G8 nations, papering over deep differences on how to set goals to combat global warming, said on Tuesday they would work toward a target of at least halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 with other participants in U.N. talks. In a communique released during a summit in northern Japan, the Group of Eight leaders agreed that they would need to set mid-term goals to achieve the "shared vision" for 2050, but gave no numerical targets.

Washington, D.C The U.S,. Senate passed (June 27,2008), by unanimous consent, legislation that will allow the U.S. to join an international treaty that could dramatically cut ocean ship pollution that causes tens of thousands of global deaths annually. “The Marine Pollution Prevention Act of 2008” (H.R. 802), was passed overwhelmingly by the U.S. House of Representatives last year.

Government leaders need to act quickly and establish clear, consistent, inclusive and long-term climate change policies, according to a global survey of key climate change decision makers and scientists conducted by GlobeScan.

[NEW DELHI] India released its national action plan on climate change this week (30 June) with a focus on harnessing renewable energy rather than stringent emissions targets. India's prime minister Manmohan Singh released the plan ahead of his attendance at next week's (7—9 July) G8 summit in Japan where climate change is expected to be discussed.

Australia's leading climate guru on Friday laid out a draft carbon trading scheme to rein in rising emissions in the world's top per-capita greenhouse gas polluter. Economist Ross Garnaut, appointed by the government to design what will be the world's most extensive emissions regime from 2010, said Australia was critically at risk from climate change and urged deep cuts in emissions from the world's top coal exporter.

G8 leaders could well cobble together some agreement next week on goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but bolder progress in climate change talks will probably have to wait until a new U.S president takes office.

North America's first comprehensive carbon tax is now in effect in the Canadian West Coast province of British Columbia, greeted with complaints that some gasoline stations have used the tax as cover to raise prices more than necessary.

All tuatara could be born male — and thus doomed to extinction — within decades.

The World Bank on Tuesday agreed to establish two investment funds to help developing economies switch to clean-energy technologies to curb carbon emissions and help poor countries adapt to climate change.

Regardless of who is elected next November, both candidates agree that climate change is a fact and not a theory. John McCain and Barack Obama however vary widely in their response to this issue, leaving the American people with a choice of approaches when choosing the next president. McCain’s primary tools include implementing a cap and trade system for emissions and utilizing greater amounts of nuclear power and “clean” coal.

In a ruling believed to be unprecedented, a Georgia judge halted the construction of Dynegy's Longleaf coal-fired power plant because it had not made provisions for reducing its emissions of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas most widely implicated in man-made global warming. The judge ruled that the plant must limit its pollution, according to the Sierra Club, which has been waging a campaign against Dynegy, an energy company with plans to build more coal-fired power plants than any other.

TOKYO (Reuters) - A grouping of 24 Japanese firms, mainly utilities and energy companies, will work with government on feasibility studies for carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, an official said on Monday. "We now have a firm that brings together all the technologies in this field," Toshihiro Mitsuhashi, who handles environmental policies for Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), told reporters.

After last year's thin ice cover, the North Pole is poised to vanish due to global warming in a short time DailyTech has previously covered the frantic pace of melt in Greenland, which is accelerating, dumping vast amounts of water into the sea. Meanwhile, the North Pole has been steadily melting away as well. Fortunately, the North Pole ice is floating, and thus will not affect sea levels, but its dissolution is an important indicator of warming.

The battle to reduce carbon emissions is at the heart of many eco-friendly efforts, and researchers from the University of Missouri have discovered that nature has been lending a hand. Researchers at the Missouri Tree Ring Laboratory in the Department of Forestry discovered that trees submerged in freshwater aquatic systems store carbon for thousands of years, a significantly longer period of time than trees that fall in a forest, thus keeping carbon out of the atmosphere.

The Group of Eight wealthy nations are looking at investing more than $10 billion a year to support new technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, including carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), a Japanese daily reported on Sunday. A draft statement on economic issue is being considered for release at the July 7-9 summit of G8 leaders in Hokkaido, northern Japan, the business daily Nikkei said.

Civic leader Scott Nelson says he is as worried as anyone about global warming, but that does not make him happy to be one of the first North Americans to pay a carbon tax to curb climate change. Nelson, mayor of Williams Lake, British Columbia, says record high energy prices mean that the levy, for all its good intentions, could not come at a worst time for residents in his community, a lumber and ranching town about 525 km (340 miles) north of Vancouver.

WASHINGTON-James Hansen returned to Capitol Hill a hero yesterday, but certainly not a conquering hero. The soft-spoken scientist, hailed as the "whistle-blower for the planet," tried to quiet a standing ovation from environmentalists here with a typically blunt admonition.

The U.S. scientist who 20 years ago first told Congress that the Earth's climate was warming said on Monday that urgent action was needed to cut greenhouse gases and proposed a tax on carbon emissions. James Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said at a congressional briefing that a carbon tax would be the most efficient way to cut global warming emissions and encourage non-fossil energy sources.

Exactly 20 years have passed since Dr. James E. Hansen of NASA first testified to Congress on June 23, 1988 that global temperatures had risen beyond the range of natural variability. Waiting another 20 years before taking decisive action is not an option.

Leading economies reached a draft accord on greenhouse gas emissions that will be presented at the G8 summit next month, South Korea said on Monday, but sources at the talks said there were no breakthroughs in the pact. Members of the Group of Eight leading powers, eight other major countries and the European Union met in Seoul at the weekend seeking long-term pledges on cutting greenhouse gases.

Detailed climate change recommendations to the Group of Eight leaders, backed by an influential group of CEOs from many of the world’s largest companies, were delivered today to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda of Japan, who will host the G8’s annual summit next month in Hokkaido, Japan. The document outlines a new, more “environmentally effective and economically efficient” long-term policy framework to succeed the Kyoto Accord.

As greenhouse-gas emissions rise, North America is likely to experience more droughts and excessive heat in some regions even as intense downpours and hurricanes pound others more often, according to a report issued yesterday by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.

It’s understandable that there would be an aggressive Democratic response to the calls by President Bush and John McCain to drill off the coasts.

Being slow to change in response to warming temperatures could have serious repercussions for long-distance migrant birds. Many birds are arriving earlier each spring as temperatures warm along the East Coast of the United States. However, the farther those birds journey, the less likely they are to keep pace with the rapidly changing climate.

Two refrigeration engineers have been convicted by a New Zealand court for depleting the ozone layer. The country's Ministry for Economic Development prosecuted the two men in the first ever case taken under a 1996 law protecting the ozone layer.