Environment News

PORT MORESBY (AFP) - Armed police have removed four activists from a timber cargo ship on the South Pacific island of Papua New Guinea, ending a three-day protest against logging, environmentalists said Saturday.

MADRID (AFP) - The world must speed up the deployment of solar power as it has the potential to meet all the world's energy needs, the chairman of an industry gathering which wrapped up Friday in Spain said.

MADRID (AFP) - Climate change will melt the 21 remaining glaciers in the Pyrenees mountains before 2050, a group of Spanish researchers said Friday.

VISALIA, Calif. - Federal researchers are warning that warming temperatures could soon cause California's giant sequoia trees to die off more quickly unless forest managers plan with an eye toward climate change and the impact of a longer, harsher wildfire season.

NEW DELHI (AFP) - India's Tata Power Co plans to buy a 10 percent stake in Australian energy company Geodynamics Ltd as it seeks a presence in the country's expanding renewable energy market, a statement said.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia's chief climate advisor Friday urged a 10 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 but conceded this may not save the country's natural assets such as the Great Barrier Reef.

WASHINGTON - Smog, soot and other particles like the kind often seen hanging over Beijing add to global warming and may raise summer temperatures in the American heartland by three degrees in about 50 years, says a new federal science report released Thursday.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - Ethanol's wild ride has brought it quickly from political golden child to scapegoat for everything from soaring food prices and world hunger to pork-barrel spending.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Worldwide sea levels may rise by about 2.6 to 6.6 feet by 2100 thanks to global warming, but dire predictions of larger increases seem unrealistic, U.S. scientists said on Thursday.

Hint: It's not really climate change. There's more destruction because humans have created more stuff to be destroyed

Editor's Note: Each Wednesday LiveScience examines the viability of emerging energy technologies - the power of the future.

Strong hurricanes are getting stronger, likely thanks to global warming, a new study finds. The news comes as Tropical Storms Hanna, Ike and Josephine march almost in a line across the Atlantic basin, and just days after Hurricane Gustav slammed into the Louisiana coast. Scientists have previously predicted that as global warming further heats up the ocean, hurricanes could become more frequent, more intense or both. ...

PARIS (AFP) - Global warming is likely to boost the power of the strongest tropical cyclones, a study released on Wednesday says.

OTTAWA (AFP) - Two ice shelves in Canada's far north have lost massive sections since August while a third ice shelf now is adrift in the Arctic Ocean, said researchers Wednesday who blamed climate change.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The incredibly rapid rate at which Canada's Arctic ice shelves are disappearing is an early indicator of the "very substantial changes" that global warming will impose on all mankind, a top scientist said on Wednesday.

LONDON - Climate change is forcing the British military to tailor its strategy and equipment for more extreme weather, a junior defense minister said Wednesday.

BRASILIA (AFP) - A group of Greenpeace activists gave Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva a fireman's outfit Wednesday in a symbolic request asking him to do more to combat forest fires in the Amazon.

THE HAGUE (AFP) - Low-lying Netherlands must spend more than 100 billion euros on dike upgrades and coastal expansion to avoid the ravages of rising sea levels due to global warming, experts warned Wednesday.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - The Netherlands needs a massive new building program to strengthen the low-lying country's water defenses against the anticipated effects of global warming for the next 190 years, a key panel advised Wednesday.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - A huge 19 square mile (55 square km) ice shelf in Canada's northern Arctic broke away last month and the remaining shelves have shrunk at a "massive and disturbing" rate, the latest sign of accelerating climate change in the remote region, scientists said on Tuesday.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - A huge 19 square mile (55 square km) ice shelf in Canada's northern Arctic broke away last month and the remaining shelves have shrunk at a "massive and disturbing" rate, the latest sign of accelerating climate change in the remote region, scientists said on Tuesday.

ABIDJAN (AFP) - The trial of 12 people charged with involvement in the 2006 toxic waste pollution scandal in the Ivory Coast is set to go ahead on September 29, according to court documents released Tuesday.

JACKSON, Miss. - The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday all but killed a federal plan nearly seven decades in the making to build the world's largest water pump in the Mississippi Delta.

GENEVA (AFP) - The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said Tuesday it has re-elected chairman Rajendra Pachauri for a second term.

Forests in Vermont's Green Mountains transition abruptly from a heat-loving mix of sugar maple, American beech, and yellow birch on the lower slopes to a cold-adapted mix of red spruce, balsam fir, and paper birch higher up.

LOS ANGELES - Environmentalists fighting the practice of oil drilling off Southern California will go before a county board next week to advocate for an oil company that wants to do just that.

The evolutionary tradeoff between becoming a bigger fighter or lover could lead to new species among dung beetle populations.

GENEVA (AFP) - The United Nations said Monday that swathes of mountain ranges worldwide risk losing their glaciers by the end of the century if global warming continues at its projected rate.

BEIJING (AFP) - Beijing is enjoying its best air quality in a decade thanks to steps taken for the Olympics, authorities said Monday, amid a push by some locals for the anti-pollution measures to be made permanent.