Donald Trump will pick an ardent opponent of President Barack Obama's measures to curb climate change as head of the Environmental Protection Agency - a choice that enraged green activists and cheered the oil industry.

Donald Trump, who called climate change a hoax during his campaign and vowed to pull out of the Paris accord, now says global warming might be real after all.

BHP's boss has urged US President-elect Donald Trump to refrain from tearing up the Paris climate change agreement.

The Paris climate accord negotiated last year has been ratified by enough countries for it to go into force, but Australia has missed out on being part of the historic moment.

Nationals deputy leader Fiona Nash has joined her cabinet colleague George Brandis in claiming the science of climate change is not yet settled.

The Earth sizzled in March with the most unusually warm month in history as average land surface temperatures easily exceeded levels deemed by scientists to constitute dangerous climate change.

The more coal and oil we burn, the more we can produce, driving growth, right? There may be another way.

Senior CSIRO executives spent much of Sunday trying to justify and prioritise deep cuts planned to climate change science programs that are understood to have caught Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull by surprise.

Australia's global ranking has dived on an international survey that Environment Minister Greg Hunt had described as "the most credible, scientifically based" analysis in the world.

A remarkably warm December helped drive global surface temperatures in 2015 to easily the hottest year in records going back to 1880, the US National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration said.

Fresh off his Golden Globe win, the Hollywood star lashes out at the fossil fuel players' "corporate greed" in Davos.

The world is now adding more power capacity from renewables every year than from coal, natural gas, and oil combined.

We need incentives to get all our brown coal power stations closed by the early 2020s, and all our black ones by the early 2030s.

He is the most revered broadcaster in the world,and at the age of 89 Sir David Attenborough has lost none of his passion for life on Earth. He talks to Jessamy Calkin about climate change, Barack Obama, and his new series on the Great Barrier Reef.

For negotiators engrossed in months or even years of arcane, technical wrangling for a new global climate agreement, the sudden involvement of political leaders in the talks in Paris was both a curiosity and a distraction.

Global temperatures soared again in November - just as leaders from the world gathered in Paris to settle a new agreement to tackle climate change.

The world may have struck a much-heralded deal in Paris to ratchet up pollution cuts in the decades ahead, but a number of Turnbull government backbenchers insist climate science is unconvincing and Australia has already promised enough.

World leaders may have committed to ambitious climate targets in Paris at the weekend, but that in small-town America, all that solar hocus pocus is still viewed with a healthy dose of slack-jawed cynicism.

A watershed climate pact in Paris has stepped up pressure on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to act at home to curb emissions and phase out fossil fuels, as the government warns it will not risk the economy to meet the new global commitment.

• COMMENT

Without concord between Beijing and Washington, the world could not have struck a comprehensive deal to tackle global warming.

The agreement struck in Paris requires a huge investment in cleaning up the Earth's atmosphere.

What you need to know about the Paris climate deal.

• COMMENT

Is the Paris climate summit, as the French phrase goes, "the mountain that gives birth to the mouse"?

Almost 200 countries have struck a grand bargain to take collective action on climate change, with the Paris summit drawing to a close by delivering the first new global agreement to cut greenhouse gas pollution in almost two decades.

• ANALYSIS

With the Paris summit wrapping up having delivered an historic global climate agreement, questions will inevitably turn to whether Malcolm Turnbull will use the international momentum to advance the climate debate back home

An historic global deal to limit and tackle climate change appears imminent after a final draft agreement has been completed at the United Nations conference in Paris.

It's not quite zombie time but the strains are beginning to show as the Paris climate summit nears a climax.

Work on an historic climate deal that for the first time would require all countries to play a role in curbing greenhouse gas emissions will continue through the weekend after organisers conceded the summit would not meet its Friday night deadline.

Elon Musk, the founder of electric car marker Tesla, and oil giant Exxon Mobil's boss Rex Tillerson have starkly different visions of the world. But on the best tool for fighting climate change, they agree.

Small nations are stretched to make sure their voices are not drowned out by big countries when negotiating climate change deals.