The high-profile court case pitting San Francisco and Oakland against major oil companies got underway yesterday as the presiding judge asked each side to present on the science of climate change. The oil companies – including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and BP – are being sued by the two cities and other communities in California for damages related to their contribution to global warming. US District Judge William Alsup took the unusual step of convening a formal “tutorial” on the subject “so that the poor judge can learn some science”. Earlier this month, Alsup had asked the cities and oil companies to answer nine questions on climate science, says E&E News, and for the latter to produce documents on the extent to which the oil companies knew about the risks of climate change. Among others, Prof Myles Allen from the University of Oxford and Prof Gary Griggs from the University of California spoke on behalf of the cities, notes the Associated Press. In reply, a Chevron attorney said the company supports scientific conclusions that humans are causing climate change, reports Reuters. Theodore Boutrous said Chevron supports the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but also pointed that earlier IPCC reports were not as certain in its conclusions. Boutrous also argued that “it’s not the production and extraction that’s caused global warming, it’s the way people are living their lives, it’s the way society is developing”, says Bloomberg. No attorneys for the other four companies answered questions at the hearing. Wired, Think Progress, Grist and the San Francisco Examiner also cover the story.

China and India helped push global demand for energy up more than 2% last year, more than twice the rate of growth in 2016. The figures from the International Energy Agency (IEA) show that this higher demand – met primarily by fossil fuels – and a slowdown in improvements to energy efficiency has led to an increase in CO2 emissions. CO2 levels increased by 1.4% last year, following three years of flat emissions growth. The IEA said  “The growth in energy-related CO2 emissions in 2017 is a strong warning for global efforts to combat climate change, and demonstrates that current efforts are insufficient to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement”, reports the Washington Post. Meanwhile, a new report from Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and CoalSwarm says that the number of coal-fired power plants built worldwide fell steeply over the past two years, says Reuters. The start of new builds dropped by 73% between 2015 and 2017, the report says, while newly completed plants fell 41% and the number of plants in planning dropped by 59%. The reasons for the decline include a shift to cleaner energy sources in China and a retreat away from coal financing by private capital in India, says BusinessGreen. However, the authors of the report and independent analysts agree the pace of decline is still too slow to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, notes the Associated Press.

The UK intends to remain in the European Union emission trading system (EUETS) until at least the end of its third trading phase running from 2013-2020, Britain’s energy minister Claire Perry said yesterday. Speaking to members of the cross-party EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee, Perry said it had yet to be formally agreed with European lawmakers but the government wanted to provide certainty for companies covered by the scheme until at least the end of phase three. Meanwhile, Reuters also reports that a planned private power cable between Norway and Scotland could be cancelled as a result of Norway’s adoption of the EU’s latest energy legislation. “NorthConnect”, due to enter operations by 2023, would need to be transferred to state-owned grid Statnett in order to go ahead, said the leader of the Norwegian parliament’s energy committee.

Floods and extreme rainfall events around the world have increased by more than 50% this decade, new figures suggest, and are now occurring at a rate four times higher than in 1980. Other extremes such as storms, droughts and heatwaves have increased by more than a third this decade and are being recorded twice as frequently as in 1980. The figures – compiled by the German insurance company Munich Re – are published in an update to a 2013 report by the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC). Prof Michael Norton, Easac’s environmental programme director, said that greenhouse gas emissions were “fundamentally responsible for driving these changes”. Dr Phil Williamson from the University of East Anglia said: “The EASAC report does provide convincing evidence for an increasing frequency of extreme weather in Europe, with major economic consequences”, reports the Mail Online.

The $1.3tn government-wide spending bill released late yesterday has rejected President Trump’s proposal to cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget by 31%. Senior lawmakers negotiating the omnibus appropriations bill instead chose to give the agency $8.1bn for the next financial year – keeping it at the same level as 2017-18. “Together, we rejected the Trump administration’s proposal to make massive and dangerous budget cuts, and instead, we restored funding for the EPA,” said Senator Tom Udall, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee panel responsible for the EPA. If passed by the House of Representatives and Senate by a Friday midnight deadline, the spending bill would avert the shutdown of many federal agencies this weekend, says Reuters.

The Louisiana Office of Community Development announced yesterday that it will spend $11.7m on a 208-hectare parcel of high ground to resettle about 80 residents on an island threatened by rising seas. The Isle de Jean Charles has lost 98% of its land area since 1955 as sea levels rise due to climate change. Some of the residents – most of whom are Native Americans – are concerned that 2019 may be too long a wait for new homes on higher ground. “We’re going to have to go through another hurricane season, maybe two,” said Albert Naquin, chief of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians. “That makes us very, very edgy.”

A sale of drilling rights in the US Gulf of Mexico that was touted by interior secretary Ryan Zinke as a “bellwether” for the offshore oil and gas industry has attracted only moderate interest, the FT reports. Yesterday’s auction of leases offered drilling rights on 77m acres in the gulf – more than any previous sale – but raised just $125m in winning bids. The record lease sale, in 2008, brought in $3.7bn. Elsewhere, Shell is placing a big bet on petrol stations and convenience stores in China, India and Mexico, reports Reuters. In a statement, the company said it plans to grow its global network of roadside stations by nearly a quarter to 55,000 by 2025. Shell is already the world’s biggest fuel retail brand, notes the Times, with more branded petrol stations than Total and BP combined.

“There is no denying…that the nation’s relative lack of storage has left it more exposed to rocketing prices during cold weather,” writes the deputy business editor of the Times, Robin Pagnamenta, although “Britain needn’t despair about its predicament and is a long way from a Ukraine-style supply crunch”. “A bigger and more immediate threat may be the UK’s exposure to price spikes during unusually cold weather,” he says. “To solve that, one priority the government should consider would be to boost Britain’s gas storage to a more sensible level,” Pagnamenta suggests. “If the government can expect consumers to shell out tens of billions of pounds in subsidies to build the Hinkley Point nuclear plant, it should be able to find a way to bankroll a few extra gas storage projects.”

Future global warming of 2C rather than 1.5C could have a “devastating impact” on South Asian and East Asian monsoon rainfall, a new study says. The research, which uses modelling, estimates that half a degree of additional warming would bring more frequent and stronger heavy rainfall events to the region by 2100. This could have “devastating impacts on the human and natural system over the Asian monsoon region,” the researchers say.

The rate of Arctic sea ice loss has become so rapid that studying its effects on wildlife should be considered a “crisis discipline”, scientists warn. A crisis discipline is a field of conservation science where urgent action is needed despite a lack of empirical evidence. Sea ice loss is “is occurring before we can understand many of the mechanisms…as a consequence, our ability to predict and manage the effects of this enormous environmental change is limited,” the researchers say.