The collision of two intact satellites serves as a warning that we need to clean up after ourselves, even in space.

The ocean has the ability to control weather systems globally

The gap between political rhetoric and scientific reality on climate change is growing, complain scientists at the UN climate conference in Poland.

If you want to see where the US is headed on climate change take a look at California. Under Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger - whose proactive stance on air pollution is said to have been triggered partly by his son's asthma - the golden state is blazing a trail on greenhouse gas emissions for the next president to follow.

What's going to happen over the next decade? New Scientist looks at the latest forecasts - and how reliable they are.

AN INDUSTRIAL chemical being used in ever larger quantities to make flat-screen TVs may be making global warming worse. However, because it's not covered by the Kyoto protocol, nobody knows by how much. The gas was first introduced as a measure to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but a prominent atmospheric chemist this week warned it could now be having the opposite effect.

While environmentalists may blame climate change for the worst floods in the Midwest since 1993, dams and river straightening have a role too.

Biofuels have failed to live up to their early environmental promise, but fuels made from plant waste and weeds may turn this around.

Ten years ago, running your car on biofuels meant covertly topping up your tank with chip fat. Now petrol is routinely mixed with ethanol made from corn, and diesel with squeezed rape, oil palm and soya. The current generation of biofuels was rushed onto the market in response to escalating concern in Europe about climate change, and in the US about energy security. But almost before the biofuels industry has got going, it has run into major problems. It has swiftly become a victim of its own success, gobbling up land and water in a way that has frightened the world.

We have heard all about Al Gore's inconvenient truths on climate change. Now comes an extremely convenient truth from his German counterpart. Social Democrat MP Hermann Scheer, who has been dubbed more revolutionary than Greenpeace, says the great unspoken truth is how painless it will be to convert the world to renewable energy, especially solar power. So much so that the Kyoto protocol is a waste of time that makes what is easy and cheap seem hard and expensive.