There’s further coverage of President Trump’s decision to impose tariffs of 30% on imported solar panels to the US. The Solar Energy Industries Association warned that it expected the tariffs to cost about 23,000 jobs – about 9% of the estimated US solar workforce. Meanwhile, Varun Sivaram of the Council on Foreign Relations told the FT that “the industry will live [but] the deployment boom in the US will slow.” Sivarum also has an in-depth commentary on the website of the Center on Global Energy Policy of Columbia University in which he says there will be “far more losers than winners”. Trump signed the tariffs into law yesterday, reports The Hill, claiming repeatedly that the tariffs will lead to new jobs. “You’re going to have people getting jobs again and we’re going to be making our own product again,” Trump said. “Our action today helps to create jobs in America for Americans…A lot of manufacturers will be coming to the United States to build both washing machines and also solar.” Tony Clifford, chief development officer of Standard Solar, which finances and installs panels, told the Guardian that “it boggles my mind that this president – any president, really – would voluntarily choose to damage one of the fastest-growing segments of our economy”. There was a mixed reaction in the stock market, with some companies saying the tariff was not as steep as they had feared. Meanwhile, Beijing has reacted angrily, says another FT article, with the commerce ministry proclaiming its “strong dissatisfaction” with the move and noting that China would “resolutely defend its legitimate interests”. Analysis published by Think Progress shows that “new and emerging state markets are disproportionately affected [by the new tariff], with southern states like Texas, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina amongst the most impacted by the tariffs.” All of those states voted for Trump in the 2016 election. Congressional Republicans and conservative groups have expressed worry at the tariffs, says another article in The Hill. Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, a big solar power producing state, said in a Twitter post that the tariffs amount to “nothing more than a tax on consumers”, reports Reuters. Reuters also has a Q&A on the winners and losers of the tariffs. The main beneficiaries are likely to be US-based solar manufacturers Suniva and SolarWorld, but also Tesla, says another Reuterspiece. Tariffs on solar cells (which make up fully-assembled panels) only kick in after 2.5 gigawatts worth hit US shores each year. Tesla, which uses solar cells in its nascent solar roof tile business (and has plans to build its own panels), expects to be able to import foreign cells free of tariffs thanks to the large exemption. Climate Home News and BusinessGreen also cover the unfolding story.

National Grid has hit out at Ofgem’s proposals over an £800m project to connect the Hinkley Point C power station to the electricity network, saying they put investment in the UK energy sector at risk. The Hinkley Seabank plan is a £800m National Grid overhaul project, involving new substations, underground cables and pylons, to send electricity from the new plant – once constructed – in Somerset to the rest of the country. Ofgem has suggested a structure that it said could save consumers more than £100m by limiting the returns available to National Grid, reports the Financial Times. In response, the National Grid said the plans would make “sustainable investment in the UK energy sector” impossible. It added it was “very disappointed” with Ofgem’s approach for such a “complex and major infrastructure project”. The National Grid may take the industry regulator to the Competition and Markets Authority, says the Telegraph. Shares in National Grid, a regulated monopoly, fell by more than 2% after the announcement, notes the Times. The Evening Standard also has the story.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) yesterday filed a federal lawsuit against the US Environmental Protection Agency for banning certain scientists from serving on its advisory committees. In October, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced the agency would bar scientists that had previously received EPA grants from serving on its independent advisory boards as a way to ensure the panels are free from bias. Critics said the policy would have the opposite effect. In its complaint, UCS called the decision a “purge”, and “an attack on science itself.” “It portrays legitimate, independent scientists – who provide accurate, evidence-based information backed by verifiable, peer-reviewed research… – as just another interest group,” it said. An EPA spokesman told CNNthat it doesn’t comment on pending litigation. The Hill also has the story. Elsewhere, Reuters reports that a ninth US city is suing oil firms over climate change. The San Francisco suburb of Richmond filed a civil case in a California court yesterday against the energy giant Chevron, its biggest employer, and other oil companies for CO2 emissions dating back to 1965.

Mountain glaciers around the world are shrinking in the face of climate change, and that could pose a major threat to water resources for nearby communities, new research warns. The study of 56 glacier drainage basins worldwide found that roughly half the sites have already reached a tipping point – after which the amount of fresh water that runs off each year begins to decline. “As glaciers recede, water is released from long-term glacial storage,” the researchers note in the paper. “Thus, annual glacier runoff volume typically increases until a maximum is reached, often referred to as ‘peak water.'” After this point is reached, they note, the amount of annual runoff begins to decline again. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that “climate change was the culprit” for the “massive collapse” of two glaciers in Tibet in 2016. The collapses killed nine people and hundreds of animals.

In his Planet Oz blog, Graham Readfern investigates the emerging journals that climate sceptics are increasingly targeting to publish their research. “These journals, and hundreds more like them, are mostly based in the Indian subcontinent or China and are part of a ballooning online industry offering to give academics a place to publish their work in return for a fee and minimal, if any, quality control,” he writes. Climate sceptics have taken “advantage of the questionable quality controls in return for getting their work published in what the publishers claim are ‘peer-reviewed journals’ but that, in reality, are not”. For example, one sceptic “has targeted at least six journals for his research claiming that sea levels around Fiji and other Pacific islands are not rising”, says Readfern. “Now, anyone can publish anything in a journal with a name that sounds official but in fact offers none of the checks and balances of legitimate journals,” he warns.

The Australian government this week unveiled a recovery package aimed at preserving the Great Barrier Reef. Writing in The Conversation, Davis Suggett, associate professor in marine biology at the University of Technology Sydney, looks at whether “this is indeed a rescue, or just a smokescreen of false hope”. The A$60 million investment is “only 0.1% of the A$56 billion estimated economic value of the Great Barrier Reef,” Suggett notes. The money will be split between tackling different stressors, says Suggett, which “at face value…seems logical” – “but here’s the problem: these stressors interact and amplify each others’ effects”. “This means that spreading the money so thinly is a risky move, because successfully tackling any one problem rests on successfully tackling all the others,” he writes. The funding package has also been criticised for not tackling the ultimate problem that affects the reef – climate change. “Cutting emissions and curbing climate change must remain our absolute priority,” he concludes.

Heatwaves have become more “widespread” across North America over the last 50 years, a new study finds. After analysing climate data taken from 1950 to 2013, the researchers concluded that the total number and spatial extent of heatwaves have increased across the continent. This findings indicate that “heatwaves have become a more widespread and fragmented phenomena,” the researchers say.

Polar bears derive most of their energy from solid sea-ice environments, a new study shows. An analysis of the diet of 55 polar bears finds that between 72 and 100% of animals’ energy comes from sea-ice environments, with the remainder coming from the open sea. “Therefore, our data illustrate that for future Arctic ecosystems that are likely to be characterised by reduced sea ice cover, polar bears will not only be impacted by a change in their physical habitat, but also potentially in the supply of energy to the ecosystems upon which they depend,” the researchers say. “This data represents the first quantifiable baseline that is critical for the assessment of likely ongoing changes in energy supply to Arctic predators as we move into an increasingly uncertain future for polar ecosystems.”