Most news publications around the world are reporting the news that scientists have confirmed that one of the biggest icebergs ever recorded has just broken away from Antarctica. As the BBC explains: “A US satellite observed the berg on Wednesday while passing over a region known as the Larsen C Ice Shelf. Scientists were expecting it. They’d been following the development of a large crack in Larsen’s ice for more than a decade. The rift’s propagation had accelerated since 2014, making an imminent calving ever more likely.” Many publications focus on the size of the iceberg, with the BBC saying the “giant block is estimated to cover an area of roughly 6,000 sq km; that’s about a quarter the size of Wales”. The Financial Times describes it as “nearly the size of the US state of Delaware”. The paper further explains: “Because ice shelves are floating extensions of land-based glaciers that flow into the ocean, the splitting off of the gigantic iceberg is not expected to have any immediate effect on sea levels…Iceberg calvings occur naturally and many scientists say there is no definitive sign that climate change caused the Larsen C berg to break free. However, ice shelves act as huge buttresses that hold back glaciers flowing down to the coast, so researchers will be watching the Larsen C shelf closely for further signs of deterioration.” Bloomberg carries an article by Eric Roston under the headline: “Don’t Blame Climate Change for the Largest Iceberg Ever”, adding “scientists remain concerned that the break could destabilise the remaining Larsen C ice shelf”. The Conversation carries a piece by Prof Adrian Luckman, a glaciologist at Swansea University, who says “any link to climate change is far from straightforward”. He adds: “in satellite images from the 1980s, the rift was already clearly a long-established feature, and there is no direct evidence to link its recent growth to either atmospheric warming, which is not felt deep enough within the ice shelf, or ocean warming, which is an unlikely source of change given that most of Larsen C has recently been thickening. It is probably too early to blame this event directly on human-generated climate change.” Meanwhile, the New York Times has a piece dedicated to the question: “How Big Is the Iceberg? That Depends on Where You Live.”

Electric vehicles could create as much as 18 gigawatts of extra demand for electricity — the equivalent of the capacity of nearly six Hinkley Point nuclear power stations — at peak times by 2050, according to National Grid. The FT says: “The operator of Britain’s electricity system has analysed the potential impact on demand at busy times of the day, such as after working hours, if forecasts for rapid growth in electric vehicles by 2050 are realised…National Grid is assuming electric vehicle sales could account for more than 90 per cent of all cars in the UK by 2050, with 1m on Britain’s roads by the early 2020s and as many as 9m by 2030.” The Guardian looks at a sharper timespan, saying that “electric vehicles on Britain’s roads could see peak electricity demand jump by more than the capacity of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station by 2030″. The forecasts are contained in the grid’s Future Energy Scenarios report, published today. The Guardian says that three of the report’s four scenarios predict that solar power will have the biggest share of generation capacity by 2050. In all of the scenarios, new nuclear power stations are assumed to be built and the capacity of interconnectors that provide backup power from Europe rises from 4GW now to between 10GW and 19GW in 2030…Regardless of how much of the UK’s gas comes from fracking, National Grid sees gas as playing a key role in power and heating for decades. It is not until 2050 in some of the group’s scenarios that alternative, electric heating technologies such as heat pumps begin to overtake gas for keeping homes warm.” The Times also covers the report.

The Guardian has the exclusive that Dieter Helm, an economist at the University of Oxford, has been chosen by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to carry out the government’s promised review of the financial cost of energy in the UK. The review will aim to examine how power prices can be kept down while meeting the UK’s carbon targets and keeping the lights on. However, the Guardian says “the choice of Helm, author of a new book on the slow demise of oil companies in the face of energy trends, will be controversial in some quarters because of his criticism of wind and solar power”. The paper quotes Hannah Martin, head of energy at Greenpeace UK, who says: “Dieter has a well-known preference for gas and has historically failed to grasp the full potential of renewables.” The paper adds that it understands that Helm “will be aided by a former boss of the National Grid, Steve Holliday, who is a proponent of decentralised energy including batteries, and Richard Nourse of Greencoat Capital, an investment fund supporting clean energy. Rounding out the proposed team would be Jim Gao, an engineer at an artificial intelligence company, Deepmind, owned by Google, which has been an enthusiastic supporter of renewables.”

A coalition of 14 conservative groups has urged US lawmakers to support an amendment to the House of Representatives’ annual defence bill that would prevent the Pentagon from implementing climate-change and green energy policies meant to save taxpayers money and protect the planet. In a letter to the lawmakers, the groups said many climate programmes “are likely to undermine military readiness by diverting scarce resources”. The groups include many prominent climate sceptic lobby groups, such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian advocacy group; Americans for Prosperity, a group funded by the conservative Koch brothers; and Americans for Limited Government.

The American shale gas revolution will enjoy a second wind as rapid growth in domestic production sees the US join the world’s club of top gas exporters, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has predicted. In a report published today, the IEA forecasts that the US will generate almost 40% of the rise in global gas output between 2016 and 2022. Come 2022, the US will produce more than a fifth of the world’s gas, putting it on the same level as top gas exporters such as Russia and Norway, the agency predicts.

The Earth is warmer than it has been for at least 2,000 years, according to a study in the journal Scientific Data which looked at data from 692 different “natural thermometers” on every continent and ocean on the planet. In the most comprehensive assessment of how the climate has changed over the period to date, researchers looked at a host of sources of historic information, including tree rings, ice cores, lake and sea sediments, corals, mineral deposits and written records. The Independent says: “What they found confirmed the famous “hockey stick” graph, showing an undulating, but broadly flat, line followed by a sharp uptick that begins at around 1900.”

The Hill previews Donald Trump’s visit to Paris later this week to mark Bastille Day, following an invitation from Emmanuel Macron: “Trump and Macron are due to hold a round of bilateral meetings and a joint press conference later this week, making it likely the two will confront the Paris agreement and the state of climate and energy diplomacy in light of Trump’s decision to pull out of the accord. ‘I think Macron has made the legacy of the Paris agreement, and its implementation, a core part of his agenda,’ said David Waskow, international climate director at the World Resources Institute. ‘Exactly how it will come up between the leaders is hard to say, but it’s hard to imagine that Macron wouldn’t want to address it in some fashion.'”

Reacting to the news that Scott Pruitt, Trump’s environment secretary, has called for a TV debate to assess climate science, Readfearn writes: “That’s right. Pruitt’s respect for climate science would see it reduced to a bastard TV love child of Jerry Springer and Judge Judy. Pruitt has been pushing around an idea that has been the wet dream of fossil-fuel funded climate science deniers for years now and it is this: there should be a ‘red team, blue team’ process established on the fundamentals of climate change, from its causes to how bad it will be. In a world that doesn’t have a former reality television star and real estate tycoon as the US president, this process already exists – it’s called the scientific method. The clearest demonstration of the ‘red team, blue team’ method is in the process of peer review.”

Mann, the US climate scientist, is joined by Hassol, the director of Climate Communication, and Toles, a cartoonist, to express their disquiet at the “dramatic rise in the prominence of climate doomism — commentary that portrays climate change not just as a threat that requires an urgent response but also as an essentially lost cause, a hopeless fight”. They say: “Such rhetoric is in many ways as pernicious as outright climate change denial, for it leads us down the same path of inaction…Doomist narratives, albeit of a more nuanced and subtle variety, are now starting to appear in respected, mainstream venues, written by otherwise able and thoughtful journalists…It is important to be up front about the risks of unmitigated climate change, and it is critical to keep in mind the potential for unpleasant surprises and worst-case scenarios, the so-called fat tail of risk. It is, moreover, appropriate to criticize those who understate the risks. But there is also a danger in overstatement that presents the problem as unsolvable and future outcomes as inevitable.” Desmog Canadaalso carries a similar piece with the headline: “The Problem With Climate Doomsday Reporting, And How To Move Beyond It.”

A new paper presents the results of an opinion poll of 10,000 European citizens in 10 countries on levels of awareness and concern about the impacts of climate change on the marine environment. Respondents were least aware of ocean acidification and most aware of melting sea ice – as well as pollution and overfishing, the study says. Participants living in coastal areas claimed to be both more informed and more concerned on climate change than those living inland, as did females and older age groups. In terms of trust in sources of information, academic scientists or those working for environmental NGOs are trusted more than scientists working for government or industry, the study suggests.

Rising air temperatures may make it harder for commercial aircraft to takeoff, requiring restrictions on how much weight they carry, a new study suggests. As air temperatures increase at constant pressure, air density declines, resulting in less lift generation by an aircraft wing at a given airspeed. Modelling five common aircraft at 19 major airports, the study finds that 10-30% of annual flights departing in the hottest part of the day by the mid-to-late 21st century may require some weight restriction.

In a brief communication article for Nature, a group of scientists respond to a study published last year about Earth system sensitivity (ESS). ESS is a measure of the total climate response to a doubling of CO2 that accounts for both long and short-term feedbacks. The study overestimates ESS, the paper says, because it “was based on the assumption that greenhouse gases were solely responsible for long-term global-mean glacial–interglacial temperature changes. This is not correct.” Therefore, “there is no reason to alter the most recent assessment of the present-day committed warming,” the scientists conclude. In a reply, the author of the original study says that other studies have used the same definition of ESS and have yielded similar estimates. In addition, the “estimates of the ESS are consistent with recent IPCC estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS),” she says.