There is widespread coverage in the US of the news that Donald Trump intends to nominate Kelvin Droegemeier, an expert in extreme weather from the University of Oklahoma, to be his top science and technology adviser at the White House. The Washington Post reports: “Droegemeier’s selection, if approved by the Senate, could soon end a roughly 19-month vacancy at the top of the Office of Science and Technology Policy — a critical arm of the White House that guides the president on such issues as self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, emerging medical research and climate change.” Vox says: “For climate researchers, the pick was a pleasant surprise…Previous potential picks to lead OSTP included emeritus Princeton University physicist William Happer, who has said, ‘There is no problem from CO2.’ Another rumoured nominee was the Yale University computer scientist David Gelernter, who downplayed humanity’s influence on global warming.” The Hill says: “Droegemeier’s expected nomination has been largely hailed by environmentalists due to his background in science.” However, the New York Times cautions that “his views on climate change are not well known”. Quartz and the Atlantic are among the other publications covering the story.

The Times reports that temperatures in southern parts of Portugal and southwestern Spain could reach 47C this weekend, according to the Met Office. A spokesperson told the Times that the European record of 48C, set in Athens in 1977, was “likely to be threatened”. She said: “The peak of the heat in Europe looks likely to occur on Saturday. Temperature records for Spain and Portugal, 47.3C and 47.4C respectively, may be broken.” The Guardian also covers the story, and carries a quote from Met Office chief scientist Stephen Belcher, reading: “The temperatures we are currently experiencing may not yet be the ‘new normal’, but within a few decades they could be.” A second story in the Times reports that the summer heatwave is likely to lead to a particularly “brown” autumn.

DeSmogUK reports on the reaction to a radio segment aired on BBC Cambridgeshire which held a “debate” on whether or not humans have caused climate change. The programme asked scientist Chris Smith to go head to head with Philip Foster, a known climate sceptic and UK Independence Party supporter. DeSmogUK report that radio producers had previously approached Rupert Read, a philosopher at the University of East Anglia and former Green party candidate for Cambridge, to appear on the show. However, on Twitter, Read refused and urged other academics to follow his lead, DeSmogUK reports. “When it was described to me what it was going to be – just a straight back and forth debate between myself and a climate science denier – I thought this was time to say ‘no’”, he told DeSmog UK. “If people start doing what i’m doing and start saying no to them if they’re going to have a climate science denier on to debate, then the BBC will have to start thinking about whether they can do this.” Dr Emily Shuckburgh, a climate scientist based in Cambridge at the British Antarctic Survey, who pre-recorded a segment for the programme, told DeSmog UK that she felt the programme had “tried but failed” to explore how the recent heatwave related to climate change. She said: “The main problem is that it wasn’t properly explained what the scientific credentials of the participants were, and when incorrect statements were made they weren’t challenged, which is a dereliction of the BBC’s journalistic duty”.

Last year was the warmest ever recorded on Earth that didn’t feature an El Niño, according to a report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). El Niño is a periodic climatic phenomenon that warms the Pacific Ocean. Overall, 2017 was the third hottest year on record, according to the report, behind 2016 and 2015. The report also says that countries including Spain, Bulgaria, Mexico and Argentina, broke their annual high temperature records in 2017. Similar findings were produced by Carbon Brief‘s state of the climate analysis in January.

Bloomberg reports that energy bills for UK households are declining, largely driven by a drop in the amount of gas and electricity used in homes. It says: “Adjusted for weather, the average dual-fuel bill fell £6 ($7.87) in 2017 from a year earlier, according to a report by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.” It adds: “Spending on electricity and gas in British homes has fallen by almost £4bn since 2008.”

MailOnline reports on a new study suggesting that exposure to sunlight causes some plastics to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The study, published in PLOS ONE, finds that polythene, a plastic commonly used to make shopping bags, emits the greenhouse gases methane and ethylene as it decomposes under sunlight. However, Reuters reports that the study cautions that plastics are “likely to be an insignificant component of the global (methane) budget” because decaying plastic only releases relatively small amounts of methane. The Daily Express also covers the story.

This weekend’s edition of the New York Times Magazine is dedicated in full to a story detailing a 10-year period from 1979 to 1989, which the magazine describes as a “decisive decade when humankind first came to a broad understanding of the causes and dangers of climate change”. In an editor’s note, the magazine’s editor in chief Jake Silverstein says: “With support from the Pulitzer Center, this two-part article is based on 18 months of reporting and well over a hundred interviews. It tracks the efforts of a small group of American scientists, activists and politicians to raise the alarm and stave off catastrophe. It will come as a revelation to many readers – an agonizing revelation – to understand how thoroughly they grasped the problem and how close they came to solving it.” The 30,000-word article is separated into a prologue, epilogue and two parts: 1979-82 and 1983-89. However, the article has attracted criticism from the Atlantic. “By portraying the early years of climate politics as a tragedy, the magazine lets Republicans and the fossil-fuel industry off the hook,” says writer Robinson Meyer. A second article in Think Progress says that “scientists aren’t impressed” with the magazine’s piece. Bob Brulle, a Drexel University sociologist and author of numerous studies on climate politics and lobbying, told Think Progress: “This article strikes me as a highly selective historical account that omits key facts that run counter to its overall narrative.” New Republic writer Emily Atkin also criticises the article.

New York Times columnist David Leonhardt writes on the media coverage of this year’s wildfire season in California. He says: “I’m glad to see journalists becoming more willing to connect the fires to climate change. For too long, people have been scared to talk about climate change when extreme weather happens.” A separate article in the Guardian explores how local politicians are including climate change in discussions about the ongoing fires.

Commonly used plastics such as polythene release greenhouse gases as they decay, a study suggests. The researchers show that, as polythene breaks down, it releases methane and ethylene. However, the amount of methane released from waste plastic is not thought to be high enough to impact the world’s remaining methane budget, they add. “Our results show that plastics represent a heretofore unrecognised source of climate-relevant trace gases that are expected to increase as more plastic is produced and accumulated in the environment,” the researchers say.