President Trump yesterday nominated former coal lobbyist Andrew R. Wheeler to help lead the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Wheeler was a registered lobbyist for Murray Energy – the largest privately-owned coal company – until August this year, following months of speculation that he would be lined up for the number two position within the EPA, reports Think Progress. The nomination prompted “contrasting reactions from industry and environmental groups,” says Reuters. Environmental group, The Sierra Club, called it “absolutely horrifying”, adding that “Andrew Wheeler is a big time lobbyist who has represented Big Coal for almost a decade, including in numerous lawsuits challenging the EPA.” If confirmed by the Senate, Wheeler would work directly under Pruitt, responsible for Trump’s aggressive agenda of undoing Obama administration regulations, says The Hill. Wheeler was previously a senior staffer for Republican Senator and vocal climate sceptic, James Inhofe. In a statement, Inhofe said he was pleased with the appointment, adding “there is no one more qualified than Andrew to help Scott Pruitt restore EPA to its proper size and scope.” In other US news, the Washington Postreports that the US Interior Department has rejected 25 endangered species petitions – including several, such as the Pacific walrus – where the species are threatened by climate change. And Reuters reports that a group of 38 senators have asked the EPA to abandon plans to lower biofuels requirements for oil refiners in 2018. In a letter, the group argues that the agency should instead increase the amount of biofuels that must be included in oil-based fuels. Finally, another Reuters article says that greenhouse gas emissions from America’s largest industrial facilities fell 2% in 2016 to 2.99bn tonnes, led by a large cut from the power sector, according to new EPA data.

TransCanada Corp – the developer of the Keystone XL pipeline – has abandoned its Energy East and Eastern Mainline oil pipeline projects amid mounting regulatory hurdles. The Energy East pipeline, for example, was designed to carry more than one million barrels of oil per day from western Canada’s oilsands to refineries in Quebec and Saint John, New Brunswick, as well as an export terminal in New Brunswick, says DeSmog Canada. “After careful review of changed circumstances, we will be informing the National Energy Board that we will no longer be proceeding with our Energy East and Eastern Mainline applications,” said president and CEO Russ Girling in a statement. TransCanada had said last month it could abandon the Energy East project, explains another Reuters piece, weeks after Canada’s National Energy Board announced a tougher review process that would take into account indirect greenhouse gas contributions among other factors. The Hill and Think Progress also have the story.

Warming soils are releasing more carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought, a new US study finds, suggesting that increases in global temperatures will trigger massive new carbon releases in a feedback loop. The experiment, which started back in 1991, examines plots of soil a mixed hardwood forest in Massachusetts. They experimented by heating some of the plots with underground cables to 5C above normal levels, leaving others as a control. They find that warmer temperatures have led microbes in the soil to become more active in breaking down plant matter and other materials, releasing CO2, explains Washington Post. If soils around the world respond to warming in the same way, the “magnitude of loss could amount to hundreds of petagrams — billions of metric tonnes — of carbon fluxing from the world’s forest soils to the atmosphere,” lead author Dr Jerry Melillo told the Post. Inside Climate News also covers the research.

Plans to cap energy bills for up to two million vulnerable households this winter have been thrown into doubt after the government’s announcement to legislate for a wider cap on all standard tariffs. Draft legislation will be published next week to help the regulator Ofgem cap prices for the 12m households on standard variable tariffs. Energy companies has previously agreed to the plan for vulnerable households, but a senior source at a Big Six supplier told the Times that firms were reconsidering. Business Secretary Greg Clark claimed that the price cap, which could knock £100 off annual energy bills, could be in place this winter, says the Sun. But, as the Guardian points out, the draft bill will need to be scrutinised by the business, energy and industrial strategy committee, be passed through parliament and go through consultation with energy companies. The whole process would take at least six months – not including any legal challenges – suggesting that the earliest most householders would see any benefit on their bills would be late 2018.

Oil companies have begun shutting down platforms in the Gulf of Mexico in the path of Tropical Storm Nate. Forecasts suggest that Nate will hit the coast of eastern Louisiana around New Orleans on Sunday. The storm’s expected track would take it through a region of the central gulf that holds a large number of offshore oil and gas platforms, affecting hundreds of thousands of barrels per day of production. Tropical Storm Nate killed at least 22 people as it tore through Central America yesterday, reports Reuters. Nate is predicted to strengthen into a Category 1 hurricane by the time it hits the US Gulf Coast. Meanwhile, the Associated Press looks at the roles of climate change and natural variability in hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean.

Fracking for shale gas in North Yorkshire could get underway within weeks, says Third Energy. Final regulatory sign-off at the firm’s KM8 well site, just outside the village of Kirby Misperton, is “imminent”, technical director Alan Linn said yesterday. Another two weeks of preparatory work is required, said Linn and then “once we’ve completed that successfully then we would begin to move into the frack”. “We expect to be finished and wrapped up with the actual fracking before the end of the year,” he added.

It is still not clear how global warming will affect the global carbon cycle, either in terms of the magnitude of the effect or even its sign. Help in answering that question will come from long-term field-based experiments designed to explore carbon cycle-climate feedbacks in an ecosystem context. A new study performed a 26-year soil-warming experiment in a mid-latitude hardwood forest. Warming resulted in a complex pattern of net carbon loss from the soil. These results support projections of a long-term, positive carbon feedback from similar ecosystems as the world warms.

“Corporations should seize this opportunity to have a seat at the table and do their part to address critical global challenges” such as climate change, writes Stephen Badger, the chairman of the food manufacturers Mars Inc, in a comment piece for the Post. “Our footprint is equivalent to that of a country roughly the size of Panama. With this scale comes responsibility. Mars, and companies like ours, must be as engaged as governments in delivering reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions,” he argues. Describing his companies new “Sustainable in the Generation Plan”, Badger explains why companies will “realise the returns on investment in a sustainable future”. “This is a call to action for all in business to double down in support of the Paris agreement and the sustainable development goals,” he concludes: “Business not only has a seat at the table; it has a vested interest in collaborating with everyone at the table. So let’s grab this opportunity with both hands.”

What will be the consequence of global warming on regional soil moisture at the end of the 21st century? The response found in the fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of IPCC is subject to many uncertainties. New research demonstrates that recent trends in soil moisture and in near surface relative humidity averaged over the boreal midlatitude continents in summer have been mainly driven by human activities. They show that there is limited influence of internal climate variability on near-term changes. They find that projected long-term drying is probably underestimated by most global climate models explored in the AR5.