Extreme and unusual storms continue to affect many parts of the world. The small western Alaskan village of Napakiak faced its third storm in a week on Tuesday, driving flooding as heavy rains swelled the Kuskokwim River, the Associated Press reports. It continues: “Erosion has long been a problem in many Alaska communities including Napakiak, where it isn’t unusual to lose 100 feet (30 metres) of riverbank a year. The erosion is caused in part by climate change, with warming temperatures melting permafrost, or permanently frozen soil, making riverbanks unstable.” In Puerto Rico, tens of thousands of people remain without power a week after tropical storm Ernesto struck the island, a second AP story says. US president Joe Biden yesterday approved a major disaster declaration for Vermont, unlocking federal funding for people affected by flooding during Hurricane Beryl in July, a third AP story says. The New York Times reports that Tropical Depression Jongdari moved towards South Korea on Tuesday, bringing a threat of flooding.

Elsewhere, several publications examine the possible factors that could have contributed to the sinking of a luxury superyacht, the Bayesian, which capsized off the coast of Sicily on Monday morning, leaving six people missing. BBC News says: “It is believed the ship was struck by a tornado over the water – otherwise known as a waterspout – causing Bayesian to capsize. There are separate reports the boat’s mast snapped during the freak storm and other factors in the boat’s sinking include water entering through hatches and doors which had been left open because of warm weather off the Italian coast.” The outlet adds that waterspouts are most common in late summer and through the autumn, “when sea temperatures are at their highest, fuelling the storm clouds”. It continues: “However, with sea temperatures rising due to climate change there is a concern that they could become more common. In the last week, the Mediterranean has registered its highest sea surface temperature on record, which has helped to energise this recent storm outbreak.” An analysis in the Guardian notes that, in recent months, Mediterranean sea temperatures have been around 30C, three degrees higher than average. Bloomberg reports that orange storm alerts are still in place for a swathe of Italy, including Calabria and Puglia, but also further north along the Adriatic coast. Reuters speaks to “climate experts and skippers” who warn “the Mediterranean is becoming a more dangerous sea to sail in”. And the Economist examines whether a waterspout could have sunk a superyacht.

Approvals for new coal-fired power plants in China dropped sharply in the first half of this year, according to new analysis by Greenpeace East Asia, “after a flurry of permits in the previous two years raised concern about the government’s commitment to limiting climate change”, AP says. The newswire reports that a review of project documents by Greenpeace found that 14 new coal plants were approved from January to June, with a total capacity of 10.3 gigawatts (GW), down 80% from 50.4GW in the first half of last year. AP says: “Authorities approved 90.7GW in 2022 and 106.4GW in 2023, a surge that raised alarm among climate experts. China leads the world in solar and wind power installations but the government has said that coal plants are still needed for periods of peak demand because wind and solar power are less reliable. While China’s grid gives priority to greener sources of energy, experts worry that it won’t be easy for China to wean itself off coal once the new capacity is built.” The article quotes Gao Yuhe, the project lead for Greenpeace East Asia, who said: “We may now be seeing a turning point. One question remains here. Are Chinese provinces slowing down coal approvals because they’ve already approved so many coal projects? Or are these the last gasps of coal power in an energy transition that has seen coal become increasingly impractical? Only time can tell.”

Elsewhere, Reuters reports that the European Union has reduced its planned extra tariff on Tesla electric vehicles imported from China by more than half. On Tuesday, the European Commission “set a new reduced extra rate of 9% for Tesla, lower than the 20.8% it had indicated in July, and said some Chinese companies in joint ventures with EU automakers may also receive lower planned punitive duties on Chinese-made EV imports”, Reuters says. The Times describes this as a “win” for Tesla against its rivals, including Chinese EV maker BYD. Separately, Reuters reports that record output from solar and hydro helped to cut coal power use as electricity demand soared during a recent heatwave in the country in July. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal covers China’s restrictions on the export of critical minerals used for weapons and clean-energy components. And a Lex column in the Financial Times comments on how China is ramping up its nuclear energy capacity.

A 92-page US Democratic party “platform” has called for the country to be the first to reach net-zero agricultural emissions by 2050, reports Successful Farming. The goal could be achieved with “the assistance of projects such as the US Department of Agriculture’s climate-smart agriculture initiatives”, the platform says, according to Successful Farming. Delegates to the party’s national convention in Chicago were scheduled to vote on the platform on Tuesday, the publication adds. Esquire reports that climate change “hangs heavy over the proceedings here at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago” after being “invisible at the Republican National Convention last month”. It says that the party’s Council on Environment and the Climate Crisis has organised a number of events over the convention’s four days, including on Wednesday when Senator Jeff Merkley and Senator Ed Markey will speak on the issue. Politico reports that Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the star of US television shows “Seinfeld” and “Veep” and a climate activist, made a surprise guest appearance at the environmental movement’s marquee celebration at the convention yesterday. According to the publication, she told a “climate voters go all in” event: “Everybody here in this room knows the climate is the sneaky issue that is tied to every other issue.” Finally, Inside Climate News examines how climate fits into the DNC’s agenda.

More than 250,000 heat pumps have now been installed in UK homes, according to industry figures reported on by BusinessGreen. Data released yesterday by the Microgeneration Certification Scheme – the quality mark for small-scale renewable energy installations – shows that more than 30,000 certified heat pumps were installed in homes and small businesses across the UK during the first six months of 2024, marking a 45% increase on the same period last year, BusinessGreen says. The country is now on track for a record-breaking year for heat pump installations, it adds. 

Separately, BusinessGreen reports that low-carbon building projects appear to be on the rise in the UK, according to a survey of construction industry professionals in which six in 10 claimed to have worked on a net-zero development in the past year. This marks a slight uptick from two years ago, the outlet says. WalesOnline reports that prime minister Keir Starmer has pledged to work with Wales to boost onshore wind and other types of renewable energy on a visit to the country. BusinessGreen also has the story.

Elsewhere, the Guardian interviews Emma Pinchbeck, the head of Energy UK, who is tapped to be the next chief executive of the Climate Change Committee. She tells the newspaper: “I think the nature of the energy transition is there will be some places where there’s more infrastructure than others, because you go where the resources are. The east coast is an example. Scotland is an example. Where you’re asking people to host a load of infrastructure for other parts of the country to benefit from cheaper energy bills, you can acknowledge that they are carrying more responsibility for the transition.” 

In the Conversation, a group of climate scientists speak out against corporate and state-level claims that the world can aim to keep temperatures at 1.5C while continuing to expand fossil-fuel production. They write: “The way to understand this doublethink: that we can avoid dangerous climate change while continuing to burn fossil fuels – is that it relies on the concept of overshoot. The promise is that we can overshoot past any amount of warming, with the deployment of planetary-scale carbon dioxide removal dragging temperatures back down by the end of the century. This not only cripples any attempt to limit warming to 1.5C, but risks catastrophic levels of climate change as it locks us into energy and material-intensive solutions which for the most part exist only on paper. To argue that we can safely overshoot 1.5C, or any amount of warming, is saying the quiet bit out loud: we simply don’t care about the increasing amount of suffering and deaths that will be caused while the recovery is worked on.”

A key element of overshoot in future scenarios “is carbon dioxide removal,” the scientists continue: “This is essentially a time machine – we are told we can turn back the clock of decades of delay by sucking carbon dioxide directly out of the atmosphere. We don’t need rapid decarbonisation now, because in the future we will be able to take back those carbon emissions. If, or when that doesn’t work, we are led to believe that even more outlandish geoengineering approaches such as spraying sulphurous compounds into the high atmosphere in an attempt to block out sunlight – which amounts to planetary refrigeration – will save us.” The “entire wacky races” of carbon dioxide removal and geoengineering “only makes sense in a world of failed climate policy”, they add.

The article also critiques the Paris Agreement’s focus on temperature limits rather than fossil-fuel emissions: “The time has come to accept that climate policy has failed and that the 2015 landmark Paris Agreement is dead. We let it die by pretending that we could both continue to burn fossil fuels and avoid dangerous climate change at the same time. Rather than demand the immediate phase out of fossil fuels, the Paris Agreement proposed 22nd-century temperature targets which could be met by balancing the sources and sinks of carbon. Within that ambiguity net-zero flourished. And yet apart from the Covid economic shock in 2020, emissions have increased every year since 2015, reaching an all-time high in 2023.” The comment piece follows on from a similarly strongly-worded opinion article from the same scientists in 2021 titled: “[The] concept of net-zero is a dangerous trap.”

The FT’s associate editor Pilita Clark examines the past 18 months of “climate claptrap”, saying: “While it is hard to say if the problem is shrinking or growing, it definitely continues to surprise. Exhibit one: Elon Musk, once a voice of reason on climate change… last week, in a conversation on his X platform with Donald Trump, said the climate risk wasn’t actually as high as many thought before launching into a mystifying explanation for why there was loads of time left to tackle it. If the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere keeps rising from today’s average levels of around 420 parts per million to above 1,000ppm, ‘you start getting headaches and nausea’, he told Trump. But since we’re only adding about 2ppm of CO2 a year, ‘we still have quite a bit of time’ and ‘we don’t need to rush’.” She continues: “This is claptrap of the highest order. The heat, flooding and fire disasters we’re seeing with the amount of warming that accumulated CO2 has already driven will be paltry compared to what would happen if levels rose to anything like 1,000ppm. And actually, decades of failing to rush to stem carbon emissions mean they must now come down rapidly to avoid irreversible changes in an array of natural systems that humans rely on. Headaches are the least of our problems.”

Elsewhere, Guardian commentator George Monbiot has a column titled: “The livestock lobby is waging war on ‘lab-grown meat’. This is why we can’t let them win.” He warns that “we should recognise self-serving corporate propaganda when we see it, confront protectionism and neophobia, and support the technologies that could be our last, best hope of averting environmental catastrophe”.

An editorial in the Independent comments on recent analysis, also covered by the Daily Telegraph, finding UK energy bills are due to go up in the short term. The article also addresses comments by Robert Jenrick, one of the contenders to be the next Conservative leader, who said on Tuesday: “The UK [accounts for] 1% of the world’s emissions. There’s no prize for being the first country in the world to decarbonise. We should be working towards net-zero 2050, but we shouldn’t be decarbonising faster than our major competitors.” The editorial responds: “On the contrary: there are prizes for being a world leader in decarbonisation. Britain could be a leader in green tech and project management at a time when most of the world is turning towards a low-carbon economic model.”

Elsewhere, Alistair Osborne, chief business commentator of the Times, says the UK government “got it about right” by allowing London City airport to lift its cap on passengers. “In short, City has been authorised to maximise the capacity it’s got, while minimising the impact on local residents. Isn’t that a fair compromise? True, it won’t satisfy Greenpeace. But a growth economy needs to fly and cannot wait until all planes run on sustainable aviation fuels.” [The UK’s official climate advisers, the Climate Change Committee, have said there can be no net airport expansion if the country is to reach net-zero.] 

People around the world are increasingly seeking information about drought from the internet, a new study suggests. Analysing national online search activity data, the researchers “investigate global drought awareness at local (awareness of local droughts in the affected country), remote (awareness of remote droughts in other countries) and global levels (awareness from non-exposed countries)”. The findings show that long-lasting droughts “enhance local- and global-level awareness”, while richer countries tend to be “associated with remote-level awareness”.