French President Emmanuel Macron kicked off his address at the World Economic Forum (WEF) with a joke related to climate change at the expense of President Trump, reports USA Today. Trump is set to arrive at the Alpine resort Thursday morning, with Macron telling business leaders and politicians: “When you arrive here and see the snow, it could be hard to believe in global warming. Obviously you don’t invite anyone skeptical about global warming this year.” Macron also said globalisation is in a “major crisis”. The White House said on Wednesday Macron would be the guest of honour at Trump’s first state dinner at the White House. During his speech, Macron went on to describe action on climate change as one of five “pillars” of his domestic agenda, reports Climate Home News. “We have decided to make France a model in the fight against climate change,” he said. “That is, for me, a huge advantage in terms of attractiveness and competitiveness… you can create a lot of jobs in such a strategy.” Think Progress also has the story. A separate article from Climate Home News reports on comments made by Blackrock vice-chair Philipp Hildebrand in Davos. Hildebrand said that while fiduciary duty – asset managers’ legal responsibility to make clients the best return on their money – is often deployed as a reason not to consider how investments might impact the climate, that concept was “evolving”. He also called on academics to look more deeply at the issue, saying: “We will hopefully demonstrate that at a minimum there is not a negative trade-off and there may even be better performance.” Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister Khalid Al Falih took a rare sideways swipe at the International Energy Agency yesterday, reports the Financial Timesby accusing the body of overhyping the impact of US shale growth on the oil market.

Botanists discovered 532 species of wildflowers in bloom across Britain and Ireland around New Year’s Day, a far cry from botanical textbooks of several decades ago which indicated only a few dozen species should be blooming in midwinter, reports the Guardian. The annual New Year Plant Hunt, organised by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI), found “autumn stragglers” including ragwort, hogweed and yarrow, which normally flower after midsummer but well before midwinter. “If you believe the textbooks, only about 10% of the species we found in flower should be in flower,” said Dr Kevin Walker, BSBI’s head of science. “It could be climate change but it could also be because people didn’t used to go and look for flowers in midwinter.”

The government should press ahead with plans to develop small-scale nuclear technology, according to a new Policy Exchange report. The report argues nuclear power will be vital for achieving a fully decarbonised electricity grid and filling the gap caused by a surge in electricity demand from electric vehicles (EVs) and the need to phase gas and coal off the power grid. “There is no other low carbon energy which can match nuclear power for scale and reliability, as well as the potential to use it for other services like district heat and hydrogen production,” said Policy Exchange’s energy and environment research fellow Matt Rooney said. However, analysis by consultancy Atkins last year concluded energy from SMRs could cost more initially than large nuclear. Bloomberg also covers the report. Separately, Energy Live News reports on figures released by Lex Autolease which show switching to EVs could deliver £625m in savings for UK businesses, with the higher initial cost more than offset by significant fuel savings, tax benefits and a potential 70% reduction in service and maintenance costs.

President Donald Trump and Republicans have tried again and again during the past year to turn back the clock on energy, writes Politico energy report Eric Wolff. But while they have pushed policies that would help fossil fuels stave off advances by solar and wind, they have “repeatedly come up short”. Wolff detailz how this is the case for several proposed policies by the Trump administration: “Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s proposal to force electricity customers to subsidise ailing coal plants ran aground early this year. The Senate rebuffed efforts to water down tax credits for solar and wind power. And Trump’s move this week to impose a tariff on imported solar panels should put only a crimp in the growth of sun-powered energy, analysts have said, despite the outcry it’s generated from most of the US solar industry.” Similarly, reporter Marianne Levelle argues in InsideClimateNews that there are “good reasons to believe most United States solar ventures will emerge intact – if not entirely unscathed” despite the temporary tariffs on imported solar panels. “Most industry analysts agree that the 30% tariff on foreign-produced cells and modules, phased out over four years, will not be as devastating a blow as Trump could have dealt,” she writes, with damage mostly confined to big utility-scale projects, as well as constraining new markets. She warns though that “any crimp in solar’s growth could…forestall the kind of rapid clean energy transition that climate science says is urgently needed”. Separately, and article in Think Progress notes there are now online price quote aggregators that can lower the cost of a new residential solar system by far more than the new tariff raises it. An article in the Conversation sets out how there are better ways to foster solar innovation and save jobs than Trump’s tariffs.

“When we talk about stepping up to address climate change across the world, we rarely think of it in terms of women’s rights”, write John Podesta – who is on UN high-level panel on the post-2015 development agenda – and Timothy E. Wirth, vice chairman and president emeritus of the United Nations Foundation. “But if environmental activists really want to reduce emissions, raise living standards and build a more sustainable future, they cannot overlook the importance of reproductive rights and health.” They go on to argue forging a coalition between the environmental movement and the women’s rights movement will both “fundamentally advance women’s rights” and “do a world of good” for the planet, which is “bearing an environmental burden because of population growth”. Research shows family planning ranks as one of the 10 most substantive solutions to climate change, they note, while the co-benefits to women and families across the globe are enormous. While American environmentalists and women’s rights advocates have “every reason to feel under siege by the Trump administration,” they conclude that this is all the more reason to find common cause in fighting for healthy women and a healthy planet. Separately, population ethicist Karin Kuhlemann argues in the Huffington Post that a concerted effort to change social norms and access to contraception could make a huge difference to how things pan out for humanity over coming decades. She writes: “What population size is sustainable? It is impossible to draw a precise line, or determine when exactly we crossed it. But we can look at the symptoms. One of the most serious is climate change, which is primarily driven by population growth (along with economic growth).”

New research illustrates how different geoengineering, or “climate engineering”, methods affect other components of the Earth system. Researchers investigate solar radiation management (SRM) and two CO2 removal methods: afforestation and ocean alkalinisation. For example, land carbon uptake is enhanced under SRM, the study finds, because of reduced soil respiration. They also find that, due to compensating processes such as the biogeophysical effects of afforestation, more CO2 needs to be removed from the atmosphere by afforestation than by alkalinisation to reach the same global warming reduction.

The highly populated regions of East Asia – including eastern China, the Korean Peninsula and Japan – will see more intense, more frequent and longer lasting extreme heat events under 1.5C and 2C of warming, a new study says. Holding temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, rather than 2C, would help avoid 35%-46% of the increases. “Thus, it is beneficial for East Asia to limit the warming target to 1.5C rather than 2C,” the researchers conclude.

Scientists have performed the first “whole-atmosphere” model simulations of climate change at a global scale. The study uses an extended version of the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM), which includes the lower atmosphere (0-15 km), middle atmosphere (15-90 km), and thermosphere-ionosphere (90-500 km). Taking into account all significant known changes caused by human activity, the researchers find that even as the lower atmosphere gradually warms, the upper atmosphere rapidly cools.