Senior Environmental Protection Agency officials worked closely with a conservative climate sceptic group known as the Heartland Institute, new emails uncovered by Associated Press reveal. The correspondence shows how officials made moves to rally climate sceptics for public hearings on science and global warming, counter negative news coverage and tout Scott Pruitt’s stewardship of the agency. John Konkus, the EPA’s deputy associate administrator for public affairs, reached out to senior staffers at the Heartland Institute a number of times, according to the emails. Emails show he and former EPA spokeswoman, Liz Bowman, repeatedly reached out to Heartland to talk over critical coverage by the Washington Post and other US titles. An email from former Heartland president Joseph Bast, shared with EPA staffers and others, shows Bast celebrating news that a reporter, Justin Gillis, was leaving the New York Times. “Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead. Still waiting for Chris Mooney and Juliet Eilperin at the WaPo and Seth Borenstein at AP to flame out,” Bast writes, according to the emails.

The Great Barrier Reef suffered five “death events” over the past 30,000 years as sea levels rose and fell, according to a new study. Rising sea levels forced corals to migrate to land or seaward to survive, The Sydeny Morning Herald reports. New Scientist also has the story. Meanwhile, Buzzfeed reports that Titanic director James Cameron has issued a “blunt warning” about the future of the reef. Cameron told reporters on Monday: “This is something that if we don’t course correct with regards to the carbon we are dumping into the atmosphere, it’s going to become an inevitability. The Great Barrier Reef will die, it’s that simple.”

The Dutch government has launched a bid to overturn a landmark climate ruling ordering ministers to cut CO2 emissions by 25% by 2020. The government’s plans for a 17% cut in CO2 pollution were deemed unlawful in the first successful lawsuit against a government’s climate policy three years ago. But on Monday the government launched an appeal arguing that judges in The Hague had overstepped their authority and “sidelined democracy”. Climate Home News also has the story.

The Japanese conglomerate Hitachi has agreed to continue plans with the UK for a nuclear power plant in Wales after the government agreed to pledge more funding, Nikkei Asia Review reports. On Friday, the Guardian reported concerns from a nuclear lobbyist that the plans were at “risk of collapse”.

Feeding cows seaweed could “dramatically” cut the amount of methane they release from belching, a new study claims. Adding a small amount of seaweed to cattle feed could reduce methane emissions from cattle microbes by up to 99%, according to preliminary results that are yet to be published. “Results are not final, but so far we are seeing substantial emission reductions,” Professor Ermias Kebreab at the University of California, Davis, told the Independent.

“At last count, there were some 258 million migrants worldwide, with 22.5 million people registered as refugees by the UN Refugee Agency. These numbers will be dwarfed if even the most modest climate-related predictions are borne out,” writes Kumi Naidoo, secretary General-designate of Amnesty International and a former executive director of Greenpeace International, for Project Syndicate. “Displaced people must be able to get on with their lives in dignity. The test of world leaders will be whether the global compacts on refugees and migrants can achieve this.”

“The biggest mistake we’ve made is to allow our politicians to turn concern about global warming into a party-political issue, and do so merely for their own short-term advantage,” writes Ross Gittins, an Australian political and economic journalist and author, in the Sydney Morning Herald. “The initial motives may have been short term, but the adverse effects have been lasting. These days, for a Liberal voter to worry about climate change is to be disloyal to their party and give comfort to the enemy.” His words come as the Guardian reports that Australian ministers have once again come to blows over energy policy. Elsewhere, the Guardian also reports how the Coalition’s Direct Action on emissions scheme has “wasted millions” on projects that “would have gone ahead anyway”. On Monday, the head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) told a forum that the timing of the country’s carbon tax was “unfortunate” because it coincided with soaring electricity network costs that have underpinned increases to household bills, the Guardianreports.

The UK government should “enshrine in law a new net-zero greenhouse gas emission target”, writes Sam Hall, head of research at conservative think tank Bright Blue. in The Telegraph. “Adopting a new legal net-zero emissions target sets the ambition of effectively ending the UK’s contribution to climate change,” Hall writes. “This could be a key component of the UK Government’s post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’ strategy.” Meanwhile, an editorial in the Daily Mirror looks at the links between the bank holiday weather and climate change.

A “cascading effect” in the Amazon rainforest – whereby moisture transpired from trees in one area creates rainfall downwind in another – helps buffer the impact of drought, a new study finds. The researchers estimate that one-third of Amazon rainfall originates within its own basin, of which two-thirds has been transpired. Areas of forest in the southwestern Amazon are particularly dependent on this transpired water. The findings “reveal a mechanism by which deforestation can compromise the resilience of the Amazon forest system in the face of future climatic extremes,” the study concludes.

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) has migrated back and forth from Australia’s coast in response to sea level changes over the past 30,000 years, a new study says. Using cores drilled in fossilised coral, the researchers show that the GBR migrated seaward as sea level fell to its lowest level during the most recent glacial maximum (~20,000 years ago), then landward as the shelf flooded and ocean temperatures increased as the glacial period ended (~10,000 years ago). The growth of the GBR was also interrupted by five “reef-death events”, the study finds – two caused by the exposure of the reef as sea level fell, and three caused by drowning as sea level rose faster than the corals could grow.

Global economic losses as a direct result of river flooding will increase by 17% in the next 20 years, a new study suggests, as climate change causes an increase in extreme rainfall. China will suffer the strongest direct losses, the researchers estimate, with an increase in losses of 82%. Countries will also be affected indirectly through the global trade network, the study notes – for example, the US is “mostly affected indirectly through its trade relations”.