The Senate yesterday agreed to a whole-chamber vote on a
bill to approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. 10
Democrats joined 53 Republican senators to pass the bill,
the Guardianpoints out. President
Obama has already threatened to veto the bill. How the United
States responds to the oil boom and to climate change are likely to
be debated on the floor, and will be top priorities for the next
president, the New York Times says. Last week, a poll by Climate
Progress revealed 72 per centof the senators
question humans’ impact on the climate.

The government is set to axe Nuclear Management Partners
(NMP), comprised of Britain’s Amec, France’s Areva and America’s
URS, a consortium currently charged with decommissioning the
Sellafield nuclear plant. Annual spending at the site last year was
£1.8 billion, implying the remaining 11 years of the contract would
be worth £20 billion, the Telegraph estimates. The Timessays the value of the
contract is closer to £9 billion.

President Obama’s visit to India in a fortnight could yield
some agreement on climate change, but it is likely to be modest,
officials say. The main aim of the visit is to improve trade
relations between the countries, which could include a deal on
clean technology. It’s unlikely the US and India will sign a deal
similar to the US and China’s high profile agreement at the end of
last year, RTCCreports.

Small volcanic eruptions could have helped decrease the
global temperature by between 0.05°C to 0.12°C over the past 15
years, new research shows. The study by the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, California, also found one instance where an
eruption caused a drop in tropical rainfall. The Mail Online and
Professor Ross McKitrick, an environmental economist from the
University of Guelph and well known climate skeptic, say the paper
casts doubt on the accuracy of current climate models.

The price of Brent oil has fallen to $47.36 a barrel – a six
year low. The price fell despite China importing record amounts.
Analysts at Goldman Sachs cut their average forecast for Brent in
2015 to $50.40 a barrel from $83.75, Reutersreports. The low price has
led some producers to explore floating storage options to lock away
profits, the Financial Timesreports.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were above 400 parts per
million (ppm) on January 1st, the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography reports. It expects many months to see average levels
above 400 ppm in 2015, as global emissions continue to climb. The
400 ppm level has become a symbol of the world’s ongoing failure to
curb emissions and tackle climate change.

There are a number of areas that India and the US can
explore when trying to agree a new climate deal, ClimateWire says:
from clean technology transfer to US companies investing in a
series of new smart grids. But any agreement won’t be a US-China
redux, one expert says. India’s prime minister Narendra Modi has
made it clear that he considers his country to be at a very
different stage of development to China, and that clean energy
policy not emissions reduction targets are the only way for it to
tackle climate change.

A new study investigates what drives energy use in 274
cities of different sizes across the world. On current trends urban
energy use looks set to treble by 2050, the authors find. The study
shows how fuel prices, transport policies and careful urban
planning, particularly in developing Asian cities, could reduce
urban energy use by more than 25 per cent by 2050, compared with a
business-as-usual scenario.

A mix of of hard and soft adaptation options is likely to be
most effective for protecting livelihoods from sea level rise in
the Mekong Delta, a new study finds. Rising sea levels are expected
to infiltrate surface and groundwater with salty water, affecting
rice production and food security. The study says that both ‘hard’
engineering options and ‘soft’ farming strategy options are needed
to limit the impact on crop yields.

A life history of British climatologist Gordon Manley, who
is perhaps best known for his pioneering work on climate
variability in the UK and for establishing the Central England
Temperature series. Manley played a pivotal role in demonstrating
the powerful relationship between climate, weather, and culture in
post-World War II Britain and remained a dedicated fieldworker
until his death in 1980.

Scientists have noticed the Arctic bird species known as the
little awk adapting its feeding behaviour to cope with the loss of
sea ice, which has caused virtually ice free summers in the birds’
high northern habitat in the Russian Arctic since 2005. The birds
have started to forage near the ice edge where melting glaciers
stimulate zooplankton growth, instead of further out to sea. But
while this has helped the little awks raise the same number of
chicks, the average adult weight has dropped by four per cent.