Scientists David Victor and Charles Kennel respond at length tocriticisms of their Nature opinion piece last week, in which theycalled for the longstanding target of limiting warming to twodegrees above pre-industrial levels to be ditched. Fellow scientistStefan Rahmstorf posted a stern critique on theRealClimateblog. Scientists tell us whatthey think of the two degree target and the Naturecommentaryhere.

Ministers pushing for shale gas exploration cannot take thesupport of rural communities for granted, warns the NationalFarmers’ Union. Farmers fear they could face financial ruin fromgovernment plans to allow fracking beneath their land withoutcompensation. Meanwhile, a farmer who lost 800 acres of land inlast winter’s floodingsaysmore needs to be done to helpfarmers recover from extreme rainfall and flooding.

EU policymakers could create an additional 30,000 jobs by settinga higher energy efficiency target, according to unpublished EUfigures seen by the Guardian. Setting a target to cut energy use by40 per cent could create 40,000 jobs, it claims. A 30 per centtarget could create 13,000 jobs. EU energy and environmentministers are gathering in Milan to discuss energy efficiencytargets as part of a broader package of climate and energy goalsfor 2030.

Rising carbon dioxide levels are making the oceans more acidic,changing the chemistry and affecting the survival of marine life.Scientists say a particular type of fish they’ve been studying -spiny damselfish – will take at least several generations to adaptto a changing environment, with no guarantee they will ever do so.

Faults with one of the reactors at the Hunterston B nuclear powerstation in Scotland could prevent the plant’s working life beingextended. Hunterston-B came online in 1976, and was due to close in2016, but EDF wants to keep it running until 2023 and beyond. Butexperts say there are fissures in two of the 3,000 graphite fuelbricks that make up one of its cores. There is no immediate impacton safety, but the new cracks are a “marker” for whether the plantcan be kept open in the 2020s, the experts say.

Scientists last week announced a new project to allow them todetermine how far climate change is influencing particular types ofextreme weather, while the weather is still happening. According tothe Mail, these “fast-track” attribution studies are intended to”prevent critics from blaming it on natural variations in theweather”. With climate change affecting different types of extremeweather differently, Dr Frederike Otto explains the scientists’rationale: “We want to clear up the huge amounts of confusionaround how climate change is influencing the weather”.

New researchlooking at how temperatureshave changed in different parts of the ocean in the last decadeshow the shallow layers have borne the brunt of ocean warming. Anew network of floating ocean buoys – known as ARGO – suggest nogreat changes below 2,000 metres but that warming in the top 700mof the oceans is considerably more than scientists thought.Previous work has underestimated ocean warming because of too fewmeasurements in the Southern Ocean, the new papers explain.New Scientisthas more on the newresearch.

Britain had its warmest weather between January and September thisyear since records began, according to new Met Office figures. Thisfits in with what scientists expect from climate change in the UK,says Bob Ward, director at Grantham Research Institute on ClimateChange and the Environment. “The UK’s seven warmest years onrecord, and four of its five wettest years, have occurred from 2000onwards, not including 2014”, Ward notes.

The UK should not expect wind energy to play a major part in howwe try to solve climate change, according to a spokesperson fromclimate skeptic lobby group the Global Warming Policy Forum. BennyPeiser said wind turbines have reached the limit of theireffectiveness and money should be spent elsewhere. In aseparatepiece, Peiser says the public is becoming evermore sceptical of climate change because of the so-called slowdownin surface temperature rise. Recently the CharityCommissionforcedLord Lawson’s group to designate aseparately funded political arm to continue activities deemed to becampaigning rather than education.

The finance company set up to provide homeowners with loans tomake their properties more energy efficiency has run into troublebecause it’s failed to convince the state-owned Green InvestmentBank to continue funding, reports the Guardian. Chief executiveMark Bayley is insisting business-as-usual while talks continuethis week.

Industry group RenewableUK’s deputy chief executive reflects onthe Labour and Conservative party conferences. He found Labourpromising political and policy support for renewables. ManyConservative members were also keen on the idea of renewables, buttheir positivity was undermined by party policy, he argues. Wereported from theLabourandConservativeconferences, too.

Financial Times columnist Nick Butler says that he simply does notbelieve that “the existing supplies of hydrocarbons can meet thedemands of 11 billion people at any viable cost”. World leadersneed to focus on finding new, cheap ways of generating electricityso everyone, including the world’s poorest, can enjoy the benefitsof readily available energy. That requires “a powerfulinternational focus on the science of energy beyond anything wehave seen so far, going way beyond the sterile debate on a globaldeal to limit emissions which is getting nowhere”, he argues.

A Guardian business section leader article calls on the nuclearindustry to match its promise to become more transparent withaction. The opinion piece comes in the wake of news that tworegulators charged with assessing the safety of two new reactors atHinkley Point C are on the pension roll of the company set to buildthem. It quotes a Finnish expert questioning how thorough theassessment was, given the short amount of time it seemed to takethe regulators to complete it.

A new study finds rising aerosol concentrations in the atmospherearound 1980 led to an increase in river runoff by up to 25 per centin the most heavily polluted regions in Europe. The researchersfind that these regions may experience reduced freshwateravailability in the future as air quality improvements are set tolower emissions of aerosols.

Two papers in Nature publish new findings based on the latestocean observations from the Argo project. The first paper concludesthat observed estimates of global ocean warming since 1970 havebeen underestimated because of poor sampling of the SouthernHemisphere. The secondpaperfinds no great change intemperature of the ocean beyond 2000m deep, though better samplingof the deep ocean would reduce uncertainty in measurements.

Super-typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines in November 2013with an intensity among the highest ever observed for tropicalcyclones globally. A new study suggests that warm water piling upin the western Pacific Ocean created a very favourable oceanconditions for typhoons. These ‘La Niña-like’ conditions in thePacific have also been linked to the hiatus in rising globaltemperatures.