climate change

Existing controls are failing to reduce the air pollutant ground level ozone to a level that protects human health and the environment, and climate change will make the challenge harder, warns a major new report from the Royal Society.

(National Science Foundation) In recent years, public discussion of climate change has included concerns that increased levels of carbon dioxide will contribute to global warming, which in turn may change the circulation in the Earth's oceans, with potentially disastrous consequences.

The Royal Society has today called on the newly established Department of Energy and Climate Change to take the right decisions on energy that will help tackle climate change.

Australian scientists set sail later this week on a voyage that could lead to better data from the Southern Ocean, which plays a major role in acting as a brake on climate change.

Scientists have released two new studies, including a report finding that climate change will cause significant impacts on Florida's coastlines and economy due to increased sea level rise and hurricane storm surge.

Property damage is expected to increase. A second study recommends that the state of Florida adopt a series of policy programs aimed at adapting to these large coastal and other impacts as a result of climate change.

People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid runaway climate change, according to a report by the Food Climate Research Network.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who has challenged his party to take climate change seriously, plans to invite officials from around the globe to a summit in November.

The economic impact of climate change will cost a number of US states billions of dollars, and delaying action will raise the price tag, concludes the latest series of reports produced by the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research.

The new reports project specific long-term direct and ripple economic effects on North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

In most cases, the price tag could run into billions of dollars.

(University of Houston) Noted energy and environment experts are addressing the implications of climate change for the world and for the Houston area weekly at the University of Houston through November.

Among topics discussed are what can be done both globally and locally to slow down climate change, as well as adapt to its effects.

The "Science and Policy of Climate Change" lecture series is free and open to the public.

Despite widespread concern about climate change, annual carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels and manufacturing cement have grown 38 percent since 1992, from 6.1 billion tons of carbon to 8.5 billion tons in 2007.