Coverage continues of the draft of the US National Climate Assessment, originally “leaked” by the New York Times yesterday, and then actually leaked later in the day. The report by federal scientists warns of severe consequences from climate change, conflicting with public statements from officials in the Trump administration. The New York Times has nine “takeaways” from the draft, such as “flooding related to sea-level rise is a problem already” and “when it rains, it pours more”, while The Hill picks out five key messages. The Times’s original story referred to an earlier draft that had been publicly available for months, noted US scientist, Katharine Hayhoe, on Twitter. The Times then published a later draft. Grist describes the confusion. The report is still awaiting approval from the Trump administration before it can be officially published, notes the New Scientist. The impending release of the report will force President Trump to choose between accepting the conclusions of his administration’s scientists and the demands of his conservative supporters, says a follow-up New York Times piece. And Times journalist Lisa Friedman was on US television last night discussing how some scientists are concerned a government climate change report won’t be released. Meanwhile, in an interview with NBC, subsequently reported by The Hill, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said she doesn’t see any reason for the Trump administration to reject the report. The Mail Online, Think Progress, Time, Ars Technica all have more details of what the report contains.

US diplomats should duck questions from foreign governments on what it would take to re-engage the Trump administration in the Paris climate agreement, according to a diplomatic cable acquired by Reuters. The missive, sent by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to embassies last Friday, tells diplomats to expect questions such as: “Does the United States have a climate change policy?”. Responses should be vague, the cable advises: for example, the answer to the question “What is the process for consideration of re-engagement in the Paris Agreement?”, should be “We are considering a number of factors. I do not have any information to share on the nature or timing of the process.” The cable also says diplomats should make clear the US wants to help other countries use fossil fuels. You can read the cable in full here. The Hill also covers the Reuters exclusive.

A federal court has struck down a rule made under Obama’s administration that banned certain Earth-warming gases used in air conditioning and fridges. The court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot ban the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) under the Clean Air Act because the legislation is only designed to protect against substances which are known to deplete the ozone layer. Though HFCs do no affect the ozone to a large degree, the substances are extremely potent greenhouse gases with an warming potential up to 14,800 times that of the same amount of carbon dioxide. The chemicals are thought to break down in as little as 15 years, meaning a phase out could help to quickly cut greenhouse gas emissions, previous research has found. Carbon Pulse also has the story.

Japanese car manufacturer Mazda says it has invented a car that will eliminate the need for spark plugs in petrol engines. The ‘Skyactiv-X’ engine lights up petrol through compression, making spark plugs redundant. The technological breakthrough could increase fuel efficiency by up to 30%, the company claims. The development could threaten the future of diesel because the new engines can match the performance of diesel engines without releasing high amounts of nitrogen oxide. Ars Technica also covers the story and adds the technology could be incorporated into the next revision of the Mazda 3, which is due to be released in 2019.

Writing in the Guardian, environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben pours scorn on the US Department of Agriculture’s “say-no-evil policy” of avoiding references to climate change in their work. “The effectiveness of this approach – based on the well-known principle that what you can’t say won’t hurt you – has previously been tested at the state level,” he says. McKibben cites examples including the North Carolina general assembly voting in 2012 to prevent communities from planning for sea level rise, and the Florida government forbidding its employees to use the term climate change in 2014. Recent research suggests that “climate change could deplete some US water basins and dramatically reduce crop yields in some areas by 2050,” McKibben notes. “But probably not if we don’t talk about it.”

Though scientists have signed off on its findings of the draft US National Climate Assessment, “President Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt have indicated they simply do not believe the experts,” says the Post in an editorial. But, even as the federal climate assessment has been under review, the warnings have grown starker, the Post says – going on to discuss some of the most recent climate change research. “The latest research suggests it is neither unrealistic nor pointless to aim for the low end of the range of possible climate outcomes, even over 2C, to at least limit the damage to the planet’s habitability,” the article concludes: “That path, however, requires leaders to admit there is a problem.”

“Another day, another leak,” writes Roger Boyes, diplomatic editor of the Times, commenting on the leaks of the draft US National Climate Assessment and the letter to the UN confirming that the US will pull out of the Paris climate accord. “Seen from afar…today’s Washington seems like a throwback to 15th century Spain: a fanatical inquisition on the hunt for heretics and a society in ferment, split between true believers and deniers,” he says. But the “The US army in particular has problems” when it comes to climate change, notes Boyes: “Many of its domestic bases are coastal and could be flooded and out of action in 35 years’ time.” “The military advisers to the president have a long wearisome path of persuasion ahead of them,” Boyes warns. “Perhaps Mr Trump will listen and modify his ideas, start to think about how the state should direct investment into the armed forces. Sadly, the US leader will probably only take climate change seriously when his first golf course sinks under the warming water.”

“So much winning,” writes Tom Toles, the Washington Post’s editorial cartoonist. “The United States is now winning in wrecking the climate, ignoring the evidence and making the remaining sane people crazy, too.” President Trump “has rounded up a ragtag army of last holdouts on this subject, staffed his administration with them and thrown the United States of America into hard reverse” on climate change. “There is no way for a sane, rational person to look at this squarely and remain sane,” Toles says: “Either the Trump administration changes policy, or it needs to be removed from power for the high crime of inflicting incalculable damage on the nation, or it might as well start implementing a policy of capture and sequestration of the rest of us in the loony bin.”

A new Antarctic ice sheet with the colorful name “f.ETISh” helps quantify the magnitude of the Antarctic ice sheet’s contribution to global sea-level rise from the collapse of ice sheets. The model, an acronym for fast Elementary Thermomechanical Ice Sheet, includes thermomechanical couplings of sea and land ice. It finds that depending on the amount of warming and associated melt, Antarctic ice sheets could contribute 1.5 meters, 6 meters, or in an extreme case 16 meters of sea level rise over the next 500 years. They suggest that the model could be integrated into future large-scale Earth System Models that currently lack realistic ice sheet dynamics.

Land use and land cover changes (LULCC) are an important contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, as well as climate forcing though changes in reflectivity (albedo) of the Earth’s surface. A new study creates a time series of global surface temperature change separately for LULCC and non-LULCC sources. They show that because of the extra warming associated with the co-emission of methane and nitrous oxide with LULCC carbon emissions, and a co-emission of cooling aerosols with non-LULCC emissions of carbon dioxide, LULCC emissions have a two-fold higher effect on temperature than non-LULCC emissions for each ton of carbon emitted. They also find that IPCC projections of tropical land conversion in the future are low compared to current observations, and may underestimate the impacts of LULCC.They suggest that even if all non-LULCC emissions are switched off in 2015, it is likely that 1.5°C of warming relative to the preindustrial era will occur by 2100, and that policies to reduce LULCC emissions must be a high priority.