A new report says that major oil and gas companies have invested $50bn (£40.6bn) in fossil fuel projects within the past year, undermining global efforts to tackle climate change, the Guardian reports. The analysis, by the thinktank Carbon Tracker, finds that none of the largest listed oil and gas companies are making investment decisions that are in line with the 1.5C global warming limit of the Paris Agreement. The report says 18 projects worth $50bn are likely to be “deep out of the money in a low-carbon world”, notes the Times. These include Shell’s $13bn Canada liquefied natural gas project, a $4.3bn oilfield expansion project in Azerbaijan owned by BP, Exxon, Chevron and Equinor, and a $1.3bn deepwater project in Angola operated by BP, Exxon, Chevron, Total and Equinor, says Reuters. The report concludes that oil and gas companies risk “wasting” $2.2tn by 2030 on new projects if governments apply stricter curbs on greenhouse gas emissions, adds Reuters. Andrew Grant, senior analyst at Carbon Tracker and report author, noted that “every oil major is betting heavily against a 1.5C world and investing in projects that are contrary to the Paris goals,” says BusinessGreen. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that global investment in new capacity for renewable energy is on course to reach $2.6tn by the end of this decade, according to a UN Environment Programme report, which is more than triple the amount of the previous decade.

There is considerable coverage of the devastation caused by Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas. “Literally hundreds, up to thousands, of people are still missing,” Joy Jibrilu, director general of the country’s tourism and aviation ministry, tells CNN. The outlet also reports comments from the prime minister, Hubert Minnis, who says the storm inflicted “generational devastation”. The death toll has now risen to 30, reports the Hill. An international relief effort to bring aid to the Bahamas gathered pace yesterday, reports Reuters. The United Nations estimates more than 76,000 people are in need of humanitarian relief after the most damaging storm ever to hit the island nation, the article notes. A preliminary estimate of total insured and uninsured losses in the Bahamas is $7bn, another Reuters piece says. The Washington Post and Vox both have images of the damage.
Hurricane Dorian weakened to a category-one storm as it brushed North Caroline, says Reuters, but tropical storm conditions are now spreading north along the state’s coast. More than 239,000 homes and businesses in the south-east US were left without power yesterday, says Reuters.
Another Reuters piece reports that floodwaters rose to 30cm or more in low-lying parts of the South Carolina city of Charleston, according to officials. More than 18cm of rain fell in some areas, with more expected overnight. Finally, the Hill reports that “one of President Trump’s top advisers on Hurricane Dorian issued a lengthy statement on Thursday defending the president’s repeated claims that forecasts showed Alabama getting hit by Hurricane Dorian”.

Germany plans to shut down its first power plants that use black coal in 2020, according to a draft law seen by Reuters. Black coal, also known as hard coal or anthracite, is a top grade coal with a high energy density, the article notes. The step would be part of a planned phase-out of coal by 2038. The government is expected to announce the new “far-reaching steps on climate protection” on 20 September, Reuters says. In the blueprint seen by the newswire, the government also wants to reach a deal with utilities on a timetable to shut down plants that use lower-grade brown coal and agree a framework for compensation.

China’s greenhouse gas emissions are likely to peak by 2022 even without the introduction of tougher policies, a senior government researcher tells Reuters, putting it ahead of an original target of “around” 2030. Jiang Kejun, a research professor with the Energy Research Institute, a unit of China’s top planning body, said he had “extreme confidence” in Beijing’s ability to bring emissions to a peak by 2022 on just a “business as usual” trajectory. “China already has very strong policies and for me, just continuing to do that could be enough,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of the Fortune Sustainability Forum in China. A new Carbon Brief guest post this week finds that China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement production grew by around 4% in the first half of 2019.

The UK energy regulator Ofgem has fined French energy group £2.1m after one of its traders manipulated wholesale British gas prices over a three-month period in 2016, reports Reuters. Ofgem said the trader from Engie Global Markets (EGM) had been involved in “spoofing”, where traders make and cancel orders to influence prices. According to Ofgem, EGM “failed to take appropriate measures to prevent or detect the breach from happening”, reports the Financial Times, but it found no evidence of “more widespread market manipulation” by the group.

A number of US publications comment on the recent CNN town hall event, which saw candidates bidding to be the Democratic nomination for US president debate climate change for seven hours. Lisa Friedman and Maggie Astor – climate and political reporter, respectively, at the New York Times – pick out “five takeaways”. Most of the candidates “support some form of putting a price on carbon emissions, at least in theory”, they write. However, “nuclear energy was a major issue where they were fundamentally divided,” they note, while whether to commit to a ban on fracking also divided the field. InsideClimate News politics reporter Marianne Lavelle writes that the “influence of Washington governor Jay Inslee, who ended his climate-focused presidential candidacy two weeks ago, was evident throughout the CNN forum”. Vox has Inslee as one of the “six winners” from the debate – and puts Joe Biden, oil and gas companies and meat as the “three losers”. Another Vox piece looks at how “some 2020 Democrats would actually get their climate plans through the Senate”. Elsewhere, E&E News reporter Mark K. Matthews has seven takeaways from the event, while Axios energy reporter Ben German also picks out his takeaways. The New York Times has an explainer on “environmental justice”, which “was a theme” of the debate. Finally, an editorial from the San Francisco Chronicle says the town hall event “stood in stark contrast to an administration for which the question is not how but whether to address the climate crisis — and the answer is no”.

The Reality Check team of BBC News looks at whether the scale of fires across the world this summer is unprecedented. Using satellite data, the team looks at four areas – Brazil, Siberia, Indonesia and Central Africa – and concludes that “although fires this year have wrought significant damage to the environment, they have been worse in the past”. For example, although the number of fires in the Brazilian Amazon is the highest (for the year so far) for almost a decade, the article says, “it is actually lower than for most years in the period 2002 to 2010”. Elsewhere, writing in the Financial Times, Andreea Leonte – a fellow at the Romanian Institute for the Study of the Asia-Pacific – says that that rainforests such as the Amazon could be protected if developed nations “provide temporary financial support to developing countries that host rainforests, helping them to grow their economy without resorting to forest exploitation”. A piece in the Conversation looks at the fragile nature of the Amazon’s recovery once the fires have stopped. In other coverage of the Amazon, the Guardian reports comments from Brazilian bishop Erwin Kräutler, who describes the fires as a “true apocalypse”. And Reuters says the head of Brazil’s Senate has signed an agreement with the Supreme Court to assign 1bn reais ($245m) to protect the Amazon. The money comes from funds seized under “Operation Car Wash”, an ongoing investigation by the Federal Police of Brazil into corruption and money laundering at the majority state-owned oil company Petrobas, Reuters notes.

“By mocking people like [Greta] Thunberg, those who claim to be Conservatives are disregarding this fundamental principle of Conservatism and treating the social contract with contempt,” writes independent researcher Ben Ramanauskas in CityAM. Ramanauskas describes the “callousness” shown to towards future generations as “not only unforgivable, [but] also unconservative”. However, Ramanauskas says, “although we should all listen to Thunberg’s warnings about climate change, we should not follow her suggestions for how to tackle it”. He argues that a carbon tax and “unleash[ing] the full force of the market” are better options than “sacrificing economic growth on the altar of environmentalism”. “Climate change requires market-led solutions – and fast,” Ramanauskas concludes. “But Conservatives seem intent on burying their heads in the sand, on this and other crucial issues that could have devastating consequences for the future of humanity.” Elsewhere, writing in New York Times, contributing opinion writer Jochen Bittner says that the message from youth climate strikers “needs optimism” as well as well as pessimism – “otherwise, your steady calls of alarm risk becoming a complacent routine in itself”.

Extreme precipitation can drive natural disasters like floods and landslides, so understanding and quantifying how it responds to warming is important. Climate models disagree on how much extreme precipitation changes in response to global warming in the tropics. They find that the response of extreme precipitation in the tropics to a given amount of warming is not fixed, but instead increases as the temperature warms. This behavior is shared by some but not all climate models. However, the next generation of models that descend from CESM1 do not share this behavior.

Tropical forests store large amounts of carbon and have high biodiversity, but are being degraded at alarming rates. Global climate change can be limited by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through the growth of trees and may also protect biodiversity as a free co‐benefit. This study investigates whether natural forest regeneration on abandoned pastureland offers such co‐benefits. The authors focus on the globally threatened Brazilian Atlantic Forest, where commitments have been made to restore one million hectares of forest. Three decades after land abandonment, regenerating forests had recovered 20% of the above‐ground carbon stocks of a primary forest. Over this period, secondary forest recovered 76% of taxonomic, 84% of phylogenetic and 96% of functional diversity found within primary forests. In addition, secondary forests had on average recovered 65% of threatened and 30% of endemic species richness.