A group of 85 scientists reported on Tuesday that the Arctic is warming about twice as fast as the rest of the planet and "that the current decline of Arctic sea ice is 'outside of the range of natural variability and unprecedented' in the past 1,450 years," reports Chris Mooney in The Washington Post.
Why it matters: The 2017 Arctic Report Card presented on Tuesday raises again the question of the Trump administration's stance on climate change. President of the Woods Hole Research Center, Phil Duffy, told the Post the report "is completely at odds with the policies and statements of the Trump administration."
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has been in Morocco to talk about the U.S./Morocco trade agreement and how American natural gas can help the Moroccan economy, according to an agency official.
Why it matters: Natural gas, which produces 50% less carbon emissions than coal, has been a key part of the environmental platform for an administration that has otherwise focused on rolling back regulations. Morocco hosted the United Nations climate talks last year.
Between the lines: Pruitt has taken a very broad definition to what his mission is at the agency, whose stated mission is to protect human health and the environment in the U.S. It is not customary for the environmental chief of the U.S. to be touting natural gas as an economic solution to another country.
One level deeper: The EPA has faced criticism for not publicly alerting the administrator’s travel ahead of time. It was not previously publicly known than Pruitt was traveling abroad.
Under a program called 'Make Our Planet Great Again', France has offered 18 climate scientists — 13 of them U.S. based — millions of euros in grants to work in France for the rest of President Trump's term, according to the Guardian.
French president Emmanuel Macron announced the contest right after Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accord, and more than 5,000 people pursued the grants.
Why it matters: The program, with the branding driving home the point, makes clear that France views the U.S. under Trump as hostile ground for climate science.
More companies are using software to assign tasks to full-time workers similar to the on-demand economy, Sam Schechner writes for the Wall Street Journal. GE and Shell are trying out the approach. Both told the paper they're going to expand those projects in the new year.
Our thought bubble: Axios' Steve LeVine joins me in saying that after decades of shearing off layers of workers at the bottom of the pyramid, automation is bubbling up into management, threatening middle-ranking jobs and, eventually, officers on top of the corporate ladder.
A new paper uses a big, multi-year dataset from bike-sharing programs in North America to conclude that climate change could boost the wider outdoor recreation economy for warm-weather activities.
Bottom line for North America: The authors see economic gains of $900 million annually for cycling alone and $20.7 billion per year for outdoor recreation more broadly by 2060.
