vote on 7 November, representing the remaining 58%, in Australia, where there is strong support for coal as a provider of jobs and wealth”, the newswire adds.

Extinction Rebellion’s “cause may be well-intentioned but its methods have tested people’s patience”, says a Times editorial, which adds that “targeting passengers on the Underground was particularly nonsensical”. Nonetheless, “there’s no question that Extinction Rebellion has been effective at getting its message heard”, says the Times, noting Britain’s new net-zero goal and a greater concern about climate change in public attitude surveys. It continues: “This shift in attitudes is welcome. Industrial emissions are some 20 times what they were in 1900, when scientists first started speculating that burning coal might warm the planet. In the 20th century the population came close to doubling twice. Countries such as India and China are making rapacious progress through the planet’s remaining resources. In contrast, Britain’s record is better than most: over the past decade it has cut emissions faster than any other developed country of its size.” Elsewhere, Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff writes that the “ugly standoff at Canning Town station is a wake-up call, illustrating the risks to a fledgling movement that has so far enjoyed huge reserves of goodwill from the millions broadly sympathetic to its cause”. She adds: “Targeting public transport is an oddly self-defeating thing for environmentalists to do, and this particular action has clearly dismayed some within Extinction Rebellion.” Similarly, Quartz has published a conversation between reporters Akshat Rathi and Cassie Werber where they try to understand “the logic of disrupting public transport to protest climate change”. Writing in iNews, Dr James Dyke from Exeter University says that while the XR London Underground protest “was in many ways counterproductive…the violent scenes that were produced by a delayed train demonstrates just how thin the fabric of our civilisation is”. And in a piece for the Daily Mirror – published before the London Underground protests yesterday morning – Labour peer Peter Hain says it “has taken Extinction Rebellion protesters and the disruption of London to force us all to confront some bitter home truths”. He adds: “And that’s something else they share in common with suffragettes, early trade unionists and anti-sports apartheid protesters: shocking everyone to change.” Other commentators put their view of XR more bluntly. The Daily Express’s head of news Paul Baldwin says that yesterday’s incidents “felt like a turning point”. He continues: “Enough you preachy teenager idiots and grandads old enough to know better. Those of us with proper jobs, the ones of us who pay for the immensely comfortable infrastructure of this nation and your lives, have got to get to work.” Freelance journalist Charlotte Gill writes in a piece for the Daily Telegraph that XR activists “have turned climate change into a class war”. She says: “After all, who suffers most when they stage these protests? It is not the government, or the capitalist giants they so abhor who often live in the centre of London and can walk around their smelly tents – but those on low wages.” Writing in the Sun, Spiked columnist Mick Hume says “London’s patience finally cracked”, adding: ‘The Canning Town response to the XR stunt was a real, spontaneous people’s rebellion by ordinary commuters who have had enough of being treated as ignorant planet-polluters for the crime of going to work.“ However, New Statesman digital editor Jasper Jackson says that the “crescendo of criticism surrounding the action at Canning Town betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what XR understands its role to be”. Treating XR as “just another campaign group trying to sway public opinion misses the point spectacularly”, he concludes: “XR has looked at decades of efforts to persuade governments, corporations and individuals to take the action necessary to avoid catastrophe, and seen them fail miserably. They believe that they are engaged in a literal rebellion designed to save humanity from itself. That is going to mean pissing a lot of people off. Going by recent history, their approach may be the only option left.”

“Around the world more than 60 countries and 100 cities have adopted, or promised to adopt, targets that will take them to net zero, typically by around 2050”, says an editorial in the Economist. However, these targets have “two drawbacks”, it says: “One stems from the word ‘net’. Net zero means taking as much CO2 out of the atmosphere as you put in, and this requires assumptions about as yet unproven ways of subtracting that carbon from the atmosphere…The other is that, because they ignore the impact of trade, such targets typically undercount the emissions for which rich countries are responsible.” For example, says the editorial, “when a Briton buys a smartphone made in a Chinese factory that is powered by a coal plant the carbon emitted in its manufacture does not count as ‘British’”. “The world needs to shift towards goods that have a cleaner footprint, regardless of where they are produced,” the Economist concludes: “That will require manufacturing hubs to shift away from dirty sources of fuel such as coal, and fewer goods to be transported by air. A range of policies could accelerate this shift. At the gentle end of the spectrum, better labelling could prod consumers to consider the carbon footprint of what they buy. At the tougher end, the EU is considering a climate tax on dirty goods it imports.” A separate piece in the Economist explores the “daunting task” of tackling trade-related emissions.

A Guardian editorial discusses the problems facing the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank – both celebrating their 75th birthday this year: “Global growth is slowing; the conviction that low interest rates are here to stay is encouraging reckless behaviour and a dangerous build-up of debt; the climate-change clock is ticking louder. The threat of a new financial crisis is growing. The prospect of it being triggered by a climate emergency is real.” While the two organisations “face an identity crisis”, they are needed, the Guardian says. Scrapping them “would be foolish, because many of the world’s pressing problems – global heating, money laundering, tax evasion, terrorism – can be solved only through international action”. Yet, they need “a new sense of purpose”, the editorial says: “There are now proposals, backed by the UN, for a global Green New Deal. It would be a good thing all round – for the world economy, for the planet and for their own long-term prospects – if the IMF and World Bank chose to back the idea.”

Science has published four separate critical responses of the Bastin et al paper published in July on “global tree restoration potential”, which attracted extensive media coverage. Simon Lewis et al say the original paper’s claim that the “restoration potential of new forests globally is 205 gigatonnes of carbon” is “incorrect”. Pierre Friedlingstein et al say that “this estimate and its implications for climate mitigation are inconsistent with the dynamics of the global carbon cycle and its response to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions”. Joseph W Veldman et al say that the paper’s claim “is approximately five times too large”. They add: “Their analysis inflated soil organic carbon gains, failed to safeguard against warming from trees at high latitudes and elevations, and considered afforestation of savannas, grasslands, and shrublands to be restoration.” Alan Grainger et al say the paper “neglect[s] considerable research into forest-based climate change mitigation during the 1980s and 1990s”. Bastin et al have also published a detailed “response to the comments”: “We did not suggest that tree restoration should be considered as the unique solution to climate change. To avoid this confusion, we have corrected the abstract accordingly.”

Local‐scale precipitation is mainly driven by thermal convection. This study reveals a decreasing trend in the summertime local-scale precipitation frequency over both China and the US by utilizing the hourly rain gauge data from 1981 to 2012. Contrasting aerosol trends likely contributed to this declining trend in both countries. As aerosol optical depth goes beyond a particular turning zone, the impact of aerosol on precipitation changes from invigoration to suppression. The mean aerosol optical depth is generally less and larger than this range in China and US, respectively, which likely accounts for the same declining trend in local‐scale precipitation in the two countries.