redOrbit: The terrestrial biosphere regulates atmospheric composition, and hence climate. Projections of future climate changes already account for "carbon-climate feedbacks", which means that more CO2 is released from soils in a warming climate than is taken up by plants due to photosynthesis. Climate changes will also lead to increases in the emission of CO2 and methane from wetlands, nitrous oxides from soils, volatile organic compounds from forests, and trace gases and soot from fires. All these ...

ScienceDaily: The memory of last winter's blizzards may be fading in this summer's searing heat, but scientists studying them have detected a perfect storm of converging weather patterns that had little relation to climate change. The extraordinarily cold, snowy weather that hit parts of the U.S. East Coast and Europe was the result of a collision of two periodic weather patterns in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, a new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds. It was the snowiest ...

Scientific American: In a sweltering summer in New York City back in 1999, Yolanda Baldwin was eight months pregnant with her first child. She lived near a gas station and across the street from an intersection choked with exhaust-spewing cars and buses. Sometimes the air was so thick with pollution that she could see it, breathe it, smell it, even taste it. And she often wondered what it might be doing to her unborn child. Now Baldwin and several hundred other mothers whose sons and daughters have been ...

Reuters: Iran said today it was ready to return to talks on a nuclear fuel swap, a surprise that came shortly after the EU agreed tougher sanctions, including a block on oil and gas investment. Shortly after EU foreign ministers approved extra restrictions that went well beyond UN sanctions agreed last month, Iran said it was prepared to return to negotiations on a nuclear fuel swap "without conditions", according to the official IRNA news agency. Talking of a letter that Iran handed to ...

New York Times: Climate change legislation has been dying in the Senate for months now, but Harry Reid's decision to finally admit as much – in the midst of an endless East Coast heat wave, no less – has supporters of cap-and-trade casting about for somebody to blame. They've blamed the Obama administration, for prioritizing health care reform over an energy bill. They've blamed the American people, for being too concerned with economic issues to grapple with longer-term threats. And they've blamed figures ...

Guardian: British, American and Norwegian engineers are in a race to design and build the holy grail of wind turbines – giant, 10MW offshore machines twice the size and power of anything seen before – that could transform the global energy market because of their economies of scale. Today, a revolutionary British design that mimics a spinning sycamore leaf and which was inspired by floating oil platform technology, entered the race. Leading engineering firm Arup is to work with an academic ...

Reuters: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hopes to unveil his pared-back U.S. energy bill on Tuesday that focuses on reforming offshore oil drilling but Republicans were quick to dismiss its chances of passing. The bill would aim to hold BP Plc accountable for its Gulf of Mexico oil spill and boost investment in vehicles fueled by natural gas and electricity. Democrats, who last week abandoned a key Obama administration effort to forge a broad climate bill because of a lack of votes, ...

Business Green: Rising energy prices and the Government's climate change policies will drive energy intensive industries overseas, warns a report published jointly today by the Energy-Intensive Users Group (EIUG) and the TUC. The Cumulative Impact of Climate Change Policies on UK Energy Intensive Industries cites steel making, ceramics, paper, cement and lime manufacture, aluminium and basic inorganic chemicals as industries based in the UK which face increases in their energy costs of up to 141 per ...