Oil giant Shell is being threatened with legal action, unless it ramps up efforts to tackle climate change. Friends of the Earth Netherlands has demanded that the company revisit its plans to invest just 5% in sustainable energy, to help bring its business in line with the Paris climate agreement. Roger Cox, who won a landmark climate case in 2015, is heading up the environmental group’s legal team. “We are not asking for damages. We want Shell to steer away from its current course and to get in line with the Paris agreement”, Cox said. Shell is Europe’s biggest oil and gas group. Last week, Shell published a new ‘scenario’ – covered by Carbon Brief – mapping out how the world could theoretically remain below 2C of warming. Elsewhere, DeSmogUK and Inside Climate Newsinvestigate “newly unearthed” internal documents from Shell, that “provide new insights into what they knew about climate change and when they knew it”. The documents reveal that Shell had a “deep understanding”, dating at least to the 1980s, of the science and risks of global warming. The Guardian, the Times and Climate Home also have the story.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is “undermining efforts on climate change” by guiding governments into decisions about fossil fuel use that are inconsistent with the long-term climate objectives of the Paris Agreement, according to a new report. The analysis by Oil Change International and the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis says the IEA’s support for investment into new fossil fuels “is making it much harder to achieve the Paris Agreement”. The report highlights that the IEA’s New Policy Scenario, which is used as the main reference by the Paris-based international agency in its annual World Energy Outlook, would lead to 2.7-3.3C of warming, which is incompatible with the 2C warming target set out in Paris. DeSmogUk also carries the story.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has declined to say if US president Donald Trump has confidence in Scott Pruitt, the embattled chief of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The White House has said that it is reviewing his conduct, including investigating whether Pruitt’s $50-a-night lease arrangement in a Capitol Hill condo last year was proper, the Hill reports. Time Magazine says that Pruitt is “is denying he knew about big raises given to two of his closest aides and insisting he did nothing wrong in renting a bargain-priced condo tied to an energy lobbyist”. The EPA’s top ethics official has said that he he lacked key facts when he concluded recently that Pruitt’s rental lease did not violate any federal gift rules, Washington Post reports. The Hill and Vox cover Pruitt’s “media blitz” responding to the scandals. Think Progress also has the story.

Samples collected during Captain Scott’s famous 1901-1904 Discovery expedition to Antarctica are still “offering scientists new insights into climate change”, iNews reports. New analysis, published in the European Journal of Phycology, uses Scott’s specimens of cyanobacteria as a crucial “baseline” – a snapshot of what conditions were like “before disruption caused by widespread human activity”. The scientists conclude that the samples could be used in investigating the potential effects of climate change.

Mining giant BHP Billiton has made its final decision to leave the World Coal Association over differences on climate change, following a preliminary announcement made in December. The company came under pressure from Australian green groups last year to leave industry associations with policies that fail to match the company’s support of the Paris climate agreement. However it has said that it will remain a member of the US Chamber of Commerce, despite material differences on its stance, due to “broader benefits” from the activities with the group.

An English golf club has refused Ineos permission to carry out seismic surveys on its land, over fears of damage to the site in North Yorkshire. The news marks another blow to the company’s plans to frack for shale gas in the UK, after it was also rebuffed by the National Trust. Ineos has the right to search for shale gas, but still needs permission from the landowners.

In order to be heard above a noisy oilfield, Savannah sparrows in Alberta Canada are changing their love songs “in complex ways that scientists are only starting to understand”, the Independent reports. The team found that birds altered their songs most near generator-powered screw pumps — the loudest of the four types of oil infrastructure studied. “They’re tailoring their songs depending on which part of their message is the most affected,” said biologist Miyako Warrington.

As the result of global warming, spring is now arriving several weeks earlier in some parts of the world. “Not all species are adjusting to this warming at the same rate, and, as a result, some are falling out of step”, says a feature in the New York Times, which looks at five examples of this mismatch. This includes the spider orchid, which, for pollination, relies on tricking lonely male bees emerging from hibernation into thinking the plant is a mating partner. But with warmer temperatures “female bees are now emerging sooner and luring the male bees away from the lovelorn orchid”.

Frank Jotzo, director of The Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, has written a summary of a paper he co-authored about China’s national emissions trading scheme, published this week in Nature Climate Change. “China taking the plunge with this quintessential market-based instrument for environmental policy is a big deal”, he says. continuing: “China’s scheme will at first cover only the electricity sector. But that alone will make it far larger than the European emissions trading scheme, the largest such scheme until now.” Their paper evaluates the design of the Chinese policy, finding that while the scheme will initially have a “relatively limited effect”, it is “designed to evolve and gain in effectiveness over time”. He concludes: “If China’s government decides to turn its emissions trading scheme into an instrument that has real impact, then this will have global repercussions.”

Increasing the contribution from renewables could reduce the vulnerability of power generation in Europe to climate change, a new study suggests. Researchers assessed the impacts of climate change on wind, solar, hydro and thermoelectric power generation in Europe for 1.5C, 2C and 3C of warming. The results show climate change will have negative impacts on electricity production in most countries and for most technologies, but while solar and wind power potential may reduce up to 10%, hydropower and thermoelectric generation may decrease by up to 20%. “Such impacts remain limited for a 1.5C warming, and roughly double for a 3C warming,” the researchers note.

The amount of land and sea in and around Canada that is covered by snow and ice is decreasing over time, a new study says. In particular, summer sea ice cover has decreased significantly across nearly all Canadian marine regions, the researchers find, and the rate of multi-year ice loss in the Beaufort Sea and Canadian Arctic Archipelago has nearly doubled over the last eight years. Projections for the 2020-2050 period suggest sea ice concentration and snow cover will decline by 15-30%. A second study in the same journal assesses how accurately the Canadian Earth System Model and accompanying prediction system simulate snow and sea ice from seasonal to multi-decadal timescales.