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Sun, 28 Feb 10
Zambia: Farming - Unpredictable Weather Patterns Hurting
http://allafrica.com/stories/201002270015.html
Times of Zambia: "Farming has now become completely different and difficult," laments Dickson Siangoma. Mr Siangoma is a headman at Malundu Village in Lusitu area of Siavonga and is struck by the changing weather patterns and conditions that have made farming a little less predictable and a high risk venture. He wonders what has become of the world. "When the rain comes, it pours continuously for almost a whole day causing damage to crops. The weather pattern is in disarray. There is ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
Global warming panel to get independent review
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/global-warming-panel-to-get-independent-review/article1484168/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheGlobeAndMail-Front+%28The+Globe+and+Mail+-+Latest+News%29
Associated Press: The Nobel Prize-winning international scientific panel studying global warming is seeking independent outside review for how it makes major reports. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said it's seeking some kind of independent review because of recent criticism about its four 2007 reports. Critics have found a few unsettling errors, including projections of retreats in Himalayan glaciers, in the thousands of pages of the reports. Scientists say the problems ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
Warming panel, under attack, seeks outside review
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ggK0SAzfuF-VQhX90rWvFeIjxkuwD9E4Q9Q00
Associated Press: The Nobel Prize-winning international scientific panel studying global warming is seeking independent outside review for how it makes major reports. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it's seeking some kind of independent review because of recent criticism about its four 2007 reports. Critics have found a few unsettling errors, including projections of retreats in Himalayan glaciers, in the thousands of pages of the reports. Scientists say the problems ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
Climate change panel seeks outside review on reports
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/27/AR2010022703449.html?wprss=rss_nation
Washington Post: Because of recent criticism of its work, the Nobel Prize-winning international panel studying global warming is seeking independent outside review for how it makes major reports, the panel said. Critics have found a few unsettling errors -- including incorrect projections of retreats in Himalayan glaciers -- in the thousands of pages of the reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Scientists say the problems, ranging from typos in key dates to sloppy sourcing, ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
United States: This act is not just about jobs; it's about the future
http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/85569402.html
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The tone and tenor of the debate over the Clean Energy Jobs Act was determined the moment the legislation was named. Supporters built into the name what they, not unreasonably, believed would be one of the bill's principal virtues: job creation. But, with recession-induced trauma still fresh in everyone's minds, it is simply too easy and expedient - facts be damned - to call virtually any new legislation a jobs killer, from health care reform to even a jobs bill. We believe the ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
Australia: Rudd not backing down on ETS
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/rudd-not-backing-down-on-ets-20100228-pann.html
AAP: Prime Minister Kevin Rudd remains committed to introducing an emissions trading scheme (ETS), saying it is the best way of taking action on climate change. "It is the most effective, least costly way of dealing with climate change," Mr Rudd told ABC Television on Sunday. "There is no way ... that when you're dealing with big challenges in the future of really bringing down greenhouse gas emissions that you can walk away from emissions trading." The prime minister said ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
Climate change task force: Early warning key to adaptation
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/environment/Climate-Change-Task-Force--Early-Warning-Key-to-Adaptation--85506852.html
Voice of America: A high level task force aimed at helping poor, vulnerable countries adapt to climate change has kicked off in Geneva. The 14-member task force, which was set up during the September 2009 World Climate Conference, says information is power and can help countries better overcome climate change related hazards. Scientists report extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and severity. They say hundreds of millions of people are at risk of losing their lives and livelihoods from ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
New iceberg breaks off east end of Antarctica
http://www.theledger.com/article/20100226/NEWS/2265052/1002/SPORTS?Title=New-Iceberg-Breaks-Off-East-End-of-Antarctica&tc=ar
Associated Press: With the dramatic crash of an iceberg against a glacier that dislodged a massive new chunk of ice, the mysterious continent of Antarctica once again did the unexpected. A big chunk of ice, slightly smaller than Oahu, broke off from a place it wasn't supposed to and in a way not quite anticipated, scientists said Friday. The new iceberg broke off from the cooler eastern end of Antarctica, the result of tidal forces that caused a longer but thinner iceberg that stretches for 60 ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
Evidence of first step towards emissions reductions
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/evidence-of-first-step-towards-reductions-20100226-p95i.html
Sydney Morning Herald: AUSTRALIA'S greenhouse gas emissions may be reaching a plateau, even though demand for electricity is rising inexorably, new data suggests. A slight trend towards burning gas instead of coal in power stations means that carbon emissions are beginning to be ''decoupled'' from power generation and economic growth, a report by energy consultants pitt&sherry found. It is a crucial first step if national emissions are going to be reduced by between 5 and 25 per cent by the year ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
Blocking EPA gas rules may backfire
http://detnews.com/article/20100227/AUTO01/2270316/NHTSA--Blocking-EPA-gas-rules-may-backfire
Detroit News: Automakers could face sharply higher costs if Congress blocks the Environmental Protection Agency from finalizing tailpipe emissions limits, the Obama administration says. In a letter to congressional leaders, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's chief counsel, O. Kevin Vincent, said Congress would jeopardize a deal reached by automakers, California and the White House if it blocks the EPA from using its power to limit greenhouse gases. California and a dozen ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
Kenya: Switch to biofuels will delay by two years
http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Company%20Industry/-/539550/869038/-/t3aqp3z/-/index.html
Business Daily: Kenya's switch to green energy– thanks to blending of petrol with ethanol– is going to delay by up to two years, a government agency dealing with the project has said. The guidelines on blending that was planned to take off on Monday are not ready and the distillers may lack the technical capacity to undertake the assignment, the National Biofuels Sub-Committee says. Dr Benard Muok, convener of the sub-committee mandated with formulating a national biofuel policy, says it will ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
Climate Panel to Appoint Committee to Review Its Procedures
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704231304575092090924140342.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines
Wall Street Journal: The world's leading authority on climate change announced Saturday it is appointing an independent committee to investigate whether it needs to change its procedures to ensure it practices rigorous science. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, beset in recent months by a string of allegations of factual mistakes and improper scientific behavior in the preparation of its high-profile reports, said it will share details of how the independent review will work in early ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
Money to Be Biggest Issue At Mexico Climate Summit
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/nvironment/money-to-be-biggest-issue-at-mexico-climate-summit/360985
Jakarta Globe: A much-needed legally binding agreement on commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will apparently not be the focus of the next major round of global climate change talks this year. Rather, money, specifically that which will flow from rich countries to poorer countries, is likely be the focus of discussions when representatives of 180 countries meet for the 16th Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico, in November. Minister for the Environment Gusti Muhammad Hatta ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
We Can't Wish Away Climate Change
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28gore.html
New York Times: It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it. Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
Indian festival goers warned about water wastage
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100227/wl_sthasia_afp/lifestyleindiareligionfestivalutilitywater
Agence France-Presse: A chronic water shortage in the Indian city of Mumbai could put a dampener on a popular Hindu festival normally celebrated with wild "rain dances" and riotous fights using powdered paint. The municipal authorities in India's financial capital have issued an edict to Holi revellers not to waste drinking water on Monday and vowed to crack down on anyone caught misusing precious supplies. Holi -- also called the Festival of Colours -- is a public holiday, marking the end of winter ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
United States: As Clock Ticks, Nuclear Plant Searches for Leak
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/us/27nuke.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
New York Times: At Vermont Yankee, a nuclear reactor on the ropes, the search for a tritium leak that may doom the plant is proceeding as quickly as possible -- which is to say, at a painstaking pace. Over the last few weeks, in the buildup to a vote Wednesday in which the State Senate approved shutting down the plant, engineers have been digging well after well here in an exploratory strategy that evokes the child's game of Battleship. At each spot, workers measure the level of radioactive tritium ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
Independent Board to Review Work of Top Climate Panel
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/science/earth/27climate.html
Reuters: An independent board of scientists will be appointed to review the workings of the world`s top climate science panel, which has faced recriminations over inaccuracies in a 2007 report, a United Nations environmental spokesman said Friday. The board`s work will be part of a broader review of the body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program, who spoke on the sidelines of an international meeting of ...

Sun, 28 Feb 10
UN to review climate-change panel
http://www.montrealgazette.com/review+climate+change+panel/2620106/story.html
Canwest News Service: In a step back from what it once presented as "settled science," the United Nations announced yesterday it would launch a review of its climate-change panel, whose credibility was tarnished by global-warming reporting errors. The planned overhaul of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change comes just weeks after Britain's University of East Anglia launched its own quality-control inquiry into the content of hacked emails that appear to show scientists seeking to silence ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
Coffee hit by global warming say growers
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100226/sc_afp/guatemalaeconomyclimatewarmingcoffee
Agence France-Presse: Coffee producers say they are getting hammered by global warming, with higher temperatures forcing growers to move to prized higher ground, putting the cash crop at risk. "There is already evidence of important changes" said Nestor Osorio, head of the International Coffee Organization (ICO), which represents 77 countries that export or import the beans. "In the last 25 years the temperature has risen half a degree in coffee producing countries, five times more than in the 25 ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
A quiet sun won't save us from global warming
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527494.700-a-quiet-sun-wont-save-us-from-global-warming.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=climate-change
New Scientist: EVEN if the sun were to quieten down appreciably for the rest of this century, it would still be business as usual for global warming. The sun goes through an 11-year solar cycle during which its luminosity varies according to the number of sunspots appearing on its face. The normal cycle has a small effect on Earth's weather. But sometimes lulls in sunspot activity can last several decades, driving down the sun's luminosity to a "grand minimum". The Maunder minimum lasted from 1645 ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
The US Chamber of Commerce: A record of obstruction on climate action
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/24/us-chamber-record-obstruction-climate
Yale Environment 360: In 1883, New York faced an environmental crisis. Water levels were falling in the state's rivers and canals, impeding travel and shipping. Scientists and editorial writers placed the blame on the logging and burning of the Adirondacks, which prevented the forests from exercising their usual moderating influence on stream flows. With the loss of the forests, it was feared, the steady release of water would be replaced by a cycle of floods and low water. To make matters worse, these ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
Australia: AGL shelves over A$1 billion investments in wind energy
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61P0SV20100226
Reuters: Australia's top operator of renewable energy assets, AGL Energy Ltd., will shelve up to A$1 billion worth of planned investments in wind energy, citing uncertainty in the government's climate change policies. AGL said on Friday the government's current rebates for small renewable technologies, such as solar water panels and heat pumps, had flooded the market with cheap renewable energy certificates and put enormous pressure on the viability of its expensive wind projects. News ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
Battle lines harden over new transmission policy for renewables
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/02/26/26climatewire-battle-lines-harden-over-new-transmission-po-77427.html
ClimateWire: A group of Pacific Northwest and California power companies has joined utilities from the Southeast and other regions to oppose widespread cost-sharing for transmission expansion to carry wind and solar power to distant markets. A letter from 14 power companies and organizations in the Northwest, sent Feb. 19 to Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), calls for developers and customers of new renewable power to pay for ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
Decongesting rail traffic is a major step to raise fuel efficiency
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/02/25/25climatewire-decongesting-rail-traffic-is-a-major-step-to-73475.html
ClimateWire: When the Department of Transportation doled out $1.5 billion in infrastructure grants last week, one of the largest checks went to a rail overhaul in the Chicago area. Almost all of the country's freight railroads converge there. The region handles so much cargo that only three cities outrank it: Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai. And like O'Hare, Chicago's infamous airport, it's reviled for its traffic. "When there's delays at O'Hare, it impacts the whole nation's air ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
United States: Fate of offshore wind farm in government's hands
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124010199
National Public Radio: A decision on the fate of what would be the first offshore wind farm in the United States is expected from the federal government in the next several weeks. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he's ready to decide whether a private developer can install 130 wind turbines off Cape Cod, Mass. But as the government gets closer to a decision, after nearly nine years of review, the intensity of the debate is increasing. 'State Of Indecision' "I think the worst thing we can do ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
Ireland: Rising temperatures bring threat of malaria deaths
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/rising-temperatures-bring-threat-of-malaria-deaths-2080652.html
Independent: IRELAND can expect a rise in water- and food-borne deaths, particularly among the elderly, because of climate change. Nobel laureate John Sweeney, who is also a professor of geography at NUI Maynooth, told a conference yesterday that, as temperatures climbed, the number of people dying in the winter would fall -- but the numbers were likely to increase during summer, particularly in cities. Speaking at the Impact of Climate Change on Health conference in Dublin yesterday, Prof ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
Only crisis will convince climate deniers, audience told
http://www.lethbridgeherald.com/content/view/160584/109/
Lethbridge Herald: Crop failures and famine may ultimately convince people who still deny the world's climate is changing. But even then, a Lethbridge audience was warned Thursday, some leaders may refuse to act. But the longer politicians and the energy industry try to postpone real change, the higher the price to be paid by Canada's next generations. Students and experts at the University of Lethbridge debated "tipping points' during a mid-day forum, as part of the "Peak Week' examination of ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
Report: Wyoming formation could hold 50 years of CO2
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/02/26/business-multiutilities-financial-impact-us-wy-carbon-sequestration_7390156.html?boxes=Homepagebusinessnews
Associated Press: An underground formation east of Rock Springs in southwest Wyoming could hold enough carbon dioxide to enable two large coal-fired power plants to meet clean-coal standards for 50 years, according to a new report by the Wyoming State Geological Survey. That makes the Rock Springs Uplift the most promising place in the state - and perhaps in any Rocky Mountain basin - to store carbon dioxide so it doesn't contribute to climate change, the survey said. The publication summarizes ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
Farmers' changes bypass climate debate
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/26/2831513.htm
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Many Australian farmers are accepting the variable nature of the weather and adapting their practices to deal with climate change, rather than getting caught up in the political debate on whether that change is natural or man-made. Farmers say the lack of water and unpredictable weather patterns over the last decade have already forced them to make major changes to their operations, a case of adapt or perish. Victorian dairy farmer Brendan Martin told ABC's Landline his ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
Key US senators do not see climate bill in 2010
http://in.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idINTRE61O5GR20100225
Reuters: The U.S. Senate is unlikely to pass a comprehensive climate change bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions this year, according to a Reuters survey of 12 key Democrat and Republican Senators who could hold the swing votes. While the Obama administration and a bipartisan core of senators still hope there is life for a climate change bill that would put a price on carbon emissions and help reinvigorate ailing international talks, the senators interviewed by Reuters this week were much ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
India: Govt eyes millions in green funds from coal tax
http://in.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idINIndia-46505720100226?sp=true
Reuters: The government proposed on Friday a small tax on production of coal to raise millions of dollars for a National Clean Energy Fund that could help the world's fourth biggest polluter to shift to a low-carbon economy. India's growing economy has huge potential to shift to a low-carbon future, given that about 500 million Indians, or about half the population, do not have access to electricity, relying on fossil fuels such as coal to expand the power grid. With global focus now on ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
Leesburg start-up firm aims to sell German solar power panels
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/23/AR2010022305054.html
Washington Post: As a home renovator, Torsten Seling said, he never liked solar panel technology, which he thought relied too heavily on batteries that leave behind toxic waste. But he said he changed his thinking last year after a trip to Germany, the world leader in solar power capacity. Now he thinks the potential is huge. "If solar works in Germany, it works in the United States, because we have so much more sun to begin with," Seling said. "We have big houses that happen to be under big ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
Canada: Bridge Glacier to be studied for global warming
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Bridge%20Glacier%20studied%20global%20warming/2615375/story.html
Vancouver Sun: An important Coast Mountain glacier north of Pemberton is being included in an ambitious project to permanently document the effects of global warming through the use of time-lapse photography. In April, world-renowned environmental photographer James Balog will install two cameras on Bridge Glacier that will photograph the ice field every 30 minutes in perpetuity. The glacier, from which Bridge River springs and which is part of the important Lillooet Icecap 109 kilo-metres ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
Sceptics derail climate action
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/opinion/sceptics-derail-climate-action/story-e6frgd0x-1225834650070
Australian: "IF in doubt vote no" may be the five most powerful words in politics. Those arguing against action on climate change certainly are entitled to think so. They have shifted public opinion merely by raising a few instances where claims about the effects of global warming have been exaggerated or not sufficiently documented, and by catching a few scientists playing politics. Heaven forbid that anyone involved in a highly charged political debate should sex up their case through the ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Chief scientist calls for land management overhaul
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258619/land-better-managed-government
Business Green: Parts of the UK could face water shortages, rising house prices and increased threats to wildlife and landscapes unless major changes are made to the way in which land use is managed, a report has warned today. The Foresight report, which is backed by the government's chief scientific adviser, professor John Beddington, warned that climate change, rising populations and urbanisation will increase pressure on the UK's infrastructure. "Our land is a finite resource, and it is set ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
UN to appoint independent board to audit the IPCC
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0226-ipcc.html
Mongabay: The U.N. will appoint an independent board of scientists to review the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the embattled U.N. climate body charged with evaluating the risk of climate change caused by human activity, reports Reuters. The IPCC has been under fire from critics and supporters alike for its sloppy work in its latest assessment. The report, released in 2007, made inaccurate statements on the condition of Himalayan glaciers, the extent of the Netherlands that ...

Sat, 27 Feb 10
Cargill sells palm oil business in Papua New Guinea
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0226-cargill.html
Mongabay: Cargill will sell off its palm oil holdings in Papua New Guinea (PNG) to focus on operations in Indonesia, reports the Star Tribune. The $175 million sale involves 62,000 ha of oil palm across three plantations and several mills. "We believe there is more value for our shareholders and customers in focusing on Indonesia," said the company in a statement. "Our PNG oil palm plantations were the only investment we had in PNG. Since no other Cargill business is actively investing in PNG ...

Fri, 26 Feb 10
A deal sours, and the Hummer bites the dust
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1967957,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
Time Magazine: GM's efforts to sell its Hummer brand to a little-known Chinese company have fallen apart, the U.S. automaker announced Wednesday. As a result, GM will begin to dismantle a brand of gas-guzzling SUVs that were synonymous with pre-financial crisis wealth and excess. Specific reasons for the failure of the deal, first announced last June, were not released. But Chinese regulators had frowned on the purchase for much the same reason that U.S. consumers shunned Hummer; the vehicles size ...

Fri, 26 Feb 10
The IPCC Needs to Change, But the Science Remains Sound
http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2245
Yale Environment 360: Until last December, a very large majority of the scientific community and most politicians would have agreed that the scientific evidence of human-induced climate change was unequivocal and that the sole question was whether the world's political leaders could agree in Copenhagen to meaningful, legally binding greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. But, as we now know, the negotiations only produced an aspirational target of limiting the global mean surface temperature to no more than 2 ...

Fri, 26 Feb 10
Official: Climate change treaty unlikely this year
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100225/ap_on_re_as/climate_indonesia
Associated Press: Industrialized and developing countries are not likely to reach a treaty this year on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, which have sparked fears of weather-related disasters, the U.N. climate chief said Thursday. Yvo de Boer, who announced last week he would resign July 1, said there was not enough time to recover from the disappointing summit in December in Copenhagen, where world leaders failed to agree on a legally binding climate pact. Bickering between rich and poor ...

Fri, 26 Feb 10
EPA Will Need Increased Climate Funding as Regs Ramp Up, Jackson Says
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/02/25/25greenwire-epa-will-need-increased-climate-funding-as-reg-20989.html
New York Times: U.S. EPA will need increased funding for climate programs in future years as the agency moves forward on efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, Administrator Lisa Jackson said yesterday. "I would expect that the needs would continue to grow as we move into a world -- either through legislation, hopefully through legislation, but possibly also with regulation -- of increasing activity on climate change," Jackson told the House Interior and Environment Appropriations ...

Fri, 26 Feb 10
If fossil fuel reserves rise carbon should be left where it belongs: in the ground
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/feb/25/oil-gas-reserves
Guardian: When forecasts of fossil fuel reserves improve, how should we respond? A new report (pdf) by the trade body Oil & Gas UK says that 11bn barrels of oil and gas could now be extracted from the UK continental shelf. This would mean a rough doubling of current reserves, but it depends on high energy prices and much greater investments than companies have so far been prepared to make to turn possible or probable reserves into real ones. If the extra reserves materialised, the body says, the ...

Fri, 26 Feb 10
More tropical cyclones in past could play role in warmer future
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100224165225.htm
ScienceDaily: More frequent tropical cyclones in Earth's ancient past contributed to persistent El NiÃ±o-like conditions, according to a team of climate scientists led by Yale University. Their findings, which appear in the Feb. 25 issue of the journal Nature, could have implications for the planet's future as global temperatures continue to rise due to climate change. The team used both cyclone and climate models to study the frequency and distribution of tropical cyclones (also known as hurricanes ...

Fri, 26 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Met Office wants re-examination of 150 years of climate data
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/25/climate-change-data-science
Guardian: The Met Office has called for a re-examination of more than 150 years of global temperature records as part of a new comprehensive approach for analysing temperature data – to better assess the risks posed by changes in extremes of climate. The plan comes at a time when public conviction about the threat of climate change has declined sharply after questions over the science and growing disillusionment with government action. In what is being viewed as a bid to regain public ...

Fri, 26 Feb 10
China says no emissions cap for now
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100225/sc_afp/unclimatewarmingchina
Agence France-Presse: China's top climate change negotiator has said the world's biggest carbon polluter has no intention of capping greenhouse gas emissions for the time being, state media reported Thursday. Su Wei, who led China's negotiating team at the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen in December, said the country's carbon emissions had to increase because the economy was still developing, the China Daily said. China "could not and should not" set an upper limit on greenhouse gas emissions ...

Fri, 26 Feb 10
World warming unhindered by cold spells: scientists
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100225/ts_nm/us_climate_warming
Reuters: The pace of global warming continues unabated, scientists said on Thursday, despite images of Europe crippled by a deep freeze and parts of the United States blasted by blizzards. The bitter cold, with more intense winter weather forecast for March in parts of the United States, have led some to question if global warming has stalled. Understanding the overall trend is crucial for estimating consumption of energy supplies, such as demand for winter heating oil in the U.S. ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
China: 'No intention' of capping emissions
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-02/25/content_9499066.htm
China Daily: China has no intention of capping its greenhouse gas emissions even as authorities are committed to realizing the nation's target to reduce carbon intensity through new policies and measures, the country's top climate change negotiators said yesterday. The negotiators also warned that rich and developing countries have little hope of overcoming key disagreements over how to fight global warming. China "could not and should not" set an upper limit on greenhouse gas emissions at ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Study: Can Hurricanes Cause Climate Change?
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1967862,00.html
Time Magazine: Back in the Pliocene era, between 5 million and 3 million years ago, the average global temperature was about 7Â°F warmer than it is today, yet atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were about the same. If carbon dioxide were the sole factor in warming, that wouldn't make any sense. It isn't, of course; there are several other contributors, including the brightness of the sun and the location of the continents (whose positions dictate, among other things, where ice caps can form) -- but these ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
World's temperature record to be re-analysed
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/worlds-temperature-record-to-be-reanalysed-1909909.html
Independent (UK): The whole of the world's instrumental temperature record -- millions of observations dating back more than 150 years -- is to be re-analysed in an attempt to remove doubts about the reality of global warming. The new analysis, an enormous task which will be carried out by several groups of scientists working independently in different countries, has been proposed by the UK Met Office in the wake of recent controversies over climate science, such as the "climategate" email affair at ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Vermont Senate Votes to Close Nuclear Plant
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/us/25nuke.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
New York Times: In an unusual state foray into nuclear regulation, the Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 Wednesday to block operation of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant after 2012, citing radioactive leaks, misstatements in testimony by plant officials and other problems. Unless the chamber reverses itself, it will be the first time in more than 20 years that the public or its representatives has decided to close a reactor. The vote came just more than a week after President Obama declared a new ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Climate scientists hope independent reviews will reverse public's loss of trust
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7039264.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=3392178
Times (UK): The two most influential advisory bodies on climate change are planning independent reviews of their research in an attempt to regain public trust after revelations about errors and the suppression of data. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is to appoint an independent team to examine its procedures after admitting having made errors that exaggerated the severity of the impact of global warming. The Met Office, which supplies the global temperature trends used by ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Could landfill sites provide the perfect home for wind farms?
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258487/landfill-sites-provide-perfect
Business Green: For years developers have wondered how to make better use of landfill sites, but now a Spanish company may have come up with an answer that promises to redevelop existing landfill sites while bolstering the UK's renewable energy capacity. Engineering firm Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas (FCC) this week announced plans to invest Â£100m through its subsidiaries FCC Energy (FCCE) and Waste Recycling Group (WRG) to install up to 80MW of wind energy capacity at its landfill sites in ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Italy delays solar incentive plan, again
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258480/italy-delays-solar-incentives
Business Green: The Italian government yesterday revealed that it had delayed the unveiling of a much-anticipated solar incentive scheme for a second time, stoking fears that the uncertainty could derail the country's booming solar industry. Officials told news agency Reuters that the plan would not be presented today, as had been widely anticipated. They added that a new date had not yet been set for the launch of the scheme. The announcement had originally been expected on 11 February, but ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Antarctic melting due to global warming; sea levels may rise
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/02/antarctic-melting-threatens-worldwide-sea-level-rise/1
USA Today: The ice shelves in the southern part of the Antarctic Peninsula appear to be disappearing because of climate change, according to a new report from the U.S. Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey. "The loss of ice shelves is evidence of the effects of global warming," says USGS scientist and lead author Jane Ferrigno. Melting of the West Antarctic part alone of the Antarctic ice sheet would cause a worldwide sea-level rise of approximately 18 feet. According to the ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Bid to restrict emissions fails
http://www.birminghampost.net/news/uk-news/2010/02/24/bid-to-restrict-emissions-fails-65233-25909100/
Birmingham Post: A cross-party bid to restrict carbon dioxide emissions from new power stations has narrowly failed in the Commons. Labour backbenchers joined with the Tories and Liberal Democrats in calling for an Emissions Performance Standard (EPS) for every new electricity generating plant. But the move was defeated by 252 votes to 244 - slashing the Government's 57-strong majority to just eight. The vote came after Energy Minister Joan Ruddock warned it would "significantly ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
California governor race key to US climate change
http://www.forexyard.com/en/news/ANALYSIS-California-governor-race-key-to-climate-change-2010-02-24T204253Z-US
Reuters: California's governor race is shaping up to be a referendum on the most aggressive U.S. plan to cut greenhouse gases in a vote from the trend-setting state that could hobble such efforts nationwide. The state is a hub for investment in "cleantech", which could be at risk with any policy change, and has a governor and senior congressional representatives who have led President Barack Obama's push for a U.S. climate change law. The face-off to replace Republican Governor Arnold ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Papua New Guinea: New Britain Palm Oil buys eco-friendly plantations
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/article-23809496-new-britain-palm-oil-secures-eco-friendly-plantations.do
London Evening Standard: New Britain Palm Oil today spent $175 million (Â£113 million) on new plantations in a deal that means it can guarantee oil it provides to image-conscious food and cosmetics manufacturers is from 100 per cent sustainable sources. The deal came as Unilever blacklisted a second palm oil supplier in as many months after damaging revelations the Dove soaps-to Flora giant used oil from illegally cleared rainforest land. New Britain's takeover of 80 per cent of CTP gives it 25,000 ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Bloom Energy unveils fuel cell of the future
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100224/sc_afp/usitcompanyinternetenergybloom
Agence France-Presse: Stealth start-up Bloom Energy on Wednesday publicly unveiled an innovative fuel cell that promises to deliver affordable, clean energy to even remote corners of the world. Compact Bloom Servers built with energy cells made from silicon -- a plentiful element found in sand -- made their formal debut in an eBay building here partially powered by the energy source. "Bloom fuel cell technology has the potential to revolutionize the energy industry," California governor Arnold ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
United States: Launch of the Bloom box fuel cell generates a slice of Apple hype
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/24/bloom-box-launch-fuel-cell
Guardian: Not every company can boast Arnold Schwarzenegger, Colin Powell and the heads of Google and Walmart at its launch. Even more unlikely, the firm in question makes what some may regard as a less than sexy clean energy device. But such was the razzmatazz that accompanied the unveiling of Bloom ÂEnergy's eagerly awaited "energy server" today at the California headquarters of one if its first customers, eBay. A mini power station containing fuel cells that can run on anything from ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Biofuel power plant plan refused
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/8532017.stm
BBC: An application to build a biofuel power station at Avonmouth, capable of powering 25,000 homes, has been refused by city councillors. The plant, which would had been fuelled initially by palm oil, was attacked by critics who blamed the demand for palm oil for rainforest destruction. The meeting was told the decision had to be made according to material planning considerations, not emotions. But councillors went against advice from planners and voted 6-2 against ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
U.S., China at odds over climate talks in 2010
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100224/india_nm/india464471
Reuters: The United States is at odds with China and other developing nations by favouring a Copenhagen climate accord as the blueprint in 2010 for a stronger deal to fight global warming, documents showed on Wednesday. In a sign of hurdles ahead, developing nations are instead stressing U.N. texts worked out since 2007 to guide talks after the Copenhagen climate summit in December disappointed many nations by failing to agree a legally binding treaty. A 5-page U.S. document outlining ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Can we trust the IPCC on the big stuff?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527493.700-can-we-trust-the-ipcc-on-the-big-stuff.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=climate-change
New Scientist: EVER since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report on the impacts of climate change was discovered to contain a major error - that the Himalayan glaciers will be largely gone by 2035 - there has been a media feeding frenzy to find other mistakes. But it misses the point to focus on individual errors sprinkled through the report's 1000 or so pages (see "Digging devils from the details"). How solid are its headline findings? The IPCC presented the second section of ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Pen Hadow returns to Arctic to study acidification of the oceans
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/pen-hadow-returns-to-arctic-to-study-acidification-of-the-oceans-1909489.html
Independent (UK): The explorer Pen Hadow is mounting a new expedition to the Arctic to research "climate change's evil twin' -- the acidification of the oceans caused by emissions of carbon dioxide. Starting next month, his team will face temperatures of minus 75 -- when the wind chill factor is included -- as well as frostbite, thin ice and polar bears, to sample sea water far out over the sea ice, as well as from a base in Arctic Canada. They will be seeking to measure how far soaring emissions of ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Canada: Siding with skeptics, Tory MP decries climate-change 'alarmism'
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/siding-with-skeptics-tory-mp-decries-climate-change-alarmism/article1479747/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheGlobeAndMail-Front+%28The+Globe+and+Mail+-+Latest+News%29
Globe and Mail: Canada's ex-foreign affairs minister has come out swinging on behalf of climate-change skeptics and assailed what he describes as alarmism over global warming. Maxime Bernier took a public stand today against the conventional wisdom on global warming, writing a letter to La Presse newspaper saying there is no scientific consensus on the matter. The prominent Conservative MP says the issue has been taken over by alarmism - and he applauds Stephen Harper's government for taking a ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
UN warns greenhouse gas cuts 'not enough' to curb warming
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100224/sc_afp/unclimatewarmingenvironmentindonesia
Agence France-Presse: Countries will have to make far greater cuts in greenhouse gas emissions if the world is to limit the rise in global temperatures to two degrees Celsius or less, the UN has warned. Commitments made since December's Copenhagen climate conference have been insufficient, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a report at its annual meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali. "No one should assume that the pledges will be enough," UNEP director Adrian Steiner ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
China's Hu says tackling climate change 'urgent'
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100224/sc_afp/unclimatewarmingchina
Agence France-Presse: Chinese President Hu Jintao has said the country must urgently confront climate change and make it a central part of the government's development strategy, state media said Wednesday. Britain and other countries have accused China of vetoing attempts to give legal force to an agreement at UN climate change talks in Copenhagen in December and blocking an agreement on reductions in global emissions. China, the world's biggest carbon polluter, has said it was never planning to ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Quietly, Mercury moves up in fuel economy
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100224/ap_on_re_us/us_behind_the_wheel2010_mercury_milan_hybrid
Associated Press: The Toyota Prius and Ford Fusion Hybrid are two of the three mid-size cars that rank best in gasoline mileage for 2010. The third car: The often-overlooked Mercury Milan Hybrid. A roomy, attractive sedan with a four-cylinder engine mated to an electric motor, the 2010 Milan Hybrid is rated by the federal government at an impressive 41 miles per gallon in city driving and 36 mpg on the highway. These aren't just numbers on paper. The test Milan Hybrid was getting more ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Regulation of Greenhouse Gases May Fall to EPA
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100224/hl_time/08599196758500
Time Magazine: From the moment President Barack Obama took office, he has emphasized the importance of dealing with climate change. He's said that the right way to do it is to pass congressional legislation that would cap greenhouse-gas emissions. But eight months after the House of Representatives passed a cap-and-trade bill, similar legislation remains mired in the Senate, its chances of passage dimming by the day. With midterm elections not far off - threatening serious losses in Democratic seats in ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Government must accelerate smart grid roll out, say MPs
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258450/government-smart-grid-say-mps
Business Green: The government must provide better strategic leadership to encourage the rollout of smart grid technologies in the UK, according to a critical new report from the cross-party energy and climate change committee MPs, which recommends an urgent upgrade of the UK's transmission network. Paddy Tipping MP, who sits on the committee, said the existing grid had been developed to serve an outdated fossil fuel economy. "The future looks very different," he said. "By 2020 the UK electricity ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Bloom energy claims a new fuel cell technology
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/business/energy-environment/24bloom.html
New York Times: A Silicon Valley company is claiming a breakthrough in a decades-old quest to develop fuel cells that can supply affordable and relatively clean electricity. Google, Bank of America, Wal-Mart and other large corporations have been testing the devices, which will be formally introduced on Wednesday. The start-up, Bloom Energy, has raised about $400 million from investors and spent nearly a decade developing a new variety of solid oxide fuel cell, considered the most efficient but most ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Belief in climate change hinges on worldview
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124008307
National Public Radio: Over the past few months, polls show that fewer Americans say they believe humans are making the planet dangerously warmer, despite a raft of scientific reports that say otherwise. This puzzles many climate scientists -- but not some social scientists, whose research suggests that facts may not be as important as one's beliefs. Take, for example, a recent debate about climate change on West Virginia public radio. West Virginia Public Broadcasting VIDEO: Coal ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
United Kingdom: One in three say climate change is exaggerated
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1253326/Just-31-British-adults-believe-climate-change-definitely-reality-following-months-public-scepticism.html
Daily Mail: The public are becoming increasingly sceptical about the threat of climate change, it emerged last night. Months of questions over flaws in climate change science and a lack of government action have led to a sharp decline in the number of British adults who believe it is a problem. The proportion of people, questioned in a survey by Ipsos Mori, who believe climate change is 'definitely' a reality has dropped from 44 per cent to 31 per cent in the last year. Myth or ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
U.S. stands out for climate-change skepticism
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N23103606.htm
Reuters: Many Americans are skeptical about global warming and that makes it harder to get a bill through Congress. "My personal leanings are that it's more cyclical than a permanent trend," said Jimmy Pritchard, a Southern Baptist pastor in a Dallas suburb. "And I think It's a little presumptuous to put so many resources and energy into something that may change direction in the next few years." Such views, widespread in the U.S. heartland, drive conservative opposition to ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Australia: Climate change opponents hit rough seas at Bondi
http://wentworth-courier.whereilive.com.au/news/story/climate-change-opponents-hit-rough-seas-at-bondi/
Wentworth Courier: A WAR of words erupted last week after the Federal Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, warned that Bondi beach could be seriously affected by climate change. The Australian newspaper fired the first salvo with a cover story dispelling this claim, quoting a local surfer who said he had seen "no change" to the coastline in the past 30 years. A former mayor of Waverley, George Newhouse, issued a furious response, saying it was "ridiculous" to compare the opinion of one resident ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Compromise climate bill coming-U.S. Sen. Kerry
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN2311694220100223
Reuters: Senator John Kerry said a bipartisan climate change bill would emerge soon in the U.S. Senate, contradicting what he called the "conventional wisdom" that the legislation was dead this election year. Kerry is working closely with the Obama administration and a bipartisan group of senators on a comprehensive bill to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide pollution blamed for global warming. "We're on a short track here in terms of piecing together legislation we intend to roll out," Kerry ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Drax outlines its ambition for future without coal
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article7038327.ece
Times (UK): It may be Europe's biggest coal-fired power station, but Drax's management is already mapping out a future without coal. Drax, which has pioneered the co-firing of biomass -- straw or wood -- with coal as a way of reducing its carbon emissions, has said that it can envisage a future in which it runs entirely on biomass. The amount of biomass that the generator can burn alongside coal is capped at 12.5 per cent, but Drax is lobbying to lift that cap. It said that there was no ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Van Jones lands new D.C. gig
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/23/AR2010022304889.html
Washington Post: In his first interview since stepping down as President Obama's environmental adviser on Sept. 5, Jones said that a green jobs policy represents the best chance of both aiding poor Americans and bridging the political divide. "When the food fight is over, there's one spot of clean common ground in American politics, and that is the need for us to be leading on energy, clean energy, and for us as a country to be more secure with all those jobs," Jones said Tuesday. Jones, who ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Australia: Climate wars give science bad name
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/climate-wars-give-science-bad-name/story-e6frgcjx-1225833598122
Australian: UNIVERSITY leaders are pressing for a public campaign to restore the intellectual and moral authority of Australian science in the wake of the climate wars. Peter Coaldrake, chairman of Universities Australia and vice-chancellor of Queensland University of Technology, told the HES yesterday he was "concerned about the way the climate change debate has flowed", and would address the role of science in the formation of public policy at his National Press Club address next ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Australia: Labor's renewable energy scheme falls flat
http://www.theage.com.au/national/labors-renewable-energy-scheme-falls-flat-20100223-p0tk.html
Age: THE Rudd government's showpiece renewable energy legislation has failed to spark a single major project in the six months since it was passed, prompting fresh claims Labor has failed to deliver on its environmental commitments. The failure of the 20 per cent renewable energy target is blamed on a poor design that promotes domestic rooftop solar panels, heat pumps and solar hot water systems at the expense of wind farms. Renewable energy backers warned the design flaws were on ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Waiting to inhale: Deep-ocean low-oxygen zones spreading to shallower coastal waters
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=low-oxygen-ocean-coastal
Scientific American: Hypoxic seawater from the deep ocean is moving into shallower near-shore environments off the Oregon coast, threatening or killing marine species that make their home there. A plague of oxygen-deprived waters from the deep ocean is creeping up over the continental shelves off the Pacific Northwest and forcing marine species there to relocate or die. Since 2002 tongues of hypoxic, or low-oxygen, waters from deeper areas offshore have slipped into shallower near-shore environments off ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
UN weather meeting agrees to refine climate data
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/24/AR2010022401495.html?hpid=moreheadlines
Washington Post: World weather agencies have agreed to collect more precise temperature data to improve climate change science, officials said Wednesday, as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged environment ministers to reject efforts by skeptics to derail a global climate deal. Britain's Met Office proposed that climate scientists around the world undertake the "grand challenge" of measuring land surface temperatures as often as several times a day, and allow independent scrutiny of the data - a ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Belief in climate change dives
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/belief-in-climate-change-dives/story-e6frg6so-1225834031901
Australian: PUBLIC conviction in Britain about the threat of climate change has plummeted after months of questions over the science and growing disillusionment with government action, a leading poll has found. Reports yesterday said the proportion of adults who believed climate change was "definitely" a reality dropped by 30 per cent over the past year, from 44 per cent to 31 per cent, in the latest survey by Ipsos Mori. Overall, about nine out of 10 people questioned still appeared to ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Oil spill threatens 'ecological disaster' in Italy
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100224/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_italy_oil_spill
Associated Press: An oil spill that fouled a small river in northern Italy reached the Po River on Wednesday, with officials warning of an ecological disaster as they scrambled to contain the sludge before it contaminated Italy's longest and most important river. Milan regional officials said the cause was certainly sabotage at a former refinery turned oil depot, since the cisterns were opened and the oil allowed to flow unimpeded into the Lambro River near Monza. The cisterns "were opened by ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Ban v Inhofe - UN chief urges policymakers to reject climate sceptics' campaign
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258455/ban-v-inhofe-un-chief-urges
Business Green: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon waded into the ongoing row over the so-called Climategate affair yesterday, urging world leaders to resist 'last-ditch' efforts by climate sceptics to block action to tackle climate change. In a statement read out by officials at the opening of the annual meeting of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in Indonesia, Ban insisted climate change continued to present "a clear and present danger" to the world's security and prosperity. He said ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
BBC documentary leads Unilever to blacklist Indonesian palm oil company
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0224-palmoil.html
Mongabay: Unilever has told Indonesian suppliers to stop sourcing palm oil from Duta Palma due to concerns over deforestation, reports Reuters. Unilever's warning comes shortly after a BBC documentary linked palm oil used in the company's products to rainforest destruction by Duta Palma. Derom Bangun, vice-chairman of the Indonesian Palm Oil Board, an industry body, told Reuters Unilever's decision was a direct result of the documentary. "It is Unilever's decision," Bangun told ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Met Office: we must check 150 years of climate data
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7039264.ece
Times (UK): More than 150 years of global temperature records are to be re-examined by scientists in an attempt to regain public trust in climate science after revelations about errors and suppression of data. The Met Office has submitted proposals for the reassessment by an independent panel in a tacit admission that its previous reports have been marred by their reliance on analysis by the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Two separate inquiries are being held ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Coral reefs in danger of being destroyed
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/coral-reefs-in-danger-of-being-destroyed-1908544.html
Independent (UK): All of the tropical coral reefs in the world will be disintegrating by the end of the century because of the rising acidity of the oceans caused by a build-up of man-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a study has found. Coral reefs start to disintegrate when the acidity of the oceans rises beyond a certain threshold, and this point is likely to be reached before 2100, said Jacob Silverman of the Carnegie Institution of Science in Washington. Carbon dioxide in the air ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Reject sceptics' attempts to derail global climate deal, UN chief urges
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/24/ban-ki-moon-un-reject-sceptics
Guardian: The UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, today urged environment ministers to reject attempts by sceptics to undermine efforts to forge a climate change deal, stressing that global warming poses "a clear and present danger." In a message read by a UN official, Ban referred to the controversy over mistakes made in a 2007 report issued by the UN-affiliated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which have been criticised by climate sceptics. Despite the failure to forge a ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Australia delays climate change bill vote until May
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258436/australia-delays-climate-change
Business Green: The chance of Australia passing carbon cap-and-trade legislation receded further today after the government signaled it would delay a crucial Senate vote on its controversial climate change bill until May. The move will further fuel speculation that the government is struggling to secure the small handful of opposition votes it requires to pass the legislation, which has already been blocked twice by the Senate during the past year. The decision came as the government's ...

Thu, 25 Feb 10
Indonesia: Oil palm plantation not in forestÂ sector: Govt
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/02/23/oil-palm-plantation-not-forest%C2%A0sector-govt.html
Jakarta Post: Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan said he had no plan to draft a decree aimed at including oil palm plantations in the forestry sector. "I don't know about it. There won't be any forest conversion into oil palm plantations," he said Monday on the side of a hearing with the House of Representatives' Commission IV on forestry and agriculture. Zulkifli said the expansion of oil palm plantations would only be allowed on idle lands. "If you ask me about forest conversion into ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
Climate Science Controversy Flares in EPA Budget Hearing
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2010/2010-02-23-091.html
Environment News Service: Climate Science Controversy Flares in EPA Budget Hearing Environment News Service (ENS) Climate Science Controversy Flares in EPA Budget Hearing WASHINGTON, DC, February 23, 2010 (ENS) - U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's appearance today before a Senate Committee to justify the agency's $10 billion FY 2011 budget became a showcase for the split in the Senate over climate change and clean energy that has to date prevented approval of a climate bill. The House of ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
Kerry insists US will move on climate
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100223/pl_afp/unclimatewarmingus
Agence France-Presse: Senator John Kerry vowed Tuesday to overcome the odds and approve US action to curb carbon emissions, raising the specter of millions of refugees unless climate change is addressed. While offering no timetable, the ally of President Barack Obama rejected predictions that Senate approval of a climate bill -- which would offer a boon to troubled talks on a new global treaty -- had become politically impossible. "I'm excited. I know that's completely contrary to any conventional ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
EPA Chief Goes Toe-To-Toe With Senate GOP Over Climate Science
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/02/23/23greenwire-epa-chief-goes-toe-to-toe-with-senate-gop-over-72892.html
Greenwire: U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson today defended the science underpinning pending climate regulations despite Senate Republicans' claims that global warming data has been thrown into doubt. "The science behind climate change is settled, and human activity is responsible for global warming," Jackson told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "That conclusion is not a partisan one." Jackson's comments came as the Senate panel scrutinized President Obama's $10 ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
Sanders compares climate skeptics to Nazi deniers
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33371.html
Politico: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is comparing climate change skeptics to those who disregarded the Nazi threat to America in the 1930s, adding a strident rhetorical shot to the already volatile debate over climate change. "It reminds me in some ways of the debate taking place in this country and around the world in the late 1930s," said Sanders, perhaps the most liberal member of the Senate, during a Senate hearing Tuesday. "During that period of Nazism and fascism's growth-a real ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
Democrats launch desperate effort to resurrect climate bill in Congress
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/23/climate-bill-congress
Guardian: Democratic leaders launched a last gasp effort today to try to resurrect a climate change bill before Congress, which is seen as vitally important in sealing a global deal to tackle global warming. Although the bill had virtually been pronounced dead for 2010 Senator John Kerry fuelled speculation that Democrats will take one last run this spring at trying to get Congress to act on one of Barack Obama's key campaign promises. "We are on a short track here in terms of piecing ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
Hu reaffirms China's steadfast commitment to climate action
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2010/201002/20100224/article_429384.htm
Shanghai Daily: PRESIDENT Hu Jintao said yesterday China was committed to fighting climate change both at home and in cooperation with the world. Hu was addressing a study meeting attended by members of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee. "We must fully recognize the importance, urgency and difficulty of dealing with climate change," Hu said. "We must make it an important strategy for our socio-economic development." The government said some ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
Conflicting signals out of Indonesia on whether palm oil plantations will be classified as forests
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0223-indonesa_palmoil.html
Mongabay: Indonesia will not allow the conversion of natural forest for oil palm plantations, claimed the country's Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan in comments reported by the Jakarta Post. Speaking at a hearing on forestry and agriculture, Hasan said he has no plan to draft a decree to incorporate plantations in the forestry sector. "There won't be any forest conversion into oil palm plantations," he was quoted as saying by the Jakarta Post. "If you ask me about forest conversion into ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
Obama's nuclear vision suffers setback as Vermont plant faces shutdown
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/23/vermont-yankee-nuclear-reactor-to-close
Guardian: Barack Obama's new dream of a nuclear renaissance faces a major reality check tomorrow when the state of Vermont is expected to shut down an ageing nuclear reactor with a history of leaks. It would be the first time a state has moved to shut down such a reactor, and follows Obama's announcement last week of $8.3bn (Â£5.4bn) in loan guarantees for the construction of two new reactors in Georgia. White House officials said the money would help spur a burst of new construction – the first ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
Air pollution 'may cause 35,000 premature deaths a year in Britain'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/23/air-pollution-deaths-sooty-particles
Guardian: Air pollution may be leading to the premature deaths of 35,000 people in Britain a year, nearly 50% more than has been previously admitted by government, a committee of MPs has heard. The figure was used for the first time by environment minister Jim Fitzpatrick when giving evidence to the Commons environment audit committee. The MPs were also told that air pollution - minute sooty particles emitted by motor transport, ships and fuel burning in houses and industry - may now be costing ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
Soul-searching follows U.S. CAP defections
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/02/22/22greenwire-soul-searching-follows-us-cap-defections-72187.html
Greenwire: The U.S. Climate Action Partnership drew its mantra from a Rolling Stones song whose lyrics were once posted in the coalition's conference room in downtown Washington. "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need." But some U.S. CAP members did not believe -- after three years of marathon meetings aimed at reaching consensus on what a federal climate change and energy policy should be -- they would ever get what they ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
Kenya losing wild animals at alarming rate
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/866788/-/vqm23h/-/
Daily Nation: The number of carnivorous animals in the country is on the decline and the government is worried. From cheetahs, lions and leopards to stripped hyena's and African wild dogs, their population has been dwindling at an alarming rate, a trend that is now being blamed on climate change, loss of food, and increased human population. On Monday, Forestry and Wildlife minister Noah Wekesa said it was a matter of serious concern that needed urgent attention. "The number of the ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Heathrow expansion plans hit the High Court
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258390/heathrow-expansion-plans-hit
Business Green: The legal challenge to the government's plans for a third runway at Heathrow has got underway today at the High Court in London in what could prove an important test case for all future carbon intensive infrastructure projects. A coalition of local councils, green groups and residents launched the legal action, which will argue that the consultation process undertaken by the government ahead of its decision on Heathrow expansion was fundamentally flawed. The final decision ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
UN climate talks to resume in April in Germany
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/23/AR2010022301443.html
Associated Press: The United Nations says formal negotiations on an international treaty to control global warming will resume in Bonn in April, four months after the failed climate change summit in Copenhagen. U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said Tuesday the negotiating schedule is being intensified in order to secure a global climate deal at the end of the year. After the Bonn meeting April 9-11, more talks are scheduled there for May 31-June 11. The next world climate summit is to take place ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
Hu says China committed to fighting climate change
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE61M2LF20100223
Reuters: President Hu Jintao said on Tuesday China was committed to fighting climate change, both at home and in cooperation with the rest of the world, but stopped short of offering any new policies. Britain, Sweden and other countries have accused China of obstructing December's Copenhagen climate summit, which ended with a non-binding accord that set a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius but was scant on details. Chinese officials have said their country ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
E.P.A. plans to phase in regulation of emissions
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/business/energy-environment/23epa.html
New York Times: Facing wide criticism over their recent finding that greenhouse gases endanger the public welfare, top Environmental Protection Agency officials said Monday that any regulation of such gases would be phased in gradually and would not impose expensive new rules on most American businesses. The E.P.A.`s administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, wrote in a letter to eight coal-state Democrats who have sought a moratorium on regulation that only the biggest sources of greenhouse gases would be ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
World's reefs could disintegrate by 2100
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/23/worlds-coral-reefs-disintegrate-2100
Guardian: The world's coral reefs will begin to disintegrate before the end of the century as rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere make the oceans more acidic, scientists warn. The research points to a looming transition in the health of coral ecosystems during which the ability of reefs to grow is overwhelmed by the rate at which they are dissolving. More than 9,000 coral reefs around the world are predicted to disintegrate when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels reach 560 ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
Copenhagen billions key to climate talks success
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100223/india_nm/india463974
Reuters: The allure of $30 billion in climate aid for poor nations holds the key to helping restore confidence in U.N. talks on fighting global warming and stopping them from unravelling. But there's only months to figure out a way to start deploying the cash, say the world body, negotiators and greens. A sense of despair has shrouded U.N. climate talks after what many say was a disappointing outcome of last December's Copenhagen summit at which world leaders crafted a non-binding ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
Emissions vows not enough to avoid 2 degree C rise: U.N
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61M23G20100223?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: Emission cuts pledges made by 60 countries will not be enough to keep the average global temperature rise at 2 degrees Celsius or less, modeling released on Tuesday by the United Nations says. Scientists say temperatures should be limited to a rise of no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times if devastating climate change is to be avoided. Yearly greenhouse gas emissions should not be more than 40 and 48.3 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent in 2020 and should ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
Role of Mass Media in Climate Change Skepticism
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100222140619.htm
ScienceDaily: Boykoff, an assistant professor of environmental studies, presented his research February 22 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego. He spoke during a panel discussion titled "Understanding Climate Change Skepticism: Its Sources and Strategies." Boykoff's segment was titled "Exaggerating Denialism: Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change" and discussed prominent pitfalls. "One problem occurs when outlier ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
Disaster Blamed on Chaotic Urban Planning
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50424
Inter Press Service: Prominent Portuguese environmentalists blamed the Dantesque scene in the tourist island of Madeira Monday, in the wake of flash floods that claimed at least 42 lives over the weekend, on seriously flawed urban planning. One of the worst storms in the history of the small hilly Portuguese archipelago, which lies around 500 km off the coast of Morocco in northwest Africa, caused raging torrents of brown mud to drag trees, rocks and cars down streets, destroying houses, bridges and roads ...

Wed, 24 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Heathrow runway opponents launch legal challenge to stop expansion
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/23/heathrow-third-runway-high-court-challenge
Guardian: A coalition of local councils, green groups and residents will today mount a legal challenge to government plans for a third runway at Heathrow airport. The coalition's lawyers will argue at the high court in London that the government's consultation process for Heathrow expansion was fundamentally flawed. The then transport secretary Geoff Hoon gave the go-ahead for the expansion in January last year, but the Conservatives are opposed to a third runway. The coalition, ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
EPA to soften CO2 requirements on industry
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100223/tpl-environment-us-epa-climate-d1a0d5d.html
Reuters: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday it would slow a phase-in of new limits on carbon dioxide from coal and other heavy industry plants to ease concerns about the impact on the economy. The Obama administration has pushed the EPA to begin regulating gases blamed for warming the planet in an effort to force polluters to support a climate change bill that is stalled in Congress. Slowing down the rules could give Congress more time to develop a legislative answer to ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Carbon index cranks up pressure on blue chips
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258324/carbon-index-cranks-pressure
Business Green: The not-for-profit Environmental Investment Organisation (EIO) is to launch a carbon ranking of the world's largest companies with the aim of helping fund managers build carbon emissions into their investment decisions. The Environmental Tracking (ET) Carbon Rankings Index could be signed up as a live investment index by Standard & Poors if fund managers indicate their backing for the initiative. Indexes -- of which the FTSE100 is probably the best known in the UK -- rank ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
EPA may soften greehouse gas permit requirement
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61L5PG20100222?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday it was considering reducing the number of big industrial plants that would be required to get permits to fight climate change. In September, the EPA said it would require large facilities, like coal plants and refineries, emitting more than 25,000 tons a year of greenhouse gases to obtain permits demonstrating they were using the best technology available to reduce emissions blamed for warming the planet. "EPA is ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Climate change melts Antarctic ice shelves - USGS
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN2221476020100222
Reuters: Climate change is melting the floating ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula, giving scientists a preview of what could happen if other ice shelves around the southern continent disappear, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said on Monday. The ice has retreated so far from the land mass that Charcot Island, which has long been connected to the peninsula by an ice bridge, emerged as a real island again last year, a USGS scientist said. "This is the first time since people ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
UN Panel Errors Fuel More Doubt In Climate Science
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123973664&ft=1&f=1025
National Public Radio: Climate science is on the defensive. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, regarded as the world's top climate science institution, has conceded it published errors in its reports. This follows the release of hacked e-mails from prominent climate scientists that cast doubt on their objectivity. Most scientists say the evidence for a warming world is still as strong as ever. But some now acknowledge they need to do some housecleaning and improve their public relations ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Coal-state Dems oppose global-warming rules
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100222/ap_on_bi_ge/us_climate_change_senate
Associated Press: Eight Democratic senators from industrial states are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate pollution blamed for global warming. In a letter written by Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the lawmakers said the agency lacks the power to restrict greenhouse gases from stationary sources such as power plants, factories and mines. The lawmakers said Congress -- not the EPA -- should address an issue with big implications for thousands of U.S. jobs and ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Group petitions EPA to reduce soot pollution
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100222/ap_on_re_us/us_soot_pollution
Associated Press: An environmental group has petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce soot, saying it accelerates the melting of glaciers and sea ice. The Center for Biological Diversity called Monday for the regulation of black carbon pollution under provisions of the Clean Water Act. Center attorney Matt Vespa says soot darkens the atmosphere, snow and ice, absorbing heat. Vespa says the petition is the first to explicitly seek protection of ice -- water in its solid ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Climate Change
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/opinion/22mon1.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
New York Times: Yvo de Boer`s resignation on Thursday after nearly four tumultuous years as chief steward of the United Nations` climate change negotiations has deepened a sense of pessimism about whether the world can ever get its act together on global warming. Mr. de Boer was plainly exhausted by endless bickering among nations and frustrated by the failure of December`s talks in Copenhagen to deliver the prize he had worked so hard for: a legally binding treaty committing nations to mandatory reductions ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Climate meeting in April aims at reviving UN process
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100222/sc_afp/unclimatewarming
Agence France-Presse: Talks will take place in April under the UN flag for planning the next steps in the effort toward a global treaty on climate change, Danish Minister for Climate and Energy Lykke Friis said Monday. The April 9-11 meeting will take place in Bonn gathering senior officials of signatories of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said Friis, whose country currently chairs the negotiating process. The date was set at a meeting of the UNFCCC bureau, tasked with ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Indonesia to target New Guinea for agricultural expansion
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0222-papua.html
Mongabay: Indonesia will target its last frontier -- its territory on New Guinea -- as it seeks to become a major agricultural exporter, reports the AFP. In its quest to become one of the largest producers of rice, maize, sugar, coffee, shrimp, meats and palm oil, Indonesia will push development in the country's largest remaining "wild" area: Papua, the Indonesian-held half of New Guinea. Expansion in Papua will begin in a 1.6 million hectare (4 million acre) area around the town of ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Ice Shelves Disappearing on Antarctic Peninsula: Glacier Retreat and Sea Level Rise Are Possible Consequences
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100222120137.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29
ScienceDaily: Ice shelves are retreating in the southern section of the Antarctic Peninsula due to climate change, according to new data. This could result in glacier retreat and sea-level rise if warming continues, threatening coastal communities and low-lying islands worldwide, experts say. Research by the U.S. Geological Survey is the first to document that every ice front in the southern part of the Antarctic Peninsula has been retreating overall from 1947 to 2009, with the most dramatic ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Ecuadorean judge changed on Chevron pollution case
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61L3YL20100222?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: The provincial court in Ecuador's Amazon region that is hearing a $27 billion environmental damages case against Chevron Corp has changed the judge in charge of the case, court officials said on Monday. The change was described as an administrative matter not expected to impact the outcome of the case. Leonardo Ordonez, the newly named president of Sucumbios provincial court, was named to replace outgoing court president Nicolas Zambrano. Local law says the court's chief judge ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Bonn to host extra U.N. climate talks, treaty unsure
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61L3XW20100222?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: Germany will host an extra session of U.N. climate talks in April but it is too early to say if the world will agree a new treaty this year after falling short at a summit in Copenhagen in December, Denmark said on Monday. "The negotiations are picking up speed again after Copenhagen," Danish Climate and Energy Minister Lykke Friis, who presides over the U.N. negotiations, told Reuters by telephone. She said that 11 representatives of key nations decided at a one-day meeting at ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
"No change whatsoever" in scientists' conviction that climate change is occurring
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0222-hance_conviction.html
Mongabay: Despite some politicians and TV personalities claiming that climate change is dead, a panel of influential US and European scientists held a press conference at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science to set the record straight on the state of the science and the recent media frenzy against climate change. "There has been no change in the scientific community, no change whatsoever" in the consensus that globally temperatures are rising, said ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Indonesia: RI should 'vie for' UNFCCC top post
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/02/22/ri-should-%E2%80%98vie-for%E2%80%99-unfccc-top-post.html
Jakarta Post: Indonesia, the host of the much-hailed Bali climate change conference, should run for the UN's top post on climate change, which will be vacant after its chief, Yvo de Boer, resigns in July, observers said. Legislator Muhammad Safrudin from the House of Representatives' Commission VII overseeing environmental affairs said Indonesia should seek support from other countries to vie for the post. "Indonesia has a number of noted figures on climate change issues such as Rachmat ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Australia: Prime Minister and Peter Garrett didn't see insulation warning
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/prime-minister-and-peter-garrett-didnt-see-insulation-warning/story-e6frg6n6-1225832766855
Australian: ENVIRONMENT Minister Peter Garrett has admitted he did not see a damning risk assessment of the federal government's roof insulation program until 10 days ago, 10 months after it was delivered to his department because of concerns the scheme could lead to death or injury. Kevin Rudd has revealed he was also in the dark about the taxpayer-funded report until February 11, the day Mr Garrett told parliament about its existence, despite it having been handed to the government in April ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Climate change to cause tropical twist to orchards
http://www.kentnews.co.uk/kent-news/Climate-change-to-cause-tropical-twist-to-orchards-newsinkent33042.aspx?news=local
Kent News: They say that the effects of global warming could spell the end of Kent's rich heritage of hops, apples and pear growing. These traditional crops need winter chills --prolonged periods when it is above freezing but below 7C. Recent warmer winters have pointed to a future where more exotic fruits normally found in the heat of southern Europe, Africa and South America will flourish, like Kiwi fruit, peaches and nectarines. And the experts have warned fruit growers not to ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Australia: Can conservation farming save the planet?
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/content/2010/s2826833.htm?site=westernplains
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: As talk of the role of agriculture in climate change heats up, farmers practicing conservation agriculture claim they may have some answers. Opposition leader Tony Abbott recently said he believed farmers could play a significant role in reducing Australia's carbon emissions, and helping tackle climate change. Chair of the Conservation Farming and No Till Farming Association, Anne Williams, says the attention Mr Abbott brought to farmer's efforts to farm sustainably is very ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
U.N. official sees climate aid scheme within months
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-46365320100222?sp=true
Reuters: Developing nations could be able to apply within three months for some of the $30 billion in climate aid promised by rich nations at last year's Copenhagen talks, a top United Nations official said on Monday. The Copenhagen talks failed to produce a legally binding global agreement to cut emissions but developed nations did pledge $30 billion in "fast-start funding" for 2010-12 to help developing nations adapt to climate change. The Copenhagen Accord was vague on how the money ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Illegal loggers hit community reforestation project in Indonesia, spurring questions about REDD
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0222-redd.html
Mongabay: Illegal loggers are targeting community-managed forests in South Sumatra, renewing questions over forestry governance and law enforcement as the Indonesia prepares to capitalize on payments for conservation and reforestation under a proposed climate change mitigation mechanism known as REDD, reports the Jakarta Press. According to the Jakarta Press, loggers have been illegally cutting timber from forests managed by local communities. These areas, which were previously barren or ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
U.S. Aims for Legally Binding Climate Change Agreement in 2010
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601203&sid=aiBM5OHZPUfw
Bloomberg: The U.S. said it wants to reach a legally binding climate-change agreement at a summit in Mexico in December, a sign President Barack Obama hasn't given up the fight for a global accord to limit greenhouse gases. The pact should cover "all major economies," and include elements from the non-binding Copenhagen Accord made in December, the State Department said in a letter released today by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC. With China and India resisting ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Australia: Start preparing Sydney, warming is inevitable
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/start-preparing-sydney-warming-is-inevitable-20100222-orrf.html
Sydney Morning Herald: ACTION to reduce greenhouse emissions is lagging so far behind what the science tells us is necessary that some degree of warming is now inevitable, an expert warned yesterday. Cities like Sydney should take pragmatic measures to prepare for an inevitable degree of warming, for example by planning to lift port infrastructure as sea levels rise, building new water supply systems and devising plans to minimise heatwave-related deaths, said Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist at ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Food carbon labels 'may not work'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/guernsey/8528061.stm
BBC: The practicalities of plans to introduce carbon footprint labelling on food are being questioned by growers in Guernsey. The UK's Carbon Trust is working with manufacturers to make the change, in addition to the current nutritional information. But Alan Dorey, president of the Guernsey Growers Association, said the theory might not work in practice. He said it would be difficult to decide which carbon inputs to include. Simple Choices Mr Dorey said: "If we ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Climate change could be accelerated by 'methane time bomb'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7289698/Climate-change-could-be-accelerated-by-methane-time-bomb.html
Daily Telegraph: Atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas, which is as much as 60 times more potent than carbon dioxide, appear to have risen significantly for the past three years running, scientists say. Experts have long feared that vast amounts of the natural gas trapped in the frozen tundra of the Arctic could be unlocked as the permafrost is melted by rising temperatures, triggering a "methane time bomb" that could cause temperatures to soar. More melting of the Arctic ice caused by ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Despite Climategate, IPPC Mostly Underestimates Climate Change
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=despite-climategate-ippc-mostly-und-10-02-22
Scientific American: Lost in the coverage of the so-called climategate email controversy is a key point about the IPCC's track record of climate change estimates. James McCarthy is on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment. He spoke February 21st at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego: "If you were to go back and map the IPCC projection for sea level rise and temperature in 1990, look at it in 1995, look ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Philips smashes sustainability targets
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258265/philips-smashes-sustainability
Business Green: Electronics giant Philips today announced it generated almost a third of its revenue from "green products" last year, reaching its target for sales of energy efficient and environmentally friendly technologies three years ahead of schedule. The company reported it had generated 31 per cent of revenue from "green products" in 2009, and was set to achieve its target of investing EUR1bn in the development of green technologies before the end of this year. It also said that it was ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Indonesia: Orangutan survival and the shopping trolley
http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_8523000/8523999.stm
BBC: The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates that the population has declined by 50% in recent decades and the Indonesian government admits that 50,000 orangutans have died as a result of de-forestation. A BBC Panorama investigation into clear-cutting in Indonesian Borneo - the island it shares with Malaysia - found that the thirst for land on which to plant palm plantations is encroaching on areas that the Indonesian government has deemed to be ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
India computer waste to grow 500 pct by 2020: report
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61L1WB20100222?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: Waste from discarded electronics will rise dramatically in the developing world within a decade, with computer waste in India alone to grow by 500 percent from 2007 levels by 2020, a U.N. study released on Monday said. E-waste -- a term describing electronics including phones, printers, televisions, refrigerators and other appliances -- grows globally by 40 million metric tones a year. Toxins are emitted when it is improperly burned by scavengers looking for valuable components, such ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
First Solar looks to China and US to offset German gloom
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258236/first-solar-looks-china-offset
Business Green: Solar PV manufacturer First Solar last week posted fourth quarter financial results showing higher-than-expected profits, but still saw its shares fall over seven per cent on Friday after profit margins narrowed and its outlook for 2010 left investors underwhelmed. The company reiterated its existing forecast for 2010 net sales of $2.7bn (Â£1.75bn) to $2.9bn and earnings per share of $6.05 to $6.85. However, its Nasdaq-listed shares had rallied in the days prior to the earnings ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Portugal: Madeira floods death toll rises as searches continue
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/22/madeira-floods-deaths
Guardian: Flooding and mudslides on Portuguese holiday island have killed at least 42 people and destroyed more than 200 homes Link to this video The death toll in flash floods on the Portuguese holiday island of Madeira rose to 42, as rescue workers searched for at least four missing people. Army and police rescue teams from mainland Portugal started sifting through mud and debris left behind by flooding and mudslides after a torrential storm ravaged the island on ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
US Aims for Legally Binding Climate Change Agreement in 2010
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-22/u-s-aims-for-legally-binding-climate-change-agreement-in-2010.html
Bloomberg: The U.S. said it wants to reach a legally binding climate-change agreement at a summit in Mexico in December, a sign President Barack Obama hasn't given up the fight for a global accord to limit greenhouse gases. The pact should cover "all major economies,' and include elements from the non-binding Copenhagen Accord made in December, the State Department said in a letter released today by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC. With China and India resisting ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
The long road to an alternative energy future
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704182004575055910461373220.html
Wall Street Journal: New Nuclear Reactors View Full Image ROAD_Nuclear Areva_EPR The Evolutionary Power Reactor, a "generation 3+" design from Areva NP ROAD_Nuclear ROAD_Nuclear The Technology: Advanced nuclear reactors use simplified, standardized designs that should be cheaper and quicker to build and easier to operate. Passive safety features lower the risk of accidents. These "generation 3+" reactors consume more of the nuclear fuel, lowering operating costs and trimming ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Climate-Change Fervor Cools Amid Disputed Science, Defections
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-22/climate-change-fervor-cools-amid-disputed-science-defections.html
Bloomberg: U.S. Representative Bob Inglis went from climate-change skeptic to believer four years ago as opinion leaders from Al Gore to General Electric Co. chief Jeffrey Immelt called for laws to curb global warming. Today Inglis, a South Carolina Republican, is a convert who's watching the public become more doubtful. "I have many people saying, 'Now don't you see the problem with the science?'' said Inglis, who dismissed global warming until 2006, when scientists showed him evidence ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
REDD challenges show up in Sumatra
http://www.carbonpositive.net/viewarticle.aspx?articleID=1901
Carbon Positive: The practical challenges of successfully tackling deforestation and restoring forests in developing countries have been highlighted by problems facing an otherwise successful forestry programme in Indonesia. One of the country's model community forestry projects is now being compromised by illegal logging with action so far taken by authorities not enough to halt it even though laws exist to do so, the Jakarta Post reports. The community forest programme in areas of Lampung, on the ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Methane levels may see 'runaway' rise, scientists warn
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/methane-levels-may-see-runaway-rise-scientists-warn-1906484.html
Independent (UK): Atmospheric levels of methane, the greenhouse gas which is much more powerful than carbon dioxide, have risen significantly for the last three years running, scientists will disclose today -- leading to fears that a major global-warming "feedback" is beginning to kick in. For some time there has been concern that the vast amounts of methane, or "natural gas", locked up in the frozen tundra of the Arctic could be released as the permafrost is melted by global warming. This would give a ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Scientist admits climate errors were 'embarrassing'
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientist-admits-climate-errors-were-embarrassing-1906478.html
Independent (UK): One of President Barack Obama's leading scientific advisers has criticised the UN body overseeing the science of climate change, describing the errors and sloppy mistakes which have affected public confidence in climate science as "an embarrassment". Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said that the fundamental science of climate change had not been affected by the errors in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Indonesia: Unilever drops major palm-oil producer
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/unilever-drops-major-palmoil-producer-1906474.html
Independent (UK): The household goods giant Unilever has distanced itself from a major palm-oil producer after a BBC documentary filmed its staff clearing protected rainforest to make way for plantations producing the widely-used ingredient. In its second blacklisting of a palm-oil producer in three months, Unilever said it would avoid buying supplies originating from the Indonesian company Duta Palma, ensuring they did not end up in best-selling brands such as Dove soap and Flora margarine. The move ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Report reveals slow start for Obama's green home vision
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258219/slow-progress-green-homes
Business Green: Barack Obama's $5bn (Â£3.2bn) retrofitting scheme to improve the energy efficiency of more than half a million homes fell 98 per cent short of its target last year, according to an official report released last week. The green home makeover programme, part of last year's $787bn economic recovery plan, was supposed to create about 87,000 jobs insulating lofts and sealing drafty windows in 593,000 homes by 2012. But progress so far has been painfully slow, according to the report ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
The paperless office is possible, says JP Morgan
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258218/zero-paper-firms-possible-jp
Business Green: It may have been mooted ever since the computer was invented, but according to a new report from JP Morgan the paperless office is now technically and economically feasible. Released last week, the report states that the banking giant has helped 25,000 of its clients eliminate more than 24 million paper documents from operations in just 18 months by promoting digital processes. It added that the campaign, which urges firms to replace paper documents such as payslips, invoices ...

Tue, 23 Feb 10
Transport for London unveils UK's largest fuel cell
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258217/transport-london-unveils-uk
Business Green: Transport for London (TfL) hopes to cut its carbon emissions by 40 per cent and save Â£90,000 per annum on utility bills with a newly unveiled green power plant at its head office that includes the UK's largest hydrogen fuel cell. TfL and the London Development Agency (LDA), which is housed in the same building, also announced last week that they plan to sign up to the 10:10 energy efficiency campaign from this April. As a result, they have committed to reduce carbon emissions ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Governments 'Misjudging' Scale Of CO2 Emissions
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1825892/governments_misjudging_scale_of_co2_emissions/index.html?source=r_science
redOrbit: Policymakers in Europe and United States are markedly underestimating the changes needed to mitigate CO2 emission required to prevent dangerous climate change because they work in 'silos,' according to pioneering research Policy makers in Europe and United States are markedly underestimating the changes needed to mitigate CO2 emission required to prevent dangerous climate change because they work in 'silos', according to pioneering research. Dr Sebastian Carney, from The ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Number of storms may drop, but more could be intense, study says
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0221/Number-of-storms-may-drop-but-more-could-be-intense-study-says
Christian Science Monitor: The number of hurricanes, typhoons, and tropical storms globally is likely to either fall or remain flat over the course of the 21st century. But an increasing proportion of the storms are likely to hit the highest levels of intensity because of the projected effects of global warming, an international team of scientists concludes. However, it's unclear whether past trends in the number and intensity of storms – which some research suggested may be due to global warming – fall outside ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Study: Warming to bring stronger hurricanes
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100221/ap_on_sc/us_sci_warming_hurricanes
Associated Press: Top researchers now agree that the world is likely to get stronger but fewer hurricanes in the future because of global warming, seeming to settle a scientific debate on the subject. But they say there's not enough evidence yet to tell whether that effect has already begun. Since just before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005, dueling scientific papers have clashed about whether global warming is worsening hurricanes and will do so in the future. The new study ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Global Warming May Hurt Some Poor Populations
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1825876/global_warming_may_hurt_some_poor_populations/index.html?source=r_science
redOrbit: The impact of global warming on food prices and hunger could be large over the next 20 years, according to a new Stanford University study. Researchers say that higher temperatures could significantly reduce yields of wheat, rice and maize – dietary staples for tens of millions of poor people who subsist on less than $1 a day. The resulting crop shortages would likely cause food prices to rise and drive many into poverty. But even as some people are hurt, others would be helped out of ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/21/sea-level-geoscience-retract-siddall
Guardian: Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings. The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century. At the ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
United States: Sen. Mary Landrieu takes heat on climate change
http://www.wxvt.com/Global/story.asp?S=12019772
Associated Press: Sen. Mary Landrieu is being hammered on the airwaves for opposing the Environmental Protection Agency's effort to regulate greenhouse gases by using the Clean Air Act. Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, has pushed a resolution to stop federal limits on what some people consider climate-changing pollution from cars, power plants and factories. Catholics United, a progressive Catholic advocacy group, is running radio ads in New Orleans and Baton Rouge criticizing ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Maldives wants India's help in climate change battle
http://www.zeenews.com/news605701.html
Press Trust of India: Maldives on Saturday sought India's cooperation in accessing new technologies and data-gathering to tackle climate change and said it was working with other countries to launch an "Asian Initiative" to mitigate global warming, which threatens to submerge the island. Maldivian vice president Mohammaed Waheed Hassan said Asian countries should take a lead on seeking innovative and pragmatic solution to complement the implementation of UNFCCC processes in dealing with challenges related ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Bringing more green power to the people
http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article317764.ece
Times Alive: The success of the renewable energy industry needs a sustainable finance mechanism. Development finance institutions can play a strategic role in the development of the industry, which is Africa's hope in the quest for cleaner and more sustainable energy solutions. The Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) is part of initiatives to stimulate this industry. DBSA has signed a memorandum of agreement with the government of Finland on a new partnership programme on renewable energy ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Electric bikes on a roll in China
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iZWhbppjy_KtEwNap4PVgYg0bdDA
Agence France-Presse: Chinese commuters in their millions are turning to electric bicycles -- hailed as the environmentally-friendly future of personal transport in the country's teeming cities. Up to 120 million e-bikes are estimated to be on the roads in China, making them already the top alternative to cars and public transport, according to recent figures published by local media. "This is the future -- it's practical, it's clean and it's economical," said manufacturer Shi Zhongdong, whose ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Lord Mandelson ready to go nuclear
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article7034860.ece
Times (UK): LORD MANDELSON is close to sealing a Â£170m government-backed deal for a nuclear manufacturing facility just days after Corus mothballed its steel plant on Teesside. The business secretary has been leading talks between Sheffield Forgemasters, the engineering firm, and Westinghouse, the nuclear reactor maker, for months about arranging a financing package for a 15,000-tonne press that would be used to make pressure vessels and castings for nuclear reactors. Today these are made ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Drax may take green project out of UK
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article7034855.ece
Times (UK): A LANDMARK Â£2 billion green energy plant will be scrapped and moved abroad unless the government reverses its decision to limit subsidies, Dorothy Thompson, chief executive of Drax, has warned. Last year the FTSE 100 energy group announced a plan to build three power plants that would run not on coal but "biomass' such as wood chips and peanut husks. It would be the largest such scheme in the world, providing low-carbon power for more than 1.2m homes. The plants would create ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Honda makes a big drive into solar power
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/engineering/article7034894.ece
Times (UK): Honda, the automotive giant, set the land speed record for solar-powered vehicles when it won the World Solar Challenge in 1996. Its Dream racer, an odd-looking vehicle shaped like a cuttlefish, covered 1,870 miles across the Australian outback at an average speed of 56mph. It took just under 34 hours. For dedicated petrolheads it was not the most inspiring event. The Dream was covered with 4,500 photovoltaic tiles but was, as its named implied, not a commercial vehicle. Yet the ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
India: Green zone as carbon cure
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100221/jsp/calcutta/story_12132347.jsp
Telegraph (India): The Maidan, the lush expanse of green spread across 5sq km in the heart of the city, acts as the lungs of Calcutta. It is the biggest carbon sink in the metropolis, recently crowned the carbon capital of India. A carbon sink is a natural or manmade reservoir that stores carbon- containing chemical compounds for an indefinite period. Other than oceans, plants act as natural carbon sinks, absorbing huge amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, through photosynthesis. A recent ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Climate still right to to talk up insulation
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/climate-still-right-to-to-talk-up-insulation-20100220-ommi.html
Sydney Morning Herald: The government's program may have taken a battering but it's still worth promoting its considerable environmental benefits. THE insulation program really is a good thing. It's had an almighty amount of bad press and is typical of the Rudd government's love of announcing a policy without worrying too much about the details. It has now been one year since the scheme was announced as part of plans to keep the economy moving when it appeared the global financial crisis was ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
United States: Biofuel industry struggling in midstate
http://www.macon.com/local/story/1031620.html
Macon: Two years after Gov. Sonny Perdue called bioenergy "the cornerstone of the new Georgia,' many Middle Georgia biofuel projects have been delayed or canceled, and biodiesel refineries have stopped production. Biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel are renewable fuels made from organic sources such as crop wastes and animal fat. State and national politicians have voiced support for alternative fuels in recent years as a way to reduce pollution and dependence on foreign oil. With ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
U.S. turns to Sweden as model in nuclear waste storage
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-nuclear-waste21-2010feb21,0,2950379.story
LA Times: If the United States is at a loss over what to do about nuclear waste, it may be time to check out the Swedish model. A symposium at the annual meeting of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science in San Diego last week highlighted the Swedish power industry in gaining public support for a geological repository for high-level radioactive waste. The Scandinavian success comes in stark contrast to efforts in the U.S., where spent nuclear fuel rods have remained for ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Australia: Go to plan B to limit costs of climate paralysis
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/editorial/go-to-plan-b-to-limit-costs-of-climate-paralysis-20100221-oo05.html
Sydney Morning Herald: ISSUES of climate change and sustainability have been reduced to a political contest between two bulls in a paddock. Labor took its 2007 election mandate and, with little consultation with other parties on a policy for future decades, adopted a ''take it or leave it'' approach to the complexities of emissions trading, daring the Coalition to risk another election on the issue. The opposition aims to make the election about Kevin Rudd's ''big new tax''. The result is that Australians ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Senate weighs final push to move climate bill
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61K13620100221?type=politicsNews
Reuters: A last-ditch attempt at passing a climate change bill begins in the Senate this week with senators mindful that time is running short and that approaches to the legislation still vary widely, according to sources. "We will present senators with a number of options when they get back from recess," said one Senate aide knowledgeable of the compromise legislation that is being developed. The goal is to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists say ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Companies fund projects to preserve Amazon rain forest
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cover-side21-2010feb21,0,4502399.story
LA Times: Deep in the Amazon, in a village accessible only by boat, river dwellers for generations have survived off fish, sparse crops and nuts from the forest. Now they have a new resource: debit cards. "If money increases, then life gets better," said Deodato da Silva, 56, with a toothless grin as he peeled cassava under a mango tree. Families in Boa Frente receive $29 a month to spend in a town upriver. The village also has a new brick walkway, rainwater cisterns and a new ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Saving the Amazon may be the most cost-effective way to cut greenhouse gas emissions
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cover-amazon21-2010feb21,0,3432052.story
LA Times: An hour outside Manaus, the Amazon's biggest city, the blackened remains of a virgin forest smolder. Chain saws whine. And Jonas Mendes tosses logs, one after another, into his kiln. "I know it's wrong to cut down the trees," said Mendes, 48, sweat streaming down his neck and torso. "But I have no other way to make a living." Under a lean-to, his teenage son hacks charcoal into pieces with a machete. His wife fills 110-pound plastic bags that sell for $4 each. If the ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Asia-produced ozone making its way to U.S., study finds
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20100221/sc_mcclatchy/3431419
McClatchy Newspapers: A new study further bolsters concerns that pollution blowing across the Pacific Ocean from China and other rapidly developing Asian nations may swamp efforts to clean up the air in the Western United States and make it difficult for states and cities to meet federal standards. The study, based on 100,000 measurements over 25 years and a computer model tracking air-flow patterns, found that during the spring, ozone from Asia reaches Washington , Oregon , California and other states ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Biotech firm launches new fuel enzyme
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/biotech-firm-launches-new-fuel-enzyme-1906087.html
Independent (UK): A Danish biotechnology company on Tuesday launched a new enzyme which it said will make it possible to turn agricultural waste into biofuel at a competitive price. The breakthrough will allow the biofuel industry to produce cellulosic ethanol for less than two US dollars per gallon (around 37 euro cents per litre), Novozymes said in a statement. This cost would put the fuel on a par with petrol and conventional ethanol, the company said. Novozymes said the new enzyme, ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Geo-engineering: the planet's savior or untested danger?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100221/sc_afp/scienceclimateus
Agence France-Presse: US researchers are studying the steam from ships, condensation trails of airplanes and volcanic eruptions as they try to understand how and even if the fledgling science of geo-engineering could slow global warming. But where some researchers are forging ahead with the new science of tinkering with the atmosphere to change the climate, many others are warning that geo-engineering is untested, potentially dangerous and distracting the world from reducing greenhouse ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Acidified landscape around ocean vents foretells grim future for coral reefs
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/21/ocean-vents-coral-reefs
Guardian: Huge vents covering the sea-floor – among the strangest and most spectacular sights in nature – pour carbon dioxide and other gases into the deep waters of the oceans. Last week, as researchers reported that they had now discovered more than 50,000 underwater volcanic springs, they also revealed a new use for them – as laboratories for measuring the impact of ocean acidification on marine life. The seas are slowly being made more acidic by the increasing amounts of carbon ...

Mon, 22 Feb 10
Warmer planet temperatures could cause longer-lasting weather patterns
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100218125535.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29
ScienceDaily: Whether it's never-ending heat waves or winter storms, atmospheric blocking can have a significant impact on local agriculture, business and the environment. Although these stagnant weather patterns are often difficult to predict, University of Missouri researchers are now studying whether increasing planet temperatures and carbon dioxide levels could lead to atmospheric blocking and when this blocking might occur, leading to more accurate forecasts. "In this research, we're trying to ...

Sun, 21 Feb 10
Philippines Bracing for the Worst in Drought
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/world/asia/20phils.html
New York Times: A drought in the Philippines has destroyed millions of dollars worth of crops, reduced the country`s water supply and is threatening widespread blackouts as power companies contend with low water levels in hydroelectric dams, officials said Friday. "It is such a difficult situation because we have just survived the typhoons in October that destroyed 1.5 million metric tons of rice and countless basic infrastructure," Joel Rudinas, an under secretary at the Department of Agriculture, ...

Sun, 21 Feb 10
Climate science alive and well despite scandals: scientists
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100220/sc_afp/scienceclimatewarmingusbritain
Agence France-Presse: Climate science is alive and well despite the scandal of leaked emails in Britain and "glitches" in a report by the UN climate change panel, top scientists said Friday. "There's consensus that action is justified, indeed imperative to reduce the problem of a really serious long-term global effect on the climate," said Lord Martin Rees, president of the British academy of science, the Royal Society. "My personal take is the key bit of evidence is the rise in CO2 concentration ...

Sun, 21 Feb 10
Barack Obama's climate change policy in crisis
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/7278638/Barack-Obamas-climate-change-policy-in-crisis.html
Telegraph: The legal challenges and splits in the US climate consensus follow revelations of major flaws in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which declared that global warming was no longer scientifically contestable. Critics of America's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are now mounting a series of legal challenges to its so-called "endangerment finding" that greenhouse gases are a threat to human health. That ruling, based in part on the IPCC's work, ...

Sun, 21 Feb 10
Australia: Law firm warned Garrett about dangers of insulation program
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/law-firm-warned-garrett-about-dangers-of-insulation-program/story-e6frgczf-1225832377128
Australian: DAMNING legal advice to Peter Garrett's department last April warned that the government's $2.45 billion insulation program could lead to house fires and fraud. The advice was released yesterday, as the embattled Environment Minister finally axed the program -- which has been linked to four deaths and 87 house fires -- declaring that the safety risks had become unmanageable. The advice from top-tier law firm Minter Ellison outlined strategies to tackle serious risks in the ...

Sun, 21 Feb 10
Australia: Stop developers from influencing coastal planning, says Flannery
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/stop-developers-from-influencing-planning-says-flannery/story-e6frg6nf-1225832374197
Australian: ENVIRONMENTALIST and author Tim Flannery has called for a ban on property developers making political donations, saying some were seeking to influence coastal planning decisions and build homes that would be threatened by rising sea levels. Addressing a forum on how Australia's coastal communities needed to adapt to climate change, Professor Flannery said the nation's governments needed to look at reining in development. "Where property developers have undue influence on ...

Sun, 21 Feb 10
Indonesia: Delegates lack skills to defend indigenous people: Activists
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/02/20/delegates-lack-skills-defend-indigenous-people-activists.html
Jakarta Post: Indonesian delegates to international conferences lack the skills to defense indigenous people's rights and promote their role in climate change mitigation, activists say. They are antagonistic to indigenous groups challenging the official stance on climate change, activists added. "We frequently get asked why indigenous rights issues are not raised in international forums," Mina Susana Setra, an activist from the Alliance of Archipelagic Indigenous People (AMAN), said at a ...

Sun, 21 Feb 10
Climate-change deniers get too much help from Post story
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/19/AR2010021905037.html
Washington Post: The Feb. 15 front-page article "Missteps weigh on agenda for climate" was infuriating, a perfect example of why so many Americans still don't believe in the coming crisis of global climate change. Read closely, your article was technically accurate, but the language and placement of information gave the impression that the overwhelming scientific consensus on global climate change might be in danger. On the all-important front-page segment of the article -- after which many people ...

Sun, 21 Feb 10
Scientists hit by climate doubt fallout
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-hit-by-climate-doubt-fallout-1905414.html
Press Association: Fallout from a loss of public confidence in climate science is affecting other fields of research, a top US academic claimed. American opinion polls point to a general deterioration in people's faith in science, according to Dr Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences. It came after two major public relations setbacks for the global warming gurus. One was the "climategate" scandal involving leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the ...

Sun, 21 Feb 10
Don't let nation's snow blind you on climate change
http://www.freep.com/article/20100220/OPINION01/2200320/1322/Dont-let-nations-snow-blind-you-on-climate-change
Editorial: Buried under snow, Washington, D.C., and other mid-Atlantic regions have become showpieces for the folks who want to dispute the possibility of global warming. Not so much here, though, where southeast Michigan has tromped through a winter that has been extraordinarily ... average. At 30 inches as of Friday, measured snowfall is 2.3 inches below normal; temperatures are running a bit above normal, including this month, which is 0.6 degrees warmer than average to date. And then there's ...

Sun, 21 Feb 10
Science damaged by climate row says NAS chief Cicerone
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8525879.stm
BBC: Leading scientists say that the recent controversies surrounding climate research have damaged the image of science as a whole. President of the US National Academy of Sciences, Ralph Cicerone, said scandals including the "climategate" e-mail row had eroded public trust in scientists. His comment came at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Diego. Dr Cicerone joined other renowned scientists on a panel at the ...

Sun, 21 Feb 10
De Boer will be a hard act to follow
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,678968,00.html
Spiegel: "Copenhagen was not what I had hoped for," said Yvo de Boer about the 2009 Climate Change Conference. A climate agreement looks remote following the chaos of the Copenhagen summit and now United Nations climate chief Yvo de Boer has thrown in the towel. UN chief Ban Ki-moon is on the lookout for a suitable successor -- someone who won't be daunted by the mammoth task ahead. First things first: Yvo de Boer's resignation as head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat has nothing to ...

Sun, 21 Feb 10
Iceberg ahead
http://www.newsweek.com/id/233887
Newsweek: One of the most impressive visuals in Al Gore's now famous slide show on global warming is a graph known as the "hockey stick." It shows temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rising slowly for most of the last thousand years and turning steeply upward in the last half of the 20th century. As evidence of the alarming rate of global warming, it tells a simple and compelling story. That's one reason the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change included the graph in the summary of its ...

Sun, 21 Feb 10
DNR: More Wisconsin power plants violate Clean Air Act
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/feb/19/dnr-more-wis-power-plants-violate-clean-air-act/
Associated Press: At least five more state-run power plants are not in compliance with federal clean air regulations and need to install tighter pollution controls, Gov. Jim Doyle's administration acknowledged Friday. The Department of Administration said it would reduce coal use, use cleaner alternative fuels or otherwise limit emissions at plants that heat UW-Eau Claire, UW-La Crosse, UW-Oshkosh, UW-River Falls and Mendota Mental Health Institute. The acknowledgment means at least eight ...

Sun, 21 Feb 10
Solar water heaters come to the boil as cash incentive is dangled
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/feb/20/solar-water-heating-incentives
Guardian: Government incentives are about to make solar water heating panels a financial no-brainer for millions of households across Britain, as long as they have a south-facing roof. Two weeks ago Guardian Money outlined the attractiveness of electricity generating panels as a result of the introduction of "feed-in" tariffs, which will pay households for the extra energy they produce. However, the installation cost – at around Â£12,500 – will put many people off. Less off-putting are ...

Sun, 21 Feb 10
Climate change's impact on forests being measured via expanding tree trunks
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/19/AR2010021905405.html
Washington Post: Jess Parker hugs trees. In the woods of Anne Arundel County, he throws his arms around tulip poplars, oaks and American beeches, and holds them so tightly that his cheek presses into their bark. This is not some hiker on a lark: anybody, hopped up on campfire coffee and exercise endorphins, might hug a tree once. Parker, a forest ecologist at the Smithsonian Institution, has spent the past 22 years on a research project so repetitive, so time-consuming, that it impresses even ...

Sat, 20 Feb 10
Warmer seas may rob corals and rainforests of clouds
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18547-warmer-seas-may-rob-corals-and-rainforests-of-clouds.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=climate-change
New Scientist: Rising ocean temperatures might leave coral reefs in seriously hot water "" without clouds for protection. Five years ago Graham Jones and his team at Southern Cross University in Lismore, New South Wales, Australia, demonstrated that algae living in coral tissue produce a gas called dimethyl sulphide (DMS). When released into the atmosphere, DMS helps clouds form over coral reefs. Jones says that the clouds block sunlight and cool the sea. His team have now discovered that a ...

Sat, 20 Feb 10
Jordan enlists army in climate fight
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE61H0TH20100219?type=marketsNews
Reuters: Jordan has unveiled plans to help fight climate change, including upgrading its armed forces by 2020, an area usually overlooked in the global warming debate. Amman says its armed forces will seek to upgrade engines and old vehicles and use energy saving technologies. It did not give expected savings. Jordan is alone in mentioning a push to make military equipment more efficient among more than 30 developing countries giving details to the United Nations of their climate plans ...

Sat, 20 Feb 10
Climate sceptics are recycled critics of controls on tobacco and acid rain
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/feb/19/climate-change-sceptics-science
Guardian: In the weeks before and after the Copenhagen climate change conference last December, the science of climate change came under harsh attack by critics who contend that climate scientists have deliberately suppressed evidence -- and that the science itself is severely flawed. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global group of experts charged with assessing the state of climate science, has been accused of bias. The global public is disconcerted by these attacks. ...

Sat, 20 Feb 10
Drax shelves biomass plans, blames government
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258183/drax-shelves-biomass-plans
Business Green: The UK's largest coal-fired power station has reportedly suspended high-profile plans to begin burning biomass alongside coal, which would have slashed the plant's carbon emissions by 3.5 million tonnes a year. The Drax plant in North Yorkshire, which is the single largest source of carbon in the UK, has invested Â£80m installing co-firing technology that was expected to help cut its carbon emissions 17 per cent. However, in an interview with the Times today Drax chief executive ...

Sat, 20 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Second GM crop trial could go ahead this year
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7264846/Second-GM-crop-trial-could-go-ahead-this-year.html
Telegraph: Scientists in the Sainsbury Laboratory at the John Innes Centre have applied to start a three-year trial of blight-resistant GM potatoes in May. Around 400 potato plants will be sown in the plot at the Norwich Research Park behind high fences and with 24 hour security. It will mean Britain has two ongoing GM trials this year, despite the concern of environmental campaigners. Leeds University carried out a successful field trial last year and is expected to plant more GM ...

Sat, 20 Feb 10
Time to clean up: UN study reveals environmental cost of world trade
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/19/business-environmental-damage
Guardian: Political pressure is mounting to make businesses pay for the damage they cause to the environment, and the latest UN study assessing the impact of the world's biggest companies is almost certainly the first stage in a concerted campaign to calculate how much damage is caused, what it is worth and ultimately how it can be stopped. Another report due later this year, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, led by the economist and UN special adviser Pavan Sukhdev, will be another ...

Sat, 20 Feb 10
Australia: Beaches 'at risk' from climate change
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/beaches-at-risk-from-climate-change-20100219-olip.html
AAP: Iconic Australian beaches such as Bondi in Sydney and Bells Beach in Victoria are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, environmental scientist Tim Flannery says. Backing similar concerns from federal Climate Change Minister Penny Wong and the government's Coasts and Climate Change Council, Professor Flannery said it was clear that beaches could be seriously impacted in the wake of sea level rises of a metre or more over the next century. "It's hardly surprising that ...

Sat, 20 Feb 10
Cold truths about the Northeast's harsh winter
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/18/AR2010021803981.html
Washington Post: We're the nation that put a man on the moon, so we can't be stupid. We're just pretending, right? We're not really taking seriously the "argument" that the big snowstorms that have hit the Northeast in recent weeks constitute evidence -- or even proof -- that climate change is some kind of hoax. That would be unbelievably dumb. Yet there are elected officials in Washington who apparently believe such nonsense. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) had his family build an igloo near the Capitol ...

Sat, 20 Feb 10
Twin threats to fragile undersea colonies of Britain
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7032590.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=3392178
Times (UK): Marine life hotspots off the British coast are facing a double threat -- deep-sea trawling and acidification of the oceans -- a leading scientist warned yesterday. The rich biodiversity of seamounts (underwater mountains) and cold-water coral reefs, which science has only recently begun to understand, needs urgent protection, Jason Hall-Spencer, of the University of Plymouth, said. Seamounts are volcanic mountains that rise at least a kilometre above the sea bed. Together with ...

Sat, 20 Feb 10
United States: Vehicle Tests on Emissions Were Faked
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/science/earth/19inspect.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
New York Times: Dozens of auto repair shops and service stations in New York City, Long Island and Westchester County faked the results of emissions tests, giving nearly 21,000 cars and light trucks passing grades, state environmental officials said Thursday. Officials with the State Department of Environmental Conservation said they had issued citations to 40 of about 3,500 inspection sites in the region for granting inspection certificates for vehicles that were not tested. To pass the ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
Penguins in Antarctica to be replaced by jellyfish due to global warming
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/7263568/Penguins-in-Antarctica-to-be-replaced-by-jellyfish-due-to-global-warming.html
Telegraph: The results of the largest ever survey of Antarctic marine life reveal melting sea ice is decimating krill populations, which form an integral part of penguins' diets. The six-inch-long invertebrates, also eaten by other higher Southern Ocean predators such as whales and seals, are being replaced by smaller crustaceans known as copepods. These miniscule copepods, measuring just half a millimetre long, are too small for penguins but ideal for jellyfish and other similarly ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
UN climate chief quits, leaves talks hanging
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/climate_de_boer_quits
Associated Press: The sharp-tongued U.N. official who shepherded troubled climate talks for nearly four years announced his resignation Thursday, leaving an uncertain path to a new treaty on global warming. Exhausted and frustrated by unrelenting bickering between rich and poor countries, Yvo de Boer said he will step down July 1 to work in business and academia. With no obvious successor in sight, fears were voiced that whoever follows will be far less forceful than the skilled former civil ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
Second Hydrocarbon Boom Threatens the Peruvian Amazon
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100218092856.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29
ScienceDaily: A rapid and unprecedented proliferation of oil and gas concessions threatens the megadiverse Peruvian Amazon. The amount of area leased is on track to reach around 70% of the region, threatening biodiversity and indigenous people. This is one of the central conclusions from a pair of researchers from the Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA) of Universitat AutÃ²noma de Barcelona (UAB), and the Washington DC-based NGO Save America's Forests, who have, for the first time, ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
Israel talks solar with Egypt, biofuel with Jordan
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61H3RJ20100218?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: Israel has started talks with Egypt about possibly establishing a joint solar project in Egypt's Sinai Desert, Industry and Trade Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said on Thursday. Ben-Eliezer raised the idea during a recent visit to Egypt with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the minister told a renewable energy conference in the southern Israeli city of Eilat. According to Ben-Eliezer, the project would provide energy for both Israel and Egypt. "Egypt has the ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
The doubters do disservice to climate facts
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/the-doubters-do-disservice-to-climate-facts/article1472224/
Globe and Mail: The science of climate change is inexact. It is about uncertainty and probabilities. Based on the evidence, a criminal lawyer would not be able to prove that humans are responsible for potentially catastrophic climate change. But the evidence would certainly nail down a civil conviction. If the vast bulk of evidence says climate change is real and that humans are almost certainly to blame, why is the science being dismissed as exaggerated, unreliable or even fraudulent by the climate ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
EU chief urges 'rethink' on China, US climate dealings
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100218/sc_afp/euclimatewarming
Agence France-Presse: The head of the European Commission warned on Thursday that European leaders must "rethink" their approach to climate change negotiations with major partners such as China and the United Sates. In a letter to the 27 European Union leaders, Jose Manuel Barroso said a UN summit in Copenhagen in December at which bloc negotiations were outmaneouvred "showed us just how tough it will be" to convince the world to adopt similar policies. "Copenhagen was a reality check," Barroso said ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
Ocean geoengineering scheme no easy fix for global warming
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100216221305.htm
ScienceDaily: Pumping nutrient-rich water up from the deep ocean to boost algal growth in sunlit surface waters and draw carbon dioxide down from the atmosphere has been touted as a way of ameliorating global warming. However, a new study led by Professor Andreas Oschlies of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) in Kiel, Germany, pours cold water on the idea. "Computer simulations show that climatic benefits of the proposed geo-engineering scheme would be modest, with the potential ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
World's top firms cause $2.2tn of eco damage
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/18/worlds-top-firms-environmental-damage
Guardian: The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world's biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found. The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
Photosynthesis: A new source of electrical energy? Biofuel cell works in cactus
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100218092846.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29
ScienceDaily: Scientists in France have transformed the chemical energy generated by photosynthesis into electrical energy by developing a novel biofuel cell. The advance offers a new strategy to convert solar energy into electrical energy in an environmentally-friendly and renewable manner. In addition, the biofuel cell could have important medical applications. Photosynthesis is the process by which plants convert solar energy into chemical energy. In the presence of visible light, carbon dioxide ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
First Solar 4Q profits slightly higher
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100218/ap_on_bi_ge/us_earns_first_solar
Associated Press: First Solar Inc. on Thursday predicted the solar power industry will struggle through a rough 2010 as increasing supplies and dwindling European subsidies cut into profits. "Uncertainties remain" in the second half of the year, CEO Robert "Rob" J. Gillette told investors in a conference call. The nation's largest solar panel maker expects supplies of solar panels will exceed demand in the second half of 2010. Furthermore, silicon-based solar modules will get cheaper, making ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Drax power plant suspends plan to replace coal with greener fuel
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7032738.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=3392178
Times (UK): Britain's biggest power station has suspended its plan to replace coal with greener fuel, leaving the Government little chance of meeting its target for renewable energy. Drax, in North Yorkshire, which produces enough electricity for six million homes, is withdrawing a pledge to cut CO2 emissions by 3.5 million tonnes a year, or 17.5 per cent. The power station, which is the country's largest single source of CO2, has invested Â£80 million in a processing unit for wood, straw ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
Deforestation and emissions keep rising
http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/news-21539--16-16--.html
Caribbean Net News: Despite significant progress in some areas, the constant reduction of forest areas and the sustained increase of CO2 emissions in the region are impeding compliance with the seventh Millennium Development Goal (MDG7) on environmental sustainability, according to a report of United Nations organizations and agencies in Latin America and the Caribbean launched Wednesday in Mexico. The study "Millennium Development Goals: Advances in Environmentally Sustainable Development in Latin ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
Water levels at Malaysian dams falling
http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Malaysia/Story/A1Story20100218-199328.html
New Straits Times: The prolonged oppressive hot weather experienced in some parts of the country has been partly attributed to climate change. A weather expert said climate change will see the country experiencing extreme weather conditions. These are expected to peak between 2025 and 2050. During this period, the country may experience heavy showers and storms which could lead to flash floods. On the other extreme, hot spells may result in long droughts. The heat wave over the past few weeks has ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
UN Climate Chief Resigns
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/science/earth/19climate.html
New York Times: Yvo de Boer, the stolid Dutch bureaucrat who led the international climate change negotiations over four tumultuous years, is resigning his post as of July 1, the United Nations said on Thursday. In a statement announcing his departure, Mr. de Boer expressed disappointment that the December climate change conference of nearly 200 nations in Copenhagen had failed to produce an enforceable agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that climate scientists say are contributing to ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
Indian official warns against mixing climate, trade
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61H2Z220100218?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: A senior Indian trade official on Thursday warned there was a growing trend for countries to use unreasonable environmental and health standards as a covert form of protectionism, blocking trade already hit by global slowdown. Trade Secretary Rahul Khullar said countries were using anything from proposed cap and trade schemes to the level of toxins found in Indian shrimps to bring standards on goods into the World Trade Organization without proper international debate. The ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
16 'endangerment' lawsuits filed against EPA before deadline
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/02/17/17greenwire-16-endangerment-lawsuits-filed-against-epa-bef-74640.html
Greenwire: Industry groups, conservative think tanks, lawmakers and three states filed 16 court challenges to U.S. EPA's "endangerment" finding for greenhouse gases before yesterday's deadline, setting the stage for a legal battle over federal climate policies. Filing petitions yesterday were the Ohio Coal Association, the Utility Air Regulatory Group, the Portland Cement Association, the state of Texas and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Another was filed by a coalition that includes the ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
UN climate chief quits
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100218/sc_afp/unclimatewarmingquit
Agence France-Presse: Yvo de Boer, head of the UN's climate change convention, will resign as of July 1, his office announced on Thursday. De Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, will join the consultancy group KPMG as global advisor on climate and sustainability and work with a number of universities, the UNFCCC secretariat said. The announcement came nearly two months after the Copenhagen summit on climate change, seen even by its supporters as a ...

Fri, 19 Feb 10
Top U.N. Climate Official Resigning
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/18/science/AP-Climate-De-Boer-Quits.html?_r=5&partner=rss&emc=rss
New York Times: Top U.N. climate change official Yvo de Boer told The Associated Press Thursday that he was resigning after nearly four years, a period when governments struggled without success to agree on a new global warming deal. His departure takes effect July 1, five months before 193 nations are due to reconvene in Mexico for another attempt to reach a binding worldwide accord on controlling greenhouse gases. De Boer is known to be deeply disappointed with outcome of the last summit in ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
Tajikistan risks calamity over climate change: Oxfam
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gKmfuiLMG0sIDYyry4NgFJfBHvPA
Agence France-Presse: Tajikistan faces potentially calamitous food and water shortages unless action is taken to mitigate the effects of climate change, including rapidly retreating glaciers, Oxfam warned on Wednesday. The British charity said the Central Asian country's glaciers in the Pamir Mountains are in retreat and one and a half million people were already suffering food insecurity after years of drought. "Entire swathes of the rural population of Tajikistan have already suffered greatly in ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
Consumers fail at identifying green companies
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0217-hance_green.html
Mongabay: An article today in New Scientist shows that American consumers have a difficult time correctly identifying green companies, often confusing 'greenwashing' for true green credentials or not bestowing enough credit where credit is truly due. By combining data from Earthsense, which polled 30,000 Americans about on their views of 'green' companies, and Trucost which assesses companies global environmental impact, New Scientist was able to discover just how confused American consumers are when ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
Industry loses lawsuit over Alaska forest logging
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100217/ap_on_go_ot/us_tongass_logging
Associated Press: A federal judge has thrown out an industry lawsuit that could have led to more logging and road building in Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the nation's largest federal forest. The ruling by U.S. District Judge John Bates dismisses a lawsuit filed by an organization of Southeast Alaska civic and business leaders. The Southeast Conference had challenged a 2008 management plan for the Tongass developed by the Bush administration. The plan leaves about 3.4 million acres of the ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
Washington embraces Copenhagen accord
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2010/02/17/Washington-embraces-Copenhagen-accord/UPI-67551266417171/
United Press International: Washington looks forward to discussing the framework of a climate accord from a summit in Copenhagen despite controversial scientific data, officials said. World leaders gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark, for two weeks in December to find a comprehensive agreement to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol. Participants agreed to "take note" of an accord that relays a desire to limit global temperature increases. There was no concrete agreement on how to achieve that goal, ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
Yemen's water crisis eclipses al Qaeda threat
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61G21P20100217?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: Yemeni water trader Mohammed al-Tawwa runs his diesel pumps day and night, but gets less and less from his well in Sanaa, which experts say could become the world's first capital city to run dry. "My well is now 400 meters (1,300 feet) deep and I don't think I can drill any deeper here," said Tawwa, pointing to the meager flow into tanks that supply water trucks and companies. From dawn, dozens of people with yellow jerricans collect water from a special canister Tawwa has set ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
Q&A: "Sustainability Issues Are Economic Issues"
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50349
Inter Press Service: Fresh from a whirlwind tour of non-stop meetings at the World Economic Forum in Davos and a U.N .investor summit on climate risk attended by George Soros, Al Gore, and 500 of the world's most powerful institutional and private investors, Mindy Lubber has a full plate. Running around the globe promoting the cause of Ceres, she calls for corporations and financial communities to address the world's environmental and social challenges. A leading nonprofit coalition of investors, ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
South Korea mulls carbon tax
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258030/south-korea-mulls-carbon-tax
Business Green: South Korea has become the latest country to confirm it is considering imposing a carbon tax as it attempts to meet its target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions four per cent by 2020. Yoon Young-sun, deputy finance minister in charge of tax and customs, told the Korea Herald that the government was undertaking a review of whether or not a straight tax on carbon emissions could help it meet its emissions targets. "The government is reviewing all options, including a carbon ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Householders to get slop buckets in campaign against food waste
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Exclusive-Householders-to-get-slop.6075483.jp
Yorkshire Post: Every household in England could be issued with a slop bucket for food waste under proposals be announced "within weeks" as the Government declares war on Britain's waste mountain. Environment Secretary Hilary Benn told the Yorkshire Post "it does not make sense" to continue burying waste food, glass, cans, paper, tins or wood in the ground where they create harmful greenhouse emissions. A formal consultation will be launched on banning them from landfill sites altogether. Any ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
India: The sacred island that's shrinking away
http://www.wbur.org/npr/123733017
WBUR: Varun Pyke has come to the edge of the Indian island where he has spent all 50 years of his life, to recount the story of the riches that he has now lost. He gloomily jabs a finger out toward the water, pointing well beyond the gray waves lapping on the shores of the long, wide beach on which he is standing. A mile or two out, there lies what used to be his farm, explains Pyke, a wiry man in a vest and wraparound "lunghi." He says he had 5 acres, all now part of the ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
ConocoPhillips, BP and Caterpillar quit USCAP
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/16/AR2010021605543.html
Washington Post: ConocoPhillips, BP and Caterpillar have dropped out of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), the coalition of corporations and environmental groups that has been most prominent in pushing Congress to pass cap-and-trade legislation. The loss of three major companies has dealt a blow to the now 28-member group and further dims prospects for the cap-and-trade bill that passed the House last summer and is awaiting action in the Senate. ConocoPhillips and BP said that USCAP ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
British bishops urge 'carbon fast' for Lent
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123800603
National Public Radio: Church leaders in Britain are urging their flock to observe Lent by going on a "carbon fast." The say it will help the poor in places suffering from climate change. So, instead of giving up chocolate, Christians could eat by candlelight to consume less electricity.

Thu, 18 Feb 10
United States: Otter Creek coal debate brings passion, outbursts to Helena
http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/article_0311ec24-1b61-11df-9230-001cc4c03286.html
Billings Gazette: From high school students to labor organizers to one man who essentially told Gov. Brian Schweitzer to shut up, the hot-button issue of Otter Creek coal drew a packed and passionate crowd to the Capitol Tuesday morning. "For what price are you willing to sell a piece of your children's future?" Missoula Big Sky High School student Allison Lawrence asked the Land Board before it voted to lower the bidding price on the state's 570 million tons of coal in the Otter Creek Valley. "We are ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
Overpopulation and Climate Change
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/opinion/18iht-edwesting.html
New York Times: With the continuing failure of governments to reach agreements on combating climate change, the outlook for both humans and nature remains bleak. And nowhere is the failure more conspicuous than in the avoidance of the subject of population growth. Population is a double-barreled environmental problem -- not only is population increasing; so are emissions per capita. In 1970, when worldwide greenhouse gas emissions had just begun to transgress the sustainable capacity of the ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
Climate chief says he won't bow to pressure to resign
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-chief-says-he-wont-bow-to-pressure-to-resign-20100217-odzw.html
Sydney Morning Herald: THE United Nations climate change panel chief, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, says he has every intention of remaining in the job at least until the delivery of the next climate assessment report due in 2013-14. Responding to questions from the Herald, Dr Pachauri said he had never considered resigning over recent criticisms of him and the panel and has vowed to make its next assessment report as good as ''humanly possible''. Dr Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
Texas joins flurry of lawsuits challenging EPA carbon ruling
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258037/texas-joins-flurry-law-suits
Business Green: The in-tray for lawyers at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be close to over-flowing after the state government of Texas and a host of business lobby groups filed separate petitions in federal court challenging the agency's right to regulate carbon emissions. Just days after the US Chamber of Commerce launched legal action against the EPA's "endangerment finding", which gives it the authority to impose limits on carbon emissions under the existing Clean Air Act, the ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
Indonesia: Plantation inclusion will 'kill forests'
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/02/17/plantation-inclusion-will-%E2%80%98kill-forests%E2%80%99.html
Jakarta Post: Environmental activists have condemned the government's plan to classify oil palm plantations as forests, calling it a ploy to legalize forest conversions. Activists from Forest Watch Indonesia (FWI), Telapak Indonesia and the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) called on the Forestry Ministry to rescind the plan if the government was serious in efforts to safeguard the country's already threatened forests. FWI executive director Wirendro Sumargo said the plan ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
Norway outlines ways to reach deep 2020 CO2 cuts
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61G2Z320100217?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: Norway laid out ways to reach one of the world's toughest climate goals on Wednesday with measures to clean up sectors from oil to transport that it said would trim just 0.25 percent from the economy by 2020. The "Climate Cure," outlined by state-run agencies to guide deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, said costs would range up to 1,100 to 1,500 crowns ($188-$256) per tonne of avoided carbon dioxide emissions. That is way above a current price of about 13 euros ($17.85) per ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
Ecotricity wind farm claims hit by ad watchdog ban
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258047/ecotricity-wind-farm-claims-hit
Business Green: Having previously complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about the green claims of some of its larger rivals, wind energy supplier Ecotricity has itself fallen foul of the watchdog over some of its marketing statements. The ASA today banned a direct mail leaflet from the company relating to a proposed wind farm development in the Cotswolds, ruling that it breached advertising rules relating to truthfulness. The promotional material stated that the company had ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
Top 10 green iPhone apps
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2010/feb/17/top-10-green-iphone-apps
Guardian: With the climate science wars spilling onto the battleground of the Apple app store this month, the time is ripe to round up the best iPhone and iPod Touch apps with a green theme. Here are my top 10. Wildlife clearly has the most mature app "ecosystem", though there are also carbon calculator tools, green living tip compendiums and more. Surprisingly, there's a dearth of decent climate change apps beyond basic news aggregators and the environmental activism apps – TckTckTck's, for example – ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
How to undertake a climate risk assessment
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/analysis/2257997/undertake-climate-risk
Business Green: As a businessperson clicking to read this article you are already several steps ahead of your peers. Numerous surveys have shown that the majority of companies, both large and small, are still not far-sighted enough to take the assessment of climate-related risks seriously. There are exceptions of course, in industries such as insurance and to a lesser extent the utilities and public sectors, but climate change risk assessment is mainly confined to the back-burner. Smaller ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Renewable energy early adopters "betrayed" by clean energy cashback scheme
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257982/renewable-energy-early-adopters
Business Green: Early adopters of onsite renewable energy technologies such as micro wind turbines and solar panels have been left feeling "betrayed" by the government, after it emerged they will be unable to access the higher rate of support available through the new feed-in tariffs. Under the government's Clean Energy Cash Back scheme, which is to come into effect from April 1, businesses and households installing on-site renewable energy technologies will receive guaranteed payments from their ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
Tajikistan threatened by climate change, says Oxfam
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8519387.stm
BBC: Tajikistan has done little to contribute to climate change, but is among the countries most adversely affected by it, the charity Oxfam says. Extreme weather conditions and melting glaciers pose a great threat to its food security and social stability. Its government recognises the threats but lacks the money and infrastructure to cope with such an overwhelming phenomenon, Oxfam's report adds. It is based on interviews conducted last autumn with ordinary ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
EU study plumps for cap & trade in ship carbon
http://www.carbonpositive.net/viewarticle.aspx?articleID=1896
Carbon Positive: Imposing an emissions cap and trade scheme is the best option for curbing carbon emissions from shipping in EU waters, a report for the European Commission has found. CE Delft's study "Technical support for European action to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from international maritime transport" was commissioned to give direction to EU plans to act on maritime emissions in the absence of any global moves. The lack of any outcome at the UN's Copenhagen climate conference in December has ...

Thu, 18 Feb 10
Obama Steps Up Nuclear Investment For Climate Fight
http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/bm/newsworld.php?id=475896
Reuters: President Barack Obama announced $8.3 billion in loan guarantees on Tuesday to build the first U.S. nuclear power plant in nearly three decades, a move designed to help advance climate legislation in Congress. Obama, a Democrat trying to win Republican support for a bill to overhaul U.S energy practices, said the United States needed to increase its supply of nuclear power to meet its energy needs and fight climate change. The government backing will go to help Southern Co ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Tajikistan facing water shortages and climate extremes, report warns
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/17/tajikistan-water-shortages-climate-change
Guardian: It has been occupied by the Russians, the Mongols, the Turks, the Arabs and the Uzbeks, the Chinese, as well as Genghis Khan. But the ancient, mountainous state of Tajikistan, which has been at the crossroads of Asian civilisations for over a thousand years, is in danger of being overwhelmed by water shortages, rising temperatures and climate extremes. A report released today by Oxfam details fast-rising temperatures, melting glaciers in the Pamir mountains, increased disease, ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Global Weirding Is Here
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/opinion/17friedman.html
New York Times: Of the festivals of nonsense that periodically overtake American politics, surely the silliest is the argument that because Washington is having a particularly snowy winter it proves that climate change is a hoax and, therefore, we need not bother with all this girly-man stuff like renewable energy, solar panels and carbon taxes. Just drill, baby, drill. When you see lawmakers like Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina tweeting that "it is going to keep snowing until Al Gore cries ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Companies leave US climate coalition
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100216/pl_afp/unclimatewarminguscompany
Agence France-Presse: Three major US companies said Tuesday they were leaving a coalition pushing for action on climate change, dealing a potential fresh blow to landmark legislation to cut carbon emissions. The companies -- oil groups ConocoPhillips and BP America and equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. -- said they backed efforts for a green economy but felt that proposed laws were unfair to them. The firms said they would not renew membership in the US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a coalition ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
The Green Politics Behind Obama's Boost for Nuclear Power
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1964571,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
Time Magazine: One of President Obama's signature ideals is the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. He's spent diplomatic capital trying to negotiate a new nuclear-arms-control agreement with Russia, and in his Nobel Peace Prize speech in December, he called atomic-weapons control "the centerpiece of my foreign policy," asking all nuclear countries to work toward disarmament. But when it comes to using nuclear power at home, Obama evidently feels a lot friendlier. Speaking at a job-training ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Decrease in fog threatens California's s sequoias: study
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/decrease-in-fog-threatens-californias-s-sequoias-study-1901837.html
Independent (UK): California's coastal fog has decreased significantly over the past 100 years, potentially endangering coast redwood trees dependent on cool, humid summers, according to a new study made public Monday. The study by University of California, Berkeley, scientists said it was unclear whether this phenomenon was part of a natural cycle or the result of human activity. But it warned the change could affect not only the redwoods, but the entire redwood ecosystem. "Since 1901, ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Virginia challenges U.S. greenhouse gas curbs
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/16/AR2010021605709.html?wprss=rss_nation
Washington Post: Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) on Tuesday filed paperwork attacking the legal underpinnings of an Obama administration effort to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, joining a crowd of political conservatives and business groups with similar objections. Cuccinelli sent a petition to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, asking the agency to reconsider its finding in December that greenhouse gases pose a danger to public health by contributing to climate change. That ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Canada: Ottawa to offset Olympic emissions
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/bureau-blog/ottawa-to-offset-olympic-emissions/article1469956/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheGlobeAndMail-Front+%28The+Globe+and+Mail+-+Latest+News%29
Globe and Mail: Rock stars do it. Movie stars too. And now the Canadian government is jumping on the "carbon footprint" bandwagon, funding greenhouse gas emission reductions to offset its environmental impact in support of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Environment Minister Jim Prentice announced today that Ottawa will spend $150,000 on activities to offset the estimated 7,600 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions created by federal bureaucrats working on the Olympics. "Canada is proud to be ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
US to build nuclear power plants
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8518670.stm
BBC: The president said the project would create "thousands of construction jobs over eight years and then hundreds of well-paid jobs" when the facilities become operational. He added that it was "only the beginning" of efforts to develop a new generation of safe and clean energy-efficient technologies, which would help fight climate change. The two new reactors will be built at an existing nuclear facility in Georgia. Southern Company said the work would create about 3,000 ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Texas, Skeptics Seek Court Review of EPA's 'Endangerment' Finding
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/02/16/16greenwire-texas-skeptics-seek-court-review-of-epas-endan-12442.html
New York Times: The state of Texas and a coalition of free-market and global warming skeptic groups are asking a federal appeals court today to review U.S. EPA's finding that greenhouse gases threaten human health and welfare. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples announced that the state is filing a petition (pdf) with the U.S. Court of Appeals challenging EPA's endangerment finding. "Texas is aggressively seeking its future in ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Biofuels Policy Fails To Achieve Goals
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1823684/biofuels_policy_fails_to_achieve_goals/index.html?source=r_science
redOrbit: US biofuel policies will fail to achieve the intended environmental, energy and agricultural goals, warns an article in the journal Applied Economics Perspectives and Policy (AEPP). "A key feature of biofuels policy is the combination of mandate and subsidies that cause severe adverse effects," said Harry de Gorter, co-author of the article and Professor in the Department of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. "The analysis of biofuel policies is shown to be unique ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Obama earmarks $8 bln for first nuclear plant in 30 yrs
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100216/sc_afp/uspoliticsenergynuclearobamaannounce
Agence France-Presse: President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced $8 billion in loan guarantees for two reactors at the first new nuclear power plant on US soil in nearly 30 years. "We?ll have to build a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in America," Obama said on a visit to a training center focusing on clean energy and low carbon energy technologies outside Washington. "We are announcing roughly eight billion dollars in loan guarantees to break ground on the first new nuclear ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Barack Obama gives green light to new wave of nuclear reactors
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/16/barack-obama-nuclear-reactors
Guardian: Barack Obama pressed the start button on the first new construction of nuclear reactors in a generation today, announcing $8.3bn in loan guarantees for the company building two. Obama, in a visit to a job training centre in Maryland, said the loan guarantees to the energy giant, Southern Company, would help launch the first wave of construction of new reactors in nearly 30 years as well as advance his energy and climate agenda. "Even though we have not broken ground on a new ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Texas challenging EPA's greenhouse gas finding
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100216/ap_on_bi_ge/us_texas_vs_epa
Associated Press: Gov. Rick Perry and other top Texas officials on Tuesday announced a legal challenge to the federal government's finding that greenhouse gases are dangerous to people, claiming the ruling was based on flawed science. The EPA in December issued an "endangerment" finding about carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, setting the stage for future rules restricting such emissions. Texas -- the which leads the nation in greenhouse gas emissions and is frequently at odds with the ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Obama gives $8 billion to new nuke plants
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Obama-gives-8-billion-to-new-cnnm-580277241.html?x=0&.v=1
CNN: President Obama announced Tuesday over $8 billion in federal support for two new nuclear power plants in Georgia, setting the stage for what could be the first completed reactor in this country in over three decades. The money, coming in the form of loan guarantees, is going to build two new reactors at Southern Company's Vogtle plant facility, located some 170 miles east of Atlanta. In announcing the grant at an electrical worker's union hall in Maryland, Obama used to ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Nuclear power aids White House climate push
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61F3RR20100216
Reuters: The White House is working hard to advance climate change legislation in Congress and hopes an announcement to jumpstart the nuclear power industry will appeal to Republican skeptics, a top adviser to President Barack Obama said. Obama will announce on Tuesday an $8.3 billion loan guarantee to help Southern Co build two reactors, a move that the administration hopes will invigorate the nuclear power industry after nearly three decades in which no new plants have been ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
GM calls for urgent increase in ethanol fuel stations
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257966/gm-calls-urgent-increase
Business Green: General Motors (GM) will today wade into the controversial debate surrounding the US biofuel industry, warning that without an urgent expansion in the country's fledgling network of ethanol fuelling stations, millions of dollars of investment in biofuel technologies risk becoming "stranded". GM vice chairman Tom Stevens will later today address a meeting of the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), where he is expected to call on the government to increase support for the development of ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Does the Huge China-Australia Coal Deal Square With the Copenhagen Accord?
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/02/16/16climatewire-does-the-huge-china-australia-coal-deal-squa-78639.html
ClimateWire: Environmental activists are attacking a $60 billion deal that will keep Chinese power stations supplied with Australian coal for at least the next two decades. Under the agreement announced last week, the Australian coal and iron ore mining company Resourcehouse will build a new mining complex to give China Power International Development 30 million tonnes of coal annually for the next two decades. Resourcehouse Chairman Clive Palmer called it the "biggest-ever export contract" for ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Obama unveils plan to build nuclear plant
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100216/us_nm/us_climate_nuclear
Reuters: President Barack Obama announced $8.3 billion in loan guarantees on Tuesday to build the first U.S. nuclear power plant in nearly three decades in a move designed to help advance climate legislation in Congress. Obama, a Democrat, said the United States needed to increase its supply of nuclear power to meet its energy needs and fight climate change. The loan guarantee will go to help Southern Co. build two reactors at a plant in the state of Georgia. "Even though we've ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
North East plans giant wind turbine test rig
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257953/huge-wind-turbine-test-rig
Business Green: A facility to test offshore wind turbines prior to deployment is to be built at Blyth in Northumberland as part of plans released today by the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) that will further enhance the region's status as one of the world's leading hubs for wind energy technologies. The Institute said the rig will be large enough to accommodate the central hub and blades of some of the world's largest turbines and will boast input power of up to 15MW. Two companies, ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Indonesia: Palm estate is forest, says ministry
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/02/16/palm-estate-forest-says-ministry.html
Jakarta Post: The Forestry Ministry is drafting a decree to include oil palm plantations in the forest sector to comply with international standards in mitigating climate change. The ministry said it believed the policy would not lead to massive forest conversion into palm oil plantations as many critics feared. "By definition, oil palm plantations will be defined as forest, but its management will be under the Agriculture Ministry," head of research and development at the ministry, Tachrir ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Science blogger finds errors in Met Office climate change records
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7028362.ece
Times (UK): A science blogger has uncovered a catalogue of errors in Met Office records that form a central part of the scientific evidence for global warming. The mistakes, which led to the data from a large number of weather stations being discarded or misused, had been overlooked by professional scientists and were only discovered when the Met Office's Hadley Centre made data publicly available in December after the "climategate' e-mail row. Although the errors do not alter the bigger ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Indonesia may open more forests to palm oil
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/business/53276-indonesia-may-open-more-forests-to-palm-oil
Jakarta Globe: As Indonesia looks for ways to meet its ambitious emissions-reduction targets, the Ministry of Forestry yesterday said it plans to issue a new regulation that would allow commercial forestry companies to plant crops such as palm oil in new concession areas. The ministry said the "mixed forest" regulation was intended to help companies survive the current low timber prices and would enable them to grow biofuel crops to help alleviate the country's energy shortage. Environmental ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
South Africa: Greenhouse targets no burden on business
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=93733
SAPA: SA'S proposed targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions, if they are adopted, will not place an extra burden on the country's business sector, Environment Minister Buyelwa Sonjica said today. "[I want] to allay the fear of business... This is not an extra burden on business," she told MPs in the National Assembly during debate on last week's state of the nation address. Sonjica repeated that South Africa had committed itself to "potential mitigation actions" leading to a 34% ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
United States: Hampton Roads in 'dire straits' because of global warming predictions, says expert
http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-local_globalwarming_0216feb16,0,741774.story
Daily Press: Sobering evidence of how storms will have an increasingly devastating effect on the Peninsula as the century progresses is outlined in a new model by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. "This is an important issue for us to get moving on," Eric Walberg, physical and environmental planning administrator with the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, told the Hampton City Council last week. The hydrodynamic model produced by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
'Carbon fast' an option for observers of Lent
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-green-lent-0216.artfeb16,0,7865655.story
Hartford Courant: Frankly, some people may be tired of giving up chocolate, vodka, fried chicken or poker for the 40 days of Lent. But sacrificing a lightbulb, or higher temperature on the thermostat? Maybe finally spurning plastic bags for reusable organic cotton totes? As many of the Christian faith begin Lent on Wednesday, one option -- the "carbon fast" -- could be as basic as unplugging your cellphone charger when not in use. Repentance, reflection and self-discipline are supposed to be ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
United States: Postal Service asks four firms to help it deliver in a green way
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-electric-vehicle16-2010feb16,0,6036373,full.story
LA Times: mail era, the U.S. Postal Service seems hardly plugged in -- but at least it wants its vehicles to be. The postal service has awarded contracts to several California firms to develop a prototype postal van that would run on electricity. The contracts are part of the service's effort to determine whether it can convert some, or even all, of its 142,000 delivery vans to electricity. Such a project would be worth billions of dollars to the companies that win production ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Bangladesh: Government against climate aid via World Bank
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88122
IRIN: Bangladesh has voiced strong opposition to plans by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) to provide close to US$100 million in climate change aid - because of its delivery through the World Bank. "We are strongly against the World Bank's involvement in handling the climate fund. DFID should give the money straight to the Bangladesh government rather than giving it to the World Bank to disburse it," Food and Disaster Management Minister Abdur Razzaque told IRIN on 16 ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Kenya to tap Rift Valley's geothermal gold mine
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257910/kenya-tap-rift-valley
Business Green: Long-standing plans to establish Kenya's Rift Valley as one of the world's largest providers of geothermal energy received a major boost last week, with the news of an ambitious plan by national utility giant the Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen). The $1.3bn (Â£830m) project, to develop 280MW of geothermal power by 2013, is expected to be backed by the World Bank and will more than double KenGen's geothermal capacity. The company told Reuters that the "scope of the ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
GM seeking more U.S. ethanol fueling stations
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61F1OQ20100216?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FbusinessNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Business+News%29
Reuters: General Motors Co's growing output of vehicles capable of running on ethanol-gasoline blends won't help cut polluting emissions or U.S. dependence on foreign oil until a slim network of stations dispensing ethanol is greatly expanded, GM Vice Chairman Tom Stevens said. Half of GM's vehicle lineup will be able to run on a mix of 15 percent gasoline and 85 percent ethanol, called E85, by the 2012 model year, said Stevens, GM's vice chairman for global product operations. "GM is ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
U.N. to Mobilise Funds for Developing Nations
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50331
Inter Press Service: After countries failed to reach a binding agreement on greenhouse gas emissions at the crucial Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last December, the United Nations moving forward to enforce a pledge to help developing countries cope with the worst impacts. The launch of the Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing follows the Copenhagen Accord, the final agreement of last year's meet, part of which states that 100 billion dollars per year will be needed to help developing ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Forest footprints
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8516931.stm
BBC: Consumers around the globe are not aware that they are "eating" rainforests, says Andrew Mitchell. In this week's Green Room, he explains how many every-day purchases are driving the destruction of the vital tropical ecosystems. When was the last time you had a "rainforest picnic"? Or even, perhaps, an "all-day Amazon breakfast"? Next time you are in a supermarket picking up a chicken sandwich for lunch, or fancy tucking in to a hearty breakfast of eggs, sausage and bacon ...

Wed, 17 Feb 10
Nigeria: Shell faces fresh criticism over Niger Delta environmental record
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257943/shell-improve-environmental
Business Green: Shell has today faced further criticism over its its environmental record in the Niger Delta with the release of a new report arguing that the company could and should take action to limit its impact on the region. The report, coordinated by the Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility, comprises five case studies carried out by NGOs operating in Nigeria, each of which levels fresh criticism at Shell's activities in the country. The report recommends Shell stop gas ...

Tue, 16 Feb 10
Obama to announce loan help for nuclear power
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100216/ts_nm/us_usa_nuclear_loan
Reuters: The Obama administration, advancing nuclear power use to help cut greenhouse gas emissions, will announce on Tuesday an $8.3 billion loan guarantee to help Southern Co build two reactors, a government official told Reuters. The reactors are in line to be among the first nuclear generating facilities to win U.S. government approval in three decades. The official said on Monday that President Barack Obama would announce the loan guarantee after he tours a jobs training center in ...

Tue, 16 Feb 10
Norway plans the world's most powerful wind turbine
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/norway-plans-the-worlds-most-powerful-wind-turbine-1900807.html
Independent (UK): Norway plans to build the world's most powerful wind turbine, hoping the new technology will increase the profitability of costly offhsore wind farms, partners behind the project said Friday. With a rotor diametre of 145 metres (475 feet), the 10-megawatt protype will be roughly three times more powerful than ordinary wind turbines currently in place, Enova, a public agency owned by Norway's petroleum and oil industry ministry, said. The world's largest wind turbine, 162.5 ...

Tue, 16 Feb 10
REDD won't save forests from palm oil: Study
http://www.carbonpositive.net/viewarticle.aspx?articleID=1894
Carbon Positive: Using carbon markets to prevent deforestation in developing countries is unlikely to provide a high enough economic incentive to save tropical forests, a study has found. The European Commission's Science for Environment Policy unit quotes a study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, which compares the returns from clearing tropical forest for palm oil plantations with the likely carbon costs if such emissions were priced. The study, "Preserving the World's ...

Tue, 16 Feb 10
Rate of ocean acidification the fastest in 65 million years
http://www.physorg.com/news185444922.html
Physorg: A new model, capable of assessing the rate at which the oceans are acidifying, suggests that changes in the carbonate chemistry of the deep ocean may exceed anything seen in the past 65 million years. The model also predicts much higher rates of environmental change at the ocean's surface in the future than have occurred in the past, potentially exceeding the rate at which plankton can adapt. The research, from the University of Bristol, is reported in this week's issue of ...

Tue, 16 Feb 10
An Ominous Warning on the Effects of Ocean Acidification
http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2241&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+YaleEnvironment360+%28Yale+Environment+360%29
Yale Environment 360: The JOIDES Resolution looks like a bizarre hybrid of an oil rig and a cargo ship. It is, in fact, a research vessel that ocean scientists use to dig up sediment from the sea floor. In 2003, on a voyage to the southeastern Atlantic, scientists aboard the JOIDES Resolution brought up a particularly striking haul. They had drilled down into sediment that had formed on the sea floor over the course of millions of years. The oldest sediment in the drill was white. It had been formed by the ...

Tue, 16 Feb 10
United States: UCLA Develops Synthetic Gene Designed to Capture CO2 Emissions
http://e360.yale.edu/content/digest.msp?id=2274&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+YaleEnvironment360+%28Yale+Environment+360%29
Yale Environment 360: Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles have created a synthetic "gene" they say can capture carbon dioxide emissions. Omar M. Yaghi, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, has developed thousands of so-called crystal sponges that absorb gases and have proven effective in the lab at storing CO2. The synthetic crystals, which code information in a "DNA-like manner," have nanoscale-sized pores that Yaghi says allow molecules to go in and out. The latest results, which ...

Tue, 16 Feb 10
United Kingdom: 'Climategate' scientist speaks out
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100215/full/news.2010.71.html?s=news_rss
Nature: Phil Jones holds himself defensively, his arms crossed tightly in front of his chest as if shielding himself from attack. Little wonder: Jones has spent the past three months being vilified for his central role in what is now called 'climategate'. Jones was director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, when, last November, more than 1,000 e-mails and documents were illegally obtained from the university and posted on the Internet. Their ...

Tue, 16 Feb 10
Weather model shows where California will burn
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527473.300-weather-model-shows-where-california-will-burn.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
New Scientist: THIS year, southern California will burn - you can count on it. But we may now be able to predict which areas will be worst hit, thanks to this map. It was compiled by Max Moritz's team at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the first to take into account fire-friendly weather. Wild fires cause millions of dollars of damage each year in California and elsewhere. Fire researchers typically identify risk areas by looking for flammable vegetation and features like canyons that ...

Tue, 16 Feb 10
Copenhagen may be dead
http://www.news24.com/Content/SciTech/News/1132/7516a1edda514a42b969693cbfb28775/14-02-2010-12-33/Copenhagen_may_be_dead
News 24 South Africa: Less than two months after it was hastily drafted to stave off a fiasco, the Copenhagen Accord on climate change is in a bad way, and some are already saying it has no future. The deal was crafted amid chaos by a small group of countries, led by the US and China, to avert an implosion of the UN's December 7 - 18 climate summit. Savaged at the time by green activists and poverty campaigners as disappointing, gutless or a betrayal, the Accord is now facing its first test in the ...

Tue, 16 Feb 10
Illegal logging rampant in Peru
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0215-peru.html
Mongabay: A survey of 78 forestry concessions in Peru found that 46 (59 percent) were in breach of their concession contracts, reports the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO). Monitoring conducted by Peru's Agency for Supervision of Forest Resources and Wildlife (OSINFOR) during 2009 found that many forestry companies were violating their operating plans by overharvesting timber. OSINFOR president Richard Bustamante warned that some concessions could be canceled and firms ...

Tue, 16 Feb 10
Tropical timber imports to the U.S. plunge
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0215-timber_imports.html
Mongabay: U.S. tropical lumber imports plunged by nearly half between 2009 and 2008, reports the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO). Citing data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, ITTO lists a 70 percent decline in volume for Acajou d'Afrique, 55 percent for Ipe, 54 percent for Sapelli, and 48 percent for Mahogany. The slowdown is thought to be largely attributable to the decline in the U.S. housing market and the tepid economy. ITTO says that tropical lumber supply and ...

Tue, 16 Feb 10
Donald Trump: Climate campaigner Al Gore 'should be stripped of Nobel Peace Prize after record snow storms'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1251283/Donald-Trump-Climate-campaigner-Al-Gore-stripped-Nobel-Peace-Prize-record-snow-storms.html
Daily Mail: Donald Trump has called for Al Gore to be stripped of the Nobel Peace prize he was awarded for campaigning on climate change. The billionaire tycoon said record-breaking snow storms proved that the former US Vice-President was wrong on global warming, and that policies aimed at tackling carbon emissions were harming America's economy. His comments follow a string of high-profile attacks on climate change advocates. Scientists have been forced to defend themselves after ...

Tue, 16 Feb 10
Greenland: Fjords Contribute to Melting of Glaciers
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/science/16obmelt-in-sci-09-52.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
New York Times: Greenland`s glaciers are melting faster than they used to, contributing to the rise of sea levels worldwide. While warmer atmospheric temperatures thin all the glaciers from above, scientists have wondered if warmer waters are also melting the many glaciers that flow into the fjords. Two studies published in Nature Geoscience provide evidence that this is the case. In one study, Fiammetta Straneo of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and colleagues looked at water ...

Tue, 16 Feb 10
United Kingdom: How I made the Met Office admit its climate-change data was wrong
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7028418.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=3392178
Times (UK): The history of science is filled with stories of amateur scientists who made significant contributions. In 1937 the American amateur astronomer Grote Reber built a pioneering dish-shaped radio telescope in his back garden and produced the first radio map of the sky. And in the 19th century the existence of dominant and recessive genes was described by a priest, Gregor Mendel, after years of experimentation with pea plants. But with the advent of powerful home computers, even the ...

Tue, 16 Feb 10
The Continuing Climate Meltdown
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703630404575053781465774008.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Wall Street Journal: It has been a bad--make that dreadful--few weeks for what used to be called the "settled science" of global warming, and especially for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is supposed to be its gold standard. First it turns out that the Himalayan glaciers are not going to melt anytime soon, notwithstanding dire U.N. predictions. Next came news that an IPCC claim that global warming could destroy 40% of the Amazon was based on a report by an environmental pressure ...

Tue, 16 Feb 10
Australia: Zero emissions possible - at $40bn a year
http://www.theage.com.au/national/zero-emissions-possible--at-40bn-a-year-20100214-nzh4.html
Age: AUSTRALIA could move to 100 per cent renewable energy within a decade if it spent heavily on cutting-edge solar thermal and wind technology, according to an analysis released as part of a community bid to redirect the flailing climate policy debate. The shift would require the annual investment of up to $40 billion - roughly 3.5 per cent of national GDP - with the largest chunk going towards solar thermal power plants that used molten-salt heat storage to allow power generation to ...

Mon, 15 Feb 10
Climate scientists admit fresh error over data on rising sea levels
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/14/benny-peiser-houghton-ipcc-apology
Guardian: Climate experts have been forced to admit another embarrassing error in their most recent report on the threat of climate change. In a background note – released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last night – the UN group said its 2007 report wrongly stated that 55% of the Netherlands lies below sea level. In fact, only 26% of the country does. The figure used by the IPCC included all areas in the country that are prone to flooding, including land along rivers ...

Mon, 15 Feb 10
'Double-counting' of loft insulations undermines carbon dioxide savings
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/14/loft-insulations-carbon-dioxide-emissions
Guardian: Tens of thousands fewer home lofts have been insulated under the government's Â£2.8bn energy efficiency programme than companies such as British Gas have claimed, the Observer has learnt. Experts claim that double-counting means that up to 9.8m tonnes of carbon dioxide that the scheme is supposed to have saved is "illusory". Energy companies have also saved millions because subsidising loft installation is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to meet their obligations under the ...

Mon, 15 Feb 10
United Kingdom: War at home: The local eco-warriors making a big noise
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/war-at-home-the-local-ecowarriors-making-a-big-noise-1895457.html
Independent (UK): Most of us enjoyed a good night's sleep last night. A warm bed, soft pillow, that sort of thing. But for the past six months, during the harshest winter in decades, protesters against the proposed Mainshill opencast mine in South Lanarkshire have been sleeping in treehouses and tunnels on the site, risking their wellbeing, or at least frostbitten fingers. Last week the eviction process began. Somewhat reassuringly, after the recent cold spell, the activists were given a medical once-over to ...

Mon, 15 Feb 10
Climate Change Facts
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/opinion/l14climate.html
New York Times: To the Editor: Re "U.N. Climate Panel and Its Chief Face a Siege on Their Credibility" (front page, Feb. 9): That fossil fuel industry-financed forces are continuing their campaign to undermine the United Nations` Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its chief scientists should not distract us from what we know about our climate. Two physical findings stand out. In the last 50 years the world ocean has accumulated 22 times as much heat as has the atmosphere ...

Mon, 15 Feb 10
United States: Big gift for local climate efforts
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2010/02/14/barr_foundation_giving_50_million_to_efforts_fighting_climate_change/
Boston Globe: The state`s largest foundation will give $50 million to Boston-area nonprofits and efforts that fight climate change - one of the biggest gifts in recent years to that cause - in a campaign that marks a strategic shift for an organization that has never before publicized its charitable works. Over the next five years, the $1 billion Barr Foundation, the principal charitable vehicle for the famously private Amos Hostetter Jr. and his wife, Barbara, will give multiyear grants of ...

Mon, 15 Feb 10
Environment, agriculture get larger campaign play
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/legislature/stories/DN-enviroag_14tex.ART.State.Edition1.4bd19e5.html
Dallas Morning News: Environmentalists' favorite buzz words -- green energy, biofuels, sustainable development -- are fast becoming the jargon of agriculture workers and the politicians who support them. A strengthening link between environmental awareness and agricultural development is reshaping the role of Texas agriculture commissioner. It's also redefining how commissioner candidates campaign and who is taking notice, even as early as the Democratic primary. "The farmer and environmentalist ...

Mon, 15 Feb 10
Climate change will lead to war, vets warn
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/northwest/story/1069842.html
News Tribune: An energy policy that relies on green energy is good for the nation's national security as well as the environment, a coalition of military veterans said Friday in Olympia. Continued dependence on foreign oil puts U.S. soldiers at risk in unstable, oil-rich countries around the world and helps fund terrorist activities, members of Operation Free said during one of the stops on the Veterans for American Power Tour of 16 states. Rolling on to the state Capitol Campus in a 45-foot ...

Mon, 15 Feb 10
Washington's snowstorms, brought to you by global warming
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021103895.html
Washington Post: You want to hear my winter weather story? No, really, I know you do. The cross-country ski race I've been training for, set for today high in the Green Mountains: cancelled, lack of snow. Meanwhile, across the continent, backhoes and helicopters are moving snow down British Columbia's Cypress Mountain in an attempt to cover the Olympic ski courses, and technicians are burying cooling pipes beneath the moguls to keep them from melting. Some climate-conscious jokers put out a ...

Sun, 14 Feb 10
Climate change threatens tiny pika at Rocky Mountain National Park
http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20100213/UPDATES01/100213006/1002/NEWS01/Climate+change+threatens+tiny+pika+at+Rocky+Mountain+National+Park
Coloradoan: The tiny pika, the chirping denizen of high alpine talus slopes throughout the Rockies and in Rocky Mountain National Park, won't be protected under the Endangered Species Act even as some pika populations disappear because of climate change. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Feb. 5 that the pika, a relative of the rabbit, will not make the endangered species list because some populations continue to thrive even as others are declining. Biologists at Rocky Mountain ...

Sun, 14 Feb 10
Canada: Tar sands snubbed by 'green' retailers
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/763791--tar-sands-snubbed-by-green-retailers
Toronto Star: Two trendy North American retail chains have washed their hands of Alberta's high-carbon oil sands, as environmentalists intensify a campaign to demonize the Canadian fuel. Organic food retailer Whole Foods Markets Ltd. and home furnishings chain Bed Bath and Beyond are believed to be the first major companies to stipulate to their fuel suppliers that they don't want gasoline refined from crude oil coming from the Alberta oil sands. Oil sands production is criticized by ...

Sun, 14 Feb 10
Algae to solve the Pentagon's jet fuel problem
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/13/algae-solve-pentagon-fuel-problem
Guardian: The brains trust of the Pentagon says it is just months away from producing a jet fuel from algae for the same cost as its fossil-fuel equivalent. The claim, which comes from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) that helped to develop the internet and satellite navigation systems, has taken industry insiders by surprise. A cheap, low-carbon fuel would not only help the US military, the nation's single largest consumer of energy, to wean itself off its oil addiction, ...

Sun, 14 Feb 10
U.N. climate panel admits Dutch sea level flaw
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61C1V420100213?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: The U.N. panel of climate experts overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level, according to a preliminary report on Saturday, admitting yet another flaw after a row last month over Himalayan glacier melt. A background note by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said a 2007 report wrongly stated that 55 percent of the country was below sea level since the figure included areas above sea level, prone to flooding along rivers. The United Nations has ...

Sun, 14 Feb 10
Rapid melting of record snowfall could harm waterways, aquatic life
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/12/AR2010021205233.html
Washington Post: To nature, snow is potential. It is rainwater, waiting for a cue. So for now, scientists can guess at the environmental effects of historic back-to-back blizzards: Snowed-in cars don't pollute, snow-drooped trees could temporarily change the architecture of local forests. But the full impact of this two-act Snowmageddon won't be clear until the stuff melts. If those 30-plus inches of snow turn to water too fast, the water could pour unfiltered into the Potomac and Anacostia ...

Sun, 14 Feb 10
Global warming's snowball fight
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/12/AR2010021203908.html
Washington Post: The back-to-back snowstorms in the capital were an inconvenient meteorological phenomenon for Al Gore. "It's going to keep snowing in D.C. until Al Gore cries 'uncle'," Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) exulted on Twitter. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) posted photos on Facebook of "Al Gore's New Home" -- a six-foot igloo the Inhofe family built on Capitol Hill. "Where is Al Gore?" taunted Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). "He has not been seen since the snow and ...

Sun, 14 Feb 10
Microsoft co-founder Gates tackling climate change
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100213/sc_afp/usitinternetenergyenvironmentgatested
Agence France-Presse: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has broken from philanthropic work fighting poverty and disease to take on another threat to the world's poor -- climate change. "Energy and climate are extremely important to these people," Gates told Friday a TED Conference audience packed with influential figures including the founders of Google and climate champion Al Gore. "The climate getting worse means many years that crops won't grow from too much rain or not enough, leading to ...

Sun, 14 Feb 10
Obama nuke plant loan reflects new energy strategy
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100213/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_nuclear_plant
Associated Press: The Obama administration's planned loan guarantee to build the first nuclear power plant in the United States in almost three decades is part of a broad shift in energy strategy to lessen dependence on foreign oil and reduce the use of other fossil fuels blamed for global warming. President Barack Obama called for "a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants" in his Jan. 27 State of the Union speech and followed that by proposing to triple loan guarantees for new nuclear ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Despite rain, California still fighting over water
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61C01320100213?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: California has been deluged with rain and snow this winter, but its epic tug-of-war over water rages on, this time in the form of a plan by U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein to divert more water to the state's farmers. Feinstein has infuriated environmental activists, fishing groups and even fellow California Democrats by drafting federal legislation that would ease Endangered Species Act restrictions to allow more water to be pumped out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta for ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
UN climate change panel unveiled
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/02/12/UN-climate-change-panel-unveiled/UPI-19181266015369/
United Press International: British and Ethiopian officials lead a panel called to help find financing for developing countries' fight against climate change, the United Nations said. The Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing will be charged with developing practical proposals to boost short- and long-term financing for mitigation and adaptation strategies in developing countries, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday in a news release issued from New York. Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Biomass energy gets tax break love
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32872.html
Politico: The biomass energy lobby sees itself as the Rodney Dangerfield of renewables, never getting the same love -- or tax breaks -- as the new boys on the block: wind, solar and geothermal. No matter that its backers include billionaire Sam Zell or the powerful Fanjul sugar family in Florida. "Biomass gets no respect,' reads a recent edition of Power magazine; federal policy has seated the industry in "the caboose of the [energy tax credit] gravy train.' But when the Senate Finance ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Food crisis looms, warn scientists
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/02/12/2816954.htm
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: A new report by Australian researchers claims far more needs to be done if we're to feed the estimated 9 billion people who will be living on the planet by 2050. The report, by Professor Mark Tester and Professor Peter Langridge of the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics at the University of Adelaide, appears today in the journal Science. "The simple fact is while food production has increased by 32 million tonnes a year, an annual increase of 44 million tonnes a ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
U.S. to offer 37 million offshore acres for oil drilling
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61B2R520100212?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: The U.S. Interior Department on Thursday issued the final terms for leasing almost 37 million acres in the central Gulf of Mexico to energy companies so they can drill for oil and natural gas. The area to be leased may hold up to 1.3 billion barrels of crude oil and 5.4 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to the department, which is also shortening the time that companies would have to develop the tracts. Lease Sale 213 involves about 6,958 tracts spread over 36.9 million ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
British university orders climate science review
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61B34920100212?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: The British university embroiled in an email row ordered a review Thursday of its climate researchers' work after accusations they distorted or hid evidence to support the case for man-made global warming. The University of East Anglia said external investigators will check papers published by its Climatic Research Unit, one of the world's leading sources of data on changing temperatures. The center, which has contributed to U.N. climate reports, is already under investigation ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Is Ethanol from Corn Bad for the Climate?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ethanol-corn-climate
Scientific American: The Obama administration last week gave the green light to corn ethanol as a low-carbon renewable fuel – in apparent contradiction to California's declaration last summer that the biofuel's carbon footprint was too big to help the state mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Regulators and policy experts insist there's no conflict: Both rules match the science; it's simply a matter of what year you start counting emissions. Indeed, timing is everything: California looked at current ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Norway joins race to build world's largest wind turbine
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257827/world-largest-wind-turbine
Business Green: The race to develop the world's largest wind turbine is heating up after a coalition of Norwegian companies announced they plan to develop a giant 10MW turbine, bringing them into direct competition with US-based Clipper Windpower and its high-profile Britannia Project to build a similar scale 10MW turbine. The Norwegian turbine is being developed as part of the Sway project, a joint-initiative between Norwegian engineering and energy firms Statoil, Lyse, Inocean and ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Targets pledged at Copenhagen fall short
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/12/copenhagen-carbon-emission-pledges
Guardian: The pledges made by governments resulting from the Copenhagen climate conference are nowhere near enough to hold global temperatures to the summit's agreed goal of no more than a 2C rise, researchers have calculated. The results, which are the most rigorous analyses yet made of pledges submitted to the UN last month, will increase pressure on rich countries to make far deeper cuts in negotiations over the next year. Researchers from the Sustainability Institute, the MIT Sloan School ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Climate sceptics denounced by Brown as he launches climate change group
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/12/gordon-brown-climate-change-fundraising
Press Association: Prime minister Gordon Brown today accused climate change sceptics of going "against the grain" of scientific evidence, as he launched a new group to raise billions of pounds for the fight against global warming. Mr Brown will co-chair the United Nations High Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing with Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi. The group aims to raise $30bn (Â£19bn) over the next three years - rising to $100bn annually by 2020 – to help poor countries limit ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Government Plans 'National Climate Service'
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123651132&ft=1&f=1025
National Public Radio: A century after the Weather Bureau began to offer regular forecasts, the government is proposing the creation of a similar service focused on climate change and its effects. NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco discusses the proposed "National Climate Service."

Sat, 13 Feb 10
UN panel to mobilize climate change funding
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hKOKVOyAqm4a3vfxXbztQrasGq1g
Agence France-Presse: UN chief Ban Ki-moon set up a high-level advisory panel Friday to mobilize funding to help developing nations battle climate change. The panel, to be led by Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Ethiopian counterpart Meles Zenawi, aimed "to mobilize the resources for climate change pledged at the recent climate change conference in Copenhagen," Ban told reporters. The group, evenly balanced between developed and developing nations, "will develop practical proposals to ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
United States: As politicians waffle on climate change, glaciers exit Glacier National Park
http://coloradoindependent.com/47382/as-politicians-waffle-on-climate-change-glaciers-exit-glacier-national-park
Colorado Independent: As Denver Mayor and Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Hickenlooper waffles on climate change, the U.S. Geological Society is reporting that Montana`s Glacier National Park will be glacier-less in a decade. Scientists had previously estimated that the park`s signature glacier-grade ice fields would last until 2030. Glacier National Park, where glaciers are an endangered species. "The 2020 date is new. Dan Fagre, glacier-melting expert [for the USGS], took a close look at ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Panel aims to find 'new and innovative' ways to fund climate adaptation
http://www.alertnet.org/db/an_art/60714/2010/01/12-164116-1.htm
Reuters: A new high-level panel of world leaders, bankers and finance and development experts will have until December to find ways to quickly raise billions of dollars to help developing nations deal with the impact of climate change, the U.N. Secretary-General said on Friday. The panel, led by Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is tasked with rapidly finding "new and innovative" ways of raising money to meet pledges made under the Copenhagen ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Utah delivers vote of no confidence for 'climate alarmists'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/12/utah-climate-alarmists
Guardian: Carbon dioxide is "essentially harmless" to human beings and good for plants. So now will you stop worrying about global warming? Utah's House of Representatives apparently has at least. Officially the most Republican state in America, its political masters have adopted a resolution condemning "climate alarmists", and disputing any scientific basis for global warming. The measure, which passed by 56-17, has no legal force, though it was predictably claimed by climate change ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Do we want to ignore climate change and risk losing all this?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/geoffrey-lean/7223753/Do-we-want-to-ignore-climate-change-and-risk-losing-all-this.html
Telegraph: Guess who just produced this pronouncement on how humanity is heating up the planet? "The basic science of the greenhouse effect is sound (ie more anthropogenic CO2 means more warming).' Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the increasingly embattled chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? Nope. Professor Phil Jones, under cross-examination from the inquiries into the notorious emails from his Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia? Try again. Ed Miliband, ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Danes less fearful of climate change now than two years ago
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100212/sc_afp/denmarkclimatewarmingunenvironmentipcc
Agence France-Presse: Residents of Denmark, the host country of December's UN climate change summit, are less afraid of the impacts of climate change now than they were two years ago, according to a poll published Friday. A Gallup poll published in Friday's Berlingske Tidende daily indicated 60 percent of those surveyed feared the consequences of climate change. That proportion was 75 percent in 2008. The poll was conducted on 1,186 Danes over 18 years of age on February 9 and 10. Quoted in ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
UK, Ethiopia to head climate funding effort
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61B43E20100212?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: Britain and Ethiopia will head a new United Nations panel that aims to secure $100 billion every year by 2020 to help developing nations cut emissions and adapt to climate change, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday. He told a news conference the group would work with governments, central bankers and finance experts to find ways to cooperate with public and private companies in raising money pledged at climate talks in Copenhagen in December. Although the summit ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Snow Sparks Climate Change Debate In US
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/environment/Snow-Sparks-Climate-Change-Debate-In-US-84256697.html
Voice of America: Unprecedented blizzards in the eastern United States have triggered renewed debate about climate change, with some critics using the record snow to attack the concept of global warming. Some experts have been quick to point out that the extreme weather is consistent with a pattern of climate change. Record-breaking snows in the U.S. capital have proponents and skeptics of climate change in a heated debate. Many critics of the theory of global warming say the recent blizzards in ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
UN taps prime ministers to seek new climate money
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/12/AR2010021203243.html
Associated Press: The U.N. chief tapped the prime ministers of Britain and Ethiopia on Friday to lead the hunt for hundreds of billions of dollars that nations pledged to contribute this decade for dealing with climate change. The announcement is an attempt to fulfill a key part of the nonbinding Copenhagen Accord aimed at directing money from rich nations to poorer nations facing rising sea levels, melting glaciers and other effects of climate change. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Climate data 'not well organised'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511701.stm
BBC: Phil Jones, the professor behind the "Climategate" affair, has admitted some of his decades-old weather data was not well enough organised. He said this contributed to his refusal to share raw data with critics - a decision he says he regretted. But Professor Jones said he had not cheated the data, or unfairly influenced the scientific process. He said he stood by the view that recent climate warming was most likely predominantly man-made. But he agreed that two ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Obama to announce nuke plant loan
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100212/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_nuclear_plant
Associated Press: President Barack Obama next week will announce a loan guarantee to build the first nuclear power plant in the United States in almost three decades, an administration official said Friday. The two new Southern Co. reactors to be built in Burke, Ga., are part of a White House's energy plan that administration officials hope will draw Republican support. Obama's direct involvement in announcing the award underscores the political weight the White House is putting behind its effort to ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
UN Gets Rolling on Copenhagen Accord, Forms Finance Panel
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/02/12/12greenwire-un-gets-rolling-on-copenhagen-accord-forms-fin-88171.html
Greenwire: The United Nations moved today to implement a key component of the Copenhagen Accord, announcing the launch of a high-level panel to design and oversee a $100 billion annual fund for climate mitigation and adaptation financing in poor countries. The Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing must design a mechanism to channel cash from developed nations to projects aimed at protecting agriculture and infrastructure from rising seas and weather extremes. The group will also propose ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Climate change sceptics 'playing Russian roulette with planet'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7221110/Climate-change-sceptics-playing-Russian-roulette-with-planet.html
Telegraph: Prof Peter Liss, acting director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), said sceptics were endangering the lives of generations to come by making unsupported claims. "The evidence is hugely for there being substantial climate change due to man's activities and if you want to argue against that case you have to produce some evidence." Prof Liss spoke after the Norwich-based UEA launched an independent review of the CRU~s work. An international ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Glaciers: Changing at a less than glacial pace
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1963878,00.html
Time Magazine: Glaciers are thought to change at, well, a glacial pace. Certainly that has been true throughout the planet's history. The current ice age -- known as the Pilocene-Quatenary glaciation, which began 2.6 million years ago -- has witnessed some 20 cycles of glacial (freezing) and interglacial (thawing) periods, with ice sheets advancing and retreating completely on roughly 100,000-year time scales. But scientists are unsure exactly what prompts the shifts in cycles. In glacial periods, ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Questions about biofuels' environmental costs could alter Europe's policies
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/business/energy-environment/12biofuel.html
New York Times: A top European farm official has suggested that yet-to-be-released studies by the European Commission could be used to "kill" heavily promoted and subsidized biofuels by focusing on their total environmental impact. The suggestion, written in the margins of internal correspondence seen by The International Herald Tribune, could foreshadow a further retreat from the biofuel-friendly policies that the commission once called crucial in the fight against climate change. The ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
United Kingdom: How to make your school more eco-friendly
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/12/carbonfootprints-carbon-emissions
Ecologist: With the carbon footprint of English schools already tipping 9.4m tonnes CO2, many campaigns to "green" schools are already underway. But reducing carbon is not the only goal. School buildings, food, waste – even school curriculum should all support a connection to, and appreciation for, the environment. The success stories so far prove that in many cases it is down to one or two dedicated teachers, parents or students to make a positive difference. School food The Food ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Wales revs up plans for M4 "hydrogen highway"
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257791/wales-revs-plans-m4-hydrogen
Business Green: The government has today announced its latest Low Carbon Economic Area (LCEA), unveiling plans to establish Wales as a major hub for the development of alternative fuel technologies and build so-called "hydrogen highway" along the M4 that will provide refueling infrastructure for zero emission vehicles. The award of the LCEA status is intended to establish Wales as the lead area in the UK for the development of alternative fuels and was kick started by the announcement that 15 ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Models of sea level change during ice-age cycles challenged
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100211163129.htm
ScienceDaily: Theories about the rates of ice accumulation and melting during the Quaternary Period -- the time interval ranging from 2.6 million years ago to the present -- may need to be revised, thanks to research findings published by a University of Iowa researcher and his colleagues in the Feb. 12 issue of the journal Science. Jeffrey Dorale, assistant professor of geoscience in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, writes that global sea level and Earth's climate are closely linked. ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Chemists create synthetic 'gene-like' crystals for carbon dioxide capture
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100211141144.htm
ScienceDaily: UCLA chemists report creating a synthetic "gene" that could capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming, rising sea levels and the increased acidity of oceans. The research appears in the Feb. 12 issue of the journal Science. "We created three-dimensional, synthetic DNA-like crystals," said UCLA chemistry and biochemistry professor Omar M. Yaghi, who is a member of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA and the UCLA-Department ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Climate science in the spotlight may not be such a bad thing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/feb/12/climate-science-spotlight
Guardian: So climate change is in the news. But now the media is discussing stolen emails, hacking, the shifting Chinese weather stations, how to extract and draw graphs of temperatures from tree ring studies, and how, how on earth, you get hundreds of authors to agree on almost 3,000 pages of reports. Climate science in the spotlight may not be a bad thing. Though as a climate scientist, the lights seem pretty bright and rather dazzling. I'm relieved they've not yet been on me. So what on ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Becoming vegetarian 'can harm the environment'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7219223/Becoming-vegetarian-can-harm-the-environment.html
Telegraph: It has often been claimed that avoiding red meat is beneficial to the environment, because it lowers emissions and less land is used to produce alternatives. But a study by Cranfield University, commissioned by WWF, the environmental group, found a substantial number of meat substitutes -- such as soy, chickpeas and lentils -- were more harmful to the environment because they were imported into Britain from overseas. The study concluded: "A switch from beef and milk to highly ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
A home from home: saving species from climate change
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/12/saving-species-climate-change
Guardian: Picture an elephant in the wild, making its stately progress across the Âsavannah, tall grass bending Âbeneath its feet. Now Âtransplant that image to the American prairie. In one of the most startling new ideas to emerge about Âclimate change, a leading conservation biologist is calling for plants and wildlife facing extinction to be saved simply by picking them up and moving them. Camille Parmesan, a butterfly Âbiologist at the University of Texas at Austin, has been monitoring the ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Climate change investigator resigns over interview defeding researchers
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7219070/Climate-change-investigator-resigns-over-interview-defeding-researchers.html
Telegraph: Philip Campbell stood down after it was disclosed he gave an interview in which he defended the conduct of researchers at University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Civil servant Sir Muir Russell is look at whether there is any evidence of manipulation or suppression of data, examine CRU's policies for dealing with information and research findings and whether it complied with university rules on Freedom of Information requests. The inquiry was set up after ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Jobs bill could fuel controversial US biodiesel business
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257773/jobs-bill-fuel-controversial
Business Green: The controversial US biodiesel industry could get a major boost from Congress if a draft bill released this week makes it to the president's desk. The draft bill proposes the reintroduction of the tax credit of $1 per gallon on alternative fuels which lapsed last year, and would deny a tax credit on so-called "black liquor" - a form of fuels derived from making pulp or paper. According to Reuters reports, companies have previsouly qualified for the tax break unfairly by mixing ...

Sat, 13 Feb 10
Investors urge companies to come clean over water risks
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257778/investors-urge-companies-come
Business Green: The vast majority of companies operating in water intensive industries are failing to provide investors with adequate information on the water-related risks they face and in many cases have little idea how their supply chains could be impacted by water shortages. That is the stark conclusion of a major new report from sustainable investor group Ceres, financial services firm UBS and news agency Bloomberg, which yesterday warned many firms operating in water intensive industries have ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
US climate skeptics seize on blizzard
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iyD8aBpbSoWH4rUEJkdr6cD-_ZAQ
Agence France-Presse: US opponents of climate change action are seizing on a record snowfall in Washington in hopes of killing legislation to curb carbon emissions, which already faced uncertain political prospects. Environmentalists have launched a swift counter-attack, pointing out that Olympics host Vancouver is facing a dearth of snow and saying the extreme weather may in fact offer proof, not a rebuttal, of dangerous climate change. With Washington and other eastern cities digging out from the ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
India skeptical of US pledge to combat climate change
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0211/India-skeptical-of-US-pledge-to-combat-climate-change
Christian Science Monitor: India and China have released more details about how they intend to combat global climate change. From India's perspective, the ball is now in the United States' court. For years, international climate talks have been caught in a stalemate. The US claims that India and China are not being asked to sacrifice; the two emerging powers say the US, as a major polluter, must cut back so others can be lifted from poverty. India and China's recent commitments to action put pressure on ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
What Does Winter Weather Reveal about Global Warming?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=what-does-winter-weather-reveal-abo-10-02-11
Scientific American: No single weather event proves or disproves the fundamental science of climate change, but extreme weather is what scientists expect from global warming. David Biello reports Snowpocalypse. Snowmageddon. Whatever your preferred appellation, this week's winter storms brought misery to denizens of the U.S. East Coast and prompted some at least to question the scientific theory of climate change. After all, shouldn't global warming deliver us from ice, snow and cold? The site of ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Rethinking renewable energy strategy
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100211121810.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29
ScienceDaily: Researchers at Queen's University suggest that policy makers examine greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions implications for energy infrastructure as fossil fuel sources must be rapidly replaced by windmills, solar panels and other sources of renewable energy. Their recommendations could be used to help policy makers restructure renewable energy production in a way that will optimize greenhouse gas emission reductions. "The energy industry is expanding so rapidly that the dynamic ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Northeast starts snow clean-up; costs mount
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6144K120100211?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: The U.S. Northeast began to dig out after two blizzards in a week brought the region to a standstill with record snowfalls, creating a multimillion-dollar mess for cash-strapped cities and states. From Washington to Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, cities began to clean up and airports tried to reopen runways for flights possibly later on Thursday but residents were advised to stay home while crews tried to clear streets. Airlines, already facing economic troubles, were ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Wind can power regeneration
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/feb/11/wind-turbine-job-regeneration
Guardian: Unemployment stands at 2.5 million people. Even though the economy is (marginally) picking up, we can't waste the opportunity to generate new jobs and income that the expansion of wind power in the North Sea represents. That's why EmbraceMyPlanet, the campaign for renewables, welcomes Nick Clegg's plans for linking the regeneration of disused shipyards to creating green jobs and supporting windfarms. The Lib Dem leader has outlined an initiative to convert old shipyards into wind ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Asian markets test cap-and-trade waters
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257758/cap-trade-spreads-east
Business Green: Hopes that the US and Australia could soon adopt carbon cap-and-trade schemes appear to be fading by the day, but that has not stopped other markets across Asia piloting emissions trading initiatives in recent weeks. According to Reuters reports, the northern Chinese city of Tianjin this week became the latest to trial a form of emissions trading, launching a small-scale energy intensity trading scheme on Tuesday with three pilot sales. Citigroup Global Markets and Gazprom ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Hacked climate emails inquiry will not 'audit scientific conclusions'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/11/hacked-emails-inquiry
Guardian: The inquiry set up by the University of East Anglia into thousands of emails from its climate scientists published online will ignore the question of whether or not global warming is caused by human activity, the chair of the inquiry team said today. Sir Muir Russell said it was not the review panel's job to "audit the Climate Research Unit's [CRU] scientific conclusions". Instead the inquiry, which will report in the spring, would limit itself to questions about how the scientists ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Indonesia to tackle climate change on its own
http://www.eco-business.com/news/2010/feb/11/indonesia-tackle-climate-change-its-own/
Eco-Business: Head of the Indonesian Council on Climate Change Rachmat Witoelar said he does not think that another round of negotiations to be held in December in Mexico will lead to consensus on a climate change deal. Jakarta, 11 February - Indonesia`s leading climate change advisor said yesterday he thinks global consensus on climate change cannot be reached, but hinted at a national strategy currently underway that would allow Indonesia to move forward on tackling the effects of environmental ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Scandal university climate science to be probed
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7023520.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=3392178
Times (UK): Claims made by the University of East Anglia that man-made emissions are causing global warming are to be reassessed by a team of independent scientists. The university today announced a new inquiry into reports published by its Climatic Research Unit after acknowledging that public confidence in climate science had been undermined by the leaking of e-mails. A separate inquiry, chaired by Sir Muir Russell, is already underway into the e-mails themselves and allegations that ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Climate envoy says China tepid on climate deal
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6185KS20100211?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: A senior U.S. official on Tuesday criticized China and other leading developing countries for trying to weaken the Copenhagen Accord to fight global warming and raised the prospect that a fuller international pact may be not be struck by year's end. A United Nations-sponsored climate change meeting in Copenhagen in December fell short of its intended goal of producing a binding treaty, but did take some nonbinding steps toward further controlling greenhouse gas emissions blamed for ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Australia: Garrett's $50m roofing debacle
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/garretts-50m-roofing-debacle/story-e6frg6n6-1225828979078
Australian: TAXPAYERS will spend up to $50 million on home safety inspections after federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett bowed to industry and political pressure to deal with potentially deadly faults in his $2.45 billion program. Fending off calls for his resignation, Mr Garrett ordered 37,000 safety audits of homes with foil insulation over fears sloppy installers had caused roofs to become electrified. The serious safety concerns to householders follow the deaths of four ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
United States: Logging helps the planet?
http://www.sfbg.com/2010/02/10/logging-helps-planet
San Francisco Bay Garden: The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), an environmental group with offices in San Francisco, filed a series of lawsuits last month challenging the state's approval of 15 logging plans it says do not adequately address greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts. But the loggers take the opposite stance, arguing that their trees capture carbon and lessen global warming. The logging plans submitted by Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) involve more than 5,000 acres of forests in the ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
United States: Romanticism undone: Invasive species, global warming taking toll on plants at Thoreau's Walden Pond
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=romanticism-undone-invasive-species-2010-02-10
Scientific American: Henry David Thoreau famously catalogued the plants around Walden Pond more than 150 years ago, and the information he gathered then is helping to illustrate the effects of invasive species and global warming on the area today. According to a paper published January 26 in the journal PLoS ONE, climate change has given invasive and nonnative species a leg up in the Walden Pond area, and native species are the losers. (A nonnative species is considered invasive if it has the potential to ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
United States: Los Angeles eyes Owens Lake for huge solar project
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61A04M20100211
Reuters: An old battleground of California's water wars could turn into one of the largest solar farms in the world, with thousands of shiny black and blue panels mounted across the desiccated, salty white crust of Owens Lake. That's the plan by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP), the largest public utility in the United States. The project may eventually generate 3 to 5 gigawatts of power -- enough for 10 percent of California's power supply -- and include other ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Drive to delay California climate law may be stuck in neutral
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/02/11/11climatewire-drive-to-delay-calif-climate-law-may-be-stuck-5461.html
ClimateWire: An election-year push to suspend California's climate change law appears to be struggling amid rumors that supporters are having trouble raising enough money to gather the signatures needed to place the issue on the November ballot. The brains behind the initiative in the state Assembly, Republican Dan Logue, recently told the Los Angeles Times that his campaign had $600,000 available to fund the signature-gathering operation, which requires 433,000 signatures by April 16 to qualify ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Biofuels in Europe
http://www.environmentreport.org/story.php?story_id=4871
Environment Report: Farmers are finding they can make more money selling crops for energy than for food. A third of all corn grown in the US gets turned into ethanol. It's tough to balance the need for energy and food when millions around the world die from starvation each year. Still, farmers are reconsidering their roles - including in Germany. In the second part of our three-part series on biofuels in Europe, Sadie Babits meets with one German farmer who wants to make the switch and become an energy ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
NOAA to establish climate center in Alaska
http://www.adn.com/news/environment/warming/story/1133686.html
Anchorage Daily News: Alaska's new climate center -- part of a reorganization that creates the new NOAA Climate Service -- was announced Wednesday by Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska. The state has a "huge demand for climate information," Begich said, and the Alaska-based climate science center would give decision-makers a more complete picture about relocating eroding coastal villages, new utility corridors and even where to build roads on permafrost. "The decision to establish Alaska as a separate region in ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Australia: Ice age coral could point to future sea levels
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/11/2816342.htm?site=northwest§ion=news
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Every day thousands of tourists flock to north Queensland to witness the Great Barrier Reef in all its glory. But soon a different group of travellers will visit the reef in order to dig up samples of ancient coral buried deep in the ocean floor. A group of international scientists say this sediment holds clues to how the Earth adapted since the last ice age. Buried deep under layers of coral reef lies a time-capsule of chemicals and sediment and scientists say that ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Canada's mild climate leaves Winter Olympics short of snow
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/feb/10/vancouver-lacks-snow
Guardian: Providing snow in the midst of a Canadian winter ought to be relatively uncomplicated. But the efforts of the Vancouver games organising committee to ensure sufficient snow cover for the opening day on Friday could just about qualify as an Olympic event in its own right. They have tried airlifting snow by helicopter at five-minute intervals; hauling snow by the lorryload from three hours away; shooting ice and water out of a snow cannon; spreading layers of snow with a Zamboni ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Arizona quits Western climate endeavor
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/02/11/20100211climate-brewer0211.html
Arizona Republic: Arizona will no longer participate in a groundbreaking attempt to limit greenhouse-gas emissions across the West, a change in policy by Gov. Jan Brewer that will include a review of all the state's efforts to combat climate change. Brewer stopped short of pulling Arizona out of the multistate coalition that plans to regulate greenhouse gases starting in 2012. But she made it clear in an executive order that Arizona will not endorse the emission-control plan or any program that could ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Germany and Italy hint at delays to feed-in tariff cuts
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257741/germany-italy-hint-delays-feed
Business Green: There were mixed signals for Europe's booming solar energy sector this week, after news Germany's ruling coalition is to delay proposed cuts to its feed in tariff scheme was followed by an unexpected postponement to Italy's revised solar subsidy scheme. The Italian government had been expected to announce reforms to the country's feed in tariff incentive scheme today. However, a spokesman for Economic Development Undersecretary Stefano Saglia, who is in charge of the reforms, told ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
EU's Ashton to engage China on climate change
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61A2YR20100211?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: The European Union's new foreign policy chief wants the EU to work more closely with China on climate issues and search for trade-offs with other policy areas, an EU official said on Thursday. Catherine Ashton will brief a summit of EU leaders on Thursday about her policy vision in areas such as climate, trade and security. "She won't be saying that we're flexible on everything, but she doesn't want climate change to be seen as an isolated issue," the official said on condition ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
United Kingdom: University pledges independent review of climate research
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/university-pledges-independent-review-of-climate-research-1896593.html
Press Association: The university at the centre of a row over global warming research today announced there would be an independent reappraisal of its climate science. The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit has been under the spotlight since emails were leaked online which climate sceptics claimed showed evidence scientists were manipulating data. The university's announcement of an external review of the unit's science came as the team conducting a separate probe into the issues ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
China's fears of rich nation 'climate conspiracy' at Copenhagen revealed
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/11/chinese-thinktank-copenhagen-document
Guardian: Rich nations furthered their "conspiracy to divide the developing world" at December's UN climate summit in Copenhagen, while Canada "connived" and the EU acted "to please the United States", according to an internal document from a Chinese government thinktank obtained by the Guardian. The document, which was written in the immediate aftermath of Copenhagen but has only now come to light, provides the most candid insight yet into Chinese thinking on the fraught summit. "It was ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Lib Dems propose Â£400m boost to UK wind turbine manufacturing
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257735/lib-dems-propose-400m-boost-uk
Business Green: The central role of environmental and energy issues at the forthcoming election was underlined today when Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg announced plans to bolster the UK's fledgling wind turbine manufacturing industry, branding it a "scandal" that UK wind farms were largely reliant on imported turbines. Speaking at an event in Newcastle to launch the party's new Green Jobs Manifesto, Clegg said that a Lib Dem government would divert Â£400m of government spending to support seven ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Medvedev says nuclear energy Russian priority amid climate change
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100211/157845067.html
RIA Novosti: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during his visit to the west Siberian city of Tomsk in freezing temperatures on Thursday said nuclear energy development was a national priority, in particular as an instrument for combating global warming. "This is an absolute priority for our power grid development, power generation development and the development of energy potential," Medvedev said at a meeting with local students. He said nuclear energy development also followed the goal of ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Climate e-mails inquiry under way
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8510498.stm
BBC: A panel of independent experts has officially begun its inquiry into the "Climategate" affair. The experts, headed by Sir Muir Russell, will investigate how e-mails from the UK's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) appeared on the web. They will also consider if the e-mail exchanges between researchers show an attempt to manipulate or suppress data "at odds" with scientific practice. The panel hopes to present "preliminary conclusions by spring 2010". Speaking at the ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Boycott of oil sands fuel called 'greenwashing'
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/boycott-of-oil-sands-fuel-called-greenwashing/article1463553/
Globe and Mail: Upscale U.S. grocer Whole Foods Markets WFMI-Q assures its eco-aware shoppers that its meat has no antibiotics, that its coffee and roses are fair-traded and, now, that its organic produce is delivered using oil-sands-free fuel -- for the most part. Whole Foods' trucks travel more than 35 million kilometres annually, delivering organic and natural products to its 284 North American outlets, items such as Manchego cheese from Spain and Himalania-chocolate-covered Goji berries from ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Sensible rules for ethanol
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/opinion/11thu3.html
New York Times: Despite pressure from farm state politicians, the Environmental Protection Agency has taken an important step to ensure that biofuels help rather than hurt the environment. Under new guidelines, biofuels produced at new facilities -- including ethanol from corn, sugar, plants and other sources -- must achieve at least a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared with conventional gasoline. In 2007, Congress mandated a big increase in biofuel production (then 7 billion ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Indonesia forest minister vows land permit crackdown
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/JAK318126.htm
Reuters: Indonesia's forestry minister on Wednesday said he had revoked the land use permits for 23 mining and other firms operating in forested areas and may crack down further, indicating a tougher stance on environmental protection. Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan, 48, also told Reuters in an interview there were no plans to allow geothermal projects in protected forest areas, contradicting recent comments by other government officials on a key energy policy. Indonesia is under ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Lords call for "calm nerves" in response to Climategate
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257722/lords-call-calm-nerves-response
Business Green: An influential group of peers yesterday called on politicians, businesses and the media to take a more dispassionate stance on the so-called "climategate" controversy, warning that exaggerated concerns over the accuracy of climate science were in danger of delaying action to address climate change risks. Writing in a letter published in the Daily Telegraph, the group of 15 Lords urged "the media, the public, policy makers and the scientific community to calm their nerves and take a ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Solar panels and wind turbines on National Trust properties
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7205713/Solar-panels-and-wind-turbines-on-National-Trust-properties.html
Telegraph: The landowner already has 140 renewable energy projects installed on castles and mansions around the country. But with the Government offering to pay for any surplus energy fed into the grid and increasing concerns around climate change, the Trust is planning on expanding its green initiative to even more properties. The target to cut energy use by 50 per cent by 2020 will go beyond national targets and could save more than 14,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Climate change affecting Kenya's coffee output
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61A0WA20100211?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: Climate change has affected Kenyan coffee production through unpredictable rainfall patterns and excessive droughts, making crop management and disease control a nightmare, a researcher said on Thursday. Intermittent rainfall in the 2007/08 crop year, for example, caused a terrible bout of the Coffee Berry Disease that cut Kenyan output 23 percent to 42,000 metric tons as farmers were caught out by rains and did not protect their crop in time. "We have seen climate change in ...

Fri, 12 Feb 10
Head of UEA inquiry to outline scope of review into hacked climate emails
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/11/uea-hacked-climate-emails-inquiry
Guardian: The senior civil servant conducting the inquiry into the fallout from the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia will today set out the inquiry's remit. Sir Muir Russell was appointed by the university on 3 December to investigate allegations based on the contents of the emails. Many commentators had hoped that his inquiry would be completed quickly to draw a line under the affair and are dismayed that it has taken two months to formally begin. The ...

Thu, 11 Feb 10
Climate group admits to making mistakes
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB30001424052748704182004575055703697897576.html
Wall Street Journal: Some top officials of a Nobel Prize-winning climate-science organization are acknowledging the panel made some mistakes amid a string of recent revelations questioning the accuracy of some of the information in its influential reports. Officials of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations-sponsored network of scientists whose reports strongly influence global policy on greenhouse-gas emissions, initially played down some of the allegations and criticized those ...

Thu, 11 Feb 10
It's Snowing Today, Therefore Climate Change Is a Myth and Al Gore Is a Fraud
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/02/its_snowing_today_therefore_cl.html
New York Magazine: Republican senators and cable-news talking heads think it's absolutely hilarious that it's snowed a lot in Washington this past week. Sean Hannity claimed that first storm "would seem to contradict Al Gore`s hysterical global warming theories." Newt Gingrich tweeted, barely comprehensibly, "where is al gore to explain it snows this heavily as a sign global warming is imminent." And the freaking Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, gloated yesterday, "Where`s Al Gore now?" Right, because ...

Thu, 11 Feb 10
U.N. climate panel reforms urged to boost trust
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100210/india_nm/india460643
Reuters: A leading U.N. climate panel should be split up or even turned into an online encyclopaedia to help restore trust after mistakes like an erroneous forecast on the melting of Himalayan glaciers, experts said. Five leading climatologists suggested everything from sticking with the existing Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to replacing it with an organisation modelled on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). "IPCC: cherish it, tweak it or scrap it," the ...

Thu, 11 Feb 10
Desertification threatens 38 percent of the world
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0210-hance_desertification.html
Mongabay: Over one third of the world's land surface (38 percent) is threatened with desertification, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. The study found that eight of fifteen eco-regions are threatened by desertification, including coastal areas, the prairies, the Mediterranean region, the savannah, the temperate steppes, the temperate deserts, tropical and subtropical steppes, and the tropical and subtropical deserts. "The greatest risk of ...

Thu, 11 Feb 10
Scientists rue errors, seek better climate report
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100210/ap_on_sc/sci_climate_report_woes
Associated Press: A steady drip of unsettling errors is exposing what scientists are calling "the weaker link" in the Nobel Peace Prize-winning series of international reports on global warming. The flaws -- and the erosion they've caused in public confidence -- have some scientists calling for drastic changes in how future United Nations climate reports are done. A push for reform being published in Thursday's issue of a prestigious scientific journal comes on top of a growing clamor for the ...

Thu, 11 Feb 10
Scientists rue errors, seek better climate report
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SCI_CLIMATE_REPORT_WOES?SITE=TXDAM&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Associated Press: A steady drip of unsettling errors is exposing what scientists are calling "the weaker link" in the Nobel Peace Prize-winning series of international reports on global warming. The flaws - and the erosion they've caused in public confidence - have some scientists calling for drastic changes in how future United Nations climate reports are done. A push for reform being published in Thursday's issue of a prestigious scientific journal comes on top of a growing clamor for the resignation ...

Thu, 11 Feb 10
Alternative futures of a warming world: Potential human responses to climate change will be integrated
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100210131946.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29
ScienceDaily: An international team of climate scientists will take a new approach to modeling the Earth's climate future, according to a paper in 11 February Nature. The next set of models will include, for the first time, tightly linked analyses of greenhouse gas emissions, projections of the Earth's climate, impacts of climate change, and human decision-making. This approach will influence the next international scientific assessment undertaken by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ...

Thu, 11 Feb 10
Utah House tells feds to end emissions moves
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100210/ap_on_re_us/us_global_warming_utah
Associated Press: The Utah House has passed a resolution questioning the science behind global warming and calling for federal officials to stop policies aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The measure passed 56-17 on Tuesday and now goes to the state Senate. The resolution says the Environmental Protection Agency's proposal to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act is based on questionable science and could hurt the economy. Ogden Republican Rep. Kerry Gibson introduced ...

Thu, 11 Feb 10
United Kingdom: If biofuels go, should we mourn them?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/10/should-we-mourn-biofuels
Guardian: It's not been a great week for the "greener driver". First, Toyota announced it was Ârecalling all its Prius hybrids Âafter detecting a potential fault with the braking system. And Âyesterday Morrissons, the largest supplier of biofuels in the UK, Âannounced it is withdrawing one of its most popular blends from its forecourts. From 1 April, it says it will no longer be selling B30, a blend of 30% rapeseed and recycled vegetable oil and 70% ordinary mineral diesel. The move follows ...

Thu, 11 Feb 10
Snowstorm: East Coast Blizzard Tied to Climate Change
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100210/us_time/08599196229400
Time Magazine: As the blizzard-bound residents of the mid-Atlantic region get ready to dig themselves out of the third major storm of the season, they may stop to wonder two things: Why haven't we bothered to invest in a snow blower, and what happened to climate change? After all, it stands to reason that if the world is getting warmer - and the past decade was the hottest on record - major snowstorms should become a thing of the past, like PalmPilots and majority rule in the Senate. Certainly that's what ...

Thu, 11 Feb 10
How to Reform the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=reform-the-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change
Scientific American: Himalayan glaciers to disappear by 2035. Nuclear power plants cheaper than fossil fuel--fired ones. A chairman who might have financial conflicts of interest (and an interest in penning a racy, loosely autobiographical romance novel). These are some of the mistakes currently argued to have been made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)--a panel of more than 2,500 volunteer scientists and other experts from 154 countries tasked with assessing climate ...

Wed, 10 Feb 10
Search for hacker may lead police back to East Anglia's climate research unit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/09/hacked-emails-police-investigation
Guardian: In a unique experiment, The Guardian has published online the full manuscript of its major investigation into the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, which revealed apparent attempts to cover up flawed data; moves to prevent access to climate data; and to keep research from climate sceptics out of the scientific literature. As well as including new information about the emails, we will allow web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of ...

Wed, 10 Feb 10
Changing weather posts in China led to accusations of scientific fraud
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/09/weather-stations-china
Guardian: In a unique experiment, The Guardian has published online the full manuscript of its major investigation into the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, which revealed apparent attempts to cover up flawed data; moves to prevent access to climate data; and to keep research from climate sceptics out of the scientific literature. As well as including new information about the emails, we will allow web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of ...

Wed, 10 Feb 10
Emails reveal strenuous efforts by climate scientists to 'censor' their critics
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/09/peer-review-block-scientific-papers
Guardian: In a unique experiment, The Guardian has published online the full manuscript of its major investigation into the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, which revealed apparent attempts to cover up flawed data; moves to prevent access to climate data; and to keep research from climate sceptics out of the scientific literature. As well as including new information about the emails, we will allow web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of ...

Wed, 10 Feb 10
Russia: Climate scientists withheld Yamal data despite warnings from senior colleagues
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/09/yamal-climate-tree-ring-data-withheld
Guardian: In a unique experiment, The Guardian has published online the full manuscript of its major investigation into the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, which revealed apparent attempts to cover up flawed data; moves to prevent access to climate data; and to keep research from climate sceptics out of the scientific literature. As well as including new information about the emails, we will allow web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of ...

Wed, 10 Feb 10
Agency Will Create National Climate Service to Spur Adaptation
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/02/09/09climatewire-agency-will-create-national-climate-service-63603.html
ClimateWire: The Obama administration announced plans yesterday to create a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Service. The proposed entity would provide "user-friendly" information to help governments and businesses adapt to climate change, creating a central federal source of information on everything from projections of sea level rise to maps of the nation's best sites for wind and solar power. "Even with our best efforts, we know that some degree of climate ...

Wed, 10 Feb 10
Australia: Is an emissions trading scheme going the way of the republic?
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/is-an-emissions-trading-scheme-going-the-way-of-the-republic-20100209-npmk.html
Sydney Morning Herald: IS THE emissions trading scheme the republic issue revisited: a policy the public supports in theory but not in practice? The federal government's ETS, like the republic in the late 1990s, almost became a reality but fell short because of a split among the believers. Two months ago, Liberal senators Judith Troeth and Sue Boyce voted with the ALP in support of the government's scheme. If the five Greens senators, who say they support an ETS but want something more extensive, had ...

Wed, 10 Feb 10
U.S. proposes new climate service
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/08/AR2010020801696.html
Washington Post: The Obama administration proposed a new climate service on Monday that would provide Americans with predictions on how global warming will affect everything from drought to sea levels. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Service, modeled loosely on the 140-year-old National Weather Service, would provide forecasts to farmers, regional water managers and businesses affected by changing climate conditions. The move is essentially a reorganization of NOAA, ...

Wed, 10 Feb 10
China points to farms as major pollution risk
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100209/sc_afp/chinaenvironmentpollutionfarm
Agence France-Presse: China on Tuesday named pollution from farms as a major cause for concern, as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases released its first nationwide survey on sources of environmental degradation. "There were some outstanding problems identified by this national census such as the high contribution to water pollution by agricultural sources," the State Council, or Cabinet, said in a statement. China's rapid industrialisation has led to widespread environmental damage over ...

Wed, 10 Feb 10
David Adam on internecine war in IPCC over glacier error
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/audio/2010/feb/09/ipcc-climate-change-glaciers-error
Guardian

Wed, 10 Feb 10
Toyota recalls 437,000 Priuses, hybrids globally
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100209/ap_on_bi_ge/toyota_recall
Associated Press: Toyota says it is recalling about 437,000 Prius and other hybrid vehicles worldwide to fix brake problems -- the latest in a string of embarrassing safety lapses at the world's largest automaker. "I don't see Toyota as an infallible company that never makes mistakes," President Akio Toyoda said at a press conference Tuesday in Tokyo. "We will face up to the facts and correct the problem, putting customers' safety and convenience first." With the Prius announcement, the number ...

Wed, 10 Feb 10
Warm world will be more fragrant
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8503000/8503823.stm
BBC: As CO2 levels increase and the world warms, land use, precipitation and the availability of water will also change. In response to all these disruptions, plants will emit greater levels of fragrant chemicals called biogenic volatile organic compounds. That will then alter how plants interact with one another and defend themselves against pests, according to a major scientific review. According to the scientists leading the review, the world may already be becoming more ...

Wed, 10 Feb 10
Czechs tap Norwegian firm for coal plant study
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6181UV20100209?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: The Czech environment ministry has picked Norwegian firm DNV to assess expansion plans at a coal-fired power plant which has raised objections from the tiny Pacific nation of Micronesia. In December, the Federated States of Micronesia challenged Czech utility CEZ's plans to extend the life of three blocks at its Prunerov plant, while raising their output and effectiveness. Overall capacity at the plant would drop with the closure of two remaining units. The Pacific nation, a ...

Wed, 10 Feb 10
US climate monitoring information service gets go-ahead in Washington
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/09/us-climate-monitoring-service
Guardian: The Obama administration delivered a vote of confidence in climate science today by founding a service to study and report on global warming. It will put scientists and data from the national weather service and various departments of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) under one roof in Washington DC. Administration officials described Noaa Climate Services, which will be accessible to the public at www.climate.gov, as "one-stop shopping" for business, ...

Wed, 10 Feb 10
African Farmers Urged to Innovate to Offset Climate Change
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-09/african-farmers-urged-to-innovate-to-offset-climate-change.html
Bloomberg: Africa's failure to embrace modern farming methods is a greater impediment to food production than global warming, according to the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics. Adopting this approach would help the continent offset possible temperature increases of as much as 3 degrees Celsius (37 degrees Fahrenheit), it said, citing conclusions made by computer modeling. Africa emits less greenhouse gas than any other continent, though it will likely be ...

Wed, 10 Feb 10
Bolivia expects 5,000 foreigners at climate forum
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100209/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_bolivia_climate_conference
Associated Press: Bolivia's government says it expects thousands of activists, environmentalists and scientists to travel to the Andean nation for conference on climate change. Bolivia's foreign minister, David Choquehuanca, estimates roughly 5,000 foreigners will attend the event. The 3-day forum kicks off on April 20 in the city of Cochabamba. Bolivian President Evo Morales announced in January that he would invite activists, scientists and government officials from around the world to an ...

Wed, 10 Feb 10
UN Climate Panel and Its Chief Face a Siege on Their Credibility
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/science/earth/09climate.html
New York Times: Just over two years ago, Rajendra K. Pachauri seemed destined for a scientist's version of sainthood: A vegetarian economist-engineer who leads the United Nations' climate change panel, he accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the panel, sharing the honor with former Vice President Al Gore. But Dr. Pachauri and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are now under intense scrutiny, facing accusations of scientific sloppiness and potential financial conflicts of ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Earlier springs could destroy delicate balance of UK wildlife, study shows
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/09/wildlife-climate-change
Guardian: As snow flurries continued to cause disruption across the country today, spring may feel further away than ever. But recent winters have been ending earlier than ever before, according to a new assessment of Britain's wildlife that reveals global warming could be disrupting the delicate balance of nature. The analysis confirms that spring and summer are occurring earlier, but also shows that this trend appears to be accelerating. The shift could pose problems for animals, birds and ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Goodbye Galapagos, you're too warm for us
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/goodbye-galapagos-youre-too-warm-for-us-1893327.html
Independent (UK): Marine scientists are reporting that a colony of sea lions, previously unique to the Galapagos Islands, has unexpectedly decamped 900 miles south-east to an island just off the coast of Peru in what may be another symptom of global warming. According to the Peru-based Organisation of Research and Conservation of Aquatic Animals, it is the first recorded instance of a colony of Galapagos sea lions abandoning their familiar waters around the archipelago, which belongs to neighbouring ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Palm oil deal 'a threat to the rainforest'
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/palm-oil-deal-a-threat-to-the-rainforest-1893312.html
Independent (UK): Hundreds of millions of tonnes of palm oil look set to be pumped into Britain's vehicles despite scientific evidence showing that chopping down rainforests to make way for plantations exacerbates climate change, according to a leaked report. The European Commission is planning to increase the amount of palm oil used in cars and power stations under the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), which is intended to reduce greenhouse gases, suggests the document. A loophole in the draft ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Britain launches labeling for green power tariffs
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61804F20100209?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: Britain has launched a scheme to certify and label electricity produced by green means so as to help consumers and small businesses choose tariffs to support suppliers doing more to cut carbon emissions than obliged. Britain's energy regulator OFGEM said Tuesday green energy suppliers needed to show an independent panel they were carrying out an additional activity to source for more renewable electricity and to reduce household carbon emissions. "Only two per cent of Britons ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
New EU organic logo set for Europe's supermarkets
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100208/sc_afp/euenvironmentconsumerlogo
Agence France-Presse: The European Union on Monday unveiled a new Green logo that will have to be shown on all pre-packaged organic products produced in Europe from July. "I'm delighted that we now have a fresh EU organic food logo," said EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel as she announced that the "Euro-leaf" logo, a green leaf design incorporating the 12 stars of the EU flag, had won a competition to find the right image. "This exercise has raised the profile of organic food and we ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Amazon rainforest will bear cost of biofuel expansion in Brazil
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0208-amazon_biofuels.html
Mongabay: Business-as-usual agricultural expansion to meet biofuel production targets for 2020 will take a heavy toll on Brazil's Amazon rainforest in coming years, undermining the potential emissions savings of transitioning from fossil fuels to biofuels, warns a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The research suggests that intensification of cattle ranching, combined with efforts to promote high-yielding oil crops like oil palm could lessen forecast ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Climate change impact of soil underestimated: study
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100208/sc_afp/finlandenvironmentclimatechangestudy
Agence France-Presse: Finnish researchers called for a revision of climate change estimates Monday after their findings showed emissions from soil would contribute more to climate warming than previously thought. "A Finnish research group has proved that the present standard measurements underestimate the effect of climate warming on emissions from the soil," the Finnish Environment Institute said in a statement. "The error is serious enough to require revisions in climate change estimates," it ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
New climate service aims to help business adapt
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6174IJ20100208?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: A proposed new U.S. NOAA Climate Service is meant to help businesses adapt to the impact of climate change, and to spur development of new technologies to cope with it, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke on Monday. "Even with our best efforts, we know that some degree of climate change is inevitable and American citizens and businesses, and American governments ... must be able to rise to environmental and economic challenges that lie ahead," Locke told reporters in announcing the ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
The case for climate action must be remade from the ground upwards
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/feb/08/case-for-climate-change-science
Guardian: What a difference three months makes. Back in November, the world broadly agreed that emissions of carbon dioxide were heating up the planet and that we needed to do something about it, even if we couldn't agree exactly what. And though we'd had the usual pre-summit rollercoaster ride of dire predictions and naive exhortations (yes, I plead guilty to some of those), even hardheaded types dared to hope that Copenhagen might produce the basis of a global climate treaty. As late as 7 ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Why Africa should not support the Copenhagen accord
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/459/709468
New Vision: THE Copenhagen accord on climate change was neither adopted nor endorsed by the 15th conference of parties in Copenhagen, Denmark. This means the accord does not have any legal standing within the UN system. Notwithstanding, the accord's lack of legal standing, the UN and some developed countries have taken the view that the accord should be implemented by a coalition of the willing countries. As a result, on January 18, the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC) ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
No time to put climate science on ice
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2010-02/09/content_9447317.htm
China Daily: The science of climate change has been on the defensive in recent weeks, owing to an error that dramatically overstated the rate at which the Himalayan glaciers could disappear. Some in the media, and those who are skeptical about climate change, are currently having a field day, parsing every comma and cough in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 2007 assessment. Some strident voices are even dismissing climate change as a hoax on a par with the Y2K computer bug. ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Disclosing financial climate-change risks
http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/80267-disclosing-financial-climate-change-risks-
The Hill: Legendary House Speaker Sam Rayburn ushered in the 1933 Truth in Securities Act in the grim depths of the Great Depression. It was based on the principle that the purchase and sale of securities should be an honest bargain, and disclosure its cornerstone. But business trends change with the times, and today one that Sam Rayburn never heard of -- climate change -- presents a new major challenge to investors' bottom lines. Investors representing over $1 trillion in assets filed a ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Governments Confirm Climate Accord Pledges, No New Commitments
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2010/2010-02-08-01.html
Environment News Service: Governments Confirm Climate Accord Pledges, No New Commitments Environment News Service (ENS) Governments Confirm Climate Accord Pledges, No New Commitments BONN, Germany, February 8, 2010 - The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has received national pledges to cut and limit greenhouse gases by 2020 from 55 countries, including China and the United States that together account for 78 percent of global emissions from energy use. The national pledges ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
US government plans new climate service
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100208/sc_afp/usclimatewarminggovernment
Agence France-Presse: US President Barack Obama's administration announced plans Monday for a new office handling climate change, aiming to help businesses chart future plans as the nation shifts to a greener economy. The first practical effect was the creation of a website, www.climate.gov, which came online Monday and brings together government resources on climate change for business, scholars and the general public. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said that the new Climate Service would help ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Four 'eco-towns' earmarked for government funds
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8504050.stm
BBC: Four "eco-towns" due to be built in England are to receive a funding boost of Â£60m to be spread over the next two years, the government has announced. The towns, which were whittled down from a shortlisted 12 last year, are Whitehill-Bordon in Hampshire, St Austell in Cornwall, Rackheath in Norfolk and North West Bicester in Oxfordshire. Each is set to receive just over Â£9m for the next financial year from the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Homes and ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
NOAA Reorganizes With Eye Toward Assessing Effects of Climate Change
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/02/08/08greenwire-noaa-reorganizes-with-eye-toward-assessing-eff-30957.html
Greenwire: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration launched a new climate service today, a reorganization effort aimed at improving long-range assessments of climate change, sea-level rise and severe weather. The effort is aimed at providing long-term forecasts to assist fisheries managers, farmers, state governments, renewable energy developers, water managers and others. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke likened the new climate shop to the 140-year-old National Weather Service, ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
U.N. deflects climate-change criticism
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2010/02/08/UN-deflects-climate-change-criticism/UPI-15201265648400/
United Press International: Scientific evidence from the environmental community suggests global warming trends are the result of human activity, a U.N. official said in Ankara. Achim Steiner, the head of the U.N. Environment Program, deflected criticism of a U.N.-backed panel that admitted to errors in its reporting on the rate of climate change. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in January it made errors in reports saying the Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035, which the ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Australian Greens question colossal China coal deal
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100208/sc_afp/australiachinaresourcesminingcoalenvironment
Agence France-Presse: A massive Australian coal export deal with China, seen as boosting the economy and creating jobs, would ultimately result in enormous greenhouse gas emissions, The Greens political party said Sunday. Australian miner Resourcehouse announced Saturday it had secured a 60-billion-US-dollar deal with energy-hungry China to ship 30 million tonnes of coal a year from a proposed mine in Queensland. But Greens Senator Bob Brown said the deal would result in the release of significant ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
United States: Voyageurs National Park to collar moose as it studies climate change
http://www.ifallsdailyjournal.com/news/outdoors/voyageurs-national-park-collar-moose-it-studies-climate-change-102
International Falls Daily Journal: The potential effects of climate change and other factors on the long-term viability of moose in Voyageurs National Park has prompted a collaring project. Park staff plan to capture up to 14 adult moose to attach state-of-art telemetry collars in the next weeks as part of a continuing project on moose in the park. The project is a collaborative effort among scientists from Voyageurs National Park, the University of Minnesota-Duluth's Natural Resources Research Institute, and ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
US renewable standard would provide sizeable jobs boost
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257517/renewable-standard-provide
Business Green: A national renewable energy standard could create more than 274,000 more jobs in the US, according to a new study, which argues that mandatory targets for renewable energy generation would prove one of the most effective means of generating so-called "green collar jobs". Lobby group the RES Alliance for Jobs commissioned Navigant Consulting to analyse the employment impact of proposals for a "25 per cent by 2025" renewable energy standard, which would force US energy firms to source a ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Asia's biggest logging company accused of bribery, violence in Papua New Guinea
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0208-hance_rh.html
Mongabay: A local organization in Papua New Guinea, known as Asples Madang, is fighting against one of the region's biggest industrial loggers, Rimbunan Hijau (RH) chaired by billionare Tiong Hiew King. Aspeles Madang has accused Malaysian company, RH, of acquiring land illegally and of using brute force and bribery in its dealing with locals. A lawsuit by a local landowner claiming that the Forest Management Area was illegally granted to RH has put the company's logging on hold for two months ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Funding gap looms as government cans renewables grants
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257514/government-subsidy-cancellation
Business Green: Satisfaction across the renewable energy industry with the announcement last week of new feed in tariffs for homes and businesses installing renewable energy technologies was tempered somewhat after the government suspended its existing grant scheme for on-site renewables. In a surprise move the Department of Energy and Climate Change circulated an announcement last Wednesday confirming that phase one and two of the Low Carbon Building Programme (LCBP) grant scheme was closed to new ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
NOAA reorganizes to provide more info on global warming
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/08/AR2010020801696.html?wprss=rss_nation
Washington Post: The Obama administration proposed a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Service on Monday, reorganizing the agency so it can provide Americans with predictions on how global warming will affect everything from drought to sea levels. The initiative, modeled loosely on the 140-year-old National Weather Service, will provide forecasts to farmers, regional water managers and business operators affected by changing climate conditions. But it comes at a time when ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
US forming new climate change agency
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35297113/ns/us_news-environment/
Associated Press: President Barack Obama's administration is forming a new agency to study and report on the changing climate. Climate change has drawn widespread concern in recent years as temperatures around the world rise, threatening to harm crops, spread disease, increase sea levels, change storm and drought patterns and cause polar melting. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, planned to announce Monday that NOAA ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
New Federal Climate Change Agency Forming
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=9777038
Associated Press: The Obama administration on Monday proposed a new agency to study and report on the changing climate. Also known as global warming, climate change has drawn widespread concern in recent years as temperatures around the world rise, threatening to harm crops, spread disease, increase sea levels, change storm and drought patterns and cause polar melting. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced NOAA ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Australia: WA drought 'could be worst for 750 years'
http://www.watoday.com.au/environment/climate-change/wa-drought-could-be-worst-for-750-years-20100205-niee.html
WA Today: Scientists have made a surprising link between climate patterns in Australia and Antarctica. If you thought the drought affecting south-west WA since the 1970s was extreme, you were right. But just how extreme has been a matter of contention. Now, scientists believe it could be the worst of its kind in 750 years, after making an unexpected discovery. Researchers from the Australian Antarctic Division and Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Brazil: Smarter farming key to saving Amazon rainforest
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/world/to-save-amazon-rainforest-expert-pushes-smarter-farming-to-replace-slash-and-burn-83765067.html
Associated Press: Walking on a dusty field of cut rice that was once rainforest, researcher Flavio Wruck explains how farming, the Amazon's biggest killer, can be turned into its best defender. At the government-run experimental farm where he works, he points toward plots where crops, cattle and timber live together. It's a simple system, long practiced in the U.S., of rotating crops and revitalizing pasture instead of simply chopping down forest and planting new grasslands. But here in the ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
China's high-speed trains may offer tips for U.S
http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2010-02-08-fasttrain08_ST_N.htm
USA Today: Once the speed gauge hits 350 kilometers per hour, or 217 miles per hour, passengers charge down the aisle to photograph the electronic display. "If we go any faster, we'll take off!" jokes Hu Qing, cracking open another can of beer on China's world-record-breaking train. The Dec. 26 opening of the high-speed link between south Chinese cities Guangzhou and Wuhan is the latest example of massive state spending to keep China's economy roaring. The fast-expanding network of ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Australia: Feral camels clear in Penny Wong's carbon count
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/feral-camels-clear-in-penny-wongs-carbon-count/story-e6frg6nf-1225827641354
Australian: THERE are many ways to skin a camel, but none, it seems, that count towards reducing Australia's carbon footprint. Scientists have found camels to be the third-highest carbon-emitting animal per head on the planet, behind only cattle and buffalo. Culling the one million feral camels that currently roam the outback would be equivalent to taking 300,000 cars off the road in terms of the reduction to the country's greenhouse gases. But Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told The ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Roof insulation turns houses 'live'
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/property/roof-insulation-turns-houses-live/story-e6frg9gx-1225827643226
Australian: HUNDREDS of homes that have been fitted with foil insulation under the Rudd government's stimulus program have been turned into potential death traps because installers have laid the insulation over live wires or used metal fasteners, causing it to become electrified. An audit of almost 1000 homes in Queensland has found that in about 2 per cent of cases, foil insulation was installed inappropriately, causing the roof to become "live". This means that if home owners enter their roof ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
"We cannot eat electricity"
http://www.thanhniennews.com/society/?catid=3&newsid=55081
Thanh Nien: Both local and international experts said at a forum on the Mekong River environment organized by the Can Tho University on Wednesday that the dams will seriously threaten food security in riparian countries. Dao Trong Tu, former Vietnam country coordinator for the Mekong River Commission, said three hydropower dams are already under construction in China, and another 11 were planned in Laos and Cambodia. La Chhuon, an expert of Oxfam Australia in Cambodia, said fishermen in ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
ADB approves $135 mln loan for China's green power plant
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90778/90860/6890894.html
Xinhua: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Monday said it has approved a 135 million U.S. dollar loan to help China build a coal-fired integrated gasification combined cycle ( IGCC) power plant, whose carbon dioxide emission rate is only one tenth of a usual coal-fired plant. The 419.59 million U.S. dollar project, scheduled to be completed in northern city of Tianjin by 2012, will be the first IGCC plant in a developing country and can generate up to 1,470 gigawatt-hours of electricity ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Transit bills fight climate change
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32656.html
Politico: When President Barack Obama took office, he inherited some of the greatest challenges the nation has ever faced, with a potential economic collapse and climate crisis topping the list. He also faced a public that had placed its hopes in his ability to change the way America operates, from revitalizing the economy and reforming health care, to ending our expensive addiction to oil and reining in dangerous global warming pollution. In June 2009, it felt as if we were well on our way ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Climate scientists hit out at 'sloppy' melting glaciers error
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/08/climate-scientists-melting-glaciers
Guardian: Climate scientists who worked on the UN panel on global warming have hit out at "sloppy" colleagues from other disciplines who introduced a mistake about melting glaciers into the landmark 2007 report. The experts, who worked on the section of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that considered the physical science of global warming, say the error by "social and biological scientists" has unfairly maligned their work. Some said that Rajendra Pachauri, the ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
New UN emissions pledges still stack up to 3.5Â°C
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527462.900-new-un-emissions-pledges-still-stack-up-to-35c.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=climate-change
New Scientist: THE Copenhagen climate dance continues. This week, 55 nations representing 78 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions from energy use, submitted pledges to the UN to cut emissions by 2020. The commitments were made to meet a deadline set at the climate talks held in Copenhagen in December. But they mostly reiterate national pledges made before the summit, and are steeped in conditions. The US, for instance, reaffirmed its commitment to cut emissions to 17 per cent below 2005 ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Obama-backed wind farm in Mass. meets strong resistance
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/07/AR2010020702965.html
Washington Post: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar journeyed out into Nantucket Sound on a Coast Guard vessel last week to signal the Obama administration's readiness to put some muscle behind wind energy. To do that, Salazar has to resolve a battle over building a wind farm on 25 square miles of open water that has driven a rift between environmentalists, infuriated local Native Americans and threatened one of the administration's cherished priorities. The nearly decade-long fight over whether to ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Research shows US political system biased against green laws
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257490/research-shows-political-system
Business Green: Environmental campaigners have long suspected that the over-representation of rural interests on Capitol Hill is at least partly responsible the USA's slow response to climate change, but a new study has now set out to determine the extent to which the influence of rural voters and lobbyists has put a brake on green legislation. The study, presented at a conference last month by researchers from the department of political science at the University of California, found that the ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Climate row scientist 'contemplated suicide'
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-row-scientist-contemplated-suicide-1892260.html
Press Association: The scientist at the centre of the "climategate" row contemplated suicide after hackers leaked his emails suggesting that he was selectively releasing information to fit his theories of climate change. Professor Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, said that it had been his "David Kelly moment" -- a reference to the scientist who killed himself in the aftermath of the "sexed up" Iraq intelligence dossier claims. He also said that he had ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Australia: Ice core research could back climate change claims
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201002/s2813038.htm
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: A 750-year-old core of ice showing a link between increased snow over Antarctica and drought in south-west Western Australia could provide evidence that the climate is changing because of human activity. Dr Tas van Ommen, from the Australian Antarctic Division, has studied the ice core taken from from Law Dome in eastern Antarctica. His research shows that rainfall over south-west Western Australia has decreased between 15 and 20 per cent since the 1960s, while snowfall at Law ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Australia: Abbott climate plan reckless - Turnbull
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/coalition-climate-change-plan-reckless/story-e6frf7kf-1225827858360
AAP: FORMER opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has savaged the coalition's direct action plan to combat climate change as a "recipe for fiscal recklessness". Giving his first parliamentary speech since losing the Liberal leadership in December, Mr Turnbull indicated he would cross the floor to vote with Labor when a vote was taken on the carbon pollution reduction scheme. Mr Turnbull was scathing of the coalition's new direct-action policy which aims to provide financial incentives ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
The fear and farce of climate-change science
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/the-fear-and-farce-of-climate-change-science/article1459355/
Globe and Mail: Tragedy and comedy have entered the climate change stage hand in hand. The tragic figure is Professor Phil Jones, the 57-year-old scientist at the heart of the climate change e-mail scandal. In an interview with London's Sunday Times newspaper, he said he contemplated suicide just before the start of December's Copenhagen climate change summit, when skeptics were emboldened by the publication of hacked e-mails from the influential climatic research unit he led. "There were death ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
India: Need for precise information on climate change: Saran
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article102807.ece
Press Trust of India: Against the backdrop of an IPCC report making a wrong conclusion about Himalayan glaciers melting, Prime Minister`s Special Envoy on Climate Change Shyam Saran on Monday harped on more research to generate precise information on the matter. "It is clear that climate is changing. Now we need precise information on the subject," he said. Mr. Saran`s views assume significance in the wake of a report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrongly concluding that ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
MPs call for carbon tax to tackle "failing" EU cap-and-trade scheme
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257460/mps-call-carbon-tax-tackle
Business Green: The campaign to reform the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) will secure an important new ally today with the release of a major report from the Environmental Audit Committee of MPs that will urge the government to consider introducing a carbon tax designed to guarantee a minimum price for carbon. Environmental and business groups, including a number of energy firms, have long complained that the low price of carbon that has resulted from the recession has undermined the case for ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Branson warns of oil crunch within five years
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/07/branson-warns-peak-oil-close
Guardian: Sir Richard Branson and fellow leading businessmen will warn ministers this week that the world is running out of oil and faces an oil crunch within five years. The founder of the Virgin group, whose rail, airline and travel companies are sensitive to energy prices, will say that the Âcoming crisis could be even more serious than the credit crunch. "The next five years will see us face another crunch – the oil crunch. This time, we do have the chance to prepare. The challenge ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Melting Arctic could cost global economy over $2.4tr
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257475/melting-arctic-cost-global
Business Green: The melting of ice in the Arctic could result in economic costs of between $2.4 trillion (Â£1.54tn) and $24 trillion by 2050, according to a major new study that predicts that the loss of "the planet's air conditioner" will accelerate the rate of global warming and lead to an increase in losses associated with heat waves, rising sea levels and other climate change effects. The study, which was commissioned by the Pew Environment Group, was presented to G7 finance ministers gathering ...

Tue, 9 Feb 10
Push to change embattled climate panel
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/08/2813722.htm?section=justin
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: A prominent scientist has joined sceptics in calling for the UN authority on climate change to be reformed, as yet more flaws are exposed in the International Panel on Climate Change's reports. The Telegraph newspaper in Britain reports that several of the claims made by the IPCC are based on information from masters students or from environmental or business lobby groups. While climate scientists say these flaws do not undermine the core argument about global warming, some, ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
United Kingdom: I thought of killing myself, says climate scandal professor Phil Jones
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017922.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=3392178
Times (UK): THE scientist at the centre of the "climategate' email scandal has revealed that he was so traumatised by the global backlash against him that he contemplated suicide. Professor Phil Jones said in an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times that he had thought about killing himself "several times'. He acknowledged similarities to Dr David Kelly, the scientist who committed suicide after being exposed as the source for a BBC report that alleged the government had "sexed up' evidence ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
The leak was bad. Then came the death threats
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017905.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=3392178
Times (UK): PHOTOGRAPHS of Professor Phil Jones show a handsome, smiling, confident-looking man. Not chubby exactly, but in blooming good health. The man who meets me at the University of East Anglia (UEA) looks grey-skinned and gaunt, as if he has been kept in prison. In a way, he has. Since November last year he has been a prisoner of public opprobrium and a target of such vilification that was he was almost persuaded to comply with the wishes of those who wanted him dead. In bare ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Climate scepticism grows among Tories
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/07/climate-scepticism-grows-tories
Guardian: Most Conservative MPs, including at least six members of the shadow cabinet, are sceptical about their party's continued focus on climate change policies, it has been claimed. The recent furore around "Climategate" has hardened the views of Tory MPs, many of whom were already unconvinced by the scientific consensus, and has led to increasing calls for the issue to be pushed down the priority list. Tim Montgomerie, founder and editor of the ConservativeHome website, said climate ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Canada: Olympic organisers desperate for climate change
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jOod_vyCDO8SWK4uw5RObLBQOPJQ
Agence France-Presse: Winter Olympics chiefs will not sanction a desperate last-minute venue switch despite unseasonably warm temperatures continuing to curse Cypress Mountain, the host of the freestyle events at the Games which begin on Friday. The host city enjoyed highs of 11 degrees again on Saturday while meteorological officials said that the warm weather, which has led to 300 dumper trucks and even helicopters being used to transport snow from higher elevations, will continue right up to the opening ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Climate change research bungle
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7177323/Climate-change-research-bungle.html
Telegraph: The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri), of which Dr Rajendra Pachauri is the director-general, has given corporate awards to companies such as Pepsi and Honda, as well as Indian businesses. Those same companies have given financial backing to Teri through grants or paid-for consultancy work. According to Teri's own website, Dr Pachauri and his wife are on the jury panel for the 2010 awards. Dr Pachauri has been on the jury panel for the awards in previous years. The ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
New errors in IPCC climate change report
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7177230/New-errors-in-IPCC-climate-change-report.html
Telegraph: The publication of inaccurate data on the potential of wave power to produce electricity around the world, which was wrongly attributed to the website of a commercial wave-energy company. Claims based on information in press releases and newsletters. New examples of statements based on student dissertations, two of which were unpublished. More claims which were based on reports produced by environmental pressure groups. They are the latest in a series of damaging ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Netherlands Enters The Climate Fray
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1819675/netherlands_enters_the_climate_fray/index.html?source=r_science
redOrbit: A claim made by the UN climate change panel in 2007 that half of the country of the Netherlands was below sea level, is being contested by the country itself. Dutch authorities estimate that only 26 percent of the country is below sea level and will be asking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to check its figures, environment ministry spokesman Trimo Vallaart told AFP. The IPCC's calculation that 55 percent of the Netherlands was below sea level came from adding the ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Toyota drivers pull in for repair; Prius fix looms
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100206/ap_on_bi_ge/us_toyota
Associated Press: Responding to two recalls and facing the prospect of another one, Toyota dealers across the country were repairing thousands of cars Saturday, the first weekend day that many drivers had a chance to take action. Although many dealers expected a long line of customers, most drivers seemed far from panicked. Delwyn Wright, a 51-year-old truck driver, had heard about Toyota's troubles on the news but got the accelerator on his wife's Camry fixed Saturday after it was suggested by ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Top British scientist says UN panel is losing credibility
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017907.ece
Times (UK): A LEADING British government scientist has warned the United Nations' climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility. Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the environment ministry, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, was speaking after more potential inaccuracies emerged in the IPCC's 2007 benchmark report on global warming. The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
UN climate scientist defends report
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/International/2010/02/06/UN-climate-scientist-defends-report/UPI-57341265489051/
United Press International: A United Nations scientist struck back at climate change critics Saturday, saying the great weight of science still supports the findings of a landmark report. Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program, wrote in an opinions piece published Saturday in the Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman that critics who have seized on a mistake over the rate at which the Himalayan glaciers would melt are missing the big picture. The 2007 report from a United Nations-backed panel of ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Food, Inc: saved from the bin
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/7175927/Food-Inc-saved-from-the-bin.html
Telegraph: My pulse is racing. I have found a new way to save money on food -- and help to save the planet in the process. I had thought there was nothing more I could do to cut back on bills and waste as I am already a devotee of markets, pound shops, supermarkets' yellow cut-price stickers and recycled leftovers. But the next logical step has just been delivered to my door: a box full of items that supermarkets cannot sell but are still fit to eat. According to Approved Food, the leading ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Climate not an issue for small nations only: EU
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/climate-not-an-issue-for-small-nations-only-eu/384851/
Business Standard: Reiterating its stance on climate change and formalising support for the Copenhagen Accord, the European Union (EU) today said climate change was not an just an issue concerning small countries but was a global threat. "Climate change is not just the responsibility of a small group of countries. We do not want to impose our solutions on anyone,' Teresa Ribera, Spain's secretary of state for climate change and president of the EU Council of Environment Ministers, said while addressing ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
India: PM's stand on Copenhagen a snub to UN climate change secretariat
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/PMs-stand-on-Copenhagen-a-snub-to-UN-climate-change-secretariat/articleshow/5543331.cms
Times of India: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's speech on Friday came as a snub to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change secretariat which has sent yet another letter to India asking it to agree to the Copenhagen Accord and let its name be put in the `chapeau' of the political pact agreed to at the Danish capital in December. Speaking at an event where UNFCCC executive secretary Evo De Boer, many foreign dignitaries and international climate negotiators were in audience, the PM called the ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
'Consensus needed for climate change accord in Mexico'
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/Consensus-needed-for-climate-change-accord-in-Mexico/articleshow/5543517.cms
Indo-Asian News Service: Ministers from around the world Saturday emphasised the need to work together to reach consensus for achieving an accord on climate change at their next meeting in Mexico in November. "Climate change is affecting all of us. The Himalayan glaciers are melting although there is a lot of fuss about the rate at which they are melting. I had great hopes in Copenhagen but we achieved little. We should look forward and all of us should work harder for Mexico," said Farooq Abdullah, union ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Five new accidents involving Toyota Prius confirmed: report
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100206/bs_afp/japanusautorecallcompanytoyota
Agence France-Presse: Japan's government has confirmed five new accidents involving possible brake malfunction in Toyota Prius hybrids and will urge the troubled carmaker to investigate, national media reported Saturday. The transport ministry has received about 80 complaints this month about malfunctions in the brake system of the latest model of the flagship Prius, the Tokyo Shimbun and Fuji Televison Network reported, without quoting sources. Five of the complaints relate to crashes in which, ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Study: Eastern Trees in the Midst of a Growth Spur
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100206/hl_time/08599196056700
Time Magazine: Basic biology suggests that plants might grow faster in a world with more carbon dioxide, and field experiments bear that out: when you pump extra CO2 into a field or a forest, trees and other vegetation tend to get bigger. There are plenty of caveats attached: without other nutrients, the size and health of CO2-enriched plants can be compromised, and in some cases noxious weeds like poison ivy do better than the greenery you might prefer. But perhaps the biggest question of all is ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Toyota preparing to announce Prius fix next week
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100206/ap_on_bi_ge/us_toyota_prius
Associated Press: Toyota has told dealers it's preparing a plan to repair the brakes on thousands of hybrid Prius cars in the U.S. In a message sent Friday night to dealers, a Toyota group vice president, Bob Carter, said the company is working on a plan and will disclose more details early next week. More than 100 drivers of 2010 Prius cars have complained that their brakes seemed to fail momentarily when they were driving on bumpy roads. The U.S. government says the problem is suspected in four ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Heavy rains bring Spanish wetlands back to life
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/heavy-rains-bring-spanish-wetlands-back-to-life-1891368.html
Independent (UK): An environmentally valuable expanse of Spanish wetlands that dried up through mismanagement of water resources and drought is once again awash with water due to heavy rainfall, an official said Tuesday. Over 1,200 hectares (3,000 acres) of the wetlands of the Tablas de Daimiel National Park are flooded, the highest level since 1997, up from just 67 hectares on January 7, a park spokesman said. The heavy rains also put out an underground peat fire which had raged at the ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
EU ready to help IPCC in quality control
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article102273.ece
Hindu: The European Union (EU) has offered to help the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) strengthen its quality control system, after the climate science panel was revealed to have made a mistake about the timeline melting of Himalayan glaciers. Making it clear that the EU fully supported the IPCC, Spain`s Secretary of State for Climate Change Teresa Ribera told journalists that the transparent way the error was dealt with showed the robustness of the system. However, she ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Arctic ice melt alarms scientists
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/arctic-ice-melt-alarms-scientists-83704042.html
Winnipeg Free Press: A Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker makes its way through the ice in Baffin Bay. A local researcher says the melt of sea ice surpasses even pessimistic forecasts. (JONATHAN HAYWARD / THE CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES) Sea ice in Canada's fragile Arctic is melting more quickly than anyone expected, the lead investigator in the largest climate change study done in Canada said Friday. University of Manitoba Prof. David Barber, the lead investigator of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Activists cry foul as climate-change agenda frozen out of G7 meetings
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/greenpage/environment/83659482.html
Canadian Press: Climate change is not on the official agenda of the G7 meeting, but activists say a new report released as some participants took a dog-sled run proves it should be. The U.S.-based Pew Environmental Group said it has quantified for the first time the economic costs of the Arctic's warming and it adds up to at least US$2.4 trillion over the next 40 years. Economist Eban Goldstein of Bard College in New York says the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
A new clean economy-with old sources of energy
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1959011,00.html
Time Magazine: Since his election, President Barack Obama has emphasized the importance of developing new sources of energy and cultivating the jobs that will come with them. "I am convinced that whoever builds a clean energy economy, whoever is at the forefront of that, is going to own the 21st-century global economy," Obama told a bipartisan meeting of governors at the White House on Wednesday. But, increasingly, the President's new clean economy seems to rely on old sources of energy. At his ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Australia: Anger as green jobs vanish into the blue
http://www.theage.com.au/national/anger-as-green-jobs-vanish-into-the-blue-20100205-nipf.html
Age: THE Green Loans scheme is the second government debacle in just over six months that has left masters student Rob Campbell, of Sunshine, disillusioned. The first time around, he co-ordinated a group of 140 households in the outer eastern suburbs to bulk-buy solar panels under the government's rebate scheme, which Environment Minister Peter Garrett canned with a day's notice in June after it blew a half-a-billion-dollar hole in his department's budget. Only half the households ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Is climate change hiding the decline of maple syrup?
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100205/full/news.2010.56.html
Nature: The burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil releases carbon dioxide that alters the balance of carbon isotopes naturally found in the environment -- an effect that is now being found in food, reveals a US study. Modern methods for tracking the origins of processed foods use isotopes -- atoms of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons. Of the most common naturally occurring isotopes of carbon -- carbon-12, with six neutrons, and carbon-13, with seven -- the ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Brazil: Generation game: Shell and Cosan team up on ethanol
http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15464489
Economist: RISING oil prices and mounting concern about global warming may have stoked demand for biofuels, but oilmen and farmers still have relatively little to do with one another. The biggest producers of ethanol are agribusinesses or farmers' co-operatives growing maize (corn) in America and sugarcane in Brazil. Big Western oil firms such as Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell have confined themselves to trading biofuels and blending them into their wares, while dabbling in research into a "second ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Arctic sea ice vanishing faster than 'our most pessimistic models': researcher
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Arctic+vanishing+fast+researcher/2532081/story.html
Vancouver Sun: Sea ice in Canada's fragile Arctic is melting faster than anyone expected, the lead investigator in Canada's largest climate-change study yet said Friday -- raising the possibility that the Arctic could, in a worst-case scenario, be ice-free in about three years. University of Manitoba Prof. David Barber, the lead investigator of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study, said the rapid decay of thick Arctic Sea ice highlights the rapid pace of climate change in the North and foreshadows ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
Obama's nuclear giveaway
http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/02/obamas-nuclear-giveaway
Mother Jones: In September 2007, the city of San Antonio and NRG Energy announced a partnership to build two new nuclear reactors--the first new nuclear project to be initiated in the United States in decades. The project represented, one of the partners promised, "a milestone for our long-term energy future." The project, initially estimated to cost $5.8 billion, quickly became a leading candidate for a Department of Energy (DOE) program in which the government would guarantee loans to finance new ...

Sun, 7 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Sir David King criticises climate scientists
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7165567/Sir-David-King-criticises-climate-scientists.html
Telegraph: Writing in The Daily Telegraph, the former chief scientist said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has tried too hard to achieve "consensus science" around the risks of floods, droughts and extreme weather events. He said this led to the 'climategate' scandal at the University of East Anglia and accusations scientist tried to block external challenges to their work. It also led to "glaciergate", where the IPCC mistakenly claimed the Himalayas would melt by ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
EU finally approves Â€4bn CCS plan
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257362/eu-finally-approves-4bn-ccs
Business Green: EU member states have approved a plan to share out EUR4bn to develop carbon capture and storage and fund high tech hi-tech renewables projects. At least eight CCS projects will receive funding as well as ocean thermal energy conversion technologies and systems to convert cellulose from plant waste into biofuels, biogas or electricity. As part of the plan 300 million permits from a reserve fund of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme will be transferred to the European Investment ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Climate emails: were they really hacked or just sitting in cyberspace?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/04/climate-change-email-hacker-police-investigation
Guardian: More than two months after the moment that thousands of confidential emails, documents and computer code from the University of East Anglia (UEA) was released online it remains a mystery who was behind the hack. Even Sir David King, the government's former chief scientist, remains confused. This week, he sought to blame the leak on a foreign intelligence agency, only to admit later he had no evidence. The university called in police last November, insisting they were victims of ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Carbon trading permits worth Â£2.7m stolen
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/04/carbon-trading-fraudsters-steal-permits
Guardian: Hundreds of thousands of carbon trading permits have been stolen from companies in Germany and the Czech Republic by fraudsters who duped companies into giving their details via a fake website. Around 250,000 permits worth EUR3m were stolen from six companies in Germany in last week's "phishing attack", which was first reported to the German national carbon registry on Friday. Permit trading on the German registry was closed immediately but reopened today. Phishing attacks are ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
According to new survey, Americans support strong climate, energy policies
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-02/gmu-atn020410.php
EurekAlert: Despite a sharp drop in public concern over global warming, Americans–regardless of political affiliation–support the passage of federal climate and energy policies, according to the results of a national survey released today by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities. The survey found support for: * Funding more research on renewable energy, such as solar and wind power (85 percent) * Tax rebates for people buying fuel-efficient vehicles or solar ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Australia: Coalition needs more than just true believers
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/coalition-needs-more-than-just-true-believers/story-e6frg6zo-1225826882387
Australian: IN August last year the Victorian coastal Borough of Queenscliffe Council decided to take its own action on climate change and rising sea levels. At a secret meeting the council decided to introduce draconian planning measures limiting building, housing extensions, new projects and subdivisions within a "flood zone" based on predictions of sea levels through to 2100. Approximately 600 homes in the suburbs of Point Lonsdale and Queenscliff were immediately affected, and future development, ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
EPA biofuels guidelines could spur production of ethanol from corn
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/03/AR2010020303804.html
Washington Post: The nation's farmers got a big boost Wednesday when the Obama administration issued new biofuels guidelines that could open the way for large increases in the production of corn-based ethanol. The Environmental Protection Agency said new data showed that, even after taking into account increased fertilizer and land use, corn-based ethanol can yield significant climate benefits by displacing conventional gasoline or diesel fuel. The new renewable-fuel standard issued by the EPA ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Climate of Davos despair
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/climate-of-davos-despair/story-e6frg6z6-1225826879579
Australian: THE ruins of global financial capitalism on display at the World Economic Forum included . . . the dashing of hopes for a deal to save the planet from global warming. Just as the world's top bankers will have to play by different rules after the crisis, global climate action requires a political rethink. "The real difficulty is that for some reason, we have trouble grappling with what are really serious trade-offs to be made with economic impacts in the short term," Canadian Prime ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Melting snowpack thins wolverine population: Study
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/technology/Melting%20snowpack%20thins%20wolverine%20population%20Study/2518338/story.html
Canwest News Service: The ferocious wolverine -- strong enough to kill prey as large as a moose -- may not be tough enough to survive climate change. New research published in the journal Population Ecology suggests that as the wolverine's snowy habitat across northwestern Canada melts, the hardy and elusive creature's population thins. "The general trend is that the faster the snowpack is declining, the more it's declining, the worse off it seems to be for the wolverines," said wildlife biologist ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Cape wind review called 'rushed.'
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/02/04/cape_wind_review_called_rushed/
Boston Globe: A federal inspector general`s investigation into the Minerals Management Service`s environmental review of the proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm has concluded that several federal agencies felt "unnecessarily rushed`` to finish their contributions to the report, although no agency believed its overall conclusions changed as a result. The US Department of the Interior`s Office of Inspector General also found that the Minerals Management Service`s January 2009 final environmental ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Research links water vapour and climate change
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2010/s2810120.htm
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: ELEANOR HALL: The Federal Government might be shaping its climate change policy around reducing carbon dioxide emissions but research from the US Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has found an increase in stratospheric water vapour may be responsible for nearly a third of the global warming that took place during the 1990s. It also found that a 10 per cent drop in vapour slowed down the rate of global warming by a quarter over the last decade. Timothy McDonald spoke about ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Biofuel production falls far short of targets
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704259304575043422176790914.html
Wall Street Journal: The Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday that it expects the biofuels industry to produce 6.5 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol this year, a fraction of the volume anticipated by Congress. The announcement suggests that government goals for turning inedible crops into transportation fuel have been unrealistic and too optimistic about the private sector's ability to advance existing technology and finance new refineries for biofuels. In 2007, Congress had mandated ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Senate debate keeps coming back to power plants
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/02/04/04climatewire-climate-debate-in-senate-keeps-coming-back-to-9841.html
New York Times: Key senators are studying whether power plants should be the guinea pig industry for the nation's first cap-and-trade system designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Electric utilities are responsible for about a third of the country's annual heat-trapping pollutants, and they have been involved for about 15 years in a similar market-based mechanism that has successfully reduced acid rain. But the focus on just one industry also comes with perils, and it is far from certain ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Obama's new nuke plant plans stir old waste storage fears
http://www.mpbn.net/Home/tabid/36/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3478/ItemId/10868/Default.aspx
Maine Public Broadcasting Network: President Obama is calling for $54 billion in loan guarantees for a "new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants." His administration also announced this week that it is dropping plans for underground storage of highly radioactive nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. The position is drawing mixed reactions from around the country, including Maine, where waste from the decommissioned Maine Yankee plant will have to stay for the indefinite future, and in the rest of New England where ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
United States: Gov. Doyle promotes 'green economy'
http://www.journaltimes.com/news/local/article_20a03b8c-1126-11df-938a-001cc4c002e0.html
Journal Times: With 10 months left on the job, Gov. Jim Doyle says you shouldn't write off him or his agenda, part of which he highlighted during his recent State of the State speech. While he's still in office, Doyle, a Democrat, says he'll continue to promote things like high-speed rail, the mayoral takeover of Milwaukee Public Schools and making Wisconsin a leader in the "green economy." Doyle was in Kenosha and Racine Wednesday promoting the Clean Energy Jobs Act, which he says has the ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
South Africa: Prime property at risk as sea levels rise
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=14&art_id=vn20100203041611339C979906
Cape Times: Sixteen prime coast areas, including Milnerton Harbour, Green Point, Sea Point, Camps Bay and the entire Strand beachfront are at "high risk" from rising sea levels, says the City of Cape Town's latest sea-level risk assessment. If sea levels rise, as they are predicted to do in the next 25 years, billions of rands of coastal infrastructure will be damaged. In a report submitted on Tuesday to the planning and environment portfolio committee, Darryl Colenbrander of strategy and ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
United States: A setback for wind power
http://www.illinoistimes.com/Springfield/article-6932-a-setback-for-wind-power.html
Illinois Times: Sangamon County board members are considering an amendment to make green energy developers plant wind turbines farther from people who don't want them. The amendment penned by board member Tom Fraase "is about an inch thick,' says Tim Moore, chair of the Public Health, Safety and Zoning committee, and would make the existing wind farm ordinance more stringent. County rules state turbines can't be less than half a mile from incorporated areas with a population of less than 10,000, or ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Environmental groups split over calls for IPCC boss to resign
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/04/ipcc-rajendra-pachauri-resignation
Guardian: International environment and development groups have given conflicting opinions over whether Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), should resign over criticism of his handling of a false claim about melting glaciers in the panel's landmark 2007 report. They also fear a drop in the confidence in climate science could undermine governments' resolve to address global warming, with Greenpeace saying a new leader of the IPCC could restore ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
'Climate change research to be more robust than IPCC'
http://business.rediff.com/report/2010/feb/04/climate-change-research-to-be-more-robust-than-ipcc.htm
rediff: After locking horns with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the glacier melting issue, environment minister Jairam Ramesh [ Images ] said on Thursday the research of the Indian Panel on Climate Change would be more 'robust and solid' than the UN body's. "We should not depend only on reports from the UN body. Its fault was that it didn't do original research and derives assessments from published literature," Ramesh told reporters while referring to the recent goof-up by ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Democratic Party support for Barack Obama ETS drops
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/democratic-party-support-for-barack-obama-ets-drops/story-e6frg6nf-1225826913033
Australian: US President Barack Obama is under intense pressure from leading members of his Democratic Party to scale back climate change legislation as their support for his proposed cap-and-trade scheme for carbon emissions ebbs away. Mr Obama indicated yesterday he may be willing to accept a compromise in which a cap-and-trade scheme similar to one proposed by the Rudd government was isolated from an all-encompassing climate change bill. The revised approach could give parts of the ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Vietnam Seeks Aid For Climate Change
http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsworld.php?id=473257
Bernama: Vietnam hopes that the World Bank would boost their assistance to the country, as it struggle with rising sea-levels and changes in river water sources, Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai said, the Vietnam news agency reported. Speaking at a meeting with the World Bank's Vice President for East Asia and the Pacific James Adam, Hai said that the climate change is Vietnam's top priority in the country's sustainable development. Hai also thanked the bank for its effective ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
China overtakes USA in wind
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257328/china-overtakes-usa-wind
Business Green: China overtook the USA for volumes of new installations and manufacturing of wind turbines for the first time in 2009, according to a report by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC). The world's wind power capacity grew by 37.5GW to 157.9GW during the year, with a third (13GW) of these additions made in China, which doubled its capacity in the period. "China is putting strong efforts into developing the country's tremendous wind resource. Given the current growth rates, it can ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
UN official says climate change science robust despite errors in panel report
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5iU1HHrHodo1iC_7gRr8SHWOYuhUA
Canadian Press: Errors in an authoritative report about the impact of global warming on Himalayan glaciers should not detract from the overall conclusions drawn in the study, the U.N. climate chief said Thursday. Yvo de Boer acknowledged that some mistakes were made in the 2007 report by the U.N.-affiliated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change but argued that the science behind global warming was robust and that the report itself was helping countries combat it. The IPCC report warning ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
UN Climate Chief Contends Framework by Global Body Still Best Way Forward
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/environment/UN-Climate-Chief-Contends-Framework-by-Global-Body-Still-Best-Way-Forward-83530927.html
Voice of America: The United Nations' climate chief is expressing optimism about the movement among various countries to discuss a global carbon-emissions treaty, less than two months after the Copenhagen conference failed to achieve such a deal. Gatherings of the European Union, the Group of Eight, the G20 and other international bodies discussing climate change will not sideline the U.N. effort for a sweeping global environmental agreement. That is what the world body's climate chief, Yvo de Boer, ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Is there enough food out there for nine billion people?
http://www.tnr.com/node/72936
New Republic: Sometime around 2050, there are going to be nine billion people roaming this planet--two billion more than there are today. It's a safe bet that all those folks will want to eat. And that's... an incredibly daunting prospect. Right now, an estimated one billion people go hungry each day. So add two billion more people, a limited supply of arable land, plus the fact that rising incomes will boost demand for meat and dairy products, plus the fact that many key natural resources (fisheries, ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Don't count your trees, forests aren't that green
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/dont-count-your-trees-forests-arent-that-green/story-e6frg6zo-1225826508034
Australian: CLIMATE change policy just got a whole lot harder. Once again, the culprit is the science. New research suggests that forests are not the carbon sinks they were assumed to be. Climate change policy-makers will have to return to the drawing board. In late 2008, while he was a Smithsonian fellow, Griffith University associate professor Peter Pollard, a chemical engineer and water quality specialist, spent six months in one of the world's most isolated tropical jungles on ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Burying it won't solve the carbon problem
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/burying-it-wont-solve-the-carbon-problem-20100203-ndfc.html
Sydney Morning Herald: The good news is that the Coalition has recognised that climate change is a problem. Until now they have been sending confusing messages. The cornerstone of their policy is to pay farmers, through a tender system, to store carbon in agricultural soils. Is it possible for Australia to cut emissions by 5 per cent by 2020, through storing carbon in vegetation and soils? Yes, it is. Is that good news for the environment? If it is done properly, absolutely. But then what? If ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
New nuclear subsidies are a terrible idea
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/03/new-nuclear-subsidies-are-a-terrible-idea/
Washington Times: At a time of deep partisan and ideological divi -sion in Washington, there aren't many issues that bring together forces from across traditional divides. So when scholars at conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and taxpayer groups such as the National Taxpayers Union agree with environmentalists on something, it's time to sit up and take notice. That's exactly what's happening on the issue of federal subsidies for new nuclear power plants. Fiscal conservatives know ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Climate debate needs facts, not anecdotes
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10623715
New Zealand Herald: Anyone who sets out to discredit a piece of published work can do so by finding a single factual error. No matter how peripheral the mistake may be, it undermines public confidence in the work. People naturally wonder, if the authors were careless on this point how much else might be wrong? More than one mistake has been found recently in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, set up by the United Nations to provide authoritative reports on global warming, ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Obama urges greater use of biofuels
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-biofuels4-2010feb04,0,6179879.story
LA Times: The Obama administration gave a boost to the corn and coal industries Wednesday, announcing a series of moves to accelerate biofuel use and deploy so-called clean-coal technology on power plants. Unveiling the actions in a meeting with energy-state governors at the White House, President Obama said the steps would create jobs in rural areas, reduce foreign energy dependence and curb the emissions that scientists blame for global warming. "It's important for us to understand ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Ireland needs ambition to become global renewable energy leader
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0204/1224263734230.html
Irish Times: Our wind blows stronger and for longer than in most other countries. There is 3,500 MW of onshore wind either already developed or in planning. Offshore wind could provide a further 7,100 MW. We have wave and tidal resources which will play an important role for us in the future. Between them, these resources would give us well over the Government target of 40 per cent of our energy coming from renewable sources. Ireland already has a well developed onshore wind industry. Offshore ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
India to have own panel on climate change: Jairam Ramesh
http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-to-have-own-panel-on-climate-change-Jairam-Ramesh/H1-Article1-505242.aspx
Indo-Asian News Service: India would soon have its very own panel on climate change, union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh announced on Thursday and added that the country could not depend only on reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). "There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am all for climate science but not for climate evangelism. I think people misused the IPCC report," Ramesh told a news channel here. Stressing that the IPCC's ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Prince of Wales says he has been abused for his green views
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7147968/Prince-of-Wales-says-he-has-been-abused-for-his-green-views.html
Telegraph: In a wide ranging speech on the need for a "greener economy", the Prince said he has been fighting all his life for a more holistic and sustainable way of living. But he said many of his ideas on health care and agriculture have been met with "huge defensiveness" and have even been described as "dangerous" or "positively evil". The Prince has been criticised by doctors for promoting alternative medicine such as homeopathy. He was described as a "Luddite" by a Labour MP for his ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
An Industry Must Clean Up Its Century-Long Mess
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122779177&ft=1&f=1025
National Public Radio: In December, the Justice Department announced a settlement in one of the largest environmental bankruptcies in U.S. history. The American Smelting and Refining Company, known as Asarco, will pay a record $1.79 billion to settle claims for hazardous waste pollution at 80 sites in as many as 20 states. Cleanup will begin this year on one of Asarco's most notorious properties -- the copper smelter in El Paso, Texas. Icon Of A Bygone Era Driving through El Paso on ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Canada: Quebec's rift with Ottawa over climate change grows
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/quebecs-rift-with-ottawa-over-climate-change-grows/article1455013/
Globe and Mail: Global warming is fracturing national politics as Ottawa and Quebec escalate a war of words over federal reluctance to act against climate change. Stephen Harper's Conservative government is being assailed for doing both too much and too little on the environment, even as it works toward a new continental accord on transportation emission standards with the Obama administration to be announced later this year. In India Wednesday, Quebec Premier Jean Charest excoriated the ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Greenpeace director tells IPCC boss Rajendra Pachauri to stand down over glacier claim
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/7153621/Greenpeace-director-tells-IPCC-boss-Rajendra-Pachauri-to-stand-down-over-glacier-claim.html
Telegraph: Dr Pachauri has refused to apologise for an inaccurate claim published in an IPCC report that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035. The error has been seized upon by climate change sceptics as evidence that the case for man-made global warming is being exaggerated, and now Dr Pachauri's allies in the environmental movement have spoken out against his handling of the affair. John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK, called on the Indian academic to be replaced to rebuild the ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Lord Smith warns climate change argument has been undermined by 'climategate'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7148764/Lord-Smith-warns-climate-change-argument-has-been-undermined-by-climategate.html
Telegraph: Lord Smith of Finsbury, the Chairman of the Environment Agency, said the climate is changing and the UK is in danger of suffering more extreme weather events like the recent floods in Cumbria. But he said "sloppy and irresponsible" emails sent by scientists from the University of East Anglia in a scandal known as "climategate" was being used by sceptics to cast doubt on the whole argument. He also said a mistaken claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Cautious optimisim for solar
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257314/cautious-optimisim-solar
Business Green: Analysts are cautiously optimistic about the state of the market for photovoltaic components this year, following a drastic reduction in pricing over the last 12-18 months. iSuppli, which tracks pricing on various raw components used by the electronics industry, charts a dramatic dip in the price of polysilicon on the spot market. In 2008, the spot price rested at $400/kg. This plummeted to $80/kg last year, and will more than halve again in 2010, falling to $35/kg. It will ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
UN climate chief defends under-fire Pachauri
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100204/wl_sthasia_afp/unclimatewarmingglaciersipcc
Agence France-Presse: The United Nations' top climate official on Thursday backed leading global warming scientist Rajendra Pachauri, saying he should ignore calls to resign over errors in a key 2007 report. Yvo de Boer, executive director of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said Pachauri was not personally responsible for the claim that global warming could melt Himalayan glaciers by 2035. De Boer told reporters in New Delhi it would be "senseless" for Pachauri, the chief of ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Companies feel threatened by climate fight: U.N. chief
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6131WJ20100204?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: Certain countries and companies feel threatened by growing efforts against climate change, the U.N. climate chief said on Thursday, after other officials spoke of a campaign to undermine a consensus on global warming. Yvo de Boer spoke amid a controversy over an incorrect projection on glacial melting by the United Nations climate panel, which drew into focus the panel's credibility and led to personal attacks on its chief, Rajendra Pachauri. Pachauri has said he will not ...

Fri, 5 Feb 10
Australia: PM Rudd says Opposition climate policy would increase emissions
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2010/s2809748.htm
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: SHANE MCLEOD: To Canberra where the battle over climate change policy is today a numbers game. The Government has had its bureaucrats crunching through the Opposition's policy and this morning says it shows Tony Abbott's plan would fall short on delivering a targeted 5 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions. The Opposition in Parliament has been attacking the Prime Minister over the 19 per cent jump in electricity prices that his emissions trading scheme would ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Obama unveils new biofuels, carbon capture, initiatives
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100203/sc_afp/usenergyenvironmentobamachina
Agence France-Presse: US President Barack Obama on Wednesday unveiled a new strategy to reinvigorate US production of biofuels, vowing he would not let nations like China race ahead in building new energy economies. Obama is embracing a host of traditional sources of power, including coal and nuclear and new energy sources, like wind power, as he attempts to improve dim prospects for cap-and-trade climate legislation in Congress. He said his government's Environmental Protection Agency had mandated ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Rainforest expert agrees with IPCC: warns of 'tipping point' for Amazon
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0203-hance_amazontip.html
Mongabay: Amid questions over the Amazon forests' capacity to survive climate change, a renowned tropical biologist says that in fact the fears are real, reports Tierramerica. Speaking at the Biodiversity Science Policy Conference in Paris, Thomas Lovejoy, biodiversity chair at the Washington DC-based Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, and chief biodiversity adviser to the president of the World Bank, described the Amazon rainforest as "very close to a tipping ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Climate change researchers must be more open, says chief scientist
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/03/climate-change-chief-scientist-beddington
Guardian: The government's chief scientist has called on climate researchers to be more open when dealing with critics and transparent when they make errors. In an interview with the Guardian, John Beddington urged scientists to share data freely even though some sceptics sought to cherry-pick facts to fit a Âpolitical Âargument. He said: "Scepticism and criticism is the way science grows. Where at all possible, data and analyses should be available so that people can do the challenging in an ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Penn St. moving forward with scientist probe
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100203/ap_on_re_us/us_climate_e_mails
Associated Press: Penn State University says it will proceed with an investigation into a leading climate scientist after an internal inquiry into alleged research misconduct stemming from leaked e-mails at the center of a controversy over global warming. A university committee has been looking into e-mails pertaining to professor Michael Mann or his work since late November, when computer hackers obtained messages between scientists from a British research center. Mann's work has long criticized by ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Invasive Plants Benefit From Climate Change
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1818085/invasive_plants_benefit_from_climate_change/index.html?source=r_science
redOrbit: Invasive plants could become even more prevalent and destructive as climate change continues, according to a new analysis of data stretching back more than 150 years. Writing in the journal PLoS ONE, the Harvard University scientists who conducted the study say that non-native plants, and especially invasive species, appear to thrive during times of climate change because they're better able to adjust the timing of annual activities like flowering and fruiting. "These results ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Britain's energy policy goes back to the future
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/03/ofgem-report-analysis
Guardian: Alistair Buchanan has set sail on the good ship Discovery to find a solution to Britain's twin needs of meeting energy-security and climate-change goals. But the Ofgem regulator might have better named his exploratory vessel Recovery, because this is a voyage to make up for lost time: it should have been launched years ago when North Sea supplies first started to run out and global warming began to be noticed. Buchanan has been the target of criticism because he is the man at ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Climate Scientist Absolved of Distorting Research
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/science/earth/04climate.html
New York Times: An academic board of inquiry has largely cleared a noted Pennsylvania State University climatologist of scientific misconduct, but a second panel will convene to determine whether his behavior undermined public faith in the science of climate change, the university said Wednesday. The scientist, Dr. Michael E. Mann, has been at the center of a roiling dispute arising from the unauthorized release of more than 1,000 e-mail messages from the servers of the University of East Anglia in ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Spain sees emissions to 2012 breaching Kyoto limit
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6123I520100203?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: Spain on Tuesday predicted on Wednesday that its greenhouse gas emissions in the 2008-12 period will be almost 20 percent above the upper limit it was set in 1990 under the Kyoto Protocol. The Environment Ministry said emissions would be, on average, 34.45 percent above 1990 levels, the benchmark year set by Kyoto, under which Spain was allowed to emit 15 percent more in 2008-12 because it was not considered fully industrialized. It will now exceed that limit by 19.45 ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Climate scientists have long been in firing line
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/feb/03/hacked-climate-emails-sceptics-funding
Guardian: Many of the researchers caught up in the "climategate" saga have spent years in the firing line of sceptics. And they have felt the heat. In late 2006, I interviewed a number of them for an article in New Scientist magazine, which focused on how the propaganda war was shaping up prior to the publication of the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment the following year. Kevin Trenberth had suffered abuse for publicly linking global warming to the ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Ecologists Link Accelerated Tree Growth to Climate Change
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/ecologists-link-accelerated-tree-growth-to-climate-change/19341888
AOL News: Forests in the eastern United States are growing taller and thicker than in past generations. A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that old hardwood forests -- the kind that dot the landscape of much of the northeast coastal region -- have been growing four to six times faster than what researchers consider a normal rate. Ecologist Geoffrey Parker, one of the study's primary authors, says a combination of factors accounts for the ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Climate change effects on prairies studied
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2010/02/03/Climate-change-effects-on-prairies-studied/UPI-11711265211024/
United Press International: Scientists say the loss of wetlands due to climate change across central North American prairies will negatively affect millions of waterfowl. The researchers said they've discovered the region is much more sensitive to climate warming than previously thought, posing a bleak future for waterfowl that depend on wetlands for food, shelter and the raising of their young. "The impact to the millions of wetlands that attract countless ducks to these breeding grounds in spring makes ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Climate scientists withheld Yamal data despite warnings from senior colleagues
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/03/yamal-data-climate-change-hacked-email
Guardian: It seems hard to believe that a handful of tree trunks dragged from frozen bogs in Siberia could undermine the argument about man-made climate change. But that is the claim that has been made by sceptics in recent months. The claim is wide of the mark, but in the 1,073 emails stolen from the University of East Anglia last November the row over the trees and what they tell us about climate change is played out in detail. The scientists are shown clinging to their data to prevent it ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
NASA: Arctic melt season lengthening
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0203-hance_meltseason.html
Mongabay: Newly released images from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center show that the Arctic's melt season has lengthened significantly over the past few decades. The melting season--i.e. the length of time in which continuous melting occurs--has increased on average by 6.4 days for every decade between 1979 and 2007. Around the lower-latitude edges of the ice pack, however, this lengthening was far above the average. According to NASA, researchers collect this data by using ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
S.Korea court says automakers not to blame for asthma
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100203/hl_afp/lifestylehealthenvironmentautojustice
Agence France-Presse: A court ruled Wednesday that South Korea's government and five main automakers are not responsible for respiratory diseases allegedly caused by air pollution. A group of 23 patients suffering from asthma or other respiratory diseases brought the rare lawsuit in February 2007, claiming 30 million won (26,000 dollars) in damages for each plaintiff. They claimed the government's lack of anti-pollution measures and automakers' negligence worsened air pollution and caused their ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Global warming good for trees, bad for ducks: studies
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100203/sc_afp/usclimateenvironmentforestry
Agence France-Presse: Global warming is good news for trees, which are thriving in higher temperatures and longer growing seasons, but bad news for ducks and other waterfowl, whose wetland habitat may dry up and disappear, two studies show. A study by researchers at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) in Maryland indicates that higher temperatures, longer growing seasons and increased levels of carbon dioxide brought by climate change are helping trees in temperate climates to grow ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Bill Gates digs deep for geoengineering
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527463.300-bill-gates-digs-deep-for-geoengineering.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=climate-change
New Scientist: THE world's richest man has been funding geoengineering research, it emerged last week. According to a report posted online by Science, Bill Gates has committed $4.5 million of his own money to funding a number of climate scientists interested in geoengineering. It is not clear whether all of that has gone to geoengineering studies. Atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California, says he received $1.1 million over three years for ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Report: US will fail to meet biofuel goals
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/02/03/obama_pushing_clean_coal_and_green_jobs/?rss_id=Boston.com+--+Latest+news
Associated Press: A presidential task force recommended spending more money to make biofuels like ethanol, saying the nation is likely to fall short of mandates for more environmentally friendly energy. An energy task force was ready to present President Barack Obama with a report outlining how the United States' production of fuel from plants or animals was unlikely to meet the goal Congress has demanded. The current production of 12 billion gallons annually is hardly the 36 billion lawmakers mandated ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
House bill would prevent EPA regulating carbon
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6124L720100203?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: With congressional action on climate legislation in doubt, two House committee chairmen have filed a bill to block the government from regulating greenhouse gases under its own power. The lawmakers say Congress, not "unelected bureaucrats," should set environmental policy. Congress has squabbled for months over a comprehensive climate change bill. Some members say the best bet is to encourage renewable energy production. The Environmental Protection Agency cleared the way for ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
US 'climategate' scientist all but cleared of misconduct
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18474-us-climategate-scientist-all-but-cleared-of-misconduct.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=climate-change
New Scientist: A prominent US climate scientist at the centre of the "climategate" leaked email controversy has been virtually cleared of professional misconduct by an internal university enquiry. Michael Mann, of Penn State University, featured regularly in the more than 1000 emails that were hacked from the University of East Anglia in the UK last November. His emails and comments have since then featured in countless blogs and news articles. Some have claimed the emails reveal that mainstream ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Australia: Report undercuts Kevin Rudd's Great Barrier Reef wipeout
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/report-undercuts-kevin-rudds-great-barrier-reef-wipeout/story-e6frg6nf-1225826128644
Australian: KEVIN Rudd's insistence that the Great Barrier Reef could be "destroyed beyond recognition" by global warming grates with new science suggesting it will again escape temperature-related coral bleaching. The Prime Minister yesterday put the reef at the centre of political combat over climate policy, telling parliament it would be obliterated in the worst-case scenario that "temperatures went through the roof". But for the second year running, the reef has defied predictions of ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Industries sue to void California's low-carbon fuel regulations
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oil-suit3-2010feb03,0,4569077.story
LA Times: Trade associations for the oil, chemical and trucking industries filed suit in federal court in Fresno on Tuesday to void California's first-in-the-nation low-carbon fuel initiative. The regulations, which took effect last month, are aimed at slashing greenhouse gas emissions from gasoline and diesel sold in the nation's largest transportation market by 10%, and spurring the development of alternative fuels and technology. But the lawsuit portrays the rules as discriminating ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
United Arab Emirates: Protection of wetlands key to human survival
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2010/February/theuae_February90.xml§ion=theuae&col=
Khaleej Times: Protection of wetlands is key to human survival and UAE plays a central role in this endeavour, a panel of scientists observed at the World Wetlands Day seminar organised by Dubai Municipality (DM). Being a crucial stopover junction for thousands of migratory birds from across the world, wetlands in the UAE play a key role in the survival of hundreds of avian species as well as other forms of life, environmentalists stressed at the conference themed 'Caring for wetlands -- and answer ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Jamaica: Wetland warning
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20100203/lead/lead2.html
Jamaica Gleaner: Global warming could lead to Palisadoes going under water if Jamaicans do not take care of the wetlands, an expert from the Port Royal Marine Laboratory has warned. The National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) yesterday used Jamaica's observance of World Wetlands Day as an opportunity to increase the public's awareness of wetlands. The agency and lab officials provided attendees with insight into wetlands, also known as swamps, during a visit to the University of the ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Sea level rise may sink island nations
http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming-island-nations.html
Discovery News: There are few legal precedents for how these nations can exist without dry land. Island states need to act now if they want to preserve even their ocean territories. Sea level rise from anthropogenic global warming could erase some island states from the face of the Earth -- but those nations could survive even without land, say researchers. Governments and people of lost islands could survive "in exile," build structures to mark their submerged territory, retain their ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Global warming may cook sea turtle eggs
http://news.discovery.com/animals/sea-turtles-global-warming.html
Discovery News: When they emerge onto beaches around the world to lay their eggs in the sand, sea turtles expose themselves to a trio of threats from climate change: cyclones, rising seas and warming temperatures. A new study finds that for the world's largest population of sea turtles -- in Australia's northern Great Barrier Reef -- blazing hot sands pose the greatest threat to the animals' breeding success over the long term. The researchers predict that from now until 2030, sea level rise ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Australia: Government admits climate debate has changed
http://news.brisbanetimes.com.au/breaking-news-national/govt-admits-climate-debate-has-changed-20100203-nbnc.html
AAP: The federal government has admitted the climate change debate may have changed in the wake of the failed global summit in Copenhagen. But it insists an emissions trading scheme is still the best way to reduce greenhouse gases. "The debate may have changed a bit," said Junior climate change minister Greg Combet, who agreed the summit did not deliver what Australia or other countries would have liked. "(But) we still need to act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and an ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Hawaii on track to meet renewable energy goals
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2010/0202/Hawaii-on-track-to-meet-renewable-energy-goals
Associated Press: The fossil fuel-dependent island state is on track to receive 40 percent of its electric power from renewable sources by 2030. New sources of renewable energy, such as these wind turbines, are helping to wean Hawaii from its dependence on fossil fuels. By the end of 2010, 10 percent of the state's energy will be from renewable sources. Two years into Hawaii's ambitious project of vastly increasing the amount of power it gets from renewable sources, state leaders say the islands ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
US budget cuts fossil subsidies
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257266/budget-cuts-fossil-subsidies
Business Green: In his 2011 budget proposals, President Barack Obama has fulfilled on his promise to end subsidies to oil, gas and coal producers, and funnel the funds into nuclear and renewable energy sources instead. The budget calls for the cancellation of over $2.7 billion in subsidies for the fossil fuels industry, aiming to discourage further exploration for them, their production and use. The budget document says funding should end "for programmes that provide inefficient fossil fuel ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
European Firms See Windfall in Renewable Energy
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50204
Inter Press Service: European governments failed to help along an international treaty to stop global warming at the United Nations climate change summit in December, but their engineering and power industries see business opportunities in renewable energy sources and their smart management. Projects to improve the environmental footprint of the European energy sector, and help reduce greenhouse gases (GhG) emissions on the continent include an international grid that intelligently manages energy ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Overall resource efficiency matters more than carbon
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257259/overall-resource-efficiency
Business Green: The UK should adopt an economic strategy focused on resource efficiency much wider in scope than the current Low Carbon Transition Plan so as to secure its place in the global economy of the future. This is the conclusion of Beyond Carbon, an ambitious report by the Aldersgate Group, a coalition of companies, NGOs, professional bodies and MPs, who lobby government on the grounds that high environmental standards are essential to long term economic growth. The report states that ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Pachauri admits damage to UN climate change panel
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/pachauri-admits-damage-to-un-climate-change-panel/story-e6frg6so-1225826520504
Australian: The embattled chief of the UN climate change panel has admitted that a mistake in a landmark 2007 report has damaged the body's credibility. But Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, refused to apologise for the erroneous claim that global warming could melt Himalayan glaciers by 2035. The admission came as former British chief scientist David King backed away from his sensational claim that a foreign intelligence agency or wealthy US ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
In Texas, Resistance Over Stricter U.S. Smog Limits
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/science/earth/03smog.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
New York Times: Environmentalists squared off against business groups and Texas state officials on Thursday at a hearing on the Obama administration`s proposal to tighten standards for smog-producing pollutants, a change that could improve the health of millions but would impose burdensome costs on industry and local governments. The hearing, before a panel of federal environmental officials, was one of three being held around the country on the proposed new standards, which would replace those set ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
California Sets Up Statewide Network to Monitor Global-Warming Gases
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/business/energy-environment/03emit.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
New York Times: California is preparing to introduce the first statewide system of monitoring devices to detect global-warming emissions, installing them on towers throughout the state. The monitoring network, which is expected to grow, will initially focus on pinpointing the sources and concentrations of methane, a potent contributor to climate change. The California plan is an early example of the kind of system that may be needed in many places as countries develop plans to limit their emissions ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
A changing climate for the IPCC
http://www.scidev.net/en/climate-change-and-energy/a-changing-climate-for-the-ipcc-1.html?utm_source=link&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=en_climatechangeandenergy
SciDev.Net: The publication of false claims by the IPCC has been compounded by its imperious attitude, says professor of climate change Mike Hulme. The incorrect statement in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the Himalayan glaciers could completely disappear by 2035 is remarkable in many ways. First, how could such a physically implausible claim have entered an early draft of an assessment undertaken by 'the world's leading experts', ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Fears over future power shortages
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8494899.stm
BBC: Mainland Britain could face power shortages in the years ahead, according to the energy regulator, Ofgem. The regulator also warned that a significant number of consumers may not be able to afford the higher energy prices they would have to face. Ofgem said there was "reasonable doubt" about whether the energy market would be able to deliver sustainable supplies in the coming decade. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband expressed confidence in supply needs being ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
UN climate change chief won't apologise for glacier claim
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7142074/UN-climate-change-chief-admits-glacier-mistake-has-cost-us-dear.html
Telegraph: Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said the assertion in its 2007 report had "cost us dear' in the fight against global warming and helped boost the efforts of sceptics. Despite the IPCC previously admitting it had made a mistake in its assessment on climate change, Dr Pachauri refused to personally apologise for the error because he was not responsible for that part of the report. In an interview published on Wednesday, the ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Wolverine numbers 'melting away'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8494000/8494397.stm
BBC: The wolverine, a predator renowned for its strength and tenacious character, may be slowly melting away along with the snowpack upon which it lives. Research shows wolverine numbers are falling across North America. Their decline has been linked to less snow settling as a result of climate change. The study is the first to show a decline in the abundance of any land species due to vanishing snowpack. Details of the wolverine's decline are published in Population ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
NASA satellite could pave way for policing CO2 emissions
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18467-nasa-satellite-could-pave-way-for-policing-co2-emissions.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=climate-change
New Scientist: NASA will launch a replacement for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, a $278 million satellite that was lost during launch last year, the White House announced on Monday. The replacement, which should be able to measure man-made carbon dioxide emissions from cities and power plants, could pave the way for space probes designed to enforce future climate treaties. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory was lost in February 2009 when a protective fairing atop the probe's Taurus XL rocket failed ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
I won't resign, climate change a reality: Pachauri
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/i-wont-resign-climate-change-a-reality-pachauri/109619-11.html
Indo-Asian News Service: Indian scientist Rajendra Pachauri has refused to apologise for a mistake in a 2007 climate change report and hit out at his critics, declaring "the larger picture is solid". "The larger picture is solid, it's convincing and it's extremely important. How can we lose sight of what climate change is going to do this planet? What it's already done to the planet?" Pachauri was quoted saying on Wednesday. Pachauri, who has been targeted by some British papers for personal attacks ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
The Amazon Is Not Eternal
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50194
Inter Press Service: The Amazon jungle "is very close to a tipping point," and if destruction continues, it could shrink to one third of its original size in just 65 years, warns Thomas Lovejoy, world-renowned tropical biologist. Climate change, deforestation and fire are the drivers of this potential Amazonian apocalypse, according to Lovejoy, biodiversity chair at the Washington DC-based Heinz Centre for Science, Economics and the Environment, and chief biodiversity adviser to the president of the World ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Portugal: Racing for Renewables
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50193
Inter Press Service: Just a decade ago, criticism rained down on sunny, windy Portugal for not making the most of nature's gifts to develop renewable energy sources. Now all signs indicate that it did not fall on deaf ears, as the country has become a leader in the field. Today, this southern European country of 10.5 million people on the west of the Iberian peninsula has substantially reduced its dependence on imported fossil fuels, and wind and solar energy now provide 35.9 percent of the electricity it ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Obama to outline biofuels strategy
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61224920100203?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: President Barack Obama on Wednesday will outline a government strategy to boost development of U.S. biofuels and address their environmental challenges, an administration official said. The strategy will be laid out in a report titled "Growing America's Fuel" by the Biofuels Interagency Working Group, a body the president established to help spur investment in biofuels and make the industry more environmentally friendly. Obama and members of his cabinet are scheduled to meet on ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
US agencies take action on buildings efficiency
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257243/agencies-action-buildings
Business Green: The US Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy have formed an action group to help states achieve the maximum cost-effective energy efficiency improvements possible in offices, buildings, industries and homes by 2020. The Obama administration announced the launch of the State Energy Efficiency (SEE) Action Network Tuesday. The two lead agencies are to work with other organisations and participants, including representatives for state and local governments, ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Government admits Britain will fail to meet 2010 carbon emission target
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7013460.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=3392178
Times (UK): Britain will fail to meet its 2010 target for cutting carbon dioxide emissions, the Government admitted yesterday. The target of a 20 per cent cut in 1990 levels of CO2 by the end of this year is likely to be missed by a wide margin. By the end of 2008, CO2 emissions had fallen by only 10 per cent. The figure is 13 per cent if it includes carbon credits bought from emission reduction programmes overseas. A spokeswoman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: ...

Thu, 4 Feb 10
Climate Crime: Phishing Scam Cripples European Emissions Trading
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,675725,00.html#ref=rss
Spiegel: Trading in CO2 emissions allowances has been hampered in several European countries as a result of a phishing scam. Sneaky cyber-thieves have made millions by fraudulently obtaining European greenhouse gas emissions allowances and reselling them. The scam has hampered trading of the credits, which are seen as an important tool in curbing climate change, in several European countries. Most Internet users are familiar with the e-mail scam known in the jargon as "phishing." A ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Obama: cap-and-trade may be separate in Senate bill
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6115V820100202?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: President Barack Obama acknowledged on Tuesday that a controversial "cap-and-trade" mechanism to fight climate change could be separated from other aspects of an energy bill before the Senate. A cap-and-trade system would set limits on greenhouse gas emissions and allow companies to trade permits to pollute. The system, a version of which was approved by the House of Representatives, is controversial, especially among lawmakers who represent states with big coal reserves. "The ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
How to fight the climate change backlash
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/comment/2257197/fight-climate-change-backlash
Business Green: The backlash is upon us. In many ways it was to be expected. On their own, the failure of the Copenhagen Summit to deliver on expectations; the undoubtedly orchestrated campaign to discredit climate scientists working at the University of East Anglia and contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would have proved damaging. Taken together they are manna from heaven for the climate sceptics and those with vested interests who are attempting to block the ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Fifty-five countries pledge to cut greenhouse emissions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/55-countries-greenhouse-emissions-pledge
Guardian: Fifty-five countries have formally pledged to cut or limit their emissions in a move welcomed by the UN's climate change body as an important step towards achieving a legally binding global agreement. They include the US, all EU countries and China, as well as major emerging economies such as Brazil, Indonesia and India. The 55 nations between them emit 78% of the world's greenhouse gases. But, significantly, the group includes only Brazil from South America, and just six out of 55 ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Controversy behind 'hockey stick' graph
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/hockey-stick-graph-climate-change
Guardian: The pioneering 'hockey stick' graph collected proxy temperature data from tree rings, lake sediments and ice cores It is a persuasive image. The "hockey stick" graph shows the average global temperature over the past 1,000 years. For the first 900 years there is little variation, like the shaft of an ice-hockey stick. Then, in the 20th century, comes a sharp rise like the stick's blade. The graph was a pioneering attempt to put together data from hundreds of studies of past ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
French carbon emissions fall in 2008
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100202/sc_afp/franceclimatewarmingemissionscarbon
Agence France-Presse: France's carbon emissions fell by 0.6 percent in 2008 over 2007, placing it on track for meeting its pledges under the UN's Kyoto Protocol and for deeper cuts by 2020, the ecology ministry said Tuesday. Emissions of greenhouse gases were 527 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, a measure by which heat-trapping gases are standardised in terms of carbon dioxide. The fall in 2008 "occurred despite tougher climate conditions" and came on the heels of a two-percent decline in 2007 over ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Hacked email scandal requires resignations
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/feb/02/climate-change-hacked-emails
Guardian: This is a tough time for climate science. The Guardian's new revelations about the hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia might help to explain the university's utter failure to confront its critics. They could also explain why the head of the unit, Phil Jones, blocked freedom of information requests and proposed that material subject to those requests be deleted. He has been spared a criminal investigation only because the time limit for ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Tesco opens its first zero carbon store
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/02/tesco-carbon-neutral-green-building
Guardian: Supermarket group Tesco, which pumps out some four million tonnes of carbon a year, today opened its first zero carbon store as part of its bid to be a carbon Âneutral company by 2050. The shop, in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, is timber-framed rather than steel, and uses skylights and sun pipes to cut lighting costs. It also has a combined heat and power plant powered by renewable bio-fuels, exporting extra electricity back to the national grid. In addition the refrigerators – one of the ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Emails between scientists reveal flaws in peer review
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/hacked-climate-emails-flaws-peer-review
Guardian: Scientists sometimes like to portray what they do as divorced from the everyday jealousies, rivalries and tribalism of human relationships. What makes science special is that data and results that can be replicated are what matters and the scientific truth will out in the end. But a close reading of the emails hacked from the University of East Anglia in November exposes the real process of everyday science in lurid detail. Many of the emails reveal strenuous efforts by the ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
German FDP opposes solar incentive cuts
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6114NP20100202?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: Germany's Free Democrats, junior coalition partners in Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right government, are opposed to proposals by the Environment Ministry to cut solar power incentives, an FDP lawmaker said Tuesday. Michael Kauch, an environment policy expert in the FDP, told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung proposed cuts by Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen were too great and said the proposed cuts would harm the German solar power sector. "We can't take an axe to it," Kauch ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Climate scientist defends his research
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/phil-jones-climate-scientist-hacked-email
Press Association: The scientist at the centre of an ongoing row about climate research has defended his work against allegations published in today's Guardian that he covered up flawed data on temperature rises. Professor Phil Jones, the head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, said a 20-year-old study questioned by sceptics "stands up to scrutiny" and was corroborated by more recent work. The allegations concern a request from sceptic Douglas Keenan, who queried data from ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Climate scientist defends results
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/norfolk/8494497.stm
BBC: The scientist at the centre of a row over climate change research has defended himself against claims that he manipulated data. Professor Phil Jones, former director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), said his results "stand up to scrutiny". Sceptics claim the e-mails, leaked after a UEA server was hacked into, showed data was being manipulated. Prof Jones also disputed claims he had withheld data from a climate sceptic. He said ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
EU agrees to split billions for green power, coal
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61156020100202?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: European nations agreed on Tuesday how they would carve up billions of euros of European Union funding to help develop advanced renewable power or carbon-trapping technology. The issue has divided the EU's 27 members for more than a year, and Tuesday's vote was seen as the last chance to secure a deal that will help the EU in its race against China and the United States to dominate low carbon technologies. Germany, Italy and Britain have been among the biggest critics of the ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Poor give muted backing to Copenhagen climate deal
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6115D420100202?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: A "Copenhagen Accord" for fighting climate change has won only half-hearted support from major emerging nations led by China and India, leaving question marks over a pact they agreed with the United States. Indian officials said the BASIC group -- China, India, South Africa and Brazil -- feared that ringing endorsement of the accord could detract from the 1992 U.N. Climate Convention, which says rich nations must lead action to slow global warming. "There seems a deliberate ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
No apology from IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri for glacier fallacy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/climate-change-pachauri-un-glaciers
Guardian: The embattled chief of the UN's climate change body has hit out at his critics and refused to resign or apologise for a Âdamaging mistake in a landmark 2007 report on global warming. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said it would be hypocritical to apologise for the false claim that ÂHimalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035, because he was not personally responsible for that part of the report. ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Copenhagen - the Munich of our times?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8490935.stm
BBC: The Copenhagen Climate Accord was a failure of historic proportions that is hardly worth the paper it is printed on, says Malini Mehra. In this week's Green Room, she says climate negotiations need to adopt a new approach that can overcome barriers like national self-interest. Climate negotiations will never be the same after the Copenhagen climate summit, and the accord reached in the Danish capital may very well prove to be the Munich Agreement of modern times. The document ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Effects of forest fire on carbon emissions, climate impacts often overestimated
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127121532.htm
ScienceDaily: A recent study at Oregon State University indicates that some past approaches to calculating the impacts of forest fires have grossly overestimated the number of live trees that burn up and the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere as a result. The research was done on the Metolius River Watershed in the central Oregon Cascade Range, where about one-third -- or 100,000 acres -- of the area burned in four large fires in 2002-03. Although some previous studies assumed ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
IPCC flooded by criticism
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100202/full/463596a.html?s=news_rss
Nature: Just over two years after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, the United Nations panel on climate change is undergoing a period of soul-searching. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has always been a target for climate-change sceptics. In recent weeks, however, criticism has mounted and the panel admitted to a glaring error in its last comprehensive report, released in 2007, which says that Himalayan glaciers are likely to melt completely by 2035 (see Nature 463, 276–277; ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Study finds a tree growth spurt
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/science/earth/02trees.html
New York Times: Forests in the eastern United States appear to be growing faster in response to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a new study has found. The study centered on trees in mixed hardwood stands on the western edge of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland that are representative of much of the those on the Eastern Seaboard. All are growing two to four times as fast as normal, according to a study published in Tuesday`s issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Water vapour worse climate change villain than thought
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18457-water-vapour-worse-climate-change-villain-than-thought.html
New Scientist: A rise in water vapour in the atmosphere fuelled 30 per cent of the global warming that took place during the 1990s. This discovery suggests that the potent greenhouse gas plays a bigger role in climate change that we previously imagined. Susan Solomon and colleagues at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration combined satellite measurements and weather balloon data to track changes in the concentration of water vapour 16 kilometres up in the stratosphere, between the ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
United States: Silicon Valley faces fierce global fight in cleantech
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_14233459?nclick_check=1
San Jose Mercury News: In other tech revolutions of recent decades, Silicon Valley became the uncontested global leader. The region's ability to innovate its way to the top in cleantech, though, is far from guaranteed. Competition is fierce and global, with trillions of dollars at stake. One of the valley's greatest challenges comes from here. China's drive to be a dominant power in the emerging global cleantech industry was on display one recent morning on the campus of the nation's third-largest ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Kentucky lawmakers blast budget's proposed coal subsidy cuts
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/83458.html
McClatchy Newspapers: President Barack Obama's fiscal 2011 budget would cut roughly $2.3 billion in coal subsidies over the next decade, a move Kentucky lawmakers worry will mean heavy job losses in economically poor but coal-rich regions of Appalachia. "Coal subsidies are costly to the American taxpayer and do little to incentivize production or reduce energy prices," said a White House Office of Management and Budget analysis released Monday. "Removing these subsidies would reduce greenhouse gas ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Study calls for EU waste enforcer
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8493413.stm
BBC: The European Union needs a dedicated agency to oversee and enforce EU waste legislation, a study recommends. Illegal dumping continues on a "significant scale" and "many landfill sites are sub-standard", the report for the European Commission warns. The authors say the problem has increased in recent years, as more waste is being generated and more material is shipped to the enlarged EU. Each year, the 27-nation bloc produces an estimated 2.6bn tonnes of ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
UK to struggle to meet green energy targets
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6112WC20100202?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: Britain could struggle to hit its target of getting 15 percent of its energy from renewable resources within the next decade, according to a UK government report submitted to the European Union. Interim targets for the next six years will cause even greater problems, causing Britain to fall behind its EU neighbors. The European Union's executive has been collating the energy forecasts of its 27 member nations to see if more needs to be done to cut climate-warming ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Businesses short-changed by feed-in tariff incentive scheme
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257176/businesses-short-changed-feed
Business Green: Businesses short-changed by feed-in tariff incentive scheme - BusinessGreen.com If this page does not print out automatically, select Print from the File menu. Businesses short-changed by feed-in tariff incentive scheme <H6> Experts hail "world-leading" incentives for domestic renewables, but warn business installations could be left behind </H6> James Murray, BusinessGreen 02 Feb 2010 Businesses keen to deploy onsite renewable energy systems could still struggle ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Bangladesh to get $100 mln loan for clean energy
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61130O20100202?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: Bangladesh will receive $100 million loan from the World Bank to expand its clean energy activities, a senior government official said on Tuesday. More than three quarters of the loan will be spent on the government's solar energy programme and the rest will be used to buy compact fluorescent lamp bulbs known as CFL bulbs. The government plans to finance installation of 1.0 million solar panels over the next couple of years and will distribute about 27.5 million low-wattage CFL ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Study: trees are growing faster because of climate change
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/02/study-trees-are-growing-faster-because-of-climate-change/1
USA Today: Forests in the eastern United States are growing faster than in the past and climate change appears to be a primary reason, a new study finds. More than 90% of the trees analyzed grew two to four times faster than predicted, according to the 22-year-long study published in Tuesday's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study looks at 55 groups of mixed hardwood forest plots in Maryland that are considered representative of trees on the east coast. It says the ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Falling UK emissions "an example in the world community"
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257173/falling-uk-emissions-example
Business Green: The government has today confirmed that greenhouse gas emissions for the UK fell nearly two per cent during 2008, far exceeding the targets set out under the Kyoto Protocol. According to official figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), emissions of the six greenhouse gases covered by Kyoto fell 1.9 per cent in 2008 to 628.3m tones of CO2 equivalent (CO2e). "Today's greenhouse gas emissions statistics are encouraging and show a continued decline in ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Obama Budget Proposal Pushes Climate Regulations Forward
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/02/02/02climatewire-obama-budget-proposal-pushes-climate-regulat-71125.html
New York Times: Both climate regulatory and climate adaptation programs won cash infusions in President Obama's budget proposal yesterday, despite a tough budget year that saw overall cuts at environment, natural resource and land management agencies. Environmentalists said the budget underscored the administration's seriousness about its climate change agenda, even when the programs were not linked directly to clean energy and jobs initiatives. "The president's putting his money where his ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Renewables in Vogue at Obama's DOE
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/02/02/02greenwire-renewables-in-vogue-at-obamas-doe-46954.html
New York Times: Nuclear, solar and wind power are the popular kids in the Energy Department schoolyard this year, while oil, gas and coal have been sent to detention. When he sent his proposed spending plan to Congress yesterday, President Obama recommended subsidizing new nuclear plants with loan guarantees and shoveling more money at wind and solar research. But when the administration's budget cutters got to the oil patch, they found a target-rich environment with plenty of programs and tax ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Australia: Opposition Leader Tony Abbott unveils climate-change policies
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opposition-leader-tony-abbott-unveils-climate-change-policies/story-e6frf7jo-1225826106218
Herald Sun: TONY Abbott believes he can fight climate change with a $3.2 billion plan to plant 20 million trees, give solar panel rebates to a million homes and put ugly high voltage electricity cables under ground. The Opposition Leader declared he would deliver the same cut to greenhouse gasses as the Rudd Government with what he called a "simpler, cheaper and more effective" tax-free scheme. Mr Abbott boasted that his "sun-and-soil" plan was based on rewards for business to cut ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Proposed budget for U.S. EPA trimmed by $300 million
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/science-updates/proposed-budget-for-us-epa-trimmed-by-300-million
New Jersey Newsroom: President Barack Obama's proposed budget would trim funding for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency just as it tries to take on a larger role in New Jersey. In a presentation to government and trade groups, though, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the $10 billion allocation for the 2011 fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, would preserve her agency's key priorities. Of the roughly $300 million reduction, "the majority of it is from the Great Lakes restoration initiative," ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Obama's climate change police
http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/economy/epa_global_warming/
CNN: The Copenhagen climate talks went nowhere. The Senate's attempt to pass a global warming bill appears stuck. But that's doesn't mean greenhouse gas laws aren't coming. The Environmental Protection Agency, spurred by a Supreme Court ruling, is racing to fill the void. As early as March, the EPA could be required to cap greenhouse gases from things like power plants and large factories, essentially doing what Senate Democrats want, without a messy vote. Some say it's a great ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Climate-Change Accord Wins Support, Falls Short on Goals
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1958234,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
Time Magazine: When President Obama hammered out an agreement with leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa in the waning hours of the U.N.'s climate-change summit in Copenhagen in December, they saved the long-running global-warming negotiation process from total disintegration. But it may have been just a stay of execution. The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) gave all nations until Jan. 31 to sign onto the deal -- in part because it was opposed by a handful of ...

Wed, 3 Feb 10
Copenhagen pledges fall short of 2C target, says UN climate chief
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/climate-change-target-copenhagen-un
Associated Press: Goals on reducing greenhouse gases announced by major industrialised nations are a step forward, but not enough to forestall the disastrous effects of climate change by the middle of this century, UN officials said yesterday. Janos Pasztor, the top climate adviser to the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, said the goals, submitted to the UN as part of a voluntary plan to roll back emissions, make it highly unlikely the world can prevent temperatures from rising above the target set at ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Huge hydroelectric dam approved in Brazil's Amazon
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6105MY20100201?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: Brazil's government has granted an environmental license for the construction of a controversial hydroelectric dam in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, the Environment Minister said on Monday. The $17 billion project on the Xingu River in the northern state of Para is to help the fast-growing Latin American country cope with soaring demand for electricity but has raised concern over its likely impact on the environment and on native Indians. "It may have been the slowest and ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Shell signs giant ethanol deal in Brazil
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/shell-signs-giant-ethanol-deal-in-brazil/article1452329/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheGlobeAndMail-Front+%28The+Globe+and+Mail+-+Latest+N
Reuters: Royal Dutch Shell PLC RDS.A-N plans to make the biggest-ever foray into biofuels by an oil major, striking a deal with Brazil's Cosan SA Industria e Comercio to form a $12-billion (U.S.) ethanol joint venture that will be the No. 3 fuel distributor in Latin America's largest country. The deal, announced on Monday, marks Shell's entry into ethanol production and follows moves by British oil company BP PLC BP-N , which in 2008 took a stake in a big Brazilian biofuel project and unveiled ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Climate change targets 'disappointing'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7131836/Climate-change-targets-disappointing.html
Telegraph: The two week long conference ended in a political 'Accord' that asked just over 190 nations to come back by the end of January with targets to cut emissions. However the United Nations body which runs the talks has received just 55 submissions, with no signs that any major country is willing to increase its ambition at this stage. The major polluters China and America have not budged from their positions. Environmental groups said the current targets will not prevent ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Japan leads the race for a hydrogen fuel-cell car
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100201/wl_csm/277076
Christian Science Monitor: Yokohama, Japan -- Fill 'er up -- with hydrogen. It may still sound like science fiction to some. But Japan is taking a lead in making zero-emissions hydrogen-fueled cars a reality. It's part of the country's aspiration to cut its carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050; nearly a quarter of those emissions come from transportation. And it's a more urgent task in a country that imports all of its oil. Japan leads Asia in early hydrogen-car infrastructure and is a world-beater ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
ExxonMobil profits slump to $19bn
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/01/exxonmobil-oil-profits-slump
Guardian: The world's largest publicly traded oil company, ExxonMobil, saw its profits slump to $19bn (Â£11.9bn) in 2009 from $45bn as it grappled with declining margins at its refineries and weaker demand for fuel in recession-battered economies. Exxon's profits were its smallest for seven years and amounted to a sharp return to earth after the Texas-based energy empire smashed America's all-time record for corporate earnings in 2008. But they still amounted to earnings of nearly $53m a ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Obama budget drops revenue outlook for carbon trade
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6101VB20100201?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: The White House on Monday dropped prospects for revenue from a climate cap-and-trade system opposed by many lawmakers, but its proposed budget still called for a "market-based" policy to fight climate change. Last year the administration forecast revenues of $646 billion for 2012-2019 from a program in which the output of greenhouse gas would be capped and polluters would be forced to buy, and could later trade, emissions permits. "Unlike last year, we do not show an assumed ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Storm brewing over climate-change clash
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/storm-brewing-over-climatechange-clash-20100201-n8y5.html
Sydney Morning Herald: KEVIN Rudd and Tony Abbott are set to lock horns on how Australia should tackle climate change - the issue that gave Mr Abbott the Opposition leadership - when they face off for the first time in Parliament today. Mr Abbott releases his policy for a 5 per cent emissions cut by 2020 - matching the government's target - immediately before Parliament, making it tight for the government to hone its attack for question time. He will take his policy to a joint parties meeting this morning ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
United Kingdom: 'Climategate' is bogus and based on lies
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/climate-emails-sceptics
Guardian: Almost all the media and political discussion about the hacked climate emails has been based on brief soundbites publicised by professional sceptics and their blogs. In many cases, these have been taken out of context and twisted to mean something they were never intended to. Elizabeth Green, veteran head of the Canadian Green party claims to have read all the emails and declared: "How dare the world's media fall into the trap set by contrarian propagandists without reading the whole ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Emissions drop due to recession, not government, say experts
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/emissions-drop-recession-government
Guardian: The government is expected to confirm tomorrow that emissions of greenhouse gases fell by a modest amount in 2008 compared to the previous year. Ministers are likely to try to portray the figures as evidence that the UK is on the right track to meeting its targets to cut emissions by over a third by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. But energy experts said that the small decline was a result of the recession and record energy prices, rather than government policy. In 2008 petrol prices ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Climate accord gets boost, but where's the money?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100201/sc_afp/unclimatewarming
Agence France-Presse: The world's major carbon polluters have reaffirmed commitments to combat global warming, providing a much-needed boost to December's Copenhagen Accord. But more than a month after the nearly scuttled climate deal, rich nations have yet to say when and how they will deliver emergency funds to help poor ones begin to green their economies and cope with climate impacts. The 30 billion dollars in so-called "fast start" financing is meant to cover the period 2010 to ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
UN says nations' greenhouse gas pledges too little
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/01/AR2010020101298.html
Associated Press: The greenhouse gas goals announced by the nations responsible for most emissions are insufficient against the disastrous effects of climate change, a U.N. official said Monday. Janos Pasztor, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's top climate adviser, said the goals, submitted to the U.N. as part of a voluntary plan to roll back emissions, make it highly unlikely the world can prevent temperatures from rising above the target set at the Copenhagen climate conference in December. "It ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Nations set 2020 carbon goals after Copenhagen
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61053Q20100201?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: Fifty-five countries accounting for almost 80 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions have pledged varying goals for fighting climate change under a deadline in the "Copenhagen Accord," the United Nations said on Monday. "This represents an important invigoration of the U.N. climate change talks," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said of the national targets for curbs on emissions until 2020 submitted by January 31. The countries, including top ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Shell to do deal with Brazilian biofuel producer Cosan to secure future
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/01/shell-cosan-brazil-biofuel-deal
Guardian: Royal Dutch Shell, Europe's second biggest energy company, is poised to become the biggest oil major in biofuels as it battles to reassure investors about profitability. The Anglo-Dutch company has signed a memorandum of understanding with the most powerful Brazil bioethanol producer, Cosan, in a joint venture said to be worth $12bn (Â£8.19bn). The move, if finalised, will cement Brazil's position as the world's alternative energy superpower with the potential to ship huge ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
China's Wen seeks binding climate deal in Mexico
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6104ZH20100201
Reuters: China backs a climate change accord struck at a contentious summit late last year and wants a binding global agreement from talks culminating in Mexico later this year, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has said. The Chinese leader endorsed the "Copenhagen Accord" in letters on January 29 to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Danish Lars Lokke Rasmussen, whose country hosted the rancorous summit that produced the controversial, last-minute document on fighting global ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Factbox: Climate change spending in new Obama budget
http://in.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idINTRE6103A920100201
Reuters: U.S. President Barack Obama's new budget includes billions of dollars in spending to support reducing the nation's greenhouse gas emissions, which are blamed for global warming. The Obama administration has pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and 80 percent by 2050. Climate measures in the budget include: Environmental Protection Agency - $21 million to implement a Mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting rule for polluters, ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Obama budget calls for market plan on climate
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61038820100201?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: The White House called in its budget on Monday for Congress to endorse a "comprehensive market-based policy" to fight climate change while dropping projected revenues from a cap-and-trade system many lawmakers oppose. Last year the Obama administration forecast revenues of $646 billion in the years 2012-2019 from an emissions trading program that formed the crux of its proposal to fight global warming. But the legislation that contains that proposal is now stalled in the U.S. ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Tesla files for first US auto IPO since Ford
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257103/tesla-files-plan-first-auto-ipo
Business Green: US electric car firm Tesla Motors has taken another major step towards the mainstream, announcing plans for an $100m IPO which would make it the first US car firm to go public since Ford in 1956. As widely anticipated the California-based company filed documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) late on Friday, which confirmed it was looking to raise $100m at an IPO but failed to provide details on the proposed timing and pricing of the floatation. The ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
UN says nations' greenhouse gas pledges too little
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/02/01/un_says_nations_greenhouse_gas_pledges_too_little/?rss_id=Boston.com+--+Latest+news
Associated Press: The goals set by the world's biggest polluters for emissions rollbacks will likely fall short of what many scientists say is necessary to avoid the disastrous effects of global warming. The climate adviser to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says the U.S., China and the European Union were among the 50 nations to have submitted plans in keeping with a United Nations deadline to do so before Monday. Janos Pasztor says the commitments so far will make it "quite difficult" to prevent ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Energy 'cashback' levels set out
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5ihghUsjSEsARkf4mEQI_NuRAfwRw
Press Association: The levels of "cashback" people will get for small scale renewable electricity such as solar panels are to be set out - but campaigners are concerned the rates will not be high enough to boost uptake of the green technology. The feed-in tariffs will be available to environmentally-friendly energy schemes up to 5MW, equivalent to two large wind turbines, as part of efforts to green the UK's electricity supply. But green groups and the micro-renewables industry are worried that ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Report: Wyoming water vulnerable to climate change
http://www.trib.com/news/state-and-local/article_c80a020e-91b2-5ee5-8459-a83a73d3b5d6.html
Wyoming Tribune: The mountain snows that replenish most surface water in Wyoming, the fifth-driest state, are vulnerable to climate change and likely to be affected by rising temperatures, a new report says. The report released this week by the Ruckelshaus Institute of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming also says downstream water demand is expected to increase in the decades ahead because of regional population growth. The Ruckelshaus Institute is a think tank for ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Gloom gathers around divisive Australia CO2 laws
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61019I20100201
Reuters: Reviled by conservatives and rejected by swing voting senators, Australia's plan for the world's most comprehensive emissions scheme appears dead in 2010, hurting investment plans for businesses wanting carbon clarity. Investors and carbon traders say they face another year of uncertainty after political opponents last year twice blocked the laws in the Senate. A disappointing outcome from the Copenhagen climate talks and a stalled climate bill in the U.S. Senate have further ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
UK has to move beyond carbon cuts to stay competitive
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61000N20100201
Reuters: Britain needs to focus on more than just carbon dioxide emission cuts and manage its water, waste and food resources better to remain competitive, a report by the Aldersgate Group said on Monday. The group is a coalition of businesses, non-governmental organisations, think-tanks and individuals. In a report to the British government, it said UK businesses could save 6.4 billion pounds a year by the improved management of energy, water, food and waste resources. "There is ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
United States: GOP: Jobs or trees? You pick
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/1030864.html
Modesto Bee: The GOP wants you to choose between jobs and trees this year, and it's betting you'll vote for the paycheck. Republican lawmakers are submitting a pack of "job-generating" bills in the Legislature, some of which would roll back regulation. "It's easy to be green when you've got food on the table," GOP Assembly-man Bill Berryhill of Ceres said. "Most of these things were passed in the good times. We're in a different time now." He took aim at California's landmark global ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
United States: It's green against green in Mojave Desert solar battle
http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2236
Yale Environment 360: Twenty years ago when an epic clash over the logging of ancient redwood forests roiled California, the battle lines were clear-cut. On one side stood a Texas corporate raider who acquired the Pacific Lumber Co. in a junk bond-fueled takeover and began felling vast swaths of primeval redwoods to pay off the debt. On the other side was Earth First! and other grass-roots greens who staged a campaign of civil disobedience to disrupt the logging. And while mainstream environmental groups ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
India: Agri sector kept out of climate change cuts
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/agri-sector-kept-outclimate-change-cuts/384234/
Business Standard: In keeping with its pledge of adopting a low-carbon path, India has informed the UN that it will undertake voluntary cuts of its emission intensity by 20-25 per cent by 2020 but asserted that it will not be applicable to the agriculture sector. In a statement submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat, the government yesterday formally said, "India will endeavour to cut its emissions intensity by 20-25 per cent by 2020 in comparison to the 2005 ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Impact of ETS on food costs 'minimal'
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/01/2806109.htm
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: A new report has found failing to tackle climate change will have a greater impact on supermarket prices than an emissions trading scheme (ETS). The report from independent think-tank the Climate Institute found extreme weather events, caused by climate change, will lead to food price rises in the future. The report says these increases will be far greater than the 1 per cent weekly price rise, or $1.30 a week, expected to flow from an ETS. It predicts extreme weather ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Shell, Brazil's Cosan in $12 billion ethanol deal
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6101TW20100201?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FbusinessNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Business+News%29
Reuters: Brazilian sugar and biofuel giant Cosan plans to merge its ethanol and fuel distribution units with Royal Dutch Shell in a deal worth up to $12 billion, extending a trend of growing foreign investment in the fast-growing industry. The deal, announced on Monday, significantly expands Shell's ethanol operations in Brazil and follows moves by British oil major BP, which in 2008 took a stake in a Brazilian biofuel project and unveiled $1 billion in investments. Shares of Cosan ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Soil Association confronts image of organic food as elitist and expensive
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/soil-association-organic-food-elitist
Guardian: In the beginning the organic movement struggled to shed its image of wonky carrots sold by hippies with dirty cuffs and sandals. Now it has the opposite problem: associated with high-priced jars of chutney and biscuits sold by slick marketing men to the dinner party classes. Now the UK's biggest organic body, the Soil Association, is confronting its posh image problem with a special session at its annual conference this week devoted to debating "organic elitism". "Organic is ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
United Kingdom: Expert: Climate change hack sophisticated
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/02/01/Expert-Climate-change-hack-sophisticated/UPI-69931265035024/
United Press International: A foreign intelligence service was likely behind the hacking operation that led to the leaking of British climate change researchers' e-mails, an expert says. David King, the British government's former chief scientist, told The Independent Monday the hacking operation was sophisticated and the way certain e-mails were leaked to produce embarrassment bore the hallmark of a coordinated foreign intelligence operation. One of the leaked e-mails written by University of East Anglia ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Multinationals train sights on supply chain emissions
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257053/business-turns-focus-supply
Business Green: Pressure to curb carbon emissions is rapidly filtering down the corporate supply chain, according to a new report from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) which found many of the multinationals that pioneered carbon reduction techniques are now turning their attention to their suppliers' carbon footprints. The report, which will be released later today, surveyed 44 end-user companies, including global giants such as Dell, Juniper Networks, National Grid, PepsiCo and Reckitt ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Study warns of growing "green fraud" risk
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2257050/study-warns-growing-green-fraud
Business Green: Wherever there is commercial opportunity, criminality soon follows. That is the somewhat dispiriting conclusion to be drawn from the annual fraud risk report from consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which will warn later today that the emerging low-carbon economy is facing a growing threat from fraudsters. "Just because it's green, does not mean it's all good," said Jon Williams, partner, head of sustainability and climate change at PwC. "That is the advice for companies ...

Tue, 2 Feb 10
Stop vilifying biofuels
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/comment/2257052/stop-vilifiying-biofuels
Business Green: It's not easy being green. And it's not always easy to take a stand on something you believe in, particularly if you've got elections to consider, and especially if it's a controversial subject like biofuel. Thanks to the concerted efforts of green groups such as Friends of the Earth, biofuel has become a byword for deforestation, carbon emissions, displaced orangutans and an impending world food crisis. Subsequently, world leaders have crumbled under pressure and cut back support for ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
Emissions of Potent Greenhouse Gas Increase Despite Reduction Efforts
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100131151009.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29
ScienceDaily: Despite a decade of efforts worldwide to curb its release into the atmosphere, NOAA and university scientists have measured increased emissions of a greenhouse gas that is thousands of times more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide and persists in the atmosphere for nearly 300 years. The substance HFC-23, or trifluoromethane, is a byproduct of chlorodifluoromethane, or HCFC-22, a refrigerant in air conditioners and refrigerators and a starting material for producing heat ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
Obama pledges to reduce govenment emisions 28% by 2020
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0131-obama_emissions.html
Mongabay: The U.S. government aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 28 percent by 2020 under an order announced Friday by President Obama. "As the largest energy consumer in the United States, we have a responsibility to American citizens to reduce our energy use and become more efficient," Obama said in a statement. "Our goal is to lower costs, reduce pollution, and shift federal energy expenses away from oil and toward local, clean energy." The government is the largest single ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
UK to fund efforts to shift towards greener palm oil production
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0131-palm_oil.html
Mongabay: Britain will contribute Â£50 million ($80m) towards efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Indonesia, including a project that aims to encourage palm oil producers to establish plantations on degraded lands instead of in place of rainforests and carbon-dense peatlands, reports BBC News. The contribution comes under the government's Â£1.5 billion ($2.4 billion) commitment to $10-billion-per-year aid package pledged by industrialized countries during last month's climate talks in ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
Australia: Rudd and Abbott set to square off
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/rudd-and-abbott-set-to-square-off-20100201-n6th.html
AAP: Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott will use the resumption of parliament this week to push their climate change credentials, setting up a political stoush likely to run until election day. The two leaders will square off in the lower house for the first time on Tuesday, following Mr Abbott's surprise election as opposition leader during a Liberal partyroom ballot in December. Mr Abbott intends to fire the first shot before the house resumes from its two-month summer break by unveiling ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
Pentagon to rank global warming as destabilising force
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/31/pentagon-ranks-global-warming-destabilising-force
Guardian: The Pentagon will for the first time rank global warming as a destabilising force, adding fuel to conflict and putting US troops at risk around the world, in a major strategy review to be presented to Congress tomorrow. The quadrennial defence review, prepared by the Pentagon to update Congress on its security vision, will direct military planners to keep track of the latest climate science, and to factor global warming into their long term strategic planning. "While climate change ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
IMF plans 100 billion fund to help poor mitigate climate impact
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100131/sc_afp/davoseconomyfinancewarmingimf
Agence France-Presse: The International Monetary Fund is planning a 100 billion dollar fund to help countries mitigate the effects of climate change, the agency's head said. "The new growth model will be low carbon," Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the IMF, told political and business leaders meeting at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos this weekend. Efforts to deal with climate change could not be blocked "just because we cannot meet the financing needs," he ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
Miliband defends climate science
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8490251.stm
BBC: Recent controversies over scientific data have not undermined efforts to tackle global warming, Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband has insisted. Among the controversies are claims that some leading scientists exaggerated the melting of the Himalayan glaciers. Mr Miliband told the BBC it would be "profoundly irresponsible" to use one "mistake" as an excuse not to act. He added it did not "undermine decades of climate research" and the "majority of scientists say ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
India reiterates carbon goals for climate accord
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60U0FP20100131?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Reuters: India has reiterated a goal of slowing the rise of its carbon emissions by 2020 as part of pledges due by Sunday under a "Copenhagen Accord" to fight climate change, an official statement said. Many other nations have also reiterated existing goals for slowing global warming before a Sunday deadline for making commitments under the "Copenhagen Accord," which sets an overriding goal of limiting a rise in world temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F). The statement ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
The folly of forgetting global warming
http://www.timescolonist.com/technology/folly+forgetting+global+warming/2505536/story.html
Times Colonist: I wonder if anyone else watching the U.S. president's state of the union address on Wednesday evening noticed the hilarity during his brief reference to global warming. "I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change," Barack Obama intoned, and had to pause until the guffaws died down. We could all see Vice-President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi laughing at the president's back. Obama himself acknowledged with a ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
Ed Miliband declares war on climate change sceptics
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1247459/Ed-Miliband-declares-war-climate-change-sceptics.html
Daily Mail: Climate secretary Ed Miliband broke his silence on the ongoing row about man-made climate change by declaring war on the 'siren voices' who denied global warming was real or man-made. Mr Miliband said the by the 'climategate' controversy that appeared to show that vital data was suppressed or manipulated by climate scientists, as well as the more recent revelation that the Intergorvernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had exaggerated claims about the melting of glaciers in the ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
Big emitters supporting Copenhagen Accord
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100131/india_nm/india458001
Reuters: Big greenhouse gas emitters have restated their promises to fight climate change, meeting a Sunday deadline in a low-key endorsement of December's "Copenhagen Accord". Following are plans announced since the Copenhagen summit. Each country's percentage of world emissions is given in brackets, based on U.S. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center data of emissions from fossil fuels and cement production: CHINA (22 percent), INDIA (6), SOUTH AFRICA (1), BRAZIL (1) -- Known as ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
Panel ignored warnings on glacier error
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7009707.ece
Times (UK): THE United Nations climate panel ignored warnings by leading scientists not to publish false claims that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. One warning, in 2006, a year before the report was published, came from Georg Kaser, an Austrian glaciologist who was a lead author on another section of the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He said: "I sent warnings to the IPCC telling them the claim about Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 was ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7009705.ece
Times (UK): A STARTLING report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its 2007 benchmark report that even a slight change in rainfall could see swathes of the rainforest rapidly replaced by savanna grassland. The source for its claim was a report from WWF, an environmental ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
United States: Global warming bringing oddball weather to region
http://www.timesleader.com/scrantonedition/news/Global_warming_bringing_oddball_weather_to_region_01-31-2010.html
Times Leader: According to a report from the National Wildlife Federation, global warming's impact on the environment is evidenced in changing winters in the Northern United States. Barbara Green of Blue Mountain Ski discusses global warming's impact on ski resorts during a program Thursday at Steamtown National Historic Site, Scranton. Increasing temperatures have led to milder and shorter winters in most areas, officials say. However, increasing temperatures are causing rain-on-snow ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
Climate change to hit public health hard
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=124167
Daily Star: Climate change will have an adverse effect on public health -- particularly that of children -- agriculture and environment, health experts said yesterday. They were speaking at a roundtable discussion titled "Climate change: The biggest health threat coming our way" jointly organised by The Daily Star and Health 21 at the conference room of the English daily. Prof Pran Gopal Dutta, vice chancellor of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, said, "If temperature goes up ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
United States: Silicon Valley tech leaders are reinventing themselves for a cleantech revolution
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_14225614?nclick_check=1
San Jose Mercury News: Brent Constantz's last startup, Skeletal Kinetics, created a bone-fracture cement that costs $200 per gram and helps orthopedic surgeons heal their patients. His new startup aims to churn out billions of tons of market-price construction cement that Constantz says can help heal planet Earth by embedding billions of tons of greenhouse gases into concrete. And it will deliver desalinated water as a byproduct. Constantz is founder and CEO of Calera, a 3-year-old Los Gatos-based ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
Mt. Rainier's melting glaciers create hazard
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-rainer-debris31-2010jan31,0,604880.story
LA Times: The fallout from Mt. Rainier's shrinking glaciers is beginning to roll downhill, and nowhere is the impact more striking than on the volcano's west side. "This is it in spades," U.S. Park Service geologist Paul Kennard said recently, scrambling up a 10-foot-high mass of dirt and boulders bulldozed back just enough to clear the road. As receding glaciers expose crumbly slopes, vast amounts of gravel and sediment are being sluiced into the rivers that flow from the region's ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
Maldives pledges deepest carbon emission cut by 2020
http://www.lankabusinessonline.com/fullstory.php?nid=1632397830
Lanka Business Online: Maldives has voluntarily pledged to slash carbon emissions 100 percent by 2020, which is the deepest cut promised by any country so far under an international accord, the Indian Ocean archipelago said. "Climate change threatens us all," Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed said in a statement. "If we don't act now, we will lose the rainforests, lose the coral reefs and, potentially, lose human civilization itself." Under the United Nations sponsored 'Copenhagen Accord' countries ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
The long and winding road after Copenhagen
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iEksP3Te9xbv3UIIjIpdS5rYCqQA
Agence France-Presse: After the near-train wreck of last month's Copenhagen climate summit, what lies ahead for efforts to beat back global warming? Next week may yield the first clues. Countries are being asked to say by Sunday whether they will endorse an 11th-hour deal, the "Copenhagen Accord," which saved the marathon meeting from collapse but sparked accusations of failure and betrayal. By week's end, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will have a picture of the ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
India reaffirms opposition to binding carbon cuts
http://www.france24.com/en/20100131-india-reaffirms-opposition-binding-carbon-cuts
Agence France-Presse: India reaffirmed to the United Nations that it would reject any attempt to impose legally binding climate change goals, but pledged to reduce emissions intensity. In an endorsement of December's much-criticised Copenhagen Accord, the environment ministry in New Delhi said it had submitted plans to reduce emissions intensity by 20 to 25 percent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels. India's proposal, first made in parliament in December ahead of the Copenhagen summit, came before a UN ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
India: Climate change boss uses car and driver to travel one mile
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1247376/Controversial-climate-change-boss-uses-car-AND-driver-travel-mile-office---says-YOU-use-public-transport.html
Daily Mail: He is the climate change chief whose research body produced a report warning that the glaciers in the Himalayas might melt by 2035 and earned a Nobel Prize for his work -- so you might expect Dr Rajendra Pachauri to be doing everything he can to reduce his own carbon footprint. But as controversy continued to simmer last week over the bogus 'Glaciergate` claims in a report by the UN`s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- which he heads -- Dr Pachauri showed no apparent ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
Top companies leaders in pollution, too
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/top-companies-leaders-in-pollution-too-20100131-n6j2.html
Sydney Morning Herald: GREENHOUSE gas emissions by Australia's top 200 companies surged by more than 10 per cent year-on-year, prompting fresh calls for a price on carbon to combat growing emissions levels. As Federal Parliament resumes this week with the government to put its carbon pollution reduction scheme before the Senate again, the superannuation fund VicSuper's Carbon Count 2009 report, to be published today, shows the companies listed on the ASX200 emitted 268.7 million tonnes of greenhouse gas in ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
Leaks imperil nuclear industry
http://www.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2010/01/31/leaks_imperil_nuclear_industry/#
Boston Globe: The nuclear industry, once an environmental pariah, is recasting itself as green as it attempts to extend the life of many power plants and build new ones. But a leak of radioactive water at Vermont Yankee, along with similar incidents at more than 20 other US nuclear plants in recent years, has kindled doubts about the reliability, durability, and maintenance of the nation`s aging nuclear installations. Vermont health officials say the leak, while deeply worrisome, is not a threat to ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
United States: Sea-level rise slowly becomes issue in Outer Banks
http://hamptonroads.com/2010/01/sealevel-rise-slowly-becomes-issue-outer-banks
Virginian-Pilot: Coastal scientists are predicting that rising seas could drown much of the Outer Banks by the next century, but the issue is just starting to be recognized as a looming crisis in league with beach erosion. Despite the vulnerability of the barrier islands to potentially catastrophic rising seas, there is no clarion call to be proactive. "I think most people who spend time around the ocean probably think there is some rise in the ocean levels," said Allen Burrus, v ice c hairman ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
United States: In Portland, going green and growing vertical in a bid for energy savings
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/us/31portland.html
New York Times: Urban gardening used to seem subversive. People planted tomatoes in public parks, strung their hops to rooftops to make homebrew and reclaimed empty lots as community farms, never mind the property owner. Yet here in one of the more thoroughly tilled cities in America, subversive has come full circle: the federal government plans to plant its own bold garden directly above a downtown plaza. As part of a $133 million renovation, the General Services Administration is planning to ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
Recharging your cellphone, Mother Nature's way
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/31novel.html
New York Times: A NEW solar cell that imitates Mother Nature`s way of converting sunlight to energy is making its debut in a variety of consumer products. The technology uses a photosensitive dye to start its energy production, much the way leaves use chlorophyll to begin photosynthesis. The dye-sensitized cells will be used to provide power for devices ranging from e-book readers to cellphones -- and will take some interesting forms. For e-book readers, for example, the cells may be found in ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
Copenhagen climate deal gets low-key endorsement
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=copenhagen-climate-deal-g
Reuters: Nations accounting for most of the world's greenhouse gas emissions have restated their promises to fight climate change, meeting a Sunday deadline in a low-key endorsement of December's "Copenhagen Accord." Experts say their promised curbs on greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 are too small so far to meet the accord's key goal of limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. The U.N. Climate Change Secretariat plans to ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
As the world burns
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633532/as_the_world_burns
Rolling Stone: This was supposed to be the transformative moment on global warming, the tipping point when America proved to the world that capitalism has a conscience, that we take the fate of the planet seriously. According to the script, Congress would pass a landmark bill committing the U.S. to deep cuts in carbon emissions. President Obama would then arrive in Copenhagen for the international climate summit, armed with the moral and political capital he needed to challenge the rest of the world to do ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
Illinois 'clean coal' plants await their fate
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/0/0833AFF22D277D5A862576BB001136C7?OpenDocument
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: After years of planning and politicking, two next-generation power plants planned for central Illinois face their respective days of reckoning. The projects -- FutureGen and Taylorville Energy Center -- aspire to be among the most advanced, cleanest coal-fueled power plants in the world, proving that the nation's vast coal reserves can be put to use while sharply curtailing emissions of heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. The projects rely on technologies that are ...

Mon, 1 Feb 10
More flaws found in climate report
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/more-flaws-found-in-climate-report-20100131-n6n0.html
Sydney Morning Herald: Anecdotal evidence ... the report considered ice melting in the Andes. THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has come under further criticism for the sources it has used in its Fourth Assessment Report. The Sunday Telegraph in Britain has reported that the panel used information from a magazine article and a student's masters thesis as the basis of its assessment that global warming was the cause of mountain ice melting in the Andes, the European Alps and ...