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By Deborah Zabarenko WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One of the most interesting facets of a new United Nations climate change report is what's not in it: much mention of curbing the greenhouse gas emissions that trap heat in Earth's atmosphere and in turn can spur some natural disasters. "It is a change," said Christopher Field, a top editor of the 600-page document released on Wednesday. [More]

By Nina Chestney LONDON (Reuters) - The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned on Monday. Scientific estimates differ but the world's temperature looks set to rise by six degrees Celsius by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are allowed to rise uncontrollably. As emissions grow, scientists say the world is close to reaching thresholds beyond which the effects on the global climate will be irreversible, such as the melting of polar ice sheets and loss of rainforests

Humans may have been causing climate change for much longer than we’ve been burning fossil fuels . In fact, the agrarian revolution may have started human-induced climate changes long before the industrial revolution began to sully the skies.

It may be surprising to hear that hydraulic fracturing is not the cause of water contamination , but what may be even more surprising is that shale gas produced using fracking may have lower life cycle greenhouse gas emissions than conventional gas. According to a recent Environmental Science and Technology report , shale gas life-cycle [greenhouse gas] emissions are 6% lower than conventional natural gas [More]

International diplomats met two weeks ago at the UN Durban Climate Change Conference in South Africa to discuss a greenhouse gas reduction plan displaying no urgency to reach any meaningful agreement. Meanwhile, researchers at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in San Francisco are reporting what many scientists have suspected for a long time but have been thus far not been able to prove convincingly that the world s sea level is likely to rise by at least 3 feet in the next 100 years

DURBAN, South Africa--The roughly 3,000 fossil fuel–fired power plants in North America--Canada, Mexico and the U.S.--emit 6 percent of global greenhouse gases , or nearly as much as all of the European Union. In fact, coal-fired power plants around the globe are the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. [More]

DURBAN, South Africa When roughly 25,000 people descend on a city to talk climate change, you can expect at least two things: mountains of waste and copious emissions of the greenhouse gases that they’ve come to talk about so seriously. To offset the hundreds of thousands of tons of these lightweight gases emitted in the pursuit of a global climate treaty, recent such conferences have taken compensatory measures, such as subsidizing retrofits of Bangladeshi brick factories , so that ambassadorial emissions are offset by a reduction in pollution from kilns

(Reuters) - Almost 200 nations began global climate talks on Monday with time running out to save the Kyoto Protocol aimed at cutting the greenhouse gas emissions scientists blame for rising sea levels, intense storms, drought and crop failures. [More]

The creation of cement is an incredibly polluting process, but Stanford scientist Bret Constanz has found a way to mimic the way coral works, by creating cement from CO2 and water.

The matter of mastering a building's energy use, getting maximum performance out of each calorie and electron, is to many people a black art.

(Reuters) - The mystery of Earth's missing heat may have been solved: it could lurk deep in oceans, temporarily masking the climate-warming effects of greenhouse gas emissions, researchers reported on Sunday.

Though burning natural gas produces much less greenhouse gas emissions than burning coal, a new study indicates switching over coal-fired power plants to natural gas would have a negligible effect on the changing climate. Tom Wigley, a senior research associate at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, reports that if natural gas were substituted for coal in energy production, climate change trends would not slow down and may, in fact, accelerate. His findings are due to be published in the journal Climatic Change Letters

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Canada moved ahead on Friday with new regulations for cutting emissions from coal-fired power plants as environmental groups decried one project that they said won a speedy approval just in time to avoid the tighter rules. Environment Minister Peter Kent said the regulations, aimed at gradually phasing out coal-fired power generation as a way to meet the federal government's greenhouse gas commitments, will force developers to reduce emissions to levels that are comparable to high-efficiency gas-fired plants. [More]

Jamming carbon deep underground has long been a proposed solution to our emissions problems, but it's expensive and rarely used. Now we can use the Earth's heat to make that gas work for us. Geothermal power production and CO2 storage are both well-known practices in the energy world: one generates power from thermal energy that is generated and stored in the Earth, and the other is used to store CO2 from coal-fired power plants (or other dirty industrial plants) to prevent the greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere.

By Gerard Wynn LONDON (Reuters) - Smoke belching from Asia's rapidly growing economies is largely responsible for a halt in global warming in the decade after 1998 because of sulfur's cooling effect, even though greenhouse gas emissions soared, a U.S. study said on Monday.