Arctic nations agreed on Wednesday to crack down on soot that is darkening ice around the North Pole and hastening a thaw that they also blamed on global warming.

An area of an Antarctic ice shelf almost the size of New York City has broken into icebergs this month after the collapse of an ice bridge widely blamed on global warming, a scientist said Tuesday.

A proposal to ban sales of new gasoline-powered cars in Norway from 2015 could help spur struggling carmakers to shift to greener models, Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen said Saturday.

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

Greenhouse gas emissions from industrialized nations rose by nearly one percent in 2007, led by strong gains in the United States, official data showed.

Carbon emissions from countries signed up to the Kyoto Protocol climate pact edged up by 0.1 percent in 2007, mainly due to rises in Japan and Canada.

Britain announced on Thursday plans to force all new coal plants in the country to test a pioneering carbon-cutting technology, as it tries to sharpen efforts to meet steep climate change targets.

The move would make Britain the first country to require coal plants to fit carbon capture and storage (CCS), still unproven on a commercial scale.