TIMES VIEW Store it but after proper testing

Nine of the 10 US urban areas that release the most greenhouse gases per person lie east of the Mississippi River, a study showed on Thursday. "A north-south divide is also apparent," said the report issued by two think tanks, the New York-based Regional Plan Association and the Washington-based Brookings Institution. Seven of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases are in the south, including two cities each in Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky, it said.

- Global warming will likely drain more water from the Great Lakes and pose added pollution threats to the region's vulnerable ecosystem, environmental groups said in a report issued on Wednesday. Climate change could further reduce scant ice cover observed in recent winters, increasing evaporation rates and dropping water levels in the five lakes that collectively make up 20 percent of the world's surface fresh water.

Talking fridges hate global warming - pass it on YOUR refrigerator could soon be helping to cool the planet as well as your food. A bar fridge built by the CSIRO has the ability to communicate with other refrigerators. The appliances do not gossip about what kind of milk you have bought, but exchange data that could help balance energy usage across the day and, ultimately, reduce the need for power stations, said a CSIRO research scientist, Geoff James.

Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says. This adds to food shortages and higher energy prices, the school's researchers Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts wrote in the journal Lancet on Friday. "We are all becoming heavier and it is a global responsibility," Edwards said in a telephone interview. "Obesity is a key part of the big picture."