Click Green: A new study from the University of California, Davis, provides a deeper understanding of the complex global impacts of deforestation on greenhouse gas emissions. The study, published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, reports that the volume of greenhouse gas released when a forest is cleared depends on how the trees [...]

Scientific American (blog): One day after new test results showed that only 32 percent of U.S. 8th graders are proficient in science, a group of 26 states has helped draft a document that may bring about a major overhaul of science education in this country.  Known as the Next Generation Science Standards, the draft sets ambitious [...]

Guardian: Global warming threatens the future of Peru’s poorest coffee farmers, but one brand thinks it has found an answer on the financial markets. In the foothills of the Andes, in the Sierra Piura region of Peru, the problems faced by coffee farmers are clear. Up to 6,600 farmers produce here for the Central Piurana [...]

WRI: This working paper provides regular updates of the Readiness Preparation Proposal (R-PPs) and National Programme Documents (NPDs) submitted by REDD+ Country Participants to the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and to the United Nations’ Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD). The World Bank administered [...]

Times of India: The fight against climate change will take a strategic jump in the 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-2017) with the government intending to plough in almost Rs 2 lakh crore through the various missions, the working group on climate of the 12th Five-Year Plan has said. The report seeks setting up of a dedicated [...]

BBC News: Leading energy ministers have been told the world is on track for a long-term temperature increase of 6C unless they change their priorities. The International Energy Agency (IEA) said on current trends, emissions would double from 2009 to 2050. The deputy director of the IEA, Richard Jones, urged ministers: “Please take our warning [...]

New Scientist: [Michael Marshall ]Europe is doing it, Brazil is doing it, and now Mexico is doing it too. The country has passed a package of laws committing it to act on climate change. It is only the second developing nation to set greenhouse gas emissions cuts in the letter of the law. The package [...]

EVI: The changing dynamics of agriculture sector and the emerging threat of climate change The agriculture sector and its remarkable advances during the middle of 20th century is considered to be the basis for securing the food supply of a rapidly expanding human population especially in the developing countries that was enjoying the fruits of [...]

Telegraph UK: Carbon emissions from goods imported and consumed in the UK are rising more quickly than greenhouse gases are being cut domestically, MPs have warned. The Energy and Climate Change Committee warned that “outsourcing” of pollution to other countries meant the UK’s record on cutting greenhouse gases was not as good as official figures [...]

Scientific American 28 Mar: The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned. The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists [...]

Guardian UK: Prof Jim Hansen to use lecture at Edinburgh International Science Festival to call for worldwide tax on all carbon emissions. Averting the worst consequences of human-induced climate change is a “great moral issue” on a par with slavery, according to the leading Nasa climate scientist Prof Jim Hansen. He argues that storing up [...]

Economic Times (WASHINGTON): It’s believed that global warming is quite a recent phenomenon, but a new study has suggested that the world’s oceans began warming more than 100 years ago, much earlier than previously believed. The findings, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, could help scientists better understand the Earth’s record of sea-level rise, [...]

ESA: Satellite are seeing changes in land surfaces in high detail at northern latitudes, indicating thawing permafrost. This releases greenhouse gases into parts of the Arctic, exacerbating the effects of climate change. Permafrost is ground that remains at or below 0°C for at least two consecutive years and usually appears in areas at high latitudes such [...]

ANI, Washington: Satellites are observing changes in land surfaces in high detail at northern latitudes, pointing towards thawing permafrost. This releases greenhouse gases into parts of the Arctic, exacerbating the effects of climate change. Permafrost is ground that remains at or below 0°C for at least two consecutive years and usually appears in areas at [...]

To develop an effective approach to climate change, don’t rely on public opinion polls; pay attention to those who are “voting with their feet” — the fish and wildlife that must adapt to or migrate from changing habitat or die, says guest columnist William Geer. SHOULD elected officials and policymakers let public-opinion polls decide our [...]

Efforts to stem global warming have nurtured a strong urge worldwide to deploy renewable energy. As a result, the use of wind turbines has increased 10-fold over the past decade, with wind power often touted as the most cost-effective green opportunity. According to Connie Hedegaard, the European Union’s commissioner for climate action, “People should believe [...]

Many of the world’s rarest and richest forests, located in high-altitudes, could be all but wiped out by the combined impact of man-made climate change and habitat destruction. An international scientific team has warned of the near-total loss of one of the world’s most delicate ecosystems, the Mexican cloud forest, along with 70 percent of [...]

Water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, but its net effect in the atmosphere is to lower temperatures.  Proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and most IPCC climate models assume the opposite: AGW hypothesis: Carbon dioxide, a weak greenhouse gas, begins warming the planet.  This warming evaporates water and so puts water vapor into the [...]

Like 2011 before it, 2012 is shaping up to be another year of economic volatility, political instability and environmental challenges for Australia. It is easy to be distracted by short-term issues but against this backdrop, climate change mega-trends are continuing. Evidence of climate change driven by our economic dependence on polluting technologies continues to grow. [...]

The idea of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is a beguiling one. Could it ever become real? THOSE who worry about global warming have a simple answer to the problem. Simple in theory, that is: stop pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In practice that is rather hard to do. But there is [...]

The EU has called on European governments to include data on CO2 emissions from farming and forestry in their efforts to tackle climate change. The draft law on accounting rules is in line with what was agreed at the Durban climate change conference in December. But the EU does not yet plan to include farming [...]

Hydrogen fluoride emissions from brick kilns have been found to damage trees and crops in new studies conducted by an international team of scientists in the Peshawar area of northern Pakistan. Peshawar has 450 brick kilns and hydrogen fluoride is also released by factories making aluminium, ceramics, and phosphate fertilisers. Reporting their findings in the [...]

Three startup companies led by prominent scientists are working on new technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The scientific community is skeptical, but these entrepreneurs believe the process of CO2 removal can eventually be profitable and help cool an overheating planet. With global greenhouse gas emissions still on the rise, despite decades of [...]

Under the Kyoto Protocol, the US was expected to lower its greenhouse gas emissions by more than 6% below the 1990 levels. Instead the world’s largest emitter’s emissions of climate-changing carbon dioxide increased by 14% between 1990 and 2010, according a draft report of the US government. The US refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol [...]

How is life on Earth reacting to climate change? : Human activities have added billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide to Earth’s atmosphere, causing global temperatures to rise. We are beginning to see how warmer temperatures are altering climates all over the planet and to understand the effects they are having on animals, agriculture and [...]

A new report from the Nordic Council of Ministers highlights the potential consequences of acting as frontrunners in the global climate mitigation effort. Should the Nordic countries take the lead in the fight against climate changes and increase their carbon pricing unilaterally? Or will this simply result in the displacement of a number of high-emission [...]

A new study on rubber plantations highlights the need for the REDD+ climate change scheme to further consider biodiversity and rural livelihoods. Agricultural policies worldwide have traditionally favoured the conversion of rotating crops to homogenous, permanent rubber plantations because they are often perceived to be more beneficial for local development and better sequesters of carbon. [...]

Summary for Policy Makers of Global Environment Outlook-5 Spurs Urgency for Action: President of the 12th Special Session of the UNEP Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum Says “Time is Not on Our Side” In Nairobi on 22 February 2012, the world’s environment ministers ended their annual meeting by committing to make the upcoming UN Conference [...]

India’s rural development minister has slammed a United Nations report which includes reducing C02 emissions as a development target agreed by poor countries, saying it was a “mistake” and that the international body was “sending the wrong signal”. Jairam Ramesh, a former environment minister, was India’s voice – echoing that of many developing nations – [...]

Glaciers around the world may hold clues about how Earth’s remote ecosystems have been influenced by the industrial revolution. They capture large amounts of carbon-containing dissolved organic matter (DOM) that is later released to downstream ecosystems where it provides food for microorganisms at the base of the aquatic food web. While many scientists believe the [...]

The Heartland Institute funds climate skeptics, including Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change founder Craig Idso, physicist Fred Singer and geologist Robert Carter. Leaked documents from the free-market conservative organization The Heartland Institute reveal a plan to create school educational materials that contradict the established science on climate change. The documents, [...]

The paradigm shift towards sustainable development envisaged in the historic Agenda 21 adopted at the first Rio conference in 1992 and confirmed in the 2002 Johannesburg Plan of Implementation is missing in the “zero draft outcome document” for June’s U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, popularly known as the Rio+20 summit. In effect the document now [...]

Brookings: Sometimes it’s difficult to see what’s most likely to happen and not the more pleasant scenario, but the Energy Information Administration (EIA) does just that in its energy outlook “reference case.” Based on existing laws and policies (i.e. “business as usual”), EIA predicts that annual world carbon dioxide emissions will increase from 30.2 billion [...]

Meat and cheese top the list of foodstuffs that have a negative impact on the environment, according to research If everyone in the UK went vegetarian or vegan it would have the same environmental benefit as talking half of all cars off the road, according to new research. Scientists have calculated the impact of 61 [...]

Himachal Pradesh will be the first state in the country to become carbon neutral by 2020 by undertaking “carbon smart growth”, Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal said here Thursday. “The government has inventorised greenhouse gas emission for assessing the carbon footprints. The carbon footprint per capita in the state has been assessed at 1.4 tonne [...]

World Bank and partners help smallholder farmers increase productivity and revenue A new methodology to encourage smallholder farmers in Kenya –and potentially worldwide — to adopt improved farming techniques, boost productivity, increase their resilience to climate change, and earn carbon credits, has been given international approval. The Verified Carbon Standard approved this first methodology on [...]

Sustainable. That word is everywhere these days. So is Rajendra Pachauri, the discredited chairman of the discredited Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This week he’s in India for the 12th Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, which begins on Thursday. The summit is organized by TERI, an institute led by Pachauri. In other words, he isn’t [...]

A cold war has been going on among government departments over control of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) cell for the last four months. The devolved Ministry of Environment became the National Designated Authority (NDA) of the United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change after it established the cell and placed it under Enercon back [...]

There are many forces at work making it difficult to stop global warming. Many assume that the cost of creating a healthy planet will be astronomical in comparison to the results it will yield — partially because the benefits will be far in the future. The old standby of restricting carbon dioxide (CO2) and other [...]

Guardian: Leading experts lend support to Freedom of Information request concerning climate sceptic foundation chaired by Lord Lawson. Leading climate scientists have given their support to a Freedom of Information request seeking to disclose who is funding the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a London-based climate sceptic thinktank chaired by the former Conservative chancellor Lord Lawson. [...]

CDKN: India is a large country with a diverse climate. Diverse seasons mean diverse crops and farming systems. There is a high dependency of agriculture on the monsoon rains and a close link exists between climate and water resources. Two thirds of the area is rain dependent. Add to this picture the small land holdings, poor [...]

Climate Progress: A few simple and clear pictures (and links) showing how the planet continued to warm and change around us in 2011 by Peter Gleick, water and climate scientist, in a Forbes repost These facts are just part of why all national academies of science on the planet and every major geophysical scientific society agree that [...]

Greenfudge: One European bicycle culture consulting firm, Copenhagenize Consulting, released there results for a study exploring the world’s most bicycle friendly cities.  By no coincidence, this index is named after the world capital for bicycle culture, Copenhagen.  The index takes 20 major cities and analyzes them on 13 categories, including; advocacy, bicycle culture, bicycle infrastructure, perception [...]

The National Atmospheric Research Laboratory (NARL) attached to the Department of Space, government of India, is planning to set up a network of LIDAR (Laser Radar System) with the help of indigenously developed sensor tools in ten locations across the country in the first phase to study the aerosol distribution over India. This was disclosed [...]

NewYork Times: Agriculture has long been a stepchild in global negotiations over the climate. Hopes had risen that this might change at the latest big global climate session, in Durban, South Africa, in December. It did not. Now, a group of experts led by John Beddington, the chief science adviser of the British government, is [...]

The World Resources Institute (WRI) will initiate a five-year program in two Chinese cities to develop low-carbon city models. WRI is an environmental think tank founded in 1982 and based in Washington, DC. Five cities in China, Brazil and India will participate in the project, including the city of Qingdao, Shandong province (eastern China), and [...]

Sciedevnet: A form of small-holder agroforestry in which trees are planted around the home, maximising the land left available for cash crops, may prove the best balance between sequestering carbon and making money by farming other crops, a study has found. There has been a proliferation of projects that encourage small-scale farmers to adopt tree [...]

SciDevNet: Reducing methane and black carbon emissions could quickly tackle climate change while improving food security and people’s health, especially in developing countries, a study reports. Scientists identified 14 emission control measures that, when applied together, could reduce global warming by around 0.5 degrees Celsius by 2050, avoid up to 4.7 million premature deaths, and [...]

DowntoEarth: IPRs are blocking access to mitigation and adaptation technologies. India offers a way out. Debate on the rights and wrongs of intellectual property rights (IPRs) always gets stuck on a fundamental question. Would there be any incentive to invent and create without the incentive of IPRs such as patents and copyright? The conventional view [...]

RTCC: Scientists offered  stark warnings in 2011 about what the world would experience if climate change ran out of control. As people ready themselves for a new year full of new promise, RTCC asks what lessons can be learnt from last year’s key research findings. Greenhouse gas emissions One of the clearest warnings in 2011 [...]

IPS News: In his quest to make the most efficient possible use of energy generated through wood combustion, Salvadoran René Núñez developed a simple but highly efficient wood stove that produces no smoke and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 95 percent. A whole meal can be cooked on a Turbococina or “Turbostove”, as he dubbed [...]

Canberratimes: Canada’s announcement before Christmas that it will formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol could not have been better timed to puncture the sense of progress generated by the UN climate change conference in Durban just two days earlier. There, delegates had celebrated a dramatic and unexpected conclusion that saw all 194 countries (including Canada) [...]

BBC News: Tropical forests in Africa may be more resilient to future climate change than the Amazon and other regions, a gathering of scientists has said. An international conference agreed that the region’s surviving tree species had endured a number of climatic catastrophes over the past 4,000 years. As a result, they are better suited [...]

Kuenselonline: Environment Large types of glaciers in the Bhutan Himalaya are covered with rock debris at the lower part.  Terminus of those glaciers is surrounded by huge moraines, which were formed by rocks flowing down with glacier ice during the Little Ice Age.  Glaciers have expanded, and their surfaces have reached at the height of [...]

Daily Climate: Media coverage of climate change continued to tumble in 2011, declining roughly 20 percent from 2010′s levels and nearly 42 percent from 2009′s peak, according to analysis of DailyClimate.org’s archive of global media. The declining coverage came amid bouts of extreme weather across the globe – historic wildfires in Arizona, drought in Texas, [...]

Sudhirendar Sharma: By strange coincidence two unrelated developments had surfaced at the time when environment ministers from several countries were mulling over reams of text to resolve the climate conundrum at the port city of Durban in early December  - one, that the branded chocolates were getting costly and two, diapers sales were plummeting across [...]

Nature: Forest-monitoring project has measured 150,000 trees and provided researchers with reams of data. One of the biggest citizen-science projects ever conducted concludes this monthafter five years of data collection. The wealth of information gathered will help researchers to understand how climate change is affecting forests. The effort has been coordinated by Earthwatch, an environmental [...]

Business Green: Earlier this month, the world’s heads of state, government, industry and NGOs met in Durban, South Africa, to discuss our common future. These climate negotiations were more successful than many people had feared. A new international climate agreement will enter into force in 2020. This agreement makes life more predictable for industry and [...]

BioOne: Offsetting Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the Himalaya? Clean Development Dams in Himachal Pradesh, India. The carbon-offsetting scheme Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has evolved into one of the most important instruments for the funding of renewable energy projects in mountain regions in developing and newly industrializing countries. The CDM allows industrialized states to compensate for [...]

IDSA: Was the 17th Meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP 17) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) a success or a failure? Shorn of rhetoric, there was no urgent action to ensure that the global mean temperature does not rise beyond the critical 2 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels. There was [...]