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MediaGlobal: For centuries Somali culture has been shaped by the weather. Forecasters, called "Xidaars," are the most respected members of communities. Using an ancient combination of Persian and African astronomy to herald the rain and warn of oncoming drought, they define the crop and livestock cycles for pastorally based Somali communities. Although Somalis are no strangers to devastating droughts, uncertainty about weather patterns are rising with the temperature. As the climate changes and ...

Guardian: Developing countries were today shocked by new UN data showing that rich nations will be able to increase their carbon emissions by up to 8% if they take advantage of a series of major loopholes in their pledges. Instead of reducing emissions by a minimum of 30-40% by 2020 and holding temperatures to a rise of 2C – as many campaigners hoped the Copenhagen climate summit in December would achieve – many rich countries would not need to make any domestic cuts to stay within the legal ...

Guardian: Who's to blame for the Gulf oil spill? Many commentators point the finger at BP and the United States government. This focus is understandable – but gives an incomplete picture of how moral responsibility is distributed in this kind of case. Getting a better idea of distribution is important for blame and punishment but also for prevention: we don't want this to happen again. Ascribing responsibility here can be knotty, owing to the wide range of actors involved in oil ...

Reuters: Climate negotiators gave a standing ovation to the outgoing head of the U.N. climate change secretariat Wednesday even after he told them they would be at risk of a red card in a soccer match for wasting time. Dutchman Yvo de Boer, who steps down from July 1 after four years in the job, said governments were doing too little to stick to a promise to limit a rise in world temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times. In a farewell address at ...

Agence France-Presse: A Swiss professor who developed a low-cost solar power cell using cheap materials such as dye squeezed from berries won a million-dollar technology prize in Finland on Wednesday. Michael Graetzel, 66, won the Millennium Technology award for process of "artificial photosynthesis" to capture the sun's energy without need for an elaborate manufacturing process. The so-called "Graetzel's cell" is made from a layer of titanium dioxide nanoparticles, covered with a molecular dye that ...

Mongabay: Journalists who report on deforestation and pollution are increasingly at risk of violence, imprisonment, or persecution, finds a new report released last week by Reporters Without Borders. High Risk Subjects: Deforestation and Pollution [PDF] reports on incidents involving journalists and bloggers who expose illegal logging, industrial pollution, and other environmental transgressions in Indonesia, Argentina, El Salvador, Gabon, India, Azerbaijan, China and Morocco. The attacks were ...

Discovery News: To read the comments section of this blog and others, and to listen to the bitter vitriol routinely spewed by folks who seem to revel in arguing about global warming, you might think Americans are divided on what to do about it. Not so, at least according to a new poll of 1,024 adults in the U.S. performed by Yale University's Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. Even as climate legislation sits gathering dust in Congress, Americans appear to strongly favor moving forward ...

Agence France-Presse: French oil firm Total and Spain's Abengoa Solar will partner with Abu Dhabi's alternative energy company Masdar to build "the world's largest" concentrated solar power plant, Masdar announced on Wednesday. The state-owned firm said it has selected a "consortium of Total and Abengoa Solar as a partner to own, build and operate Shams 1, the world's largest concentrated solar power plant and the first of its kind in the Middle East." "We are moving on the right path to make Abu ...

Reuters: British energy giant BP Plc's stock price tumbled on Wednesday as it faced more U.S. government and congressional scrutiny over its handling of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill. BP shares fell around 6 percent in London, following a 5 percent drop on Tuesday, on worries that the company will have to suspend its dividend payment under pressure from U.S. politicians who say it should go to pay for legal claims and environmental damage in the Gulf. The cost of protecting BP ...

Associated Press: The government's ban on deepwater petroleum drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is being challenged by a Louisiana petroleum service company. Hornbeck Offshore Services Inc. filed suit in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, claiming the Interior Department recommended the six-month moratorium to President Barack Obama without any legal justification. Hornbeck operates a fleet of vessels that haul people and supplies to offshore drilling rigs and production platforms. The company ...

Agence France-Presse: The UN's incoming chief on climate change cautioned on Wednesday it could take until 2050 to build the machinery that will ultimately tame greenhouse gases. In an interview with newswire reporters on the sidelines of UN talks in Bonn, Christiana Figueres said she was approaching her new job with optimism tempered by hard-edged realism. "I continue to be confident that governments will meet this challenge, for the simple reason that humanity must meet the challenge. We just ...

CBC: Global warming is once again becoming a hot topic for Americans, new data suggests. A U.S. national survey released Tuesday finds that public concern about global warming is increasing, with public belief that it is occurring rising to 61 per cent, up from 57 per cent since January. And 50 per cent of Americans believe the phenomenon is caused by people -- an increase of three points. Fifty-three per cent of respondents now worry about the impact global warming will have (an ...

Nation: A tour of Dimock, Pennsylvania, with Victoria Switzer is a bumpy ride over torn-up roads, around parking lots filled with heavy machinery and storage tanks, and past well pads that not long ago were forests. The winter here was quiet, but with the thawing ground came the return of the rigs, the trucks, the constant noise and lights of a twenty-four-hour-a-day gas drilling operation. "It's a modern-day Deadwood out here," Switzer says, likening the activity to the gold rush. "No rules, no ...

Sydney Morning Herald: THERE is little sense of urgency about climate change in the budget, and the more muscular rhetoric about cutting greenhouse gases in recent budget papers has been replaced by talk of "minimising" the impact of global warming. About $170 million will be directed to energy- and water-saving programs that had been previously announced, including household rebates, while the establishment of many national parks meant a funding boost for the parks sector. The energy-saving schemes ...

Reuters: China will face increasing pressure in U.N. climate talks after data released on Wednesday showed the country's carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel rose by 9 percent in 2009, bucking a global downtrend. See related table China's CO2 from fossil fuels grew to 7.52 billion tonnes, even though global emissions dropped for the first time since 1998 as industrial production and fuel consumption fell amid a global recession, BP data showed. China was the first nation ...

Australian Broadcasting Corporation: In a bid to find out how the Great Barrier Reef will be affected by climate change, scientists are using elephant seals to collect data from the ocean around Antarctica. The seals have sensors glued to their heads that collect information about changes to temperature and salinity in the Southern Ocean. The information is sent back to Hobart via satellite, where researchers at the CSIRO will make the link between what is happening in the cold waters of the Southern Ocean and ...

Politico: So far, the worst oil spill in American history hasn't jump-started climate change legislation in a gridlocked, shell-shocked Senate, as many Democrats had hoped it would. There is a powerful will on the Hill to punish BP by eliminating a cap on the company's liability. But that fervor isn't translating into support for the comprehensive energy reform bill unveiled by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) earlier this year, despite President Barack Obama's vow to ...

Guardian: The widespread disappearance of snakes will be one impact of climate change that some people may find it hard to regret. But as vital predators in sensitive habitats such as rice fields, their decline will have wider ecological consequence, say scientists. The first major study of the problem, published today, will also be seen as another powerful sign of the worldwide destruction of the natural world, which is causing growing concern about the loss of vital services from rainfall to ...

Asian News International: An expert on climate change has revealed that seven out of ten Americans feel that the United States should take action to power the nation with clean energy. According to Edward Maibach, Director, Centre for Climate Change Comunication, a majority of Americans surveyed feel that carbon dioxide regulation is a must. "The stabilization and slight rebound in public opinion is occurring amid signs the economy is starting to recover, along with consumer confidence, and as memories ...

Guardian: <figure> <figcaption>A villager walks on an embankment amid the rising waters of the Sundarbans, India. Rich countries have pledged financial aid to help developing countries tackle climate change. Photograph: Bikas Das/AP</figcaption> </figure> Rich countries will raid existing aid budgets, double-count promises and convert grants to loans to avoid paying the $30bn (£21bn) they pledged last year to poor countries to help them adapt immediately to the climate change they did not ...