Delegates from 26 countries opposed to a new EU carbon tax on airlines are meeting in Moscow to consider possible retaliation, amid fears of a trade war.

China, India, Russia and the US are among the countries opposed to the EU fee, which took effect on 1 January.

Critics say the EU has no right to impose taxes on flights to or from destinations outside Europe.

But in December the European Court of Justice ruled that the EU tax on CO2 pollution from aircraft was legal.

Crime chiefs from countries with populations of wild tigers have agreed to work together in order to combat the illegal trade in the big cats.

Heads of police and customs from 13 nations agreed to tighten controls and improve cross-border co-operation at a two-day meeting in Bangkok.

Only six subspecies remain, with fewer than 1,000 tigers in each group.

Smuggling of tiger parts is one of the main threats facing the planet's remaining big cats, say experts.

A French court has found the US biotech giant Monsanto legally responsible for the poisoning of a farmer who inhaled a powerful weedkiller.

Correspondents say the case could influence rulings in other countries on the use of pesticides.

Monsanto says it will appeal against Monday's verdict by a court in Lyon.

Paul Francois, 47, suffered from dizziness, headaches and other problems after examining a sprayer in 2004 which contained Lasso, a product now banned.

The court linked Lasso directly to the farmer's illness.

In recent years, media reports of jellyfish blooms and some scientific publications have fueled the idea that jellyfish and other gelatinous floating creatures are becoming more common and may dominate the seas in coming decades. The growing impacts of humans on the oceans, including overfishing and climate change, have been suggested as possible causes of this apparently alarming trend.

A careful evaluation of the evidence by Robert H. Condon of Dauphin Island Sea Lab and his 16 coauthors, however, finds the idea that jellyfish, comb jellies, salps and similar organisms are surging globally to be lacking support.

A huge crustacean has been found lurking 7km down in the waters off the coast of New Zealand.

The creature - called a supergiant - is a type of amphipod, which are normally around 2-3cm long.

But these beasts, discovered in the Kermadec Trench, were more than 10 times bigger: the largest found measured in at 34cm.

Alan Jamieson, from the University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab, said: "It's a bit like finding a foot-long cockroach."

"I stopped and thought: 'What on Earth was that?' This amphipod was far bigger than I ever thought possible."

Gorillas bare their teeth in a playful "grin" to reassure one another during play, scientists have discovered.

This "flash of teeth" seems to let their playmate know that they do not intend to harm them.

The researchers, from the University of Portsmouth, study the facial expressions of primates to uncover the evolutionary origins of human smiling and laughter.

They published their findings in the American Journal of Primatology.

Tropical sea cucumbers and their faeces could save coral reefs from the harmful impacts of climate change, scientists have found.

Scientists at One Tree Island, the University of Sydney’s research station on the Great Barrier Reef, say sea cucumbers reduce the impact of ocean acidification on coral growth.

"When they ingest sand, the natural digestive processes in the sea cucumber's gut increases the pH levels of the water on the reef where they defecate," Tree Island director professor Maria Byrne said.

The Prince of Wales is to launch a major international campaign to halt the destruction of the oceans through overfishing.

A report to be published this week by one of the Prince's charities, theInternational Sustainability Unit (ISU), will say that fisheries around the world could be pulled back from the brink of collapse by tackling wasteful fishing practices.

Their critics complain that the environmental activists came to represent 'Interminable meetings, not action'.

A seal sanctuary in The Netherlands has seen a massive increase in the number of seal pups washing up along the Dutch coastline. "There has been dramatic increase in numbers as a result of the recent winter storms in the Wadden Sea," said Karst van der Meulen, who runs a seal creche in Pieterburen, some 200 kilometres (120 miles) northeast of Amsterdam.

A committee of MPs is to investigate how to ensure Parliament's Clock Tower - better known as Big Ben - can be prevented from tilting further, after surveyors found it was leaning.

The Palace of Westminster, built during the 19th Century, is also suffering from cracking

One of the world's most endangered primates has been caught on camera by scientists on the island of Borneo.

Using time-lapse recordings to investigate the diversity of the remote Wehea forest, the team were surprised to see an unusual sub-species.

Close analysis confirmed that they had photographed a group of Miller's grizzled langurs.

Fears for the monkeys' future were sparked last year when none were recorded in previously known habitats.

The international team of researchers suggest their evidence could indicate a more optimistic future.

THE 18,000ha Tasmanian wilderness estate of a mysterious American who bought land to escape the nuclear threat of the Cold War is on the market.
A lakeside property included in the package of land for sale from the Martin Polin estate.

Agents believe the estate of Utah lawyer Martin Polin, who died in 2007, could be worth more than $10 million.

... Mr Polin, who was described as a conservationist and a survivalist, built an underground bunker at a property known as Circular Marsh, near Bronte Park.

THE Australian government says its priority is to make sure the three whaling activists who climbed on board a Japanese whaling security ship are being well cared for, Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said.
Ms Roxon told reporters in Melbourne the government has been in touch with the Japanese government to find out exactly where the security ship is in Australia's exclusive economic zone in the waters off Western Australia.

"It's early days and it's happened just a number of hours ago,'' Ms Roxon said.

"Our top priority is to make sure Australian citizens are safe and that they are being well cared for.''

It's flat. It's slimy. And it hides under rocks on the river bottom. It's the Ozark hellbender, and at up to two feet in length, it's one of the world's largest salamanders.

But Ozark hellbenders are disappearing: Fewer than 600 are left in the rivers of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. Scientists have been making a huge effort to get them to breed in captivity. And now, thanks to a major effort at the Saint Louis Zoo, 2012 could be the year of new hope for hellbenders.

For lovers of Camembert, the downy white rind is the tart bite that balances out the fat-laden, oozing, pungent layer inside.

For a group of Swiss bioengineers, that moldy rind is one of nature's greatest living surfaces, doing double duty as a shield and a cleaner. The rind allows the cheese's deep flavor and aroma to mature, but also defends it against microorganisms that could spoil it. The cheese repays the fungi on the rind by supplying it with nutrients.

So amazing is the rind that the scientists, who are interested in designing "smart," functional materials, used it as an inspiration to build their own living material. The researchers describe their work in a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Climate change dropped even further from the world's headlines and newscasts last year. 
Weird weather, Australia's carbon tax and Solyndra fracas weren't enough to stem a decline that started in 2009.

Secretly-filmed footage from poultry farms suggests many egg producers on the Continent will flout a European Union ban on battery hens which comes into force today.

Remarkable images of life from one of the most inhospitable spots in the ocean have been captured by scientists.

Researchers have been surveying volcanic underwater vents - sometimes called black smokers - in the South West Indian Ridge in the Indian Ocean.

The UK team found an array of creatures living in the super-heated waters, including yeti crabs, scaly-foot snails and sea cucumbers.

They believe some of the species may be new to science.

Malaysian wildlife authorities have captured a female Borneo Sumatran rhino that will be paired with a new mate in a breeding programme meant to save their species from extinction.

Officials have spent more than three years seeking a suitable mate for a middle-aged male rhino named "Tam" that was rescued in Malaysia'seastern Sabah state in 2008 while wandering in an oil palm plantation with an infected leg likely caused by a poacher trap.

Frankincense - a traditional staple of the Christmas story - faces an uncertain future, according to researchers.

Ecologists have warned that the production of the fragrant resin could decline by half over the next 15 years.

The festive fragrance is produced by tapping the gum of trees in the Boswellia genus.

The findings, based on a study carried out in Ethiopia, have been published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

Canada will not make further cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, and may begin formally withdrawing next month.

Though not a surprise, the news will anger poor countries that say the rich are reneging on pledges made 14 years ago when the protocol was signed.

They see the protocol as the only way to make emission cuts legally binding.

Taxpayers will have to pay billions of pounds a year equipping council houses, town halls, hospitals and other public buildings with the latest green technology, under new proposals by the European Commission.

A British scientist has won a coveted environment research prize for showing how bees can be used to reduce conflict between people and elephants.

Lucy King's work proved that beehive "fences" can keep elephants out of African farmers' fields or compounds.

The animals are scared of bees, which can sting them inside their trunks, and flee when they hear buzzing.

Dr King received the Thesis Prize in a ceremony at the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) meeting in Norway.

Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere rose to yet another high in 2010, according to the UN's weather agency.

Levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) - the major contributor to climate change - rose by 2.3 parts per million between 2009 and 2010.

That exceeds the average for the past decade of 2.0 parts per million, the World Meteorological Organization says.

The latest round of UN climate talks begin in South Africa in two weeks.

"The atmospheric burden of greenhouse gases due to human activities has yet again reached record levels since pre-industrial time," said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud.

Concentrations of CO2 reached 389 parts per million in 2010 - the highest such concentrations since the start of the industrial era in 1750.

Geese, ducks and swans that spend winter in wetlands of Northern Europe are changing their migration patterns as temperatures rise, say scientists.

Researchers in Finland found some waterfowl delayed migrations by up to a month compared with 30 years ago.

The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) says that numbers of some very familiar species are decreasing in the UK, as many birds do not fly as far.

Read some of the previews of what the summary from the updating for policy makers from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would say and you might think much of this climate change business was being overstated. Take the example from page one of Friday’s The Australian illustrated here.

Or this preview story from the BBC earlier in the week on which The Australian (a Murdoch paper) based its coverage:

The draft, which has found its way into my possession, contains a lot more unknowns than knowns.

On the one hand, it says it is “very likely” that the incidence of cold days and nights has gone down and the incidence of warm days and nights has risen globally.

And the human and financial toll of extreme weather events has risen.

But when you get down to specifics, the academic consensus is far less certain.

There is “low confidence” that tropical cyclones have become more frequent, “limited-to-medium evidence available” to assess whether climatic factors have changed the frequency of floods, and “low confidence” on a global scale even on whether the frequency has risen or fallen.

In terms of attribution of trends to rising greenhouse gas concentrations, the uncertainties continue.

Well, the Summary for Policymakers of the Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation prepared for this week’s IPCC meeting in Uganda is now available to all 0f us online. Judge for yourself if these findings justify a heading “Review fails to support climate change link.”

CLIMATE EXTREMES AND IMPACTS

Confidence in projecting changes in the direction and magnitude of climate extremes depends on many factors, including the type of extreme, the region and season, the amount and quality of observational data, the level of understanding of the underlying processes, and the reliability of their simulation in models.

Term                                Likelihood of the outcome

Virtually certain             99-100% probability

Very likely                        90-100% probability

Likely                                 66-100% probability

About as likely as not           33 to 66% probability

Unlikely                            0-33% probability

Very unlikely                     0-10% probability

Exceptionally unlikely      0-1% probability

Models project substantial warming in temperature extremes by the end of the 21 st century. It is virtually certain that increases in the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes and decreases in cold extremes will occur in the 21st century on the global scale. It is very likely that the length, frequency and/or intensity of warm spells, or heat waves, will increase over most land areas.

It is likely that the frequency of heavy precipitation or the proportion of total rainfall from heavy falls will increase in the 21st century over many areas of the globe. This is particularly the case in the high latitudes and tropical regions, and in winter in the northern mid-latitudes. Heavy rainfalls associated with tropical cyclones are likely to increase with continued warming. There is medium confidence that, in some regions, increases in heavy precipitation will occur despite projected decreases of total precipitation in those regions.

Average tropical cyclone maximum wind speed is likely to increase, although increases may not occur in all ocean basins. It is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged.

There is medium confidence that there will be a reduction in the number of extra-tropical cyclones averaged over each hemisphere. While there is low confidence in the detailed geographical projections of extra-tropical cyclone activity, there is medium confidence in a projected poleward shift of extra-tropical storm tracks. There is low confidence in projections of small spatial-scale phenomena such as tornadoes and hail because competing physical processes may affect future trends and because current climate models do not simulate such phenomena.

There is medium confidence that droughts will intensify in the 21st century in some seasons and areas, due to reduced precipitation and/or increased evapotranspiration. This applies to regions including southern Europe and the Mediterranean region, central Europe, central North America, Central America and Mexico, northeast Brazil, and southern Africa. Elsewhere there is overall low confidence because of inconsistent projections of drought changes (dependent both on model and dryness index). Definitional issues, lack of observational data, and the inability of models to include all the factors that influence droughts preclude stronger confidence than medium in drought projections.

Projected precipitation and temperature changes imply possible changes in floods, although overall there is low confidence in projections of changes in fluvial floods. Confidence is low due to limited evidence and because the causes of regional changes are complex, although there are exceptions to this statement. There is medium confidence (based on physical reasoning) that projected increases in heavy rainfall would contribute to increases in local flooding, in some catchments or regions.

It is very likely that mean sea level rise will contribute to upward trends in extreme coastal high water levels in the future. There is high confidence that locations currently experiencing adverse impacts such as coastal erosion and inundation will continue to do so in the future due to increasing sea levels, all other contributing factors being equal. The very likely contribution of mean sea level rise to increased extreme coastal high water levels, coupled with the likely increase in tropical cyclone maximum wind speed, is a specific issue for tropical small island states.

There is high confidence that changes in heat waves, glacial retreat and/or permafrost degradation will affect high mountain phenomena such as slope instabilities, movements of mass, and glacial lake outburst floods. There is also high confidence that changes in heavy precipitation will affect landslides in some regions.

There is low confidence in projections of changes in large-scale patterns of natural climate variability. Confidence is low in projections of changes in monsoons (rainfall, circulation) because there is little consensus in climate models regarding the sign of future change in the monsoons. Model projections of changes in El Niño – Southern Oscillation variability and the frequency of El Niño episodes are not consistent, and so there is low confidence in projections of changes in this phenomenon

 

Apple has met with environmental groups in China in a bid to quell concerns about pollution caused by its Chinese manufacturers.

The move comes after a report in August alleged that some Apple manufacturers were discharging harmful pollutants.

The Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) said the technology giant had shared its plans to address the issues during the talks.

When contacted by the BBC, Apple refused to comment on the meeting.

Salmon, once a pricey delicacy, is now an affordable staple at supermarkets and sushi restaurants everywhere. For that, we can thank fish farms. They produce 70 percent of the salmon eaten by consumers, who savor its subtle texture and rich flavor. Medical researchers say the fatty acids in salmon might help prevent cancer and heart disease.
So it was troubling that researchers over the past few weeks may have found an infectious disease known as salmon anemia in wild fish in British Columbia. Lawmakers and fisheries managers in the U.S. and Canada see the illness as a threat to a $3 billion industry. Although Canadian officials said further tests seemed to be negative, the episode is a reminder of the need to make serious improvements in aquaculture practices.

Three years ago, Democrats and Republicans joined to expand the nation’s oldest federal wildlife law to cover illegal logging.

But then federal investigators picked Gibson Guitar as the first target of the new provision, confiscating guitars and pallets of ebony two years ago that allegedly came from wood illegally logged in Madagascar. In August they seized more than 100,000 fingerboards allegedly made from imported Indian rosewood, along with electronic files.

Conservationists have brought one of the world's most threatened bird species to the UK in order to start a captive breeding programme.

The 13 spoon-billed sandpipers arrived in the country on Friday, 11 November.

They were taken to the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) reserve in Slimbridge, Gloucestershire.

It was the final stage of an epic 8,000km journey for the birds, which have been brought from their breeding grounds in Russia's Far East.

No wild black rhinos remain in West Africa, according to the latest global assessment of threatened species.

The Red List, drawn up by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has declared the subspecies extinct.

A subspecies of white rhino in central Africa is also listed as possibly extinct, the organisation says.

Nigeria's first house built from discarded plastic bottles is proving a tourist attraction in the village of Yelwa.

Hundreds of people - including government officials and traditional leaders - have been coming to see how the walls are built in the round architectural shape popular in northern Nigeria.

The bottles, packed with sand, are placed on their side, one on top of the other and bound together with mud.

Australia's parliament passed laws that impose a price on carbon emissions on Tuesday in one of the biggest economic reforms in a decade, giving new impetus to December's global climate talks in South Africa.

The laws will force Australia's top 500 polluting companies to pay a price on carbon emissions from July 2012, in a major policy victory for embattled Prime Minister Julia Gillard, whose popularity has plunged over the scheme.

The final vote in the Senate comes after five years of heated debate, and endorses the central plank of the government's commitment to cut carbon emissions by 5 percent of year 2000 levels by 2020.

A Brazilian court has rejected a bid by academics, animal rights campaigners and environmentalists to have a chimpanzee who paints every day released from a zoo.

Crowds ransacked a hospital and set buses alight in a second day of violent protests against a planned nuclear power plant in western India.

Reports say at least 20 people were injured as police sought to quell the unrest in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra state.

On Monday one person died as protesters attacked a police station close to the proposed site at nearby Jaitapur.

Activists say the region is prone to earthquakes and fear a repeat of the disaster at Japan's Fukushima plant.

Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has said extra safeguards will be taken in light of the crisis in Japan.

But local villagers also fear the $10bn (£6bn) plant - expected to be the biggest in the world - will ruin their traditional fishing grounds.

I remember years ago when I was still persona grata with Australia's top rating breakfast radio station 3AW breakfast as the resident political spinner, describing how I would run the campaign in favour of Japanese whaling. The secret, I decided, was to attack the sizeism that determines that saving the life of a single whale is more important than saving the millions of beautiful little creatures called krill that the monsters of the deep eat every day.

“Save the krill – kill a whale” was my suggested slogan to put on the tee shirts and I received more abuse over that item than anything I ever said with unfair criticism of our country's political leaders John Howard and Paul Keating. I happily put my pretend campaign into storage having discovered that commercial radio has many whale loving listeners without a sense of humour.

But maybe I was wrong; for today I read that the cuddly little krill is a declining species with the voracious appetite of whales and seals a major factor in this threatened genocide.

Messrs Wayne Z. Trivelpiecea, Jefferson T. Hinkea, Aileen K. Millera, Christian S. Reissa, Susan G. Trivelpiecea, and George M. Wattersa provide the telling evidence of destruction inan article recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. It is difficult to think of a publication with a more prestigious title than that so we should be taking notice of their views in “Variability in krill biomass links harvesting and climate warming to penguin population changes in Antarctica.”

I am not going to be distracted by the academically fashionable tendency of these academics to tie their research findings into theories of global warming. Academics, like whales, have to eat. Nor do I want to dwell on the article choosing to concentrate on the impact of declining krill numbers in Antarctic waters on the capacity of penguins to survive. Grants are surely easier to get for creatures made immensely popular by recent cinema classics than for studying shrimp-like marine crustaceans. And, of course, penguins on land are easier to count than krill in the ocean so we should not be too harsh. The decline in penguin numbers is a proxy measure of the decline in krill.

And so to the murderous, if understated, conclusion about the damage being done by whales:

Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is the dominant prey of nearly all vertebrates in this region, including Adélie and chinstrap penguins. Large-scale changes in krill biomass best explain why populations of Adélie and chinstrap penguins increased as a result of competitive release following the harvesting of the whales and seals (the krill-surplus hypothesis) and why more recently they have decreased as a result of climate change and the recovery of pinnipeds and baleen whale populations.

India has added 181 million new people to its population over the last decade, according to the results of the 2011 census.

India's population is now 1.21bn, which is bigger than the combined populations of the US, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

A national survey has recorded an encouraging rise in small bird populations in the UK.
In January, over 600,000 people took part in the Big Garden Birdwatch run by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).
The results, published this week, show a promising increase in garden bird populations since last year.
Over 10.2 million birds were counted. Goldcrest sightings doubled, while long-tailed tits rose by a third.
The annual survey, now in its 32nd year, was held on Saturday 29 January.
The survey asked people to take to their gardens and public open spaces to count the number of birds during a given hour.

GIVING birth to 50,000 offspring and then leaving them to fend for themselves might not sound like "supermum" behaviour.

 But that's the term scientists at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) in Townsville are using to describe the first captive raised lobster to successfully produce larvae. 

They have good reason to be happy with the achievement - it marks a major step forward in efforts to establish a lobster aquaculture industry.

AIMS Principal Research Scientist Dr Mike Hall said successfully breeding with captive-raised lobsters had proved impossible in the past and the institute had achieved a world first.

"This is going to grab considerable interest around the world" he told AAP.

The development could help lead to not only large scale captive breeding but also better looking and tasting lobster, he said. 

Cuckoos' egg forgery skills are increasingly being put to the test, as host birds evolve better defences, say scientists.
These brood parasites, as they are called, are master deceivers - hiding their eggs in other species' nests.
To avoid detection, cuckoos have evolved to mimic colour and pattern of their favoured host birds' eggs.
But researchers have developed "birds eye view" models ... This study revealed details about the "evolutionary arms race" in which cuckoos are embroiled; as they evolve better mimicry, their hosts evolve the skills to spot these damaging intruders.

Kangaroos used in a university experiment will be caged and suffer extreme distress from confinement, Animal Liberation says.

University of Wollongong will keep kangaroos in a cage one metre by 1.3 metres by 1.7 metres for nine months to measure the methane gas they expel, Animal Liberation executive director Mark Pearson said.

"For the NSW State Government to approve such a pathetic experiment for someone's PhD on global warming is unconscionable," Mr Pearson said.

South Australian Liberal Senator Mary Jo Fisher took to dancing the Hokey Pokey and The Time Warp in her speech against a carbon price, resulting in one of the most memorable political speeches we've seen in a while. And not memorable in a good way.

It's worth clicking to catch a video of the performance on the site.
The Liberals are broadly Australia's conservative equivalent of the GOP

WARNBRO Beach, south of Perth, has been closed after a school of more than 100 sharks was spotted 200 metres off shore.

The school of up to 80 whaler sharks and 30 hammerhead sharks was spotted at around 7.45am this morning off the coast of Warnbro Sound at Waikiki.

Tawny owls turn brown to survive in warmer climates, according to scientists in Finland.
Feather colour is hereditary, with grey plumage dominant over brown. But the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that the number of brown owls was increasing.
As winters become milder, the scientists say, grey feathered tawny owls are likely to disappear.
This study indicates that the birds are evolving in response to climate change.

Japan has told the ambassadors of Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands to take action against anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd, whose harassment cut short its Antarctic hunt this season.

On Friday Japan announced it was bringing home its harpoon ships a month early, citing a need to guarantee the safety of the whalers.

"It is extremely regrettable that the obstructionist activities by Sea Shepherd were not prevented," Japan's foreign minister Seiji Maehara said in remarks directed to the three countries that allow Sea Shepherd to fly their flag or use their ports.

apan has suspended its annual Antarctic whale hunt following protests from a campaign group.

Activists from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a US-based environmental group, have been chasing the Japanese fleet's mother ship.

An official at the country's fisheries agency said whaling had been halted "for now" because of safety concerns.

Commercial whaling was banned in 1986 but Japan uses a regulation permitting hunting for scientific research.

It's almost enough to make a green republican turn monarchist! Britain's Prince Charles overnight delivered a speech on the consequences of the pursuit of economic growth at the expense of the environment that would have done any Green Party politician proud. Addressing the European Parliament climate change conference in Brussels His Royal Highness - see I'm writing like a monarchist already - warned about the pursuit of economic growth at the expense of the environment and condemned climate change sceptics for their ''corrosive'' impact on public opinion.

I have to say, this process [towards an innovative approach to sustainability that actually saves money] has not exactly been helped by the corrosive effect on public opinion of those climate change sceptics who deny the vast body of scientific evidence that shows beyond any reasonable doubt that global warming has been exacerbated by human industrialized activity. Their suggestion that hundreds of scientists around the world, and those who accept their dispassionate evidence - including presumably and gentlemen myself, rather ironically I am constantly accused of being anti-science - are somehow unconsciously biased creates the implication that many of us are, somehow, secretly conspiring to undermine and deliberately destroy the entire market-based capitalist system which now dominates the world! I would ask how these people are going to face their grandchildren and admit to them that they actually failed their future; that they ignored all the clear warning signs by passing them off as merely part of a “cyclical process” that had happened many times before and was beyond our control; that they had refused to heed the desperate cries of those last remaining traditional societies throughout the world who warned consistently of catastrophe because they could read the signs of impending disintegration in the ever-more violent, extreme aberrations in the normally, harmonious patterns of Nature. I wonder, will such people be held accountable at the end of the day for the absolute refusal to countenance a precautionary approach, for this plays I would suggest a most reckless game of roulette with the future inheritance of those who come after us? An inheritance that will be shaped by what you decide to do here in this Parliament.

Pigeons can find their way home from hundreds of miles - an ability that fascinates scientists and has led to their use in carrying messages and even smuggling drugs.
Now, researchers in Italy, say they have shown how much the birds rely on one of their nostrils to "sniff" their way around.
The team report in the Journal of Experimental Biology, that pigeons with a blocked right nostril were unable to create the "map of smells" that guides them on their journey.
Homing pigeons are the domesticated relatives of wild rock doves , which have an innate ability to find their way back to their own nest over long distances.

A total of 950 natural catastrophes were recorded last year by the major re-insurance company MunichRe. The company says nine-tenths of the incidents were weather-related events like storms and floods. This total made 2010 the year with the second-highest number of natural catastrophes since 1980, markedly exceeding the annual average for the last ten years (785 events per year).

The overall losses amounted to around US$ 130bn, of which approximately US$ 37bn was insured. This puts 2010 among the six most loss-intensive years for the insurance industry since 1980. The level of overall losses was slightly above the high average of the past ten years.

“2010 showed the major risks we have to cope with. There were a number of severe earthquakes. The hurricane season was also eventful – it was just fortunate that the tracks of most of the storms remained over the open sea. But things could have turned out very differently”, said Torsten Jeworrek, Munich Re’s Reinsurance CEO. “The severe earthquakes and the hurricane season with so many storms demonstrate once again that there must be no slackening of our efforts to analyse these risks in detail and provide the necessary insurance covers at adequate prices. These prices calculated by the insurance industry make it possible to assess the economic consequences of these otherwise difficult-to-evaluate risks.”

In all, there were five catastrophes last year assignable to the top category of “great natural catastrophes” based on the definition criteria of the United Nations: the earthquakes in Haiti (12 January), Chile (27 February) and central China (13 April), the heatwave in Russia (July to September), and the floods in Pakistan (also July to September). These accounted for the major share of fatalities in 2010 (around 295,000) and just under half the overall losses caused by natural catastrophes.

One of the most devastating earthquakes in the history of the past 100 years, the quake in Haiti on 12 January killed more than 220,000 people. Only the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in China claimed more lives (242,000). Whilst the earthquake in Haiti resulted in human tragedy on a staggering scale, it gave rise to only negligible losses for the insurance industry, as is so often the case in developing countries.

Five-hundred times more energy than in the Haiti quake was released by the earthquake that hit Chile just over a month later. With overall losses of US$ 30bn and insured losses of US$ 8bn, this quake was last year’s most expensive natural catastrophe. Chile is a highly developed country with very strict building codes to take account of the high earthquake exposure. As a result, there were comparatively few human casualties, despite the severity of the quake – the fifth-strongest ever measured – although people were killed in Chile, too.

In the summer, floods following extreme monsoon rainfall had devastating consequences in Pakistan. For weeks, up to one-quarter of the country was flooded. Countless people lost all their worldly possessions. The overall loss totalled US$ 9.5bn – an extremely high amount for Pakistan’s emerging economy.

A widescale catastrophe also resulted from the heatwave in Russia and neighbouring countries between July and September. Many places, including Moscow, experienced record temperatures. In some regions of central Russia, they exceeded 30°C for two months on end. Forests burned, with the fires threatening nuclear facilities and areas where the ground had been contaminated by radioactive fallout from Chernobyl. At least 56,000 people died as a result of heat and air pollution, making it the most deadly natural disaster in Russia’s history.

The hurricane season in the North Atlantic was benign – but only at first glance. Favourable weather patterns meant that the US coast was not hit by a single hurricane. In Mexico, however, a few storms caused substantial damage. Otherwise, the tropical cyclones turned away in a northeasterly direction over the sea, only grazing some islands in the Caribbean.

But what appeared benign was, in terms of the number and intensity of the storms, one of the severest hurricane seasons of the past 100 years. Altogether, there were 19 named tropical cyclones, equalling the number recorded in 1995 and putting 2010 in joint third place after 2005 (28) and 1933 (21). Twelve of the storms attained hurricane strength, with five of these falling into the top hurricane categories (wind speeds over 178 km/h). This means the forecasts of various institutes about the number of storms turned out to be very accurate. “The number of storms was indeed well above average. It is just that it is impossible to forecast whether and where such storms will make landfall”, said Prof. Peter Höppe, Head of Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research.

Right at the start of the 2010 hurricane season, the water temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic were up to 2°C above the long-term mean – and thus significantly higher than the level to be expected for the cyclical warm phase in the North Atlantic that has persisted since 1995. The water temperatures thus provided ideal conditions for the occurrence and high intensity of hurricanes. As from the beginning of August, atmospheric conditions also favoured the occurrence of Atlantic tropical cyclones (”La Niña” conditions).

“That is in line with the trend of the past 30 years, in which all ocean basins show an increase in water temperatures. This long-term trend can no longer be explained by natural climate oscillations alone. No, the probability is that climate change is contributing to some of the warming of the world’s oceans”, said Höppe. “This influence will increase further and, together with the continuing natural warm phase in the North Atlantic, is likely to mean a further high level of hurricane activity in the coming years.”

Scientists employed by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the UAE and leader of Abu Dhabi, successfully created more than 50 rainstorms in the state's Al Ain region last year, mostly in July and August when there is virtually no rain at all. It is believed to be the first time the system has produced rain from clear skies.
They have been using giant ionisers, shaped like giant lampshades, to generate fields of negatively charged particles, which create cloud formation.

The organisation in charge of Japan's scientific whaling program has accused the Sea Shepherd conservation group of endangering its crews in the Southern Ocean.

The two sides have clashed for the first time during this season's Antarctic hunt.

Militant anti-whaling activists from the Sea Shepherd group say they have begun pursuing the Japanese whaling fleet through the icy waters of the Antarctic.

They say the whaling ships used water cannons on their inflatable boats during high-speed chases.

But the Institute of Cetacean Research, which runs Japan's scientific whaling program, accused the Sea Shepherd activists of throwing glass bottle projectiles and deploying ropes to try and foul the propeller and rudder of one of its ships.

A ban on plastic bags is coming into effect in Italy, which has one of the highest rates of consumption of the bags in Europe.

The ban begins in shops across Italy on 1 January, with only biodegradable, cloth or paper bags to be offered.

Italians use 20 billion plastic bags a year - more than 300 per person.

We’ve seen all those pictures of snow bound New York, all those travellers stranded at European airports. Must be a really cold snap in the northern hemisphere, right?

Well, no, actually. Up in the Arctic circle something strange has been happening. Sea ice has been forming at one of the slowest rates ever!

The innovative building was conceived and constructed by Illac Diaz and MyShelter Foundation as a way of turning a negative - an abundance of discarded plastic bottles - into a positive - a brand new place for children to get their learn on. The school is made from 1.5 and two-liter soda and water bottles filled with adobe, a combo that is relatively cheaper than concrete and - get this - is also about three times stronger!

The return of duck to Hong Kong after a year-long 6,000km (3,700-mile) journey to the Arctic has yielded new information about bird migration.

The female, fitted with a tracking device, was one of about 20 monitored by the WWF conservation group.

Using Google Earth, the WWF identified the duck's feeding areas and route back to Hong Kong's Mai Po Nature Reserve.

A critical breakthrough has been made in efforts to save the giant panda, one that could kick-start attempts to reintroduce the animals to the wild.
Conservationists say they have perfected the difficult task of reproducing pandas, having reached their target of successfully raising 300 of the bears in captivity.

Carbon emissions fell in 2009 due to the recession - but not by as much as predicted, suggesting the fast upward trend will soon be resumed.

Those are the key findings from an analysis of 2009 emissions data issued in the journal Nature Geoscience a week before the UN climate summit opens.

Industrialised nations saw big falls in emissions - but major developing countries saw a continued rise.

The report suggests emissions will begin rising by 3% per year again.

Watching in slow motion reveals that cats of all sizes, from tabbies to tigers, have a very elaborate way of drinking. First, they move the tip of their tongue onto the surface of the water to flick the water up so that a little jet of liquid flies into the air. Then, in a flash, they catch the jet in their mouth.

China's endangered giant pandas are enjoying a baby boom this year with a record number of births in captivity in 2010, conservationists reported on Tuesday.

In Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico, Kansas, Florida, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Wyoming, Republican global warming deniers and conspiracy theorists are vying to take over the governorships, armed with plans to cripple the nation's clean energy economy.

In Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming, four Democratic governors who have supported clean energy may be replaced by Republicans who have expressed fealty to big oil in the November 2010 elections.

A 20-year study shows worrying results about the decline of krill, a form of plankton, in the Southern Ocean.

Plankton is the basic food source for almost all ocean dwelling creatures and krill is one of its most important forms.

The scientist leading the krill project, Dr Graham Hosie, says he cannot explain the drop in numbers.

The United States is the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world. So without action by by the US Government the idea of an international agreement on climate change is simply a joke. And a sick joke it will prove to be if the predictions about the likely result of next month's Congressional elections prove correct. Republicans are strongly fancied to take control of the House of Representatives and are given a 50 per cent chance of controlling the Senate as well. Yet the chances of a Republican dominated Congress taking action to stop global warming are virtually nil. As the New York Times explained in an editorial this morning: With one exception, none of the Republicans running for the Senate — including the 20 or so with a serious chance of winning — accept the scientific consensus that humans are largely responsible for global warming. The candidates are not simply rejecting solutions, like putting a price on carbon, though these, too, are demonized. They are re-running the strategy of denial perfected by Mr. [former vice president Dick] Cheney a decade ago, repudiating years of peer-reviewed findings about global warming and creating an alternative reality in which climate change is a hoax or conspiracy.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has made a flying visit to the giant Gorgon gas project in Western Australia to praise the world's biggest carbon capture and storage program.

On a hot Barrow Island off WA's northwest coast on Saturday, Ms Gillard also thanked the US for making a $US500,000 ($A510,000) grant to an Australian-founded institute to promote carbon capture.

She congratulated the Chevron-led Gorgon project for winning global recognition on Friday from the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum at its annual meeting in Warsaw.

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As part of the $43 billion Gorgon liquefied natural gas project, carbon will be separated from the gas and reinjected into a sandstone layer 2.5 kilometres beneath Barrow Island.

When the media keep pretending day after day that something is news by giving constant updates it is bound to eventually get into the public's mind that the information is important. If it was not so why would they keep telling us about it?
Thus the vague view that most people have that the level of the stock exchange index today compared with yesterday or last week or last year or 10 years ago actually matters. Ditto for the foreign exchange rate or the official interest rate. Newspapers, radio and television keep giving daily reports on them all. Therefore, QED, we should be pleased or worried about them.
Complete nonsense really. The figures reported so breathlessly on the hour every hour every day indicate nothing of value to ordinary people. The main reason they began being reported was to fill in the media's insatiable desire for regular content.
Only with the dull thud of repetition have they become factors in the political process where a rising value of the Australian dollar against the US dollar is portrayed as a sign of national strength rather than as a symbol of a social change that will force the closure of Australian factories with a consequent loss of manufacturing jobs. The idea that things that go up are good while things that go down are bad is too deeply ingrained for the truth to be realised.
This power of repeating a basic, if sometimes irrelevant, message is something that the worriers about climate change have not yet realised. These good and earnest people can repeat all they like their generalised warnings about the dangers of rising world temperatures but it means nothing when the public do not have it rammed home to them regularly in a way that is easily understood.
What is needed is a picture to appear alongside the the daily media weather reports that illustrates what is happening to global temperatures. A daily version of something like the accompanying graph.

Now I know that some of the experts in the field of climate change measurement have some reservations about this particular daily chart but to me it is something like this that that they can agree on that all of them should be lobbying to have appear every day throughout the world alongside the weather map
It is only when ordinary voters are persuaded that global warming is a reality that politicians will be prepared to take the actions necessary to prevent it.

Scientists have discovered 10 new snail species in the Northern Territory.

The discovery will enable scientists to better conserve the habitats of some of the world's most vulnerable species.

Julia Gillard will move fast to try to reassert the government's credentials on climate change when Parliament sits for the first time since the election tomorrow.

The Prime Minister will announce as early as today the make-up of a committee to forge the way to a price on carbon, a signal of the government's wish to gain the initiative on an issue that bedevilled its first term in office.

The committee is expected to include the Minister for Climate Change, Greg Combet, the Greens' climate change spokeswoman, Christine Milne, and academic experts.

Hikers and tourists visiting one of Italy's most scenic stretches of coastline have been banned from carrying plastic bottles of water amid fears that the area is being "buried" in rubbish.

Nine people have been arrested and are to appear in a South African court on Wednesday for their alleged role in a rhino poaching syndicate.

The suspects include a businessman and two veterinarians operating in the Limpopo Province.

An official told the BBC the gang allegedly sent rhino horns to Asian markets.

More than 200 rhinos have been killed for their horns since the beginning of this year.

Rhino horns are sold in the black market and used in some Asian countries for medicinal purposes.

The West Australian government has announced it will foot one-third of the bill for Australia's largest grid-connected solar power plant, to be built in the state's mid-west.

Speaking at the annual Energy in WA Conference, Energy Minister Peter Collier announced the $58 million solar photovoltaic energy project would be built in Geraldton.

Mr Collier said the project would generate up to 10 megawatt hours of electricity each year.

A "lost" population of tigers has been caught on camera living in the mountains of Bhutan, a discovery that could be crucial for the big cats' survival.
Their discovery has stunned experts, as the tigers are living at a higher altitude than any others known and appear to be successfully breeding.
Their presence in the Bhutan highlands has been confirmed by footage taken by a BBC natural history camera crew.

An academic study of eight years of Gallup opinion poll data on climate change knowledge and concern in the US general public has found women know more about the subject than men. Not that men let their greater ignorance deter them from professing to be more expert. Consistent with much existing sociology of science research, the study author Aaron M. McCright finds women underestimate their climate change knowledge more than do men.

Tourists visiting Western Australia's Pilbara are being told to give mating turtles plenty of space.

The Department of Environment says September is mating season for turtles and it is important they are not disturbed to ensure they breed in their natural surroundings.

Marine turtles travel long distances to breed, with some swimming more than 2,600 kilometres to find their perfect match.

Britain can no longer stop global warming and must instead focus on adapting to the 'inevitable' impacts of climate change such as floods, droughts and rising sea levels, Government ministers will warn this week.\... In her first speech on climate change since taking office Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, will speak about the need for Britain to adapt to rising temperatures.
"It is vital that we carry on working to drastically cut our greenhouse gas emissions to stop the problem getting any worse," she will say. "But we are already stuck with some unavoidable climate change. Because of this, we need to prepare for the best and worst cases which a changing climate will entail for our country."

Attracted by the prospect of generous grants designed to boost the use of alternative energies, the so-called "eco Mafia" has begun fraudulently creaming off millions of euros from both the Italian government and the European Union.
And nowhere has the industry's reputation become more tarnished than Sicily, where windmills now dot the horizon in Mafia strongholds like Corleone, the town better known as the setting for the Godfather films.
"Nothing earns more than a wind farm," said Edoardo Zanchini, an environmental campaigner who has investigated Mafia infiltration of the industry. "Anything that creates wealth interests the Mafia."

The Goddard Institute of Space Studies at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has now released its analysis of world temperatures for the first seven months of this year showing that the global average July 2010 temperature was 0.55°C warmer than climatology (the long-run average) in the GISS analysis, which puts 2010 in practically a three-way tie for third warmest July. July 1998 was the warmest in the GISS analysis, at 0.68°C.

The July 2010 global map of surface temperature anomalies (figure 1), relative to the average July in the 1951-1980 period, was more than 5°C (about 10°F) warmer than climatology in the eastern European region including Moscow. There was an area in eastern Asia that was similarly unusually hot. The eastern part of the United States was unusually warm, although not to the degree of the hot spots in Eurasia. There were also substantial areas cooler than climatology, including a region in central Asia and the southern part of South America. The emerging La Nina is now moderately strong, as evidenced by the region cooler than climatology along the equator in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean.

The 12-month running mean of global temperature (figure 2) achieved a record high level during the past few months. Because the current La Nina will continue at least several months, and likely strengthen somewhat, the 12-month running mean temperature is expected to decline during the second half of 2010.

The GISS analysis poses the question of whether calendar year 2010 be the warmest in the period of instrumental data?

Figure 3 shows that through the first seven months 2010 is warmer than prior warm years. The difference of +0.08°C compared with 2005, the prior warmest year, is large enough that 2010 is likely, but not certain, to be the warmest year in the GISS record. However, because of the cooling effect of La Nina in the remainder of the year, there is a strong possibility that the 2005 and 2010 global temperatures will be sufficiently close that they will be practically indistinguishable.

The Intrade prediction market where people put a price on such matters has the probability of 2010 being warmer than prior years at about a 90% probability.

The first newborn beavers born in the wild since their re-introduction to the UK last year have been spotted by officials in a Scottish forest.

At least two kits, estimated to be eight weeks old and belonging to different family groups, have been seen in Knapdale Forest in Argyll.

A total of 11 beavers were brought to Scotland from Norway last year as part of the Scottish Beaver Trial.

Beavers were hunted to extinction in the UK 400 years ago.

Palm trees in Berlin? Not quite. But the German capital is testing trees from the south as native species show signs of struggling with increasingly warm temperatures. Instead of limes and oaks, the city could soon be filled with Judas trees and Daimyo oaks.

The simultaneous catastrophes of flooding in Pakistan, wildfires in Russia and landslides in China are evidence that global warming predictions are correct, according to climate change experts.

Plastic bags will be banned in the Northern Territory from mid next year, making it only the second jurisdiction in Australia to turn to reusable green bags.

Shops will be prohibited from selling or giving away non-biodegradable lightweight plastic bags, NT Environment minister Karl Hampton announced on Tuesday.

It is being billed as the world’s greatest frog hunt and the Australian gastric brooding frog, last seen back in 1985, is on the most wanted list. Conservation International is organising the search and says scientists are optimistic about the prospect of at least one rediscovery. The recent find in the southern Tablelands of NSW of the yellow-spotted bell frog after not being seen for 30 years has clearly given them hope.

The keen interest in the gastric brooding frogs of Australia comes partly from their raising tadpoles in their stomachs, which is something unique in the animal world. The production of stomach acid is turned off and the BBC reports medical researchers hoped that understanding how the frogs did it could lead to new treatments for stomach ulcers. But disappearance of the species in 1985 — probably another victim of chytridiomycosis — put paid to such notions.

The Greens will today renew the push for Antarctica to be given World Heritage protection.

Greens leader Bob Brown says Labor went to the last election promising to push for the continent to be given World Heritage status.

Global climate change talks have moved backwards since last year, say negotiators from both rich and poor nations at discussions in Germany.

The US envoy said some countries had "walked away" from commitments made at Copenhagen last year to contain greenhouse gas emissions.

But the top UN climate official, Christiana Figueres, said progress had been made towards an eventual deal.

Some interesting excerpts from Weather Underground’s wunderground blog.

At 4pm local time on 30 July in Moscow, Russia, the temperature surpassed 100°F for the first time in recorded history. The high temperature of 100.8°F (37.8°C) recorded at the Moscow Observatory, the official weather location for Moscow, beat Moscow’s previous record of 99.5°F (37.5°C), set just three days ago, on July 26. Prior to 2010, Moscow’s hottest temperature of all-time was 36.6°C (98.2°F), set in August, 1920. Records in Moscow go back to 1879.

On August 1, Ukraine tied its record for hottest temperature in its history when the mercury hit 41.3°C (106.3°F) at Lukhansk. The Ukraine also reached 41.3°C on July 20 and 21, 2007, at Voznesensk. Sixteen of 225 nations on Earth have set extreme highest temperature in history records this year, the most of any year. The year 2007 is in second place, with fifteen such records.

None of the 303 major U.S. cities listed in the records section of Chris Burt’s book Extreme Weather has set a coldest month in history record since 1994 (these 303 cites were selected to represent a broad spectrum of U.S. climate zones, are not all big cities, have a good range of elevations, and in most cases have data going back to the 1880s.) There were just three such records (1% of the 303 major U.S. cities) set in the past twenty years, 1991 - 2010. In contrast, 97 out of 303 major U.S. cities (32%) set records for their warmest month in history during the past twenty years. It is much harder to set a coldest month in history record than a coldest day in history record in a warming climate, since it requires cold for an extended period of time — not just a sudden extreme cold snap.

The Russian government, it seems, is at last beginning to think there might be such a thing as global warming. Last year, reports Timemagazine, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced that his country, the world’s third largest polluter after China and the US, would be spewing 30% more planet-warming gases into the atmosphere by 2020. “We will not cut our development potential,” he said during the summer of 2009 (an unusually mild one), just a few months before attending the Copenhagen climate summit.

At a meeting of international sporting officials in Moscow on July 30 this year, President Medvedev announced that in 14 regions of Russia it was quite a different story “practically everything is burning. The weather is anomalously hot.”

Then, as TV cameras zoomed in on the perspiration shining on his forehead, Medvedev announced, “What’s happening with the planet’s climate right now needs to be a wake-up call to all of us, meaning all heads of state, all heads of social organisations, in order to take a more energetic approach to countering the global changes to the climate.”

Meanwhile, back in Australia, the leaders of our two major political parties out on the campaign trail continue to speak and act as if there is no hurry to take a “more energetic approach.” Perhaps we need a good heatwave to concentrate their minds but the evidence should be clear enough without one. Here is a Bureau of Meteorology map showing the 12 monthly mean temperature anomaly for Australia.

There’s not one part of the country where temperatures have not been above the long-term average.

Cities may need "cool refuges" as climate change brings heat waves and the risk of mass casualties, engineers warn.

They've raised the prospect of vulnerable people - including the elderly and the sick - heading into air-conditioned shopping malls to survive, possibly at night.

The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), a body of engineers and scientists, released a plan on Tuesday to climate-proof the country's cities.

The report cautions that while 90 per cent of Australians live in urban areas, little has been done to prepare cities for global warming.

At 4pm local time today in Moscow, Russia, the temperature surpassed 100°F for the first time in recorded history. The high temperature of 100.8°F (37.8°C) recorded at the Moscow Observatory, the official weather location for Moscow, beat Moscow's previous record of 99.5°F (37.5°C), set just three days ago, on July 26. Prior to 2010, Moscow's hottest temperature of all-time was 36.6°C (98.2°F), set in August, 1920. Records in Moscow go back to 1879.

Fourteen extreme national high temperature records have been set in 2010
This year now ranks in second place for the most number of countries that have set extreme heat records

Business leaders have criticised what they call a "big rush" to bring in a 7p charge on carrier bags in Wales.

The assembly government wants the mandatory charge at stores in Wales from spring 2011 in an attempt to cut the number of bags dumped in landfill.

A UN panel has added Florida's Everglades National Park and Madagascar's tropical rainforest to a list of world heritage sites at risk.

Unesco's World Heritage Committee said development in the Everglades had caused water flow to fall 60% in the wetland, a major wildlife sanctuary.

The pollution level there was so high it was killing marine life, it added.

The Galapagos Islands has been withdrawn from a list of endangered world heritage sites by a UN panel.

Microscopic plants in the ocean, called phytoplankton, are among the most important creatures on Earth and produce half of the planet's oxygen. But they are in trouble. A new study finds that since 1950, the amount of phytoplankton in the ocean's surface waters — the basis of the ocean's food web — has declined by 40 percent.

SEAWEED is choking the Great Barrier Reef and killing coral, new research has found.

Scientists in one of the largest studies of water quality pollution on the reef yesterday revealed the shock impact on the $1 billion-a-year tourism drawcard.

Poor water quality on the reef due to run-off, nutrients and high turbidity was increasing the amount of seaweed and reducing biodiversity of corals, the study found.

The world is on course for the hottest year since records began in 1880 after record-breaking temperatures in four of the first six months of the year, according to meteorologists.

HOUSEHOLDERS will be allowed to build wind turbines on the roofs of suburban homes to generate green electricity under a sweeping overhaul of NSW planning laws.
The Sunday Telegraph can reveal the State Government is proposing to allow small windmills with a generating capacity of 10kW or less to be erected in residential areas, adding to solar panels as an option for domestic power generation.
A height limit of 3m above the roof line will be imposed and turbines will have to be at least 25m from neighbouring properties.

A cross-border battle is looming over polar bears, the Arctic giants that provoke passionate reactions in both Canada and the United States.

The U.S. wants to ban the trade in polar-bear body parts, a proposal that will be considered at a meeting beginning next week of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Canada, the only country allowing the sale of bear skins and trophy hunting of the animals, is trying to defeat the proposal.

THE number of climate change sceptics is rising in the wake of failed international negotiations, political posturing and damaging publicity about scientific research.

A Sun-Herald/Taverner poll of 609 NSW voters shows 8 per cent of people do not believe climate change is real and another 29 per cent think it is real but not caused by humans and 60 per cent of people believed in man-made climate change.

Last year, only 3 per cent said climate change was not real and 18 per cent said it was happening but not caused by humans. In 2008 2 per cent did not believe and 14 per cent said it was real but humans were not responsible.

The latest draft law compiled by the government shows some of its measures for the fight against global warming could be watered down significantly, compared with an initial draft mapped out earlier by the Environment Ministry.

Raised with a herd of goats since he was a puppy, Neeake has bonded with the goats so loyally that he guards them with his life. He scans the horizon constantly, searching for predators, keeping the cheetahs and leopards at bay.

Neeake, a Turkish breed known as an Anatolian shepherd, is the latest experiment by Africa's conservationists as they search for new ways to halt the dramatic decline of African wildlife. Because of Neeake, and other dogs like him, the farmers of Molopo River don't need to shoot or trap the cheetahs. The dogs protect the livestock, and the cheetahs survive.

IF you want to build a car park, someone has to drink a lot of beer.

A Hobart council has become the first council in Australia to use recycled glass in asphalt.
Forty-five tonnes of the glass – the equivalent of 254,000 crushed beer stubbies – replaced 53 tonnes of natural sand which would have been mined from Tasmania's rapidly diminishing sand reserves.

The freshly laid asphalt used to seal the Rosny Tennis Club car park looks like other road surface.

But the asphalt contains about 20 per cent of recycled glass, collected through kerbside recycling.

KOALAS are overpopulating the Adelaide Hills and may have to be relocated or sterilised, as has been the case on Kangaroo Island.

Environment and Heritage Department officials have warned there is a "looming issue of overpopulation in the Adelaide Hills", in advice made public yesterday by the Australian Koala Foundation, which disputes the findings.

Figures just released by NASA's Global Institute for Space Studies (GISS) show that 2009 was the warmest year on record for the southern hemisphere and the second equal warmest for the world as a whole.

NASA mathematician Reto Ruedy commented to Science magazine before the release of the final official figures that while United States may be experiencing one of the coldest winters in decades, but things continue to heat up in the Southern Hemisphere. Ruedy said Southern Hemisphere temperatures can serve as a trailing indicator of global warming given that that part of the globe is mostly water, which warms more slowly and with less variability than land. Ruedy says 2009 temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere were 0.49°C warmer than the period between 1951 and 1980, with an error of +/- 0.05°C.

Asked if indeed 2009 was the second hottest year on record world-wide, Ruedy said yes, and then quickly clarified that, given the error bars on the temperature record (see figure), it's really best to call it a 3-way tie with 1998 and 2007. In fact, he said, 2005 is "only marginally warmer than" the second hottest years."

This is especially impressive because we're at "the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century." Of 2009 being the warmest ever in the Southern Hemisphere he said:

That's significant because the second-warmest year, 1998, saw the most severe recorded instance in the 20th century of El Niño, a cyclic warming event in the tropical Pacific. During El Niño events, heat is redistributed from deep water to the surface, which raises ocean temperatures and has widespread climatic effects. But last year was an El Niño year of medium strength, which Ruedy says might mean that the warmer temperatures also show global, long-term warming as well as the regional trend.