The world can learn from a British plan for "carbon budgets" to fight climate change even though London often promises more than it delivers, a senior government adviser said.

The United States is by far the biggest greenhouse gas emitter ahead of China if consumers in rich nations are given responsibility for energy used to make imported goods, a researcher said on Wednesday.

Major economies tried on Tuesday to break the deadlock between rich and poor nations over 2050 goals for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions at a last-minute meeting before an expanded G8 summit in Italy.

Major economies including the United States and China are considering setting a goal of halving world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 when they hold a summit in Italy next month, a draft document showed.

The United States has been resisting European calls for industrialized nations to target an upper limit for global warming of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), according to a draft summit text.

Pacific islands are trying low-cost ways to protect crops and coasts from cyclones that are a bigger threat -- for now -- than rising sea levels that could wipe low-lying nations off the map.

Japan should shun a "politically inexplicable" option of a rise in greenhouse gas emissions when it sets a 2020 target in coming days, the U.N.'s top climate change official said on Wednesday.

A Mexican proposal to raise billions of dollars to fight climate change is winning backing in talks on a new U.N. treaty, paradoxically because no one really likes it, a Mexican official said on Wednesday.

Rich and poor countries criticized a first draft text of a new United Nations climate treaty Monday but grudgingly accepted it as the basis for six months of arduous negotiations.

population."

Experts studying images taken from space were initially baffled by reddish-brown splodges on the ice.

"It turned out they were the feces, guano stains, of the emperors," Trathan said. "There's a really good contrast between the dark poo stains and the ice."

Scientists widened the search for the tell-tale blots to 90 percent of the Antarctic coastline and found 38 colonies.

Pages