The president of Vanuatu says climate change is contributing
to more extreme weather, after a category five cyclone tore through
the island nation on the weekend. Baldwin Lonsdale told a United
Nations world conference in Sendai, “All the development that has
taken place has been wiped out”. First aid teams are arriving in
Vanuatu to scenes of “utter destruction”, reports Reuters. For background, Carbon Brief
has a guideon hurricanes and climate
change.

The news that emissions didn’t rise in 2014 despite the global
economy growing by 3% in 2014 got a lot of coverage over the
weekend, afterThe Financial Timesbroke the story on
friday. Consumption shifts in China, the world’s biggest carbon
polluter, were among the reasons emissions stalled last year, said
the International Energy Agency.The Guardian,The Telegraph,RTCC,ReutersandThe Washington Postall have the story.

One of Scotland’s leading engineering experts has called the
Scottish government’s decision to impose a moratorium policy on
fracking ill-informed, short-sighted and “ethically appalling”. The
newspaper’s front page carries the strong worded criticism by
Rebecca Lunn, Professor of Engineering Geosciences at the
University of Strathclyde, who says the government has ignored
advice from scientific institutions and evidence that, if properly
regulated, fracking poses little environmental risk.

A series of photos compiled by NASA shows how quickly the
earth is changing, including before and after pictures of the
parched Aral Sea in Kazakhstan, Alaska’s shrinking Muir glacier and
the thinning Arapaho Glacier in Colorado. While many pictures show
the devastating effects of climate change, the piece notes, a few
reflect positive changes like the regrowth of forests in
Uganda.

As the global divestment movement picks up momentum, the
University of Oxford will decide later today whether to pull its
investments from coal and oil sands. The move would be significant,
saysBusinessGreen, as Oxford University’s
£3.8 billion endowment equates to around 41 per cent of the total
across all British universities.

The government’s scheme to offer loans for homeowners to
fund energy efficiency work has been dealt a fresh blow after more
than 350 companies registered to carry out assessments or
installation work have been banned after failing to deal with
complaints properly and not being adequately qualified. As a Decc
spokesperson played down the number of rogue companies involved in
the Green Deal scheme, Citizens Advice warn of “phoenix companies”
attempting to get re-certified under a different
name.

NASA reported this weekend that last month was the
second-hottest February on record, which now makes the 12-month
period from March 2014 to February 2015 the hottest recorded. While
February was cold for those living in the eastern and northeastern
U.S, parts of the world experienced temperatures 8.4 degrees
Celsius above the 1951-1980 average.

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is likely to be the next energy
source to see prices fall, as several major projects in Australia
finally come on stream this year after years of development.
Estimates are for an extra 122 million tonnes of new LNG supply by
the end of the decade.

Science historian Naomi Oreskes talks about the new
documentary adaptation of her 2010 book Merchants of Doubt, and the
tactics still being used to prevent action on global warming. Chris
Mooney in Washington Postexplores the demand
that drives the supply of misinformation, describing climate action
as a “live political issue that goes straight to the heart of the
role of government in the economy”.

Climate skeptic columnist Matt Ridley argues that moving
away from fossil fuels will rob developing countries of the “leap
in living standards” that fossil fuel energy has allowed others
throughout history. In a second piece in The Times, Ridley – whose family estate
has a coal mine on it – argues there’s no way to decarbonise
“without bankrupting the country”. A post by Climate Nexusrebuts some of
Ridley’s arguments.

Professor Michael Kelly accuses the Royal Society of closing
down meaningful debate about the claim that human activity is
causing the world to warm. Kelly takes issue with the society’s
recent publication entitled “A short guide to climate science”. Last
year, Kelly authored a report for climate skeptic lobby group, the
Global Warming Policy Foundation, arguing ambitions to decarbonise
the economy have not been put through an engineering reality
test.

A study of pine trees in northeast China shows that
increased temperature has a negative effect on pine growth during a
major part of the growing season. Researchers gathered tree rings
to study the growth rates of trees between 1901 and 2009. They
found that adverse effect of moisture loss caused by rising
temperatures outweighed the positive effect of higher carbon
dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

New research suggests poor connectivity of protected area
networks in Southeast Asia may prevent lowland species from
adapting to climate change. The study concentrated on areas of
Borneo that are protected from deforestation. The researchers found
that many low-lying areas are isolated, creating a barrier to
species trying to shift to cooler forested areas at higher
elevation.