Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth blog reports on State of the Climate
2013, a compendium of climate trends and events from the US
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It finds that
greenhouse gas levels continued to climb and that 2013 was among
the warmest years on record. Sea levels rose and sea temperatures
put 2013 in the top ten warmest years.

Australia’s carbon tax and plans for emissions trading will
be scrapped after a vote yesterday in the country’s senate. The
victory for prime minister Tony Abbot comes after a
minor setbacklast week when the repeal
stumbled. The tax has taken centre stage in Australian politics
over recent years and was a major factor in the downfallof previous PM Julia
Gillard. Think Progress saysthe tax had been delivering
emissions cuts in the power sector. The climate policy retreat –
described as a world first by some papers- has attracted
international condemnationand, in some circles,
glee at the downfall of a “disastrous and pointless”scheme.
A second Reuters describesthe repeal as a blow to
global carbon markets, though recent falls on New Zealand carbon
markets are said to be unrelated. In The Conversation the
Committee on Climate Change’s Alexis Kalaglis arguesthe UK shows how carbon can
be cut without a tax. An Australian renewable electricity target
for 2020 has so far escaped unscathed.

Scotland’s most important industrial complex has secured the
support to invest in a terminal that will import US shale gas. An
article in the Telegraph saysthe move is “pure politics”,
with the Scottish independence referendum just months away.
Bloomberg reportscomments by the
International Energy Agency’s chief economist that Europe risks
losing 30 million jobs to the US shale gas boom.

Noise levels from truck movements are being disputed in
Sussex where council officers say Celtique Energie underplayed the
expected traffic, the Guardian reports. The argument is delaying
planning applications relating to a site near Fernhurst in West
Sussex where the company has already withdrawn plans to drill
horizontal wells under neighbouring land but still wants to drill
vertically.

A report from the Department of Energy and Climate Change
shows that renewables now produce 15 per cent of UK electricity and
received £8 billion in investment last year. Business
Green saysthe report anticipates that
renewables investment will be more than ten times higher than that
in new gas plant or shale gas development. Reuters reportson DECC plans to amend
‘unbundling’ rules that restrict simultaneous ownership and
investment in power transmission and generation. DECC says the move
is required to boost investment in the power sector. The proposed
changes may prove controversial as EU rules have sought to drive
more unbundling rather than less.

A £20 million business energy efficiency initiative
announced by the Department of Energy and Climate Change amounts to
consumer funding for free LED lighting in supermarkets, the
Telegraph reports. The plan is supposed to reduce the risk of the
lights going out and remove the need to build expensive additional
power generating capacity.

The shocking news of the Malaysian Airlines crash over
Ukraine has also had an impact on European gas and coal prices,
according to Reuters. The news has pushed up prices as traders fear
further deterioration in relations with Russia, it
says.

Some scientists are concerned that continued warming of the
Arctic may cause once permanently frozen ground – called permafrost
– to thaw, releasing carbon and speeding up global warming. But a
new study suggests the threshold to trigger widespread collapse is
a fair bit higher now than it was in past, meaning it might not
pose quite the risk some have suggested.

Changes in the jet stream responsible for more extreme
weather may be linked to global warming, according to a report of a
new study in the Guardian. John Abraham sounds a note of caution in
his article, adding that other weather factors such as El Niño in
the Pacific ocean, are likely to be at play.

Models that predict how much sea ice will remain over summer
are unlikely to do a good job unless they include a realistic
representation of the atmospheric conditions in spring, says new
research. The prediction from a simple model matched observations
surprisingly well despite not taking into account the sea ice
state, oceanic conditions or processes that might speed up ice
melt.