The French city of Bordeaux has hit its highest temperature since records began, as Western Europe feels the impact of the second heatwave to hit this summer, report BBC News and others. Bordeaux in the south-west of the country registered 41.2C (106.1F), topping the previous record of 40.7C during the deadly heatwave of 2003, BBC News explains. “Forecasters predict a record-breaking run across Europe this week, including Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands,” the article notes. It quotes a World Meteorological Organization spokeswoman saying the heatwaves bears “the hallmark of climate change”. The quote continues: “As we saw in June, they are becoming more frequent, they’re starting earlier and they’re becoming more intense…It’s not a problem that’s going to go away.” In the UK, the Met Office is forecasting that the national July heat record of 36.7C (98.1F) could fall this week, reports the Washington Post, “and it is possible that the all-time hottest temperature of 101.3F (38.5C) will be tied or bested as well”. The Press Association reports the specific probabilities – there is a 60% chance of beating the July record and a 30% of topping the “all-time UK temperature record”.

Bob Ward, director of policy at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, says the UK Met Office “must do more to warn people about the dangers of heatwaves and should give names to heatwaves the way it does for winter storms”, reports the Times. Ward notes that “far more people have died from recent heatwaves than from storms, so it should be uncontroversial to start applying names to both”, says the Daily Telegraph. And the MailOnline notes that the UK’s Committee on Climate Change “recently warned that the UK was not prepared for a future of more heatwaves, with more action needed to prevent overheating in homes, hospitals and schools, and that even vulnerable people did not consider themselves at risk”. And finally, Daily Telegraph analysis suggests that it is possible that heatwaves “cause some economic harm”. It adds: “A glance at the average summer economic growth rates in a range of leading economies suggests a loose trend to better performance in cooler nations.”

The Times reports on a “leaked government analysis” which, the paper says, shows that: “Britain needs to build a fleet of nuclear or carbon-capture power plants equivalent to a dozen Hinkley Point Cs to hit climate change targets”. It says that business secretary Greg Clark “disclosed the estimates to industry in a private meeting on Monday”, where he reportedly said the government analysis showed “30 to 40 gigawatts of firm capacity could be needed in 2050”, the Times adds. The Guardian also has coverage of the news that the government is consulting on a “regulated asset base” (RAB) funding model for new nuclear. The paper says this could mean consumers paying “a share of any cost overruns or construction delays”. In a business commentary for the Times, Alistair Osborne describes nuclear as “last-century tech”. He says of the government’s plans for a RAB model for nuclear: “It’s obvious what it involves: an upfront transfer of the construction risks from the company building the plant to the consumer or taxpayer.” He concludes: “[I]f the government really is set on building a whole fleet of new nuclear disasters, it would be far simpler to use its low borrowing costs to finance construction and then regulate an operator’s returns. All this RAB talk just wastes time.” In the Guardian, Nils Pratley writes that nuclear is “hideously expensive” and argues the government “should be backing renewables” instead.

A new study warns that the speed of climate change is outstripping many animals’ capacity to adapt, reports the Guardian. It explains: “Previous academic work has shown that species respond to warming temperatures by earlier timing of biological events, for example egg-laying by birds, budding of plants and flying of insects.” The research, published in Nature Communications, “examines how effective this is in terms of reproduction and survival”, the newspaper continues. Assessing thousands of published studies, it “found a clear lag in the majority of species studied and none could be considered safe”, the Guardian says, noting that the research says “the probability that none of the study species is at risk is virtually zero”. Populations of European roe deer, song sparrow, common murre and Eurasian magpie were among those identified as at risk, says the Press Association. “These are species that adapt but even they are not adapting fast enough,” says study co-author Dr Alexandre Courtiol, quoted in the Independent. The quote continues: “It’s likely that species even less accustomed to human environments may be struggling even more. I don’t think this picture is going to get much better for birds or mammals.”

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg yesterday told the French Parliament that it was OK for some members to ignore her and other children’s warnings about global warming, but “she implored them to listen to scientists”, reports Reuters. Invited by a cross-party group of politicians, Thunberg and several other children spoke to a French parliamentary committee meeting. But ahead of her speech, “conservative and far-right lawmakers hurled insults and said they would shun the 16-year-old”, Reuters says. “Some people have chosen not to come here today, some have chosen not to listen to us,“ she said, reports the Washington Post. “And that is fine. We are, after all, just children.” Her quote continues: “We become the bad guys who have to tell people these uncomfortable things because no one else wants to, or dares to.” Two members of parliament who are running for leader of the conservative party Les Républicains were among those who criticised Thunberg, the paper adds. It explains that Guillaume Larrivé said in a TV interview that “the public debate should not be focused on one single person, who has a symbolic strength and who also at times says a lot of nonsense”, while Julien Aubert tweeted: “Do not count on me to go and applaud a prophetess in shorts, Nobel Prize of fear.“ BBC News and Deutsche Welle also cover the news, while BBC News has a video of Thunberg’s speech.

An influential group of US House Democrats yesterday unveiled an alternative to the green new deal, reports Reuters, which they said featured a “more realistic” goal to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 rather than by 2030. It quotes representative Frank Pallone introducing the plan by saying: “what we’re really trying to do here is come up with a united front that’s driven by the scientific community and that’s consensus”. The proposal is “a rival” to the green new deal, says the Hill, which “highlights the rift with the party’s more progressive wing, which has rallied around the green new deal and its goal of a carbon-free economy by 2030”. Analysts described the announcement “as an effort by centrist Democrats to reclaim the climate agenda while treating global warming with the urgency that scientists say it demands”, reports the New York Times.

In related news, the Guardian reports that Extinction Rebellion protestors brought disruption to Capitol Hill in Washington yesterday evening, superglueing themselves to doorways to block politicians and staff. According to the paper, demonstrators – 17 of whom were arrested – said their goal was to force a House and Senate concurrent resolution on the climate emergency, which is currently on hold, to receive immediate attention.

A Rolls-Royce-led consortium has secured a UK government investment commitment to develop small nuclear reactors for commercial use, reports the Financial Times. The £18m investment – which is still subject to final sign-off – would be used to “mature the design, address the considerable manufacturing technology requirements and to progress the regulatory licensing process”, according to a spokesperson for the consortium quoted by the FT. The move would “still require significant levels of additional investment before the reactors can become a commercial reality”, notes the FT.

In other nuclear news, Reuters reports that Tokyo Electric Power plans to scrap its Fukushima Daini nuclear station in Japan, located a few miles south of the bigger Fukushima Daiichi plant where three reactors melted down in 2011 after an earthquake and tsunami.

The climate change views of new UK prime minister Boris Johnson make “uncomfortable reading”, write Mat Hope and Richard Collette-White – editor and researcher, respectively, at DeSmog UK. Looking back at Johnson’s comments over recent years, Hope and Collett-White note that the “former foreign secretary has rejected climate science a number of times”. After the Paris climate summit in December 2015, Johnson wrote a column in the Daily Telegraph in which, Hope and Collett-White write: “whatever is happening to the weather at the moment, he said, it is nothing to do with the conventional doctrine of climate change”. However, “Johnson’s position has apparently changed since then”, they note, and during his stint as foreign secretary, he said he would “continue to lobby the US at all levels to continue to take climate change extremely seriously”. In addition, Johnson “has frequently stated his full backing for the UK’s recently adopted net-zero greenhouse gas emissions target for 2050”, says BusinessGreen senior reporter Michael Holder. The Independent’s political correspondent Lizzy Buchan looks at Johnson’s voting record, noting that he “voted against measures to prevent climate change, such as setting a carbon reduction target for the UK in 2016”. And in April, she continues, “he said he was sympathetic to the aims of Extinction Rebellion but described the young climate change activists as ‘smug’ and told them to ‘lecture’ China instead”. And finally, BusinessGreen editor James Murray has “10 green questions” for the new prime minister, including: “Will the prime minister prioritise net-zero?” and “is it too late to rethink Heathrow approval?”.

“There’s a growing consensus that the next 18 months will be critical in dealing with the global heating crisis, among other environmental challenges,” writes BBC News environment correspondent Matt McGrath. He explains: “Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that to keep the rise in global temperatures below 1.5C this century, emissions of CO2 would have to be cut by 45% by 2030. But today, observers recognise that the decisive, political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place will have to happen before the end of next year.” The next year and a half will see a “series of critical UN meetings”, says McGrath, including a special climate summit in New York in September, for which UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres “has been clear that he only wants countries to come to the UN if they can make significant offers to improve their national carbon cutting plans”. But “the really big moment, will most likely be in the UK at COP26, which takes place at the end of 2020”, says McGrath. “The UK government believes it can use the opportunity of COP26 [Conference of the Parties], in a post-Brexit world, to show that Britain can build the political will for progress, in the same way the French used their diplomatic muscle to make the Paris deal happen.”

The location of methane bubbles escaping from the Arctic Ocean’s seafloor to its surface have been mapped for the first time in a new study. Research suggests that the release of methane from the seafloor could be driven by ocean warming. Once released, methane acts as a potent greenhouse gas – further increasing global warming, the authors say. The bubbles can be detected using ship‐mounted sonars, they add.