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The odds of 2014, 2015, and 2016 naturally being as hot as they were are about the same as the odds you’ll be struck by lightning this year

2014, 2015, and 2016 each broke the global temperature record. A new study led by climate scientist Michael Mann just published in Geophysical Research Letters used climate model simulations to examine the odds that these records would have been set in a world with and without human-caused global warming. In model simulations without a human climate influence, the authors concluded:

Many lines of evidence demonstrate that it is extremely likely [95%–100% confidence] that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century … the likely range of the human contribution to the global mean temperature increase over the period 1951–2000 is … 92%–123%.

I would not agree that [CO2] is a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.

.@BBCr4today airs false statements on climate by Lord Lawson in the name of balance. Scientists fact-checkhttps://t.co/jIvKEuKxj5 pic.twitter.com/oowi8QnlfB

Despite the scale and urgency of the climate crisis and popular support for action, governments and financiers are failing to act. This will have to change

In a global first, Australian mum-and-dad shareholders Guy and Kim Abrahams have launched a case against the Commonwealth Bank, arguing that the bank has breached the law by not disclosing the risks climate change poses to its business.

Buying their shares over 20 years ago, Guy and Kim were making “an investment in their children’s futures”. A climate-changed world of financial risk, social upheaval and environmental degradation is clearly not the future they signed up for.

Related: Commonwealth Bank shareholders sue over 'inadequate' disclosure of climate change risks

Related: Will CBA's board vote against financing Adani – and against global warming? | David Ritter

Noway’s role as the world’s biggest fossil fuel exporter undermines its efforts to cut emissions at home, says NGO report

Norway’s plan to ramp up oil and gas production in the Arctic threatens global efforts to tackle climate change, according to a new study.

The research says 12 gigatonnes of carbon could be added by exploration sites in the Barents Sea and elsewhere over the next 50 years, which is 1.5 times more than the Norwegian fields currently being tapped or under construction.

George Monbiot’s call to reconsider how we name things (Forget ‘the environment’. Fight for our living planet, 9 August) is a timely contribution to a confusing world. But one word that both he and the majority of online contributors have ignored is “prosperity”. That, after all, is why humans engage in economic activity: they believe it will make things better. There is, however, a fundamental problem with the way we have arranged our economic affairs. By treating the natural world as an infinite thing, “external” to the economy (except as a never-ending supply of resources) we have built a massive endeavour to take natural resources and make them into things that are then disposed of, generally after a fairly brief period of human enjoyment.

Everyone I speak to readily accepts that under this system the planet must eventually “run out”, but they cannot see an alternative to “prosperity”. The conversation we need to have is not how we name things but how we do things.