Trump’s nominee for energy secretary, Rick Perry, has said that he regrets calling to abolish the Department of Energy in 2012 and will base decisions on “sound science” if confirmed next week. Speaking at a Senate committee hearing yesterday on his nomination, Perry said, “I am going to protect all of the science, whether it’s related to the climate or other aspects of what we’re going to be doing.” While the former Texas governor said he believes in climate change, he says he doesn’t know how much of it can be blamed on human activity, reports The Hill. Referring to Perry’s comments about having been briefed on the “vital functions” of the energy department, The New York Times says, “having taken the time to find out what the Energy Department actually does, Rick Perry now seems eager to lead it as Donald Trump’s new energy secretary.” Climate Home and Ars Technica have more.

The Guardian devoted a whole day of content to the topic of climate change yesterday. This page takes you to all the newspaper’s articles, which are too many to list here. But highlights include articles by the Australian scientist Tim Flannery, a podcast about how best to communicate climate change to sceptics and a rolling live-blog picking out content from around the world.

Clues from an ancient warm period suggest that sea levels could rise by a greater-than-expected six metres over many centuries, according to new research. Scientists have discovered that ocean temperatures 125,000 years ago, when sea levels were six to nine metres higher, were “indistinguishable” from today, suggesting the world can expect a significant rise as water slowly expands and ice sheets melt. Anders Levermann, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told Reuters the study was a hint that ice sheets would melt at lower temperatures than previously expected and that “sea levels will respond faster” to global warming. Previous research had shown that sea levels rose by several metres during the last interglacial but until now the picture of how sea temperatures had varied over the same period had remained patchy, reports The Guardian.

A parliamentary watchdog has criticised the UK government for spending £168m on two failed initiatives to help to fund carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The report by the National Audit Office (NAO) said a £100m competition unexpectedly cancelled by the government in 2015 had not provided value for money. An earlier competition costing £68m collapsed in 2011 when a consortium including National Grid and Iberdrola’s Scottish Power pulled out. Meg Hillier, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, said in statement alongside the report, “The government will have to work hard to restore investor confidence in carbon capture and storage, or come up with cost-effective alternatives to meet the UK’s decarbonisation target.”

A rift in Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf looks set to spawn one of the biggest icebergs ever recorded, as data from the EU’s Sentinel-1 satellite system show the crack has opened up another 10km since 1 January. With the fissure now extending some 195km, it’s hard to predict exactly when the iceberg will break free, say scientists from Swansea and Aberystwyth universities and the British Antarctic Survey. But when it does, the fear is that it could potentially destabilise the shelf, which holds back enough ice above sea level to raise oceans by 4 inches, explains The Washington Post.

A draft climate plan from the Scottish government has set the goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 66% from 1990 levels over the next 15 years, underscoring its determination to be a leader in combating climate change. To meet the goal, Roseanna Cunningham, environment secretary, said Scottish electricity generation will be “fully decarbonised”, 80 per cent of heating would come from low carbon technologies and emissions from the transport sector would be cut by a third from 2014 levels.

Prince Charles has urged world leaders to take immediate steps to combat climate change, calling for efforts to cut emissions to be “urgently scaled up”. The message, contained in a foreword to a new Ladybird book on climate change that he co-authored, will be interpreted as a direct message to Theresa May and Donald Trump, says The Telegraph. Mr Trump has said he plans to meet the Prince “in the coming weeks” though Clarence House said no meeting had been scheduled.

A Nature editorial explores the science behind the ‘social cost of carbon’ (SCC), a concept drawn up by scientists and economists to represent the hidden costs from climate impacts such as extreme weather, declining crop yields and rising sea levels. The metric is already a target for the incoming administration of president-elect Donald Trump, which has said it will push for a review of the underlying science in a bid to lower the social cost of carbon from its current value of US$36 per tonne of CO2. Pointing to a 2014 review of the science suggesting a minimum value of $125, the editorial argues that there is little evidence in the scientific and economic literature to justify such a move: “Some have indeed argued that [the social cost of carbon] is too high, but numerous studies have concluded that the price tag for damages is too low — perhaps much too low.”

Conservatives cannot properly be climate denier since at the heart of their political stance is the desire to hand on something better to the future than they have received from the past, says conservative peer and former environment minister, John Gummer, in The Guardian. Thatcher “would have scorned the populist attack on science that we are seeing from much of the American right” and rather than Conservatism, she would regard it “as a rearguard defence of the status quo and the vested interests that sustain it”, he argues. She’d have been just as trenchant about the confusion between a well-functioning free market and a distorted market, which, says Gummer, defends vested interest by allowing coal owners to make profits while the community pays the cost.

Global average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) during the last interglacial period were like those of today, a new study finds. During this mild period in the Earth’s history, 129,000 to 116,000 years ago, global sea levels were around 6-9m higher than they are at present. The researchers compiled 104 SST records from 83 marine sediment core sites. Their results indicate that peak SSTs during the last interglacial were around 0.5C warmer than the 1870-1889 average and indistinguishable from the 1995 to 2014 average.