Andrew Brown, Shell’s director of upstream international
business is sceptical about the potential for shale oil and gas
development in Britain, reports the Sunday Telegraph. Brown’s
comments will come as a blow to energy minister Michael Fallon as
he prepares to open the latest round of exploration licences, the
piece explains. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Brown
said, “It’s a matter of geology, costs, access, you know, it’s a
combination of factors that would mean it’s not yet somewhere we
would focus on.”

The Anglican Church in Australia’s general synod has
unanimously passed a motion urging the federal government to
respect the science on climate change. Bishop Tom Wilmot said the
dismantling of the Climate Commission proved the Abbott government
was not interested in the truth about climate science.

A new report out today will say the UK’s climate change
policies haven’t damaged business competitiveness – and can even
increase competitiveness in the long term through encouraging
innovation and efficiency. The report, authored by Samuela Bassi
and Dmitri Zenghelis from the Grantham Research Institute,
concludes there’s no reason to e=weaken the scale of ambition in
the UK’s fourth Carbon Budget, which sets emissions reduction
targets for the period 2023 to 2027.

People with red hair could become extinct within a couple of
centuries as a result of increasing temperatures, experts have
warned. Scientists think the gene that causes red hair evolved to
maximise Vitamin E intake when skies are cloudy. Red hair and blue
eyes aren’t adapted to a warming climate and may eventually die
out, reports the Mirror.

Geoffrey Lean looks at a Commons Committee report last week
which warned of an “unprecedented confluence of pressures” over
coming decades, raising the spectre of global food demand
outstripping supply. The report warned that while “competition for
land, water and energy” intensifies and “the effects of climate
change become increasingly apparent”, the piece
reports.

Nick Butler looks ahead to the Tory party manifesto for the
election next May – and what it will say on energy policy. The
document’s authors – Jo Johnson and Oliver Letwin – need to return
to energy policy “first principles”, Butler says: balance, realism
and competition.

Centralised, coal-fired power is over, says clean technology
author Giles Parkinson. As early as 2018, solar could be
economically viable to power big cities and by 2040 over half of
all electricity may be generated in the same place it’s used, he
says.

John Vidal looks at glaciers turning darker as particles of
fine dust are settling on the snow, reducing their reflectivity and
lengthening the melt season. Data from Himalayan weather stations
reveal one glacier’s ability to reflect sunlight dropped 20 per
cent in a single month. The piece looks at other research on the
effect of dust and particles of black carbon on Arctic sea ice and
the Greenland ice sheet, where in some areas the melt season is now
between six and 11 days longer per decade than it was 40 years
ago.

Using new figures on raw material consumption in the UK,
Chris Goodall calculates the weight of physical resources used to
generate £1 sterling of income has fallen from about 513 grams in
2000 to around 358 in 2012 – equivalent to a 30 per cent reduction
since 2000.

A team of scientists has completed the most accurate and
precise reconstruction to date of historic volcanic sulphate
emissions in the Southern Hemisphere. The new record, derived from
individual ice cores collected at locations across Antarctica,
found global aerosol forcing values from some of the largest
eruptions were overestimated by 20-30 per cent and others
underestimated by 20-50 per cent.

A new study compares the effectiveness of three different
approaches to communicating the scientific consensus on climate
change; descriptive text, a pie chart and metaphorical
representations. While all three have benefits, the pie chart and
simple text seem to get the best results in an inline survey, say
the researchers.