Heathrow expansion can only be justified if the government proves it will not breach laws on climate change and pollution, MPs say. Ministers say a third runway will not exceed environment limits. However, the Commons Environmental Audit Committee has accused the government of “magical thinking” – wishing the problem away without a proper solution. They say ministers must show the expansion will not fuel climate change. Committee chair Mary Creagh tells BBC News: “The implication of this is that they think other sectors of the economy like energy and industry are going to have to cut their carbon emissions even more so people can fly more – but the government’s been told by its own advisors (the Committee on Climate Change) that’s not possible.” The Times says the MPs point out that a new runway “could increase aviation carbon emissions by 15% above a previously agreed limit”. The Guardian says the government is set to “water down” limits on aviation emissions. It also quotes Creagh: “Mitigating the air quality, carbon and noise impacts of a new runway cannot be an afterthought.” The Financial Times also carries the story. Last year, Carbon Brief analysis showed that aviation could consume around half the carbon budget available to the UK in 2050, even if the sector’s emissions growth is constrained.

The Times’s frontpage splash reports on the new report published by Chatham House which is critical of government policies which support the use of biomass. It chooses to focus its reporting on Chris Huhne, who “championed” subsidising burning biomass for power when he was the energy and climate change secretary and who is now the European chairman of Zilkha Biomass, a US supplier of wood pellets. The Times adds: “The report was written by Duncan Brack, a former special adviser to Mr Huhne, for Chatham House, the respected international affairs think tank.” The paper adds: “Drax, Britain’s biggest power station, received more than £450 million in subsidies in 2015 for burning biomass, which was mostly American wood pellets. The report says that the government’s assessment of the impact on the climate of switching from coal to wood pellets is flawed because it ignores emissions from burning pellets in power stations. The assessment counts only emissions from harvesting, processing and transporting wood pellets.” It also quotes Nina Skorupska, chief executive of the Renewable Energy Association, which represents Drax: “This report hangs on the fallacy that it takes decades for a forest to recapture carbon. That isn’t true…Biomass delivers a massive cut in carbon emissions compared to fossil fuels. The whole supply chain is monitored in detail to ensure we cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60% compared to fossil fuels.” Carbon Brief has published a detailed article summarising the Chatham House report’s conclusions.

Two new nuclear power stations are needed in Scotland to keep the country’s lights on and reduce polluting carbon emissions, according to the Scottish Conservatives. The measures were part of a new environmental package announced yesterday by Ruth Davidson, the party leader. Under the plans, two new stations would be built at Torness in East Lothian and Hunterston in Ayrshire, where there are already nuclear power stations in place. The Times adds that the Conservatives are “worried that the SNP administration’s reliance on renewable energy will leave Scotland vulnerable to power blackouts and the risks of an uncertain supply if electricity has to be imported from other countries”. The Scotsman also carries the story.

Emails from the new US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt’s tenure as Oklahoma attorney general reveal several instances of coordination between his office and oil interests in his state. The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) released the emails yesterday, one day after Pruitt’s former office turned them over to a state court in Oklahoma. The group said it received 7,564 pages of emails from Pruitt’s office overall. Several emails show coordination between Pruitt and oil and gas companies, utilities and conservative groups inside Oklahoma and out. Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy was one of the most frequent industry sources for Pruitt’s office. The Washington Post and Reuters are among the others carrying the story.

Imposing a price cap on energy bills could be a “very understandable” decision for ministers to take, the energy regulator has said only months after the competition watchdog rejected the idea. Dermot Nolan, the chief executive of Ofgem, said a price cap was a matter for government but told MPs: “If government does choose to go down that road. we will support them in every possible way and implement such a cap if it comes in.” The Guardian reports that at the same Commons hearing, Lawrence Slade, the chief executive of Energy UK, which represents the main energy suppliers, said that firms are under pressure to pass on more price hikes to consumers’ energy bills. The firms are blaming a mix of rising wholesale costs, installation of smart meters and government policies paid for through bills.

Theresa May must not use Donald Trump’s climate change denial as an excuse to “backslide” on environmental commitments, Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats leader, said in a speech yesterday to the thinktank Policy Exchange. Farron accused the government of being “blinkered by right-wing climate change-sceptics who put warped ideology before common sense”. BusinessGreenhas published a full transcript of Farron’s speech.

DeSmogUK reports that “two fringe British climate science deniers” – UKIP MEP, Nigel Farage, and far-right Breitbart London commentator, James Delingpole – are heading to Maryland to appear at the American Conservative Union’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), starting today. CPAC claims to be the “birthplace of modern conservatism” and aims to “break through the resistance of Washington’s powerful elites” via four-days of talks and activist training. Delingpole will be conducting on-stage interviews with two climate sceptics.

The Guardian has a long feature looking at the way climate scientists in the US have face years of political and ideological attack and threats. The paper speaks to some scientists with the political heat rising again with climate sceptic Donald Trump now in the White House. Prof Michael Mann, who has faced more than a decade of personal attacks, said climate scientists “fear an era of McCarthyist attacks on our work and our integrity”.

A new study had found a simple rule for predicting the timing of interglacials — the relatively warm periods that occur in between cold, glacial periods. Scientists know that the cycle of past glacial periods has been driven by changes in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun and the tilt of its axis. Between 2.6 and 1 million years ago, interglacials occurred every 41,000 years, but over the last million years, interglacials have only occurred every 100,000 years. The new study uses a statistical model to predict the timing of these cycles using only the average daily exposure to solar radiation in summer in the northern hemisphere.

Carbon emissions caused by forest degradation in developing countries have been underestimated, a new study suggests. Researchers estimated emissions from forest degradation – which consists of forest fires, harvesting fuels and other human impacts that stop short of deforestation – between 2005 and 2010 across 74 developing countries covering 2.2bn hectares of forests. Their findings suggest that degradation emissions are equivalent to 4.3% of total global emissions, and are equal to about a third of the emissions from deforestation.

Deficiency in the trace element selenium – an essential part of the human diet – could increase as the climate warms, a new study suggests. Using multiple datasets covering 1994-2016, the researchers mapped the selenium content of soils around the world. Their projections suggest that precipitation and aridity changes will see selenium levels in soils decline in 66% of croplands by the end of the 21st century. Lower levels of selenium in the soil means less in cereal crops, the researchers say, particularly in agricultural areas of Europe, India, China, southern South America, southern Africa and the south-western United States.