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Danger of coastal flooding might make sensible people think twice about building houses in vulnerable places, let alone nuclear power stations

Back in 2012 a document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed that the Environment Agency was warning that 12 out of the UK’s 19 nuclear sites were in danger of coastal flooding and erosion because of climate change. Among them was Hinkley Point in Somerset, one of the eight proposed sites for new nuclear power stations around the coasts.

That was before the increasing volume of melting of the Greenland ice cap was properly understood and when most experts thought there was no net melting in the Antarctic.

Related: Melting ice sheets are hastening sea level rise, satellite data confirms

From Wall Street to the pope, many increasingly see fossil fuels as anything but a sure bet. That gives us reason to hope

If you’re looking for good news on the climate front, don’t look to the Antarctic. Last week’s spate of studies documenting that its melt rates had tripled is precisely the kind of data that underscores the almost impossible urgency of the moment.

And don’t look to Washington DC, where the unlikely survival of the EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, continues to prove the political power of the fossil fuel industry. It’s as if he’s on a reality show where the premise is to see how much petty corruption one man can get away with.

And the third problem for the fossil fuel industry? That would be the climate movement

Related: The pipeline is surely in some people's best interest. But it's not what's best for Canada | David Suzuki

When the former PM signed in 2015, he said Australia made a ‘definite commitment’

Tony Abbott has claimed he was misled by bureaucrats before he signed Australia up to the Paris international climate agreement in 2015 during another sortie by government conservatives against the national energy guarantee.

Opponents of the government’s energy policy used the opportunity of the regular Coalition party room to resume their attacks on the policy that goes to a critical meeting of state and territory energy ministers in early August.

Related: Voters prefer Shorten's tax plan to Turnbull's – Guardian Essential poll

Related: 'Not safe, not wanted': is the end of NT fracking ban a taste of things to come?

Short answer: maybe

There’s recently been a spate of sea level rise denial in the conservative media, but in reality, sea level rise is accelerating and melting ice is playing an increasingly large role. In the first half of the 20th Century, average global sea level rose by about 1.4 millimeters per year (mm/yr). Since 1993, that rate has more than doubled to 3.2 mm/yr. And since 2012, it’s jumped to 4.5 mm/yr.

16. Greenland is melting faster right now because it is being subjected to rapid Arctic warming. But everybody knows that Antarctica has vastly more *potential* to lose ice than Greenland does.