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Climate Warnings, Growing Louder (19/05/2013 11:28 PM)
New York Times: The news that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the most important global warming gas, have hit 400 parts per million for the first time in millions of years increases the pressure on President Obama to deliver on his pledges to limit this country's greenhouse gas emissions. America cannot solve a global problem by itself. But as Mr. Obama rightly observed in his inaugural address, the United States, as both major polluter and world leader, has a deep obligation to help shield the...

The Rise and Fall of China's Sun King (19/05/2013 10:10 AM)
Reuters: In a 2010 speech before a packed ballroom of university students in Sydney, Shi Zhengrong, founder of Chinese solar-panel maker Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd, listed the people who had been important in his rise to fame and riches. Two were of particular note: Yang Weize and Wang Rong, senior Communist Party officials from the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi. A decade earlier, Shi had been research director of a solar energy firm, a spin-off from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, where...

Syria: Without Water, Revolution (19/05/2013 01:23 AM)
New York Times: I just spent a day in this northeast Syrian town. It was terrifying — much more so than I anticipated — but not because we were threatened in any way by the Free Syrian Army soldiers who took us around or by the Islamist Jabhet al-Nusra fighters who stayed hidden in the shadows. It was the local school that shook me up. As we were driving back to the Turkish border, I noticed a school and asked the driver to turn around so I could explore it. It was empty — of students. But war refugees had occupied...

Impossible Choice Faces America's First 'Climate Refugees' (19/05/2013 06:41 AM)
National Public Radio: Climate change is a stark reality in America's northernmost state. Nearly 90 percent of native Alaskan villages are on the coast, where dramatic erosion and floods have become a part of daily life. Perched on the Ninglick River on the west coast of the state, the tiny town of Newtok may be the state's most vulnerable village. About 350 people live there, nearly all of them Yupik Eskimos. But the Ninglick is rapidly rising due to ice melt, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says the highest point...

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon pacing 88% higher than last year's rate (19/05/2013 07:55 AM)
Mongabay: Satellite analysis by a Brazil-based NGO indicates that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon continues to pace well ahead of last year, when the government passed a weakened version of its law governing use of forest lands. Imazon's near-real-time deforestation tracking system - known as SAD - detected 1,570 square kilometers of accumulated forest loss between August 2012 and April 2013, an 88 percent increase over the 836 sq km cleared during the year earlier period. However accumulated forest...

Scientists agree on climate change. So why doesn’t everyone else? (18/05/2013 06:06 PM)
Washington Post: Here`s a finding that shouldn`t be all that surprising: Since 1991, roughly 97 percent of all published scientific papers that take a position on the question agree that humans are warming the planet. That stat comes from this extensive new survey led by John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli, who run the Skeptical Science website. And it builds on earlier studies finding the exact same thing. The authors sifted through 11,944 climate-related abstracts over the past two decades and found that 66.4 percent...

Why Canada should back Antarctica North (19/05/2013 12:00 AM)
Globe and Mail: Another kind of Canadian government would take this opportunity as Arctic Council chair to lead a diplomatic effort to demilitarize the region, to make it a northern Antarctica where, by international treaty, military activities are banned. Of course, the Arctic Council alone couldn't bring about demilitarization since it has no such power, but it could become an important place to put the issue on the international agenda. Canada should borrow a slogan from someone Americans love - Ronald Reagan,...

Crossroads for Europe's carbon-capture efforts (19/05/2013 12:00 AM)
Reuters: European policymakers face a difficult decision on building carbon capture and storage (CCS) - saving money in the long run requires spending more upfront. CCS captures carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from a fossil fuel power plant and then pipes it to an underground storage site such as a depleted gas or oil reservoir. In theory, CCS would allow energy producers to continue to burn fossil fuels and still meet carbon emission targets. In practice, the technology is expensive and unproven. Clustering...

Blowing the carbon budget (19/05/2013 12:00 AM)
Reuters: Budgets are made to be broken - especially when they are written by politicians. Unfortunately it seems the world is on course to break the carbon budget that scientists and policymakers agree is necessary to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius. If governments were really committed to limiting the rise in temperatures to 2 degrees, two-thirds of the currently known oil, coal and gas reserves would have to be left in the ground, according to the International...

Airlines fined millions for air pollution (19/05/2013 12:00 AM)
AAP: Two Indian and eight Chinese airlines face millions of euros in fines for not paying for their greenhouse gas emissions during flights in the EU. Eight Chinese and two Indian airlines face fines of up to several million euros for not paying for their greenhouse gas emissions during flights within the bloc, the European Commission said on Friday. It said member states could fine the firms, among them Chinese flag carrier Air China, under the terms of the EU's Emissions Trading System which is...

Is tornado intensity increasing? (19/05/2013 12:00 AM)
Climate Nexus: With at least 10 tornadoes ripping through North Texas in one night this week -- leveling neighborhoods, killing six and injuring dozens -- it might be tempting to call the twisters yet another instance of climate-fueled weather. But not so fast. While most climate scientists agree that global warming is driving record heat waves, widespread drought, heavy rain and floods, intense hurricanes, and even monster snowstorms, tornadoes -- at least for now -- are a different story. "With tornadoes,...

EU to dial back measures against global warming (19/05/2013 12:00 AM)
Kyodo: The European Union, which has spearheaded efforts to curb global warming, is set to adopt a change of focus in response to concerns over costs and the impact on companies in economically depressed Europe. Under the change, the European Uniln will prioritize the supply of energy at affordable prices over cutting greenhouse gas emissions which impose burdens on industries, in a turnaround of the region's energy policy, an EU official said Saturday. EU leaders will decide on the shift in energy policy...

EU carbon permit surplus doubles in 2012 (18/05/2013 07:10 PM)
Financial Times: The surplus of permits in the EU’s carbon market more than doubled last year to 2bn, according to fresh data that Brussels hope will rally support for its controversial plan to boost carbon prices. The data – released by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm – reveal that free permits given over the past five years to makers of steel, glass, cement and other heavy industries exceeded their carbon emissions during that period by nearly 300m tonnes. Under the rules of the EU’s flagship...

Tundra Carbon Impact? (18/05/2013 10:31 PM)
Environmental News Network: There is a concern with the carbon stored in the form of frozen partially decomposed vegetation in the vast tundra of the north. When the permafrost melts, it may releases carbon in the form of carbon dioxide and methane, both of which are greenhouse gases. The amount of greenhouse gases which will be released from the Arctic’s stockpile of carbon may be more secure than scientists thought. In a 20-year experiment that warmed patches of chilly ground, tundra soil kept its stored carbon, researchers...

Stephen Harper touts Keystone XL pipeline in New York, downplays oilsands emissions (19/05/2013 12:00 AM)
Edmonton Journal: The Keystone XL pipeline “absolutely needs to go ahead” because it will create jobs and bring energy security to the United States, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told an audience primarily made up of elderly businessmen Thursday. He said construction of the 1,800-kilometre pipeline will create 40,000 jobs and bring enough oil to reduce American dependence on offshore oil by 40 per cent. “This is an enormous benefit to the United States in terms of long-term energy security,” he said. At...

What Can Bamboo Do About CO2? (18/05/2013 06:49 PM)
Ecology Global Network: Efforts to thoroughly study the role that plants play in climate change mitigation are increasing. Most researchers focus on the promise of large, leafy forest trees to help remove carbon from the atmosphere; for example Lal (1998) in India, Chen (1999) in Canada, Zhang (2003) in China, and Monson ( 2002) in the United States. This is because, generally speaking, the bigger the plant, the more CO2 it absorbs - and trees are the most obvious large plant species. However, there are some very large...

China 'will not accept' EU measures on emissions (19/05/2013 12:00 AM)
China Daily: A senior official from the Civil Aviation Administration of China said on Friday that the country disapproved and "will not accept any unilateral and compulsory market measures", after the European Union threatened Chinese carriers with fines for non-compliance with its Emissions Trading System, or ETS. Speaking at the 2013 China Civil Aviation Development Forum in Beijing, Yan Mingchi, deputy director-general of the policy, law and regulation department under the CAAC, said that "airlines in...

Experts: Increased rate of weather disasters in Ohio linked to global warming (19/05/2013 12:00 AM)
Central Oho: Weather disasters aren’t just a big deal in the South or along the coasts, according to a new report from Environment Ohio. They also occur with some frequency in Ohio. The report, “In the Path of the Storm,” stated seven of 10 Ohioans suffered from a weather disaster in the past six years. The report compiled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency designated disasters in each of Ohio’s counties, excluding tornadoes, which haven’t been linked to global warming. Julian Boggs, state policy...

EU should scrap energy subsidies to fight warming, Poland says (19/05/2013 12:00 AM)
Bloomberg: The European Union should scrap fossil fuel and renewable energy subsidies and set a target to cut oil imports to remain the leader in the fight against global warming, according to Poland’s environment minister. Poland wants to keep energy prices at an affordable level, Minister Marcin Korolec said today at a conference in Warsaw attended by EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard titled “A World You Like With a Climate You Like.” “We have our ideas of how to improve EU policies and thus climate,”...

The US disconnect over climate change (18/05/2013 08:44 PM)
Aljazeera: As scientists become more overwhelmingly convinced that climate change is man-made, why do politicians and the public give credence to global warming sceptics? A review of scientific literature published this week has found that 97 percent of peer-reviewed papers taking a position on global warming say humans are causing it. Yet, a large proportion of the US public still seems unconvinced. There is a false balance of media coverage where two or three percent of skeptics get close to 50 percent...

Australia: Opposition reaffirms carbon tax double dissolution threat (19/05/2013 12:00 AM)
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: ELIZABETH JACKSON: The Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has made it clear that the Coalition will scrap the carbon tax if it wins the election in September. But a Tony Abbott victory won't mean an end to the debate. With the changeover in the Senate not due until next year, Labor and the Greens would be able to block repeal legislation. And that would mean voters could face the prospect of having to return to the polls again next year, with the Coalition reaffirming its threat to call a double...

A Black Mound of Canadian Oil Waste Is Rising Over Detroit (18/05/2013 03:48 AM)
New York Times: Assumption Park gives residents of this city lovely views of the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit skyline. Lately they've been treated to another sight: a three-story pile of petroleum coke covering an entire city block on the other side of the Detroit River. Brian Masse, a member of the Canadian Parliament, wants a bilateral agency to investigate the pile accumulating in Detroit. Detroit's ever-growing black mountain is the unloved, unwanted and long overlooked byproduct of Canada's oil sands...

Climate finance that makes sense to farmers (18/05/2013 06:58 PM)
World Agroforestry Centre: Agricultural carbon projects involving smallholder farmers can take up to 16 years to generate a profit from carbon credits. Meanwhile, farmers’ direct income from poles, timber and fuelwood could be 50 times higher than the value of carbon revenue. These statements are just a snapshot of the evidence presented in a new World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) policy brief, Climate Finance for Agriculture and Livelihoods, which calls for an innovative and integrated approach to financing sustainable...

Bill calls on feds to address health impacts of climate change (19/05/2013 12:30 AM)
Hill: A bill introduced Friday calls on the federal government to craft a national strategy for dealing with the public health effects of climate change. Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) is sponsoring the measure. She said climate change has factored into recent increases in allergies, asthma, tropical diseases, drought and high temperatures. “Regardless of what one believes about its causes, climate change is very real,” Capps said in a statement, adding, “We have to provide our public health officials with...

Study quantifies sea level rise from melting glaciers (19/05/2013 12:00 AM)
Summit Voice: The world`s major ice sheets -- on Greenland and Antarctica -- haven`t really started a major meltdown yet. But the rest of the world`s glacial regions have been losing ice at a rate of about 260 billion metric tons annually, raising sea level by about 0.03 inches per year -- about a third of the observed sea level rise. The biggest ice losses are happening in Arctic Canada, Alaska, coastal Greenland, the southern Andes and the Himalaya. Combined, the areas contribute as much to sea level rise...

America’s first climate refugees: “It’s happening now … The village is sinking” (18/05/2013 10:15 PM)
Guardian: One afternoon in the waning days of winter, the most powerful man in Newtok, Alaska, hopped on a plane and flew 1,000 miles to plead for the survival of his village. Stanley Tom, Newtok`s administrator, had a clear purpose for his trip: find the money to move the village on the shores of the Bering Sea out of the way of an approaching disaster caused by climate change. Newtok was rapidly losing ground to erosion. The land beneath the village was falling into the river. Tom needed money for bulldozers...

DOE Approves Second Fracked Gas LNG Export Terminal (19/05/2013 02:18 AM)
EcoWatch: Friday is the proverbial "take out the trash day" for the release of bad news among public relations practitioners and this last Friday was no different. In that vein, yesterday the Department of Energy (DOE) announced a conditional approval for the second-ever liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal. LNG is the super-chilled final product of gas obtained--predominantly in today`s context--via the controversial hydraulic fracturing process that is taking place throughout many states in...

Delaware: Council members disagree on risk of sea level rise (19/05/2013 12:00 AM)
Sussex County Post: Sussex County Council members are not on the same wave length regarding the debatable issue of sea level rise. At the May 7 council meeting, Susan Love, a planner with the Department of Environmental Control and Natural Resources’ Coastal Management Program, delivered an update on progress made by the state’s Sea Level Rise Advisory Committee, which is developing an adaptation plan for the state that will provide a path forward for planning for impacts of sea level rise. Ms. Love’s presentation...

Front-row seats to climate change (18/05/2013 07:09 AM)
PhysOrg: By day, insects provide the white noise of the South, but the night belongs to the amphibians. In a typical year, the Southern air hangs heavy from the humidity and the sounds of wildlife. The Southeast, home to more than 140 species of frogs, toads and salamanders, is the center of amphibian biodiversity in our nation. If the ponds and swamps are the auditorium for their symphonic choruses, the scientists of the U.S. Geological Survey's Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative, or ARMI, have...

The sense in hedging for climate volatility (18/05/2013 09:17 AM)
Globe and Mail: In the financial markets, volatility is rising and all manner of derivatives are employed to hedge against potentially catastrophic losses. In the real world, the climate is becoming more volatile, yet cities and businesses – make that entire industries – are doing little to protect themselves from extreme weather. They are everywhere, endless rows of cookie-cutter towers. Besides being bland, even hideous, they are obviously not built to cope with volatile weather patterns, such as the soaring...

The EPA Could Lose Its Power to Fight Climate Change Before Using It (18/05/2013 05:47 AM)
Atlantic Wire: Advocates of forceful action on climate change have long held a trump card. The primary source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. is coal plants, and -since the Supreme Court has determined that those emissions are a pollutant -the EPA is mandated to regulate them. At some point, then, whether whatever president likes it or not, the agency had to make a rule limiting carbon dioxideemissions. But, what the court giveth, the court can rescind in a tightly contested vote. And with a barrage...

Scientists Agree On Climate Change, Why Doesn't The Public? (18/05/2013 06:24 AM)
National Public Radio: A new study confirms that the vast majority of scientists who research the climate accept that the planet is warming and human beings are largely responsible. Yet a large slice of the American public believes that scientists are deeply split about global warming.

Interior Department offers new rules for 'fracking' (17/05/2013 07:20 AM)
LA Times: The Interior Department proposed new rules to regulate hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas on federal land Thursday, drawing criticism from environmentalists that it had weakened an earlier draft to placate industry. Industry officials were not mollified, however, reiterating their objections to federal standards. Last year, they criticized the department's earlier draft rules as inflexible and onerous. "We are proposing some common-sense updates that increase safety while also providing flexibility...

New Fracking Rule Issued By Interior On Public Land (16/05/2013 11:20 PM)
Associated Press: Companies that drill for oil and natural gas on federal lands will be required to disclose publicly the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing operations, the Obama administration said Thursday. The new "fracking" rule replaces a draft proposed last year that was withdrawn amid industry complaints that federal regulation could hinder an ongoing boom in natural gas production. The new draft rule relies on an online database used by Colorado and 10 other states to track the chemicals used in fracking...

Australia's 'unpopular' carbon price isn't to blame for Labor's poor polling (17/05/2013 02:16 PM)
Guardian: Since the disappointment of Copenhagen in 2009, Australia has witnessed a concerted scare campaign against action on global warming. The scare campaign has been led by senior commentators in (Murdoch owned) News Limited papers, by conservative radio shock-jocks on the airwaves, and in parliament by extremist opposition party leader Tony Abbott. From the moment Australia's carbon pricing legislation package, the Clean Energy Future Act, was announced Tony Abbott has barnstormed from one end of...

Under fire, EPA nominee can't give ground on climate change (17/05/2013 03:10 PM)
Boston Globe: After a month of procedural delays, the nomination of Gina McCarthy to run the Environmental Protection Agency was finally moved Thursday out of the Environment and Public Works Committee to the full Senate. But the party-line vote of 10 Democrats and eight Republicans suggested more turbulence ahead, as the Senate Democrats will need the support of at least five Republicans to reach a filibuster-proof majority for confirmation. Hardball tactics aren’t justified in the case of a nominee who worked...

Ukraine Carbon Offset Usage Soars as EU Ban Talk Boosts Demand (17/05/2013 06:00 PM)
Bloomberg: Factories, utilities and airlines snapped up a flood of carbon offsets from Ukraine and Russia to comply with European Union emission targets in 2012 amid speculation the credits would face usage restrictions. Ukraine supplied 169 million metric tons of United Nations Emission Reduction Units to EU emitters, a more than fivefold increase from 31.5 million tons in 2011, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, citing EU data published today. That’s the most of any country supplying credits, the...

Major U.S. Cities Are at Risk for Climate-Related Water Shortage: Report (16/05/2013 07:49 PM)
Bloomberg: Washington, D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, and San Diego are among the cities most likely to face water scarcity as climate change increases drought potential, a study released May 15 found. Along with the potentially 40 million Americans affected in these cities, several “breadbasket region” states such as Nebraska, Illinois, and Minnesota also made the list of vulnerable areas. The report, America's Water Risk: Water Stress and Climate Variability, examined how climate could affect “vulnerability...

Fracking on Federal Lands Said to Get Scaled-Back Rule Proposal (17/05/2013 04:49 AM)
Bloomberg: Oil and gas industry representatives offered qualified support for a U.S. proposal to govern hydraulic fracturing on public lands that establishes federal oversight while deferring to state standards in some cases. In the proposal released yesterday, the U.S. Interior Department made a second attempt to establish national regulations for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. While industry officials said they prefer state to federal regulation, they welcomed the changes made by the Bureau of Land...

Nearly 100% of new California electricity to be solar (17/05/2013 06:00 PM)
New Economy: Herman Trabish of Greentech Media has happened across a pretty interesting find -- 97% of new electricity generation capacity in line to be added to the California grid in the second half (2H) of 2012 is from solar power projects. This is according to the California Independent System Operator (the ISO), as published in the 2012 Annual Report on Market Issues and Performance. In total, 1,633 megawatts of generation capacity are in line to be added to the grid in 2H 2013. A whopping 1,581 megawatts...

Scientists agree overwhelmingly on global warming. Why doesn’t the public know that? (18/05/2013 12:00 AM)
New York Times: Most climate scientists agree that global warming is caused by human activity, according to a new survey of published papers on climate science. "Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary,” said John Cook, the survey’s lead author, in a statement. A team of Australian and North American scholars examined 11,944 peer-reviewed climate papers written by some 29,000 climate scientists between 1991...

Obama climate agenda faces Supreme Court reckoning (17/05/2013 06:00 PM)
Reuters: With a barrage of legal briefs, a coalition of business groups and Republican-leaning states are taking their fight against Obama administration climate change regulations to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other industry groups, along with states such as Texas and Virginia, have filed nine petitions in recent weeks asking the justices to review four U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations that are designed to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. If the court were...

Indigenous association to sue to shut down Panama's REDD+ program (18/05/2013 04:41 AM)
Mongabay: Panama's largest association of indigenous people will sue the Panamanian government to shut down the country's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) program. The National Coordinator of Indigenous Peoples in Panama (COONAPIP) announced its intent after it failed to reach agreement with the United Nation's REDD+ program, which has been working to establish a forest conservation framework in the Central American country. REDD+ aims to compensate tropical countries for cutting...

In landmark ruling, Indonesia's indigenous people win right to millions of hectares of forest (18/05/2013 06:13 AM)
Mongabay: In a landmark ruling, Indonesia's Constitutional Court has invalidated the Indonesian government's claim to millions of hectares of forest land, potentially giving indigenous and local communities the right to manage their customary forests, reports Mongabay-Indonesia. In a review of a 1999 forestry law, Indonesia's Constitutional Court ruled [PDF - Indonesian] that customary forests should not be classified as "State Forest Areas". The move is significant because Indonesia's central government...

Researchers develop highest-resolution global forest cover dataset to date (17/05/2013 02:02 PM)
Mongabay: Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed a 30-meter resolution forest cover data set that could boost efforts to track deforestation and forest degradation. The dataset, which is published in the International Journal of Digital Earth, is based on combining data from two satellite sensor systems: 250-meter resolution MOderate-resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) and 30-meter Landsat imagery. The result is a tree cover layer that is more accurate than the industry standard for...

UK Signals Support for EU Import of Canadian Tar Sands Oil (17/05/2013 02:00 PM)
Guardian: Britain has given its clearest signal yet that it wants to allow European countries to import carbon-intensive tar sands oil from Canada. Leaked papers seen by the Guardian show that in EU negotiations on laws intended to encourage the use of low-carbon transport fuels, the UK has rejected language that would class tar sands oil as more polluting than conventional crude or other fuels. The European commission has proposed labelling the oil as "highly polluting" under its fuel quality directive,...

Two-Decade-Old Harvard Data Confounds U.S. EPA Nomination (17/05/2013 02:00 PM)
Bloomberg: Buried in the questions Senate Republicans want answered by the nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency is a stumper: data linking microscopic particles in the air to premature death. The problem is the EPA doesn’t have the data, which was compiled by Harvard University researchers more than two decades ago, and confidentiality agreements with hundreds of thousands of participants prevent researchers from making it public. The nominee, Gina McCarthy, had nothing to do with the research....

Senate Panel Advances Nominee for E.P.A (17/05/2013 02:00 PM)
New York Times: A sharply divided Senate committee on Thursday approved the nomination of Gina McCarthy to serve as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. The Environment and Public Works Committee voted to clear Ms. McCarthy by 10-to-8 along strictly partisan lines, sending the nomination to the Senate floor where Republicans are threatening to filibuster unless the E.P.A. meets demands for additional information. The Democrats on the panel, chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer of California, were...

Arctic Council Takes First Steps to Reflect Global Interests (17/05/2013 02:00 PM)
ClimateWire: The Arctic Council added China and five other countries as official observers yesterday, expanding the focus of the organization and underscoring the complicated politics created by newly open waters in the north because of climate change. The council -- which consists of eight Arctic countries -- granted observer status to India, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Singapore in addition to China. The group deferred a final decision about an observer application from the European Union, although...

Proposed Fracking Rules Anger Environmentalists, Annoy Industry (16/05/2013 03:00 PM)
National Journal: The Obama administration on Thursday unveiled a new proposal for its first major regulation of hydraulic fracturing on public lands, attempting to address at least a portion of the controversial drilling practice that’s unlocked vast new supplies of U.S. oil and gas but has also raised fears about its environmental impact, particularly on local water supplies. The proposal is softer on energy producers than an initial draft floated by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management last year....

Draft fed rules would let frackers do whatever they want, but they’re still not happy (18/05/2013 01:24 AM)
Grist: For everyone who was hoping the Obama administration`s proposed new rules for natural gas drilling on public lands would make a difference, the just-released new draft amounts to a big "frack you." Federal rules governing fracking on public lands are being updated, ostensibly to help manage the boom that`s polluting America`s groundwater and shaking free vast volumes of cheap natural gas. Environmentalists were disappointed a year ago when the Department of Interior released a fracker-friendly...

Green roofs don’t work unless you plant them with diverse, local plants (18/05/2013 12:52 AM)
Grist: Don’t freak out, but there’s a problem with green roofs: They’re not necessarily greener than ordinary roofs. Soooooo kind of a major problem. With a little extra effort, though, green roofs can be efficient AND locally sourced — you just can’t take the easy way out. Scientific American reports: [R]ooftop vegetation has to be able to survive the high winds, prolonged UV radiation and unpredictable fluctuations in water availability. To resist these harsh environments, a majority of green roofs...

No Nukes Groundswell Hits California, Solartopia Rising (18/05/2013 03:12 AM)
EcoWatch: In January, it seemed the restart of San Onofre Unit 2 would be a corporate cake walk. With its massive money and clout, Southern California Edison was ready to ram through a license exception for a reactor whose botched $770 million steam generator fix had kept it shut for a year. But a funny thing has happened on the way to the restart: a no nukes groundswell has turned this routine rubber stamping into an epic battle the grassroots just might win. Indeed, if ever there was a time when...

Fish Feeling the Heat from Global Warming (18/05/2013 02:47 AM)
EcoWatch: A study featured in the current issue of Nature reveals that ocean warming has already affected fisheries around the world over the past four decades as fish populations shift in response to changing sea temperatures. The findings provide an indicator of the effect that climate change has on the distribution and abundance of fish. The study also points to the need for wildlife officials in New England and around the world to give fish and the ecosystems they rely upon a better chance to adapt to...

‘Artificial Forest’ Nanosystem Mimics Photosynthesis, Researchers Say (18/05/2013 03:31 AM)
Yale Environment 360: U.S. scientists have developed what they say is the first integrated nanosystem capable of replicating the process of photosynthesis, a sort of “artificial forest” that could one day lead to the production of hydrogen that could be used to power fuel cells. Composed of nanowire structures -- including silicon “trunks” and titanium oxide “branches” -- the system mimics the role played by chloroplasts in promoting photosynthesis in green plants. By assembling the “trees” in a dense array, resembling...

Fiji's villagers move uphill to escape global warming's rising seas (18/05/2013 12:00 AM)
Telegraph: Fiji's picturesque Natewa Bay must be a hard place to leave, and for none more so than the villagers of Vunidogoloa, who are preparing to abandon their ancestral home in the face of the rising sea. But they have little choice: big waves now overtop a once-protective sea wall, their salt-polluted vegetation is dying. They are to move as a community a mile inland, and uphill, to a new site on the northern island of Vanua Levu. Devout Methodists, they have named Kenani, Fijian for Canaan – the promised...

Keystone won’t hurt environment as much as feared, MIT prof says at hearing (16/05/2013 09:23 PM)
MarketWatch: The controversial Keystone XL pipeline, whose approval has been delayed by the Obama administration, would not create the extensive environmental damage that some fear, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology energy economics professor told a House small business subcommittee Thursday. The pipeline, proposed by Canadian company TransCanada /quotes/zigman/27155 /quotes/nls/trp TRP , would transport crude oil from the oil sands in Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf of Mexico. The State Department needs...

From 'Potent' Pollen to Double Whammy Allergy Seasons (17/05/2013 08:17 PM)
ABC: Climate changes and rising carbon dioxide levels don't just affect the environment. Experts say they also affect your nose. Warmer temperatures and higher carbon dioxide levels mean certain plants will thrive, and those are the plants that tend to make us sneeze during allergy season. Allergies may seem like a minor nuisance, but according to the CDC there are an estimated 50 million Americans living with allergies, and $18 billion is spent every year dealing with the affliction. From hay fever...

Interior Proposes New Rules for Fracking on U.S. Land (17/05/2013 10:46 AM)
New York Times: The Obama administration on Thursday issued a new set of proposed rules governing hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas on public lands, moving further to address industry concerns about the costs and reporting burdens of federal regulation. The new Interior Department proposal, which is subject to 30 days of public comment and further revision, disappointed environmental advocates, who had pushed for full disclosure of the chemicals used in the drilling process and tougher standards for groundwater...

Public anger over pollution is being taken seriously (17/05/2013 10:30 AM)
Independent: Pollution and its health effects are a leading cause of unrest in China as the country’s rapid economic rise is accompanied by often appalling environmental side-effects. The air in most cities is regularly barely breathable and most of China’s rivers are poisoned. Pollution is the single biggest source of complaint among young people, and most environmental protests are carried out by educated, middle-class Chinese, worried about the danger to their families that environmental degradation can...

Everest Ice Shrinking Fast, Scientists and Climbers Say (17/05/2013 06:58 AM)
National Geographic: Everest isn't the same mountain it was when Jim Whittaker became the first U.S. climber to summit the peak in 1963. The world's highest peak has been shedding snow and ice for the past 50 years, possibly due in part to global warming, new research says. (Take an Everest quiz.) New analyses show Mount Everest has lost significant snow and ice cover over the past half century. In nearby Sagarmatha National Park, glaciers have shrunk by 13 percent. Weather data reveal the larger Everest region has...

Research Into Carbon Storage in Arctic Tundra (17/05/2013 06:52 AM)
ScienceDaily: When UC Santa Barbara doctoral student Seeta Sistla and her adviser, environmental studies professor Josh Schimel, went north not long ago to study how long-term warming in the Arctic affects carbon storage, they had made certain assumptions. "We expected that because of the long-term warming, we would have lost carbon stored in the soil to the atmosphere," said Schimel. The gradual warming, he explained, would accelerate decomposition on the upper layers of what would have previously been frozen...

World's melting glaciers making large contribution to sea rise (17/05/2013 05:52 AM)
ScienceDaily: While 99 percent of Earth's land ice is locked up in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the remaining ice in the world's glaciers contributed just as much to sea rise as the two ice sheets combined from 2003 to 2009, says a new study led by Clark University and involving the University Colorado Boulder. The new research found that all glacial regions lost mass from 2003 to 2009, with the biggest ice losses occurring in Arctic Canada, Alaska, coastal Greenland, the southern Andes and the Himalayas....

World's biggest ice sheets likely more stable than previously believed (17/05/2013 05:52 AM)
ScienceDaily: For decades, scientists have used ancient shorelines to predict the stability of today's largest ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Markings of a high shoreline from three million years ago, for example -- when Earth was going through a warm period -- were thought to be evidence of a high sea level due to ice sheet collapse at that time. This assumption has led many scientists to think that if the world's largest ice sheets collapsed in the past, then they may do just the same in our modern,...

Technology is key to conquering climate change in long run, Harper says (17/05/2013 06:09 AM)
Canadian Press: Technological change will prove to be the key to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told a blue-chip audience on Thursday. Simply imposing emissions targets or trying to cap economic growth to reduce emissions isn't going to work, Harper said during a question-and-answer session at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "I am convinced that, over time, we are not going to effectively tackle emissions unless we develop the lower-emissions technology in energy...

U.S. Interior issues new draft fracking rules for federal lands (17/05/2013 05:19 AM)
Reuters: The Obama administration on Thursday unveiled a new proposal for regulating hydraulic fracturing on federal lands, rolling back some measures from its original, abandoned draft as it sought to ease concerns the rules would be too burdensome for producers. The U.S. Interior Department scrapped a proposal from 2012 after drawing heat from green groups and the drilling industry over rules aimed at updating decades-old fracking regulations. "Our thorough review of all the comments convinced us...

Food industry should audit supply chains, say waste campaigners (15/05/2013 03:30 PM)
Guardian: The food industry should be forced to audit its supply chains regularly to cut down on the amount of food being thrown away, according to waste campaigners. The group This is Rubbish (TiR) called for more transparency in the system, claiming that householders are being unfairly blamed for the UK's food waste when the industry generates over half of the 18-20m tonnes food wasted every year. An estimate in January by the UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineers put the amount of food wasted worldwide...

Study Shows Scientists Agree on Anthropogenic Climate Change (17/05/2013 07:31 AM)
ScienceDaily: A comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed articles on the topic of global warming and climate change has revealed an overwhelming consensus among scientists that recent warming is human-caused. The study is the most comprehensive yet and identified 4000 summaries, otherwise known as abstracts, from papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of recent global warming -- 97 per cent of these endorsed the consensus that we are seeing human-made, or anthropogenic, global...

Study: 97 percent Agreement on Manmade Global Warming (17/05/2013 08:30 AM)
Climate Central: The scientific agreement that climate change is happening, and that it's caused by human activity, is significant and growing, according to a new study published Thursday. The research, which is the most comprehensive analysis of climate research to date, finds that 97.1 percent of the studies published between 1991 to 2011 that expressed a position on manmade climate change agreed that it was happening, and that it was due to human activity. The study looked at peer reviewed research that...

Smaller Glaciers Boost Sea Level as Much as the Giants (17/05/2013 08:30 AM)
Climate Central: As the planet warms under the influence of rising greenhouse gases, and melting ice drives sea level higher, scientists have focused mostly on changes in the vast ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica. If either one melts substantially or slides into the ocean, the results would be catastrophic. But there's another ice reserve to worry about: the many thousands of smaller glaciers unconnected to continental-scale ice sheets. They're melting, too, and a new report in Science shows that...

Amid rapid Arctic warming, U.S. releases new strategy (16/05/2013 12:00 AM)
Climate Central: With ministers from the eight Arctic states meeting Wednesday in Kiruna, Sweden, for the 2013 ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council, the Obama administration has laid out a broad new U.S. Arctic policy that sets strategic goals for how the U.S. will cope with the rapidly changing region. The "National Strategy for the Arctic Region' features the conflicting goals of accessing some of the Arctic's potentially abundant natural resources -- such as oil, gas, and minerals -- and the need to protect...

U.S. Energy Policy Should Take a Lesson From Germany’s Energiewende (15/05/2013 09:53 PM)
Bloomberg: “Energiewende” may not be a household word in the United States today, but U.S. citizens and policymakers are likely to hear more about it. It’s the name of Germany's ambitious energy transformation, which aims to move the country to at least 80 percent of electricity from renewable energy sources by 2050. Germany already gets nearly 25 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, up from just under 7 percent thirteen years ago. That is no small feat. Germany is a manufacturing powerhouse:...

China Unlikely to Stimulate New Carbon Credit Supply Efforts (15/05/2013 05:10 PM)
Bloomberg: China, the world’s largest greenhouse-gas emitter, probably won’t import carbon credits for two decades as global diplomats craft a new emissions market that will increase supply, the nation’s climate negotiator said. Using offsets from outside China in that period is an “unlikely scenario,” Su Wei said in an interview in Bonn earlier this month. “Rather, internally we will have a lot of offsetting credits.” United Nations envoys are seeking to put together a new carbon market as the world...

Sea levels may rise 69 centimeters until 2100 on ice melt (16/05/2013 12:00 AM)
Bloomberg: Sea levels may rise as much as 69 centimeters (27 inches) through 2100 as water temperatures rise, glaciers melt in the Andes and Himalayas and ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica shed water, European scientists said. The new estimate exceeds a previous forecast of as much as 59 centimeters by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, which didn’t fully account for the effects of melting ice, researchers with the independent Ice2sea project of 24 institutions in Europe...

World's most distinct mammals and amphibians mapped (16/05/2013 11:37 AM)
BBC: Scientists have developed the first map of the world's unique and most endangered mammals and amphibians. The map highlights the fact that only a fraction of the areas identified as critical for the conservation of these species are protected. Among the species highlighted by the map are the Mexican salamander, the Sunda pangolin and the black and white ruffed Lemur. The research is published in the journal Plos One. The Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) project has...

Sea levels are rising - but how quickly? (16/05/2013 12:00 AM)
BBC: A deep sea mission of genuine exploration Legacy of Britain's great flood Can UK science navigate around the Valley of Death Is graphene really a wonder-material? Scientists are warning that the level of the sea may rise by slightly more than previously forecast - but they also say that the very worst predictions look much less likely. Confused? If so, you're not alone. The future of sea level rise is one of the most important questions in climate science because so many millions around...

'Best estimate' for impact of melting ice on sea level rise (16/05/2013 12:00 AM)
BBC: Researchers have published their most advanced calculation for the likely impact of melting ice on global sea levels. The EU-funded team says the ice sheets and glaciers could add 36.8cm to the oceans by 2100. Adding in other factors, sea levels could rise by up to 69cm, higher than previous predictions. The researchers say there is a very small chance that the seas around Britain could rise by a metre. The last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was highly detailed...

Your Supermarket is Selling Rainforest Destruction! (17/05/2013 06:04 AM)
Rainforest Action Network: Palm oil touches our lives every time we take a trip to the supermarket. Palm oil and its derivatives are used in a ubiquitous array of packaged foods, including ice cream, cookies, crackers, chocolate products, cereals, breakfast bars, cake mixes, doughnuts, potato chips, instant noodles, frozen sweets and meals, baby formula, margarine, and dry and canned soups. In the U.S. alone, palm oil imports by companies like Cargill and IOI have jumped 485% in the last decade. The dramatic and growing...

Climate change threatens global fish stocks (16/05/2013 08:11 AM)
Conversation: Ocean warming has already affected global fisheries in the past four decades, a new international study has found, driving up the proportion of warm-water fish being caught and posing a threat to food security worldwide. The new study, conducted by researchers from the University of Tasmania’s specialist… Ocean warming has already affected global fisheries in the past four decades, a new international study has found, driving up the proportion of warm-water fish being caught and posing a threat...

EU Ice2sea report offers new estimates of sea level rise (17/05/2013 12:00 AM)
Summit Voice: After four years of studies and more than 150 peer-reviewed papers, The EU-funded ice2sea program has concluded that melting ice may not contribute as much to sea level rise as some other studies have suggested. Under a moderate greenhouse gas emissions scenario, the contribution from continental ice will likely amount to between 3.5 and 36.8 centimeters (1.4 to 14.5 inches) by 2100, the program`s leaders said this week, unveiling a new report that summarizes their research. The report is online...

Why Warming Oceans Could Mean Dwindling Fish (16/05/2013 07:54 PM)
Time: It’s easy to forget that global warming doesn’t just refer to the rising temperature of the air. Climate change is having an enormous, if less well understood, impact on the oceans, which already absorb far more carbon dioxide than the atmosphere. Like so much of what goes on in the vast depths that cover more than two-thirds of our planet’s surface, the effect of climate change on the oceans remains a black box--albeit one that scientists are working to illuminate. Here’s one way: fisheries....

Is Canada’s oil too dirty for Europe? (16/05/2013 12:00 AM)
New York Times: As the debate over the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline continues in the United States, a Canadian trade delegation is insisting that Canadian oil extracted from tar sands - the product that would be transported by an expanded pipeline - should not be classified as being dirtier than other types of oil. Last week Canada`s natural resource minster, Joe Oliver, threatened to take the European Union to the World Trade Organization over its plans to classify oil harvested from tar sands as...

Scientists say united on global warming, at odds with public view (16/05/2013 06:00 PM)
Reuters: Ninety-seven percent of scientists say global warming is mainly man-made but a wide public belief that experts are divided is making it harder to gain support for policies to curb climate change, an international study showed on Thursday. The report found an overwhelming view among scientists that human activity, led by the use of fossil fuels, was the main cause of rising temperatures in recent decades. "There is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions...

The rising red tide with climate change (16/05/2013 09:35 PM)
PhysOrg: The tattoos on Ashley Cryan's ankles depict a chicken and a pig. Since the days of Captain Cook, sailors have donned the animals' likenesses to help them walk on water and guard against drowning. According to folklore, the animals-which survived shipwrecks more often than humans-had a special power that protected them from succumbing to the sea. Cryan, whose grandfather taught her to sail when she was 11, got her tattoos after surviving a shipwreck. She said they symbolize strength and survival,...

NGO: conflict of interests behind Peruvian highway proposal in the Amazon (17/05/2013 12:08 AM)
Mongabay: As Peru's legislature debates the merits of building the Purús highway through the Amazon rainforest, a new report by Global Witness alleges that the project has been aggressively pushed by those with a financial stake in opening up the remote area to logging and mining. Roads built in the Amazon lead to spikes in deforestation, mining, poaching and other extractive activities as remote areas become suddenly accessible. The road in question would cut through parts of the Peruvian Amazon rich in biodiversity...

Canadian government drops over $16 million on advertising its tar sands (17/05/2013 01:33 AM)
Guardian: The Canadian government has nearly doubled its advertising spending to promote the Alberta tar sands in an aggressive new lobbying push ahead of Thursday's visit to New York by the prime minister, Stephen Harper. The Harper government has increased its advertising spending on the Alberta tar sands to $16.5m from $9m a year ago. The Canadian Press news agency, which first reported on the increase in advertising spending by the Department of Natural Resources, said the television advertising...

Japan Takes First Step to a Permanent Reactor Shutdown After Fukushima (16/05/2013 02:00 PM)
Reuters: Experts judged on Wednesday that a reactor on Japan's west coast is located on ground at high risk of an earthquake, setting in motion a process that will likely lead to the first permanent shutdown of a nuclear plant since the 2011 Fukushima crisis. Mothballing the reactor at Japan's oldest nuclear station would be the most stringent measure adopted in Japan since the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station north of Tokyo exposed failings in nuclear oversight. The experts' finding...

Canada: After Upset Election, Route for Tar Sands to Pacific Doesn't Close (16/05/2013 05:00 PM)
InsideClimate: Environmentalists suffered a setback on Tuesday when British Columbia re-elected a premier who left the door open for approval of two oil pipelines that would carry tar sands oil across B.C. to the Pacific Coast, where it could be exported to the world market. Despite trailing in the polls, incumbent Christy Clark, the leader of B.C.'s Liberal Party, defeated Adrian Dix and his New Democratic Party. Dix had opposed both pipelines, and environmental groups had hoped his win would signal the end of...

Canada: Protestors Pulled From Cement at the Keystone XL Construction Site (16/05/2013 03:01 PM)
KRMG: Police had a hard time trying to figure out how to get three protestors out of solid cement near Wewoka and Holdenville Tuesday morning. The protestors are with the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance and Cross Timbers Earth First. They put themselves in the cement Monday to protest construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. On the organization’s Facebook page, they say, “A Deputy from the Hughes County Sheriff’s Department is full-force swinging a sledgehammer at one of Holly and Bailey’s lockdown...

Pipeline Owner Asks Vermont to Reconsider Tar Sands Oil Ruling (16/05/2013 03:55 PM)
Associated Press: The owner of a crude oil pipeline that runs between Maine and Montreal is asking Vermont environmental regulators to reconsider a ruling that would require a new review under the state's land-use planning law if the company seeks to move Canadian tar sands oil to Portland for possible shipment to markets across the world. In its motion to reconsider, the Portland-Montreal Pipeline Corp. Pipeline said the coordinator of the District 7 Environmental Commission, who issued the ruling last month,...

As climate change broils the Arctic, John Kerry apologizes (17/05/2013 06:26 AM)
Grist: "Hello, world? Hey, John Kerry here. Just wanted to apologize for all those decades of America`s non-leadership on that crazy global warming thing. But now we`ve decided to start making some nice sounds about the issue. Hope you can hear me making them over the din of the Arctic ice breaking up behind me." OK, so the Secretary of State didn`t actually say that. But the leader of the department that will rule on the climate-changing Keystone XL pipeline proposal has begun apologizing for the nation`s...

97 out of 100 climate scientists agree: humans are responsible for warming (17/05/2013 12:52 AM)
Grist: The Earth revolves around the sun. Also, it`s overheating because we`re burning fossil fuels. Can you guess which of those two long-established facts just received an additional jolt of publicized near unanimity among scientists? It was, of course, the latter. (The oil industry has no economic interest in attempting to debunk the former, and you can no longer be persecuted for claiming it.) An international team of scientists analyzed the abstracts of 11,944 peer-reviewed papers published...

Will the Colorado River Get Fracked? (17/05/2013 02:39 AM)
EcoWatch: Two months ago a story started ‘leaking’ out of Western Colorado about a fracked-gas pipeline break--loaded with cancer-causing benzene--with fluids heading toward and eventually into Parachute Creek which is a tributary to the Colorado River. As water wells close to the Creek started testing positive for benzene, and then as the Creek itself tested positive for benzene above drinking water standards, the news media started telling a story of how the Colorado River--a drinking water source for 35...

Interior Department Bows to Pressure from Oil and Gas Industry, Weakens Fracking Rules (17/05/2013 05:51 AM)
EcoWatch: The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposed an updated set of rules governing hydraulic fracturing, on public lands today. The controversial oil and gas development technique--in which drillers blast millions of gallons of chemically treated water into the earth to force oil and gas from underground deposits--has been linked to air and water pollution and public health problems. “Comparing today’s rule governing fracking on public lands with the one proposed...

10 Reasons Canada’s Tar Sands Suck (17/05/2013 12:43 AM)
EcoWatch: Pardon my french, but Canada`s tar sands suck. As a Canadian it blows my mind that we can have the second largest deposits of oil in the world, but our government remains billions in debt and one in seven Canadian children live in poverty. I feel like we are being played for fools here in Canada, because foreign owned oil companies like ExxonMobil, British Petroluem and PetroChina (71 percent of oil sands production is owned by foreign shareholders) are making billions exporting raw tar sand...

Keeling's son ponders a sobering milestone (17/05/2013 12:00 AM)
Yale Environment 360: When the history of humanity’s struggle to combat climate change is written, few characters will play as prominent a role as Charles David Keeling. A geochemist, Keeling developed an accurate method of measuring CO2 in the atmosphere, and in 1958 began recording background levels of the gas at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. That was the start of the famous Keeling Curve, which has tracked the steady rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Those levels have soared from 315 parts per million when...

In Post-Tsunami Japan, A Push To Rebuild Coast in Concrete (16/05/2013 11:01 PM)
Yale Environment 360: In the years leading up to the massive tsunami of March 11, 2011, it seemed that Japan’s coastal ecosystems could hardly decline in health any further. Decades of coastal engineering had divided land from ocean, turned quaint seaside towns grey with concrete, and pushed once-familiar species like loggerhead sea turtles and common orient clams towards extinction. Nearly half of the island nation’s perimeter was modified in some way; cliffs comprised most of what remained untouched. Even within the...

Scientist’s U.S. Road Trip Reveals Higher Methane Emissions Than Previously Known (17/05/2013 03:31 AM)
Yale Environment 360: Methane measurements collected during a scientist’s road trip across the U.S. indicate that local emissions of the potent greenhouse gas are higher than previously known in many regions. Using a gas chromatograph mounted to the roof of a rented camper, Ira Leifer of the University of California, Santa Barbara, collected air samples from Florida to California, finding the highest methane concentrations in areas with significant refinery activity — such as Houston, Texas — and in a region of central...

97% of Climate Scientists Can’t Be Wrong (16/05/2013 10:54 PM)
Climate Desk: The biggest survey of climate research to date finds that scientists are more united than ever. Telling Americans that scientists don`t agree is the classic climate denial strategy. It`s been over a decade since consultant Frank Luntz famously furnished the GOP with strategies to kill climate action during the Bush years, recommending in a leaked memo [PDF]: "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue." Oh yeah, and avoid truth: "A compelling story, even if factually...

First grey whale spotted south of the Equator (14/05/2013 09:58 PM)
Guardian: Astonishing news from Walvis Bay, Namibia, where scientists from the Namibian Dolphin Project on Tuesday confirmed the sighting of a grey whale. Not only has this North Pacific species been extinct in the Atlantic since the 18th century, it has never been seen south of the Equator. The signficance of this sighting is creating excitement among marine biologists. It may suggest good news – that the great whales are recovering from the disastrous hunts of the 20th century. Or it may indicate that...