The UK government has slashed its financial support for the Met Office's climate programme. The move came in the same week that prime minister Gordon Brown laid out ambitious talk of a US$100-billion fund to help developing countries to cope with climate change.
The US House of Representatives must be commended for passing a comprehensive climate bill last week that would finally set the United States on a path to lower its greenhouse-gas emissions. The pending legislation is far from perfect and will face a tough test in the Senate. But it is a necessary first step for the country that has so far added the most carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
It has been suggested that the delivery of dust-borne iron to the glacial ocean could have increased primary productivity and enhanced deep-sea carbon export in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific (EEP), lowering atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations during glacial periods. But lower opal accumulation rates cast doubts on the importance of the EEP for glacial carbon dioxide drawdown.
Modern refrigerants designed to protect the ozone layer are poised to become a major contributor to global warming because of their future explosive growth in the developing world, scientists report this week.
China's central government has repeatedly declared its intention to clean up the environment, from the smoggy skies of Beijing to the scummy green waters of Lake Tai in the Yangtze delta. However, ensuring that intentions are translated promptly, fairly and efficiently into action across the provinces is often a problem. Two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) may be about to change this.
While conservation biologists debate whether to move organisms threatened by the warming climate, one forester in British Columbia is already doing it.
