As of next year, Google will purchase about 2.6 gigawatts of wind and solar energy annually, enough to power its office and data centre operations around the globe, the company announced on Tuesday. In a blog post, Urs Hölzle, senior vice president for technical infrastructure at the company said the choice to go 100% renewable energy was a business decision first and foremost, with the cost of wind and solar power per unit of electricity coming down unexpectedly quickly. Signing its first long-term renewable power agreement in 2010 and striking 19 similar deals since, the move underlines Google’s position as the largest corporate purchaser of renewable power in the world, notes Business Green. Google executives have said the company would not rule out investing in nuclear power in the future, reports The Guardian. With tech giants jockeying to be the greenest, Apple is close to reaching its own 100% renewables goal, says a separate Guardian Sustainable Business article, having achieved 93% in 2015. The Daily Mail, TIME and The Washington Post all cover the story.

Storms in the US that now occur about once a season could happen five times a season by the end of the century and bring up to 70% more rain, according to new research published in Nature Climate Change. The lead author from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, described the shift to more frequent torrential downpours “as one of the most severe consequences of climate change, at least in the US”. Previous research suggests downpours have already increased by 71% across the entire continental US and this will only intensify as the climate warms further, say the authors. Scientific American and The Guardian have more on the new research. Elsewhere, BBC News and The Guardian cover a new report by global insurers warningthat more frequent extreme weather is driving up uninsured losses and making some assets uninsurable. Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, says: “Over time, the adverse effects of climate change could threaten economic resilience and financial stability [and] insurers are currently at the forefront.”

Drax, the owner of Britain’s biggest power station, is set to buy leading challenger business energy supplier Opus for £340m, turning the company’s retail arm into the UK’s fifth largest business energy supplier. Making a foray into gas generation, the move marks part of a strategic shift for the company away from burning coal, says The Financial Times. About 20% of electricity sourced by Opus comes from small renewable generators such as wind turbines, solar farms and hydroelectric power plants. Shares in Drax soared by as much as 18% after the plans were announced, notes The Telegraph. The FT’s Lex column says, “Converting coal to biomass made sense but left Drax needing steady subsidies. That made it as dependent on political whim as it was on anthracite. Tuesday saw news of greater diversification: further away from coal, no further from politics.”

President-elect Donald J. Trump met on Monday with climate-activist Al Gore, offering a glimmer of hope that the new administration will be more moderate towards climate policies than Trump’s campaign promises to pull out of the Paris Agreement and revive the coal industry suggest. But individuals appointed to transition positions suggest otherwise, says The Washington Post, in an article which runs through statements Trump’s advisors have previously made expressing doubt about key aspects of the science of climate change.

New research expects melting ice in the Arctic to cause polar bear numbers to collapse by a third in as little as 35 years, reports the Daily Mail. Combining polar bear generational length with sea ice projections based on satellite data and computer simulations, the scientists, led by Dr Eric Regehr from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, project a reduction in the world population of bears from around 26,000 to 17,000, warranting the ‘vulnerable’ label given to polar bears on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list of threatened and endangered species. The Independentand Press Association have more.

Scientists have uncovered an important use for the chowder clam as a barometer of climate change, reports iNews. Studying rings on the clams’ shells revealed that prior to the industrial period, changes in the North Atlantic Ocean drove our climate but this switched between 1800 and 2000 when changes in the atmosphere brought about by greenhouse gases began to dominate. With up to 500-year lifespans, the world’s longest living creature is revealing how mankind could be having a dramatic influence on the climate, says The Express.

With the election of Donald Trump and the amount of nonsense written about science on the Internet surely set to rise, Phil Williamson from the University of East Anglia asks, what can scientists do? While acknowledging Brandolini’s law – that the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it – scientists should take the time to challenge online falsehoods and inaccuracies, he argues, harnessing the collective power of the Internet to fight back. Williamson suggests setting up a moderated, rating system for websites that claim to report on science, adding: “We could call it the Scientific Honesty and Integrity Tracker, and give online nonsense the SHAIT rating it deserves.”

A study of the longest-living animal on Earth – the quahog clam – has provided new insights into the North Atlantic Ocean. By studying growth rings in the shells of the clam, researchers pieced together the history of the North Atlantic over the past 1000 years. Before the industrial revolution, changes in the North Atlantic – caused by variations in the Sun and volcanic eruptions – drove changes in northern hemisphere air temperature, the study finds. But in the last 200 years, variations in the North Atlantic have lagged behind changes in air temperatures caused by human-caused warming, the researchers say.

Tornadoes in Europe cause injuries, deaths and damages, yet their threat is not widely recognised, a new study warns. Researchers assessed the social and economical impact of tornadoes using reports from the European Severe Weather Database between 1950 and 2015. They find that few European meteorological services have developed and maintained tornado databases and even fewer have issued tornado warnings.