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Miami (AFP) - In 2014 the world's oceans swelled, major greenhouse gases that fuel global warming hit record highs and the planet's surface temperature reached its hottest point in 135 years, international researchers said Thursday. The findings are contained in the 2014 State of the Climate report, a peer-reviewed study that examines temperature, precipitation and weather events around the world. A total of 413 scientists from 58 countries around the world contributed to the report, the 25th in a series that is based on data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments on land, water, ice and in space. The...

On this Independence Day, one of the sadder aspects of American life we have to consider is the tendency of some Americans to wag their fingers at others about the way they choose to live, sometimes with disastrous results. The temperance movement of the 19th Century led to Prohibition which led to Al Capone, for example. Now someone writing in the New Republic on Friday wants to take away our right to barbecue.

OSLO (Reuters) - Pink salmon in the Pacific Ocean face a double threat of acidification linked to greenhouse gas emissions since it slows their early growth in rivers and disrupts the chemistry of seawater, a study showed on Monday. Impacts have in the past been more studied in the seas than in fresh water. But the Canadian study found that acidification of rivers could make young pink salmon, the most abundant type in the Pacific, smaller and more vulnerable to predators by dampening their ability to smell danger. Damage done by acidification "in fresh water in pink salmon could occur...

A new study by MIT has revealed that the quantities of nitrous oxide (N2O), otherwise known as laughing gas, being released by the world's oceans has been dramatically underestimated. Heightened levels of N2O have the potential to seriously influence the health of our planet's ozone layer, as the gas is around 300 times more potent than the more prevalent menace of carbon dioxide emissions.

OSLO, April 13 (Reuters) - China is poised to overtake the United States as the main cause of man-made global warming since 1990, the benchmark year for U.N.-led action, in a historic shift that may raise pressure on Beijing to act. China's cumulative greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, when governments were becoming aware of climate change, will outstrip those of the United States in 2015 or 2016, according to separate estimates by experts in Norway and the United States. The shift, reflecting China's stellar economic growth, raises questions about historical blame for rising temperatures and more floods, desertification, heatwaves and...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is directing the federal government to cut its emissions of heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming. Obama will sign an executive order targeting greenhouse gases at the White House on Thursday. The White House says a number of major companies that sell to the federal government will also announce commitments to cut their emissions.

Seattle to Fine Residents for Throwing Food in the Garbage In an attempt to shame residents of their city, a new Seattle law will levy a fine on homes that do not properly sort food out of their garbage. Emblazoned with a red citation tag, violators will start to be fined anywhere from $1-$50 in July. For now, Seattle residents will be publicly shamed by the ‘Scarlet Letter’-like tags. US Food Waste Food waste is a big, and still growing, problem. (Charles Krupa/AP Photo) "I'm sure neighbors are going to see these on their other neighbors' cans," says Rodney Watkins,...

They’re adults. They had to be told this? It wasn’t part of their upbringing? I know that most EPA workers are urban liberals, but were they raised in barns? Management for Region 8 in Denver, Colo., wrote an email earlier this year to all staff in the area pleading with them to stop inappropriate bathroom behavior, including defecating in the hallway. In the email, obtained by Government Executive, Deputy Regional Administrator Howard Cantor mentioned “several incidents” in the building, including clogging the toilets with paper towels and “an individual placing feces in the hallway” outside the restroom. Confounded by what...

Environmental Protection Agency workers have done some odd things recently. Contractors built secret man caves in an EPA warehouse, an employee pretended to work for the CIA to get unlimited vacations and one worker even spent most of his time on the clock looking at pornography. It appears, however, that a regional office has reached a new low: Management for Region 8 in Denver, Colo., wrote an email earlier this year to all staff in the area pleading with them to stop inappropriate bathroom behavior, including defecating in the hallway. In the email, obtained by Government Executive, Deputy Regional Administrator...

The Supreme Court on Monday mostly validated the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to regulate power plant and factory emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, while imposing some limits on the agency’s reach. The justices said the EPA could not rewrite specific standards written into the law, but they still handed the Obama administration and environmentalists a big victory by agreeing there was another way for the EPA to carry out its program.

There's striking new evidence that Earth's atmosphere is increasingly saturated with carbon dioxide, the major gas from fossil fuel emissions that trigger climate change. ... "This should be taken as a warning," said Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist with the Carnegie Institution's department of global ecology at Stanford University. "It is time to stop building things with tailpipes and smokestacks. "It is time to stop using the sky as a waste dump for our carbon dioxide pollution. If we fail to heed this warning, our children will end up living in a world that is much hotter than any human...

As part of its plan to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the Obama administration is targeting the dairy industry to reduce methane emissions in their operations. This comes despite falling methane emission levels across the economy since 1990. The White House has proposed cutting methane emissions from the dairy industry by 25 percent by 2020. Although U.S. agriculture only accounts for about 9 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, it makes up a sizeableportion of methane emissions — which is a very potent greenhouse gas. Some of these methane emissions come from cow...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Friday it will take a hard look at whether new regulations are needed to cut emissions of methane from the oil and gas industry, part of President Barack Obama's plan to address climate change. Regulators will start by proposing new rules later this year to reduce venting and flaring from oil and gas wells on public lands, one way to begin slashing emissions of the potent greenhouse gas, said Dan Utech, Obama's top energy and climate aide. Most oil and gas production takes place on privately owned land. The Environmental Protection Agency...

Specifically, those challenging the EPA say it is reading too broadly its authority to regulate greenhouse gases, carrying over limits from vehicle transmissions and applying them to stationary sources such as power plants. They also say the EPA is picking and choosing which parts of the law to enforce by establishing a permitting scheme for greenhouse gas emitters, because its threshold for when those regulations take effect is above the law’s limits. The government argues a lower limit would potentially ensnare millions of buildings nationwide beyond the intent of the regulations, including public schools and some apartment buildings. It argues...

Scientists have identified four new man-made gases that are contributing to the depletion of the ozone layer. Two of the gases are accumulating at a rate that is causing concern among researchers. Worries over the growing ozone hole have seen the production of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases restricted since the mid 1980s. But the precise origin of these new, similar substances remains a mystery, say scientists. Lying in the atmosphere, between 15 and 30km above the surface of the Earth, the ozone layer plays a critical role in blocking harmful UV rays, which cause cancers in humans and reproductive problems in...

The Obama administration has been mighty pleased with themselves and the various ways in which they have stepped up their climate-change game with impunity, mainly through aggressive regulatory maneuvering (most recently with their new plans to essentially regulate new coal-plant construction out of existence paired with their forthcoming plans to regulate existing coal plants next year). The Obama administration has been discouraging the Supreme Court from providing a platform for the inevitable legal challenges to their emissions-capping agenda, but to no avail: The highest court in the land decided to hear out the consolidated arguments against the Environmental Protection Agency’s...

That’s really the goal, of course, of the Obama administrations incoming regulations. The hardcore eco-radicals will openly admit that, yes, a “war on coal” is precisely what’s needed to accomplish their goals, and that they do want to forcibly remove the coal industry from America’s (and someday, the world’s) energy scheme; but the Obama administration will deny the “war on coal” charge all day long, insisting that, why no, what we really want is just to nudge coal to become more clean and efficient, and eventually support a slow and steady shift in our energy scheme’s proportions as we begin...

On Tuesday, President Obama announced a sweeping series of initiatives, including the use of executive powers, to combat global warming. The plan will involve federal funding for renewable energy technology, and spending for areas hit by storms and droughts aggravated by an allegedly changing climate. Yet the most ambitious part of his agenda is an effort to force a reduction in so-called greenhouse gases from the nation’s coal-fired power plants. Prior to the speech, Daniel P. Schrag, a White House environmentalism adviser and director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, got to the nub of that agenda: “Politically,...

President Obama is preparing regulations limiting carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants, senior officials said Wednesday. The move would be the most consequential climate policy step he could take and one likely to provoke legal challenges from Republicans and some industries. Electric power plants are the largest single source of global warming pollution in the country, responsible for nearly 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. With sweeping climate legislation effectively dead in Congress, the decision on existing power plants — which a 2007 Supreme Court decision gave to the executive branch — has been among the most closely watched...

IIn history studies of the Great Global Warming Scare, people will ask, is this the bargaining stage or the start of acceptance? Adapting to _ not just fighting _ climate change is taking the heat out of global warming talk Seth Borenstein for The Associated PressWASHINGTON (AP) — Efforts to curb global warming have quietly shifted as greenhouse gases inexorably rise.The conversation is no longer solely about how to save the planet by cutting carbon emissions. It’s becoming more about how to save ourselves from the warming planet’s wild weather. — Newsdaily On the five stages of  grief, this...