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United Kingdom: Piece of cod is becoming a luxury item - Guardian: Cod is becoming a weekend mealtime treat for British families as the cost of traditional fish-and-chip dinners soars, . Consumption of cod is falling as prices rise and shoppers no longer see it as an everyday food, according to market research analysts TNS, who found that consumption fell by 1.4% in the year to August 2009. Although sales rose by 4% to £94.4m during the period, due to a rise in prices caused by restrictions on supplies. The trade magazine The Grocer said the ...

Emerging nations meet in India over climate change - Agence France-Presse: Environment ministers from Brazil, South Africa, India and China met in New Delhi on Sunday to agree a common position for future talks after the Copenhagen climate change summit, officials said. The four emerging economies -- a key bloc within troubled negotiations on how to tackle global warming -- lobbied successfully at the Copenhagen meeting in December against binding emissions caps. "The nations have come together to chalk out their post-Copenhagen strategy and organise ...

Traffic fumes increase the risks of child pneumonia - Guardian: Children who live near a main road are in greater danger of catching pneumonia because pollution from passing traffic damages their lungs. A leading expert in childhood breathing difficulties has made the link between exposure to particles from vehicle exhausts and a child's susceptibility to the chest infection, which can be fatal. Professor Jonathan Grigg, an honorary consultant at the Royal London Hospital and academic paediatrician at Queen Mary, University of London, made the ...

UN pledges tighter controls after melting glaciers blunder - Guardian: The head of the UN's panel of climate scientists, Rajendra Pachauri , has dismissed suggestions that he should resign over an erroneous projection that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, though he pledged that future research procedures by his organisation would be tightened up. A 2007 report from the Inter­governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said global warming could cause the Himalayas' thousands of glaciers to vanish if it continued at its current pace. But ...

Tanker collision sends oil into Texas waterway - Reuters: A barge collided with a tanker on Saturday in the port of Port Arthur, Texas, sending thousands of gallons of crude oil into the water, the U.S. Coast Guard said. The tanker was carrying crude oil to Exxon Mobil Corp's refinery in Beaumont, Texas, located north of Port Arthur. The waterway, through which tankers carry oil to four refineries in Port Arthur and Beaumont, Texas, remained shut on Saturday night. A 15-foot-by-8-foot (4.6 meter-by-2.4-meter) hole was torn in the side ...

World climate event set for March 27 - Agence France-Presse: Millions of people from Sydney to Sweden are set to switch off their lights on March 27, as part of the global 'Earth Hour' campaign to highlight climate change, organisers said Sunday. Some 250 cities around the world have already signed up for the symbolic, energy saving exercise which in 2009 saw landmarks such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and New York's Empire State Building plunged into darkness. "The event will be held at 8:30 pm Saturday 27 March in cities and towns all ...

UN climate panel blunders again over Himalayan glaciers - Times (UK): The chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has used bogus claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Rajendra Pachauri's Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), based in New Delhi, was awarded up to £310,000 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the lion's share of a £2.5m EU grant funded by European taxpayers. It means that EU taxpayers are funding research into a scientific claim about ...

Chile: Water a Matter of National Security - Inter Press Service: In its proposed constitutional reform, the Chilean government recognises that the availability of freshwater is a matter of national security. Environmentalists applaud the initiative, but some business groups are worried it will hurt their bottom line. The paragraph that will be added to Article 19 of Chile's Constitution, if Parliament approves the bill sent by President Michelle Bachelet on Jan. 7, states that water is a national good for public use, regardless of the state where ...

Planes Train Endangered Cranes To Migrate - National Public Radio: As the early-morning fog cleared at the Dunnellon airport in Marion County, Fla., and the temperatures slowly rose, 8-year-old Edon Palchar waited with his family to see whooping cranes for the very first time. The cranes, guided by an ultralight aircraft, were on their way to their winter homes at a wildlife refuge in Florida this week. Experts say there are only 350 of these rare birds left in the world. Their arrival is becoming an annual spectacle that draws thousands of bird ...

Asian pollution worsens US air levels: study - Independent (UK): Pollution from Asia is boosting levels of ozone in the skies above the western United States, a trend that could hamper US efforts to meet tougher smog standards, experts said on Wednesday. Their study focusses on data for ozone in springtime above western North America at an altitude of between three and eight kilometers (two and five miles). This height is between the stratosphere - where a thin layer of ozone helps to filter out dangerous ultra-violet light from the Sun - ...

UN panel chief won't quit for Himalayan melt error - Associated Press: The head of a panel of United Nations climate scientists said Saturday he would not resign despite a recent admission that a panel report warning Himalayan glaciers could be gone by 2035 was hundreds of years off. The claim, made in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's voluminous, Nobel-winning report, came in a paragraph with several errors. Data indicates the ice could melt by 2350. The assertion went virtually unnoticed until The Sunday Times said the projection seemed ...

Pachauri admits mistake in IPCC report, rules out resignation - Times of India: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chairman R K Pachauri on Saturday termed as a "human error" the findings in its report about melting of Himalayan glaciers, but ruled out his resignation on the issue. Pachauri, who is under attack from various quarters over the IPCC's 2007 report that said the glaciers in the Himalayas will disappear by 2035 due to global warming, said the mistake was "unfortunate". "I have no intention to of resigning from my position. I have a task. ...

Election energizes climate bill talks - Boston Globe: Seeking to resuscitate stalled global warming legislation in Washington's suddenly changed political climate, a bipartisan group of senators including John Kerry of Massachusetts has been conducting private talks this week with the White House and a key business group over an array of concessions sought by Republicans. The election of Scott Brown as Kerry's colleague has added urgency to the negotiations for a compromise, which would include the Democrats' goal of limiting carbon ...

Glaciergate threatens a climate change - Australian: GRAHAM Cogley, the Canadian scientist who trekked a decade-old paper trail to expose the Glaciergate error in a crucial UN-backed document on climate change, says there is one certainty about what will happen next. An expert on glaciers at Trent University in Ontario, Cogley is an instinctively cautious scientist who opposes any leaps to unproven conclusions but he is prepared to bet that climate change sceptics and deniers will pore over the report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel ...

Glaciergate was a blunder, but it's the sceptics who dissemble - Guardian: It was a strange moment that linked the fates of some of the world's poorest farmers to the interests of an increasingly powerful set of western lobby groups. Last week, UN climate researchers admitted they had grossly overestimated the chances that the Himalayas' glaciers would soon disappear as a result of global warming. For millions of Indian and Chinese families who till land washed by rivers that pour from the Himalayas, this was good news. The prospects of major droughts, loss ...

UN climate panel chief: Error shouldn't derail global warming efforts in India - Washington Post: For many Indians, the most powerful and urgent reason to battle global warming arose from a report warning that the Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035. But that prediction was an error, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which authored the report, said Wednesday. Speaking publicly on the issue for the first time Saturday, Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel Prize-winning panel, said the mistake occurred because rigorous procedures for scientific ...

Oil spilled at east Texas port as ships collide - Associated Press: About 450,000 gallons of crude oil spilled in a southeast Texas port Saturday after two vessels collided, the U.S. Coast Guard said. No injuries have been reported, but part of the port has been closed. U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Renee Aiello told The Association Press that the crude spilled at the Port of Port Arthur when a 600-foot tanker carrying oil collided with a towing vessel pushing a loaded barge. The Coast Guard was notified of the collision around 9:50 a.m., she ...

Canada: Climate Slips Off US Agenda - Toronto Star: The Canadian government's strategy to let Washington set the pace on climate change has fallen into disarray as American lawmakers lose their appetite for aggressive carbon-cutting legislation in 2010. Public anger exposed by Tuesday's electoral uprising in Massachusetts is resetting Washington priorities across the board, as Democrats and Republicans scramble to address economic issues in a bid to outpace an anti-incumbent mood ahead of November's midterm elections. Few expect ...

IPCC to focus on humanitarian issues: Pachauri - Indo-Asian News Service: Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Saturday said the UN body's fifth assessment report scheduled in 2013 will focus on "socio-economic factors and humanitarian" issues. "So far emphasis has been on physical, biological and geological aspects of climate change but we haven't really effectively translated that into what it would do at the economic and social level and most importantly at humanitarian level. So this something we will really ...

Glacier alarm 'regrettable error': UN climate head - Agence France-Presse: The head of the UN's climate science panel said Saturday a doomsday prediction about the fate of Himalayan glaciers was "a regrettable error" but that he would not resign over the blunder. Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said the mistake arose from "established procedures not being diligently followed." "I am not resigning from my post. There has been an error but we ...

Indonesia: RI wants UN to raise ocean issues at talks - Jakarta Post: Indonesia will once again raise ocean issues at the upcoming UN conference in Bali, to press for world recognition of the role of oceans in climate change. The Indonesian Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry said the country's delegation would push the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to include oceans in its program of work to help protect the oceans from the impacts of rising temperatures. "We hope UNEP will adopt the ocean as its main mandate in its program of work," ...

Indian makes molecule suck carbon dioxide - Telegraph (India): A 29-year-old Indian scientist in the Netherlands has helped develop a molecule that sucks carbon dioxide from the air and could open a new line of research to combat global warming. Raja Angamuthu and his colleagues at Leiden University have shown that a complex molecule containing atoms of copper can remove carbon dioxide, create useful chemical by-products, and return to its original state to repeat the process. The technique appears to be an attractive way to capture carbon ...

A-Power Texas project costs up; China may fund - Reuters: Chinese wind turbine company A-Power Energy Generation Systems said cost overruns at its 600-megawatt wind power project in Texas could reach $500 million and it was talking to Chinese state banks about funding the project. A-Power, which is building the project with U.S. partners, said higher turbine and cable connection costs could push the total cost to $2 billion, a third more than the original estimate, Chief Operating Officer John Lin told Reuters. State-owned Bank of ...

Calif. nuclear revival? A French company rolls the dice - New York Times: In Berkeley, the city government won't buy services of any kind from a company that refuses to sign a "nuclear free" disclosure. In Sacramento, a moratorium against new reactor construction has held since 1976. And statewide, energy developers have a hard enough time securing permits for massive power plants run by renewable energy, much less finding enough political daylight to launch a multibillion-dollar nuclear project. The reality is California has become a kind of a nuclear ...

Warming alarms Louisiana scientists - Times-Picayune: In a letter filled with citations of peer-reviewed scientific studies, 32 scientists -- including many working on the state's coastal restoration efforts -- told Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal that there's a direct link between the rising sea levels eroding the state's coastline and greenhouse gases produced by the state's industries. "We believe that the scientific evidence is compelling that sea level is highly likely to rise at faster rates than in the recent past and that this poses ...

Mild weather in Canada forces Vancouver to ship in tons of snow for Winter Olympics - Daily Mail: Snow-bound Britain may be slipping and sliding through the worst winter for decades, but it`s a different story in once-Arctic Canada. As spring flowers bloom early and birds start to nest around balmy Vancouver, officials there have chartered a fleet of helicopters to fly in thousands of tons of snow for the Winter Olympics. Without the emergency snowlift, which is also shipping in tons of snow in convoys of giant lorries, Olympic chiefs feared they might have to abandon the ...

United States: Climate change raises concerns for state's recreation industries - Grand Junction Sentinel: In the 20 years that Ken Murphy has worked in the rafting business, he has watched the commercial season start increasingly early, more people get drawn to the river by ever-warmer temperatures, and safety concerns lessen as flows have decreased. Short-term, Murphy said, climate change has been beneficial to Glenwood's rafting industry. "In the longer term, would I want my kids to get into the river outfitting business? No, because eventually we're not going to have the water, ...

British engineers slam home wind turbines as 'eco-bling' - Independent (UK): Installing wind turbines and solar panels in people's homes is "eco-bling" that will not help meet Britain's targets on cutting carbon emissions, engineers warned Wednesday. In a new report by the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE), Professor Doug King said it was better to adapt buildings to make them more energy efficient than try to offset energy use with "on-site renewable energy generation." The leader of Britain's main opposition Conservative party, David Cameron, is ...

UN climate panel head says glacier alarm 'regrettable error' - Agence France-Presse: The head of the UN's climate science panel said Saturday that a doomsday prediction about the fate of Himalayan glaciers was "a regrettable error." Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in an emailed statement to media outlets that the mistake arose out of "established procedures not being diligently followed." Pachauri was referring to a forecast which featured in a benchmark report on global warming that the ...

Worldwide nitrogen deficit constrains carbon dioxide uptake by plants - ScienceDaily: Nitrogen is an essential nutrient for plants; limits on available nitrogen constrain how much plants can grow. This in turn affects the amount of carbon dioxide plants can absorb, which affects the global climate. Using a framework that considers interactions of carbon and nutrients, Wang and Houlton have developed a new global estimate of nitrogen fixation rates. The authors considered the amount of nitrogen plants require to store additional carbon and found that a ...

Climate change action has stalled - Shanghai Daily: THE world is showing only lukewarm enthusiasm for a "Copenhagen Accord" to curb climate change, with no sign so far of deeper-than-planned 2020 curbs on greenhouse gas emissions before a January 31 deadline. In Brussels, a draft European Union letter yesterday showed plans for the 27-nation bloc to reiterate a minimum offer of a 20 percent cut in emissions by 2020 below 1990 levels and a 30 percent cut if other nations act comparably. Other countries are likely to do the same ...

Rare warbler found in Afghanistan - BBC: Scientists say they have for the first time discovered a breeding site for the world's least-known bird species. Little is known about the large-billed reed warbler, but researchers have found a thriving flock of the birds in a remote corner of Afghanistan. Robert Timmins from the US based Wildlife Conservation Society discovered them when he was conducting a survey in the area. The tiny brown bird, first spotted in 1867, has not been seen since 2006. Mr Timmins ...

Ice is 'rotten' in the Beaufort Sea - ScienceDaily: Recent observations show that Beaufort Sea ice was not as it appeared in the summer of 2009. Sea ice cover serves as an indication of climate and has implications for marine and terrestrial ecosystems. In early September 2009, satellite measurements implied that most of the ice in the Beaufort Sea either was thick ice that had been there for multiple years or was thick, first-year ice. However, in situ observations made in September 2009 by Barber et al. show that much of the ...

India: Pachauri rules out quitting climate change panel - Hindu Business Line: Ruling out his resignation over an error in predicting the melting of Himalayan glaciers by 2035, Mr R.K. Pachauri, head of Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, said that the UN body will use more rigorous research systems in future. "I have no intentions of resigning. I have got a task to complete the Fifth Assessment report and I shall do it," Mr Pachauri told reporters. Admitting that there was a mistake in concluding that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, Mr ...

United States: Gov. takes aim at coal-fired power plants - Associated Press: Gov. Bill Richardson has painted a target on New Mexico's coal-fired power plants, saying they provide a major source of electricity for homes and businesses in the state but pump far too much pollution into the air. Richardson called out the coal plants during his State of the State speech before the Legislature on Tuesday, but his administration says they're not only polluters the governor is after. "It could be any kind of entity that has an air permit. We're talking about ...

Climate panel admits glacier gaffe - Al Jazeera: The head of a United Nations panel of climate scientists has said that a prediction in one of the Nobel-prize winning panel's reports that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 was "a regrettable error". Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on Saturday dismissed talk of his resignation over the claim, but promised to tighten research procedures. "I am not resigning from my post. There has been an error but we will ensure ...

UN climate change expert: there could be more errors in report - Times (UK): The Indian head of the UN climate change panel defended his position yesterday even as further errors were identified in the panel's assessment of Himalayan glaciers. Dr Rajendra Pachauri dismissed calls for him to resign over the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change's retraction of a prediction that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. But he admitted that there may have been other errors in the same section of the report, and said that he was considering whether ...

Ivory Coast: Threat to toxic waste victims' compensation - Independent (UK): More than 30,000 victims of toxic dumping on the west coast of Africa may never see a penny of their compensation, British lawyers have warned, after they lost a crucial battle in the courts of Ivory Coast. Residents of the city of Abidjan were awarded £30m after an international trading company agreed to settle compensation claims for sickness, vomiting and other minor illnesses. But yesterday judges sitting in the Court of Appeal of Ivory Coast ordered the UK law firm Leigh ...

United States: Lawns may contribute to global warming - Christian Science Monitor: It's the sort of headline that would grab the attention of any city dweller: Urban 'Green' Spaces May Contribute to Global Warming. As it turns out, "green spaces" doesn't mean pocket parks or wooded areas. It refers to grass. Grass in parks and grass covering athletic fields. And, although the study – from the University of California Irvine – looked at grass in parks, the conclusions may give pause to lawn-proud homeowners, too: Dispelling the notion that urban "green" spaces ...

Nike Shrinks GHG Footprint to 2007 Levels and Dumps Carbon Offsets - ClimateBiz: Nike has brought its footprint for greenhouse gas emissions back to 2007 levels and reports progress in other climate and energy areas, but has revisited its carbon neutrality goals and no longer purchases carbon offsets, the firm says in its latest corporate responsibility report. The world's leading maker of athletic footwear and apparel released the CSR report, which covers fiscal years 2007 through 2009, today. Nike said its total greenhouse gas footprint (including supply ...

Stronger hurricanes predicted for around Haiti - SciDev.Net: Haiti and the Dominican Republic are among the areas set to be hit by fiercer Atlantic hurricanes this century, researchers have predicted. The western Atlantic will experience fewer hurricanes overall, the scientists, writing today (22 January) in Science, say, but those that do occur, above a line 20 degrees north, are likely to be stronger and more destructive. Recent models of the effect of climate change on hurricanes have suggested they will reduce in frequency. But the ...

Copenhagen 'fails forest people' - BBC: A multi-billion dollar deal tabled at the Copenhagen climate summit could lead to conflicts in forest-rich nations, a report has warned. The study by the Rights and Resources Initiative said the funds could place "unprecedented pressure" on some areas. Six nations offered $3.5bn as part of global plans to cut deforestation, which accounts for about 20% of all emissions from human activity. Campaigners warn the scheme fails to consider the rights of forest ...

Experts: Aid Must Target Haiti's Underlying Issues - National Public Radio: In the coming weeks, aid agencies will begin planning how to rebuild what the earthquake destroyed in Haiti. Aid experts who have worked in the country say that money could be wasted if it isn't used to fix deep-seated problems that have reinforced poverty and even exacerbated the effects of last week's earthquake. Avoiding Mismanaged Aid When Rajiv Shah, the head of the Agency for International Development, met with reporters after the earthquake, he emphasized that the ...

Sundance film puts human face on climate change - Agence France-Presse: The devastating impact of global warming on communities worldwide is the subject of a powerful Sundance documentary aiming to put a human face on climate change. Michael Nash's film -- "Climate Refugees" -- is a compelling look at the millions of humans displaced by disasters arising from incremental and rapid ecological changes to the environment and more frequent extreme weather events such as hurricanes, cyclones, fires and tornadoes. A conference to discuss the subject is ...

Is Algae Worse than Corn for Biofuels? - Scientific American: Growing algae for use in biofuels has a greater environmental impact than sources such as corn, switch grass and canola, researchers found in the first life-cycle assessment of algae growth. Interest in algae-based biofuels has blossomed in the past year, sparking major investments from Exxon Mobil Corp. and Dow Chemical Co., and it has gained steam on Capitol Hill, as well. But the nascent industry has major environmental hurdles to overcome before ramping up production, according to ...

A distraction of Himalayan proportions - Independent (UK): It was one of the most startling predictions in climate science. By 2035 the great glaciers of the Himalayas were supposed to have largely disappeared, threatening the water supplies of tens of millions of people who rely on the ice to feed the great rivers of Asia, from the Indus and the Ganges in the west to the Brahmaputra and the Yangtze in the east. But the prediction, made by the Nobel Prize-winning body charged with overseeing global climate science, also managed to astonish ...

Arizona Snared Last Jaguar, Inquiry Finds - New York Times: Contrary to their denials, employees of the Arizona Game and Fish Department intentionally snared the last known jaguar in the Southwest last year, a report by the federal government says. Wildlife advocates and politicians had demanded a federal investigation of the capture of the male cat, nicknamed Macho B, which was freed soon after he was snared but later recaptured and euthanized because he was ailing. Many described the department`s account of his capture and death as ...

Quarter of US grain ends up at the biofuel pump - Business Green: A quarter of all the grain crops produced in the US last year ended up being used to make biofuel, according to a new study that will reignite the debate surrounding the wisdom of using food crops to fuel vehicles. Washington-based environmental think tank the Earth Policy Institute analysed 2009 figures from the US Department of Agriculture and found the 107m tons of grain that went to US ethanol distilleries last year represented over a quarter of all the grain produced in the ...

One quarter of US grain crops fed to cars - not people, new figures show - Guardian: One-quarter of all the maize and other grain crops grown in the US now ends up as biofuel in cars rather than being used to feed people, according to new analysis which suggests that the biofuel revolution launched by former President George Bush in 2007 is impacting on world food supplies. The 2009 figures from the US Department of Agriculture shows ethanol production rising to record levels driven by farm subsidies and laws which require vehicles to use increasing amounts of ...

China: Three Gorges dam may force relocation of a further 300,000 people - Guardian: A further 300,000 people must be relocated from around China's Three Gorges dam - in addition to the 1.2 million who have already been forced to leave their homes, according to a draft government report. Less than two years after completion of the world's biggest hydroelectric power plant, site engineers have found landslides and water pollution are more severe than anticipated, prompting calls for drastic remedial efforts. In a report drawn up over the past year, the managers ...