http://www.enn.com/ ENN RSS News http://www.enn.com/business/article/40163 Officials from a 17-member body which account for the lions share of the world's carbon emissions will hold urgent talks next Tuesday to iron out differences on the eve of a July 8-10 summit of the G8. Group of Eight diplomats and climate change officials told Reuters the meeting of the Major Economies Forum (MEF) was called to narrow the gap between rich countries and developing nations such as India over long-term targets on global warming and emissions. http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/40160 Besides the obvious benefits they bring, it looks like we owe our very existence to plants, which helped prevent the Earth from freezing over during the past 25 million years. http://www.enn.com/climate/article/40158 The US ranks next to last among G8 member countries when it comes to cutting greenhouse gas emissions and paving the way toward a clean energy economy, according to a World Wildlife Fund SE-Allianz study released July 1. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/40156 The rain band near the equator that determines the supply of freshwater to nearly a billion people throughout the tropics and subtropics has been creeping north for more than 300 years, probably because of a warmer world, according to research published in the July issue of Nature Geoscience. If the band continues to migrate at just less than a mile (1.4 kilometers) a year, which is the average for all the years it has been moving north, then some Pacific islands near the equator -- even those that currently enjoy abundant rainfall -- may be drier within decades and starved of freshwater by midcentury or sooner. The prospect of additional warming because of greenhouse gases means that situation could happen even sooner. http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/40153 http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/40152 The extremely well-preserved remains of a 66-million-year-old hadrosaur, known as a "dinosaur mummy," have just yielded soft-tissue skin structures and organic molecules, according to a new study. While research on other dinosaurs has led to the identification of organic material linked to bones, co-author Roy Wogelius told Discovery News that "this is the first dinosaur to reveal intact skin structure and associated organic molecules." http://www.enn.com/energy/article/40145 Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced measures on Monday to hasten the development of solar energy on public lands in six western states. Salazar expects to have 13 commercial-scale projects with solar power arrays under construction by the end of 2010. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/40144 Dust in the wind is rewriting the cycle of life in the mountains. Throughout memory the warmth of spring has begun the mountain snowmelt, bringing life-giving water to greening plants so they can blossom and renew their species. But now, scientists say, the timing is being thrown off by desert dust stirred as global warming dries larger areas and human activity increases in those regions. http://www.enn.com/energy/article/40143 US President Barack Obama on Sunday expressed his opposition to a provision in the clean energy bill that would impose trade penalties on countries that do not accept limits on global warming pollution, The New York Times reported late Sunday. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/40141 Staples such as cassava on which millions of people depend become more toxic and produce much smaller yields in a world with higher carbon dioxide levels and more drought. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/40136 The Sahara Desert is crossing the Mediterranean, according to Italian environmental protection group Legambiente which warns that the livelihoods of 6.5 million people living along its shores could be at risk. "Desertification isn't limited to Africa," said Legambiente Vice President Sebastiano Venneri. "Without a serious change of direction in economic and environmental policies, the risk will become concrete and irreversible." http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/40135 President Barack Obama scored a major victory on Friday when the House of Representatives passed legislation to slash industrial pollution that is blamed for global warming. The Democratic-controlled House passed the climate change bill, a top priority for Obama, by a vote of 219-212. http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/40131 European environment ministers have sidestepped the key emissions reduction strategy of classifying carbon dioxide as a pollutant during consideration of new laws to limit industrial pollution. http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/40127 A new regulation adopted today will force more than a dozen California landfills to install equipment that captures methane gas created by decomposing solid waste. The California Air Resources Board’s newly adopted measure will also impact other landfills by forcing them to change their operating practices to reduce the amount of methane released into the atmosphere. http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/40124 The Agriculture Department will have the lead role in overseeing agriculture offsets under the House climate bill, a major victory for farm groups that pushed lawmakers to take the lead away from U.S. EPA. http://www.enn.com/business/article/40118 President Obama says the greenhouse-gas emissions cutting Waxman-Markey bill before Congress will "spark a clean energy transformation." But a new analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency casts doubt on that claim. http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/40112 Democrats in the House of Representatives on Tuesday said they had reached a deal on difficult agriculture issues in a climate change bill, clearing the way for a vote and probable passage in the chamber this week. "We have an agreement finally," said House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, whose support had been widely sought by House Democratic leaders. Peterson declared he is now prepared to vote for the controversial bill. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/40110 The new Climate Change, Wildlife and Wildlands Toolkit for Formal and Informal Educators is an updated and expanded version of the award-winning (2001 Public Relations Society of America Bronze Anvil Award for Interactive Communications and 2002 Telly Award) and very popular (over 40,000 kits distributed in all 51 states and territories and over a dozen countries across the world) Climate Change, Wildlife and Wildlands Toolkit for Teachers and Interpreters first published in 2001. http://www.enn.com/climate/article/40107 NASA scientists reveal Patagonia glaciers are losing ice mass in higher zones. http://www.enn.com/energy/article/40106 Climate change legislation pending in Congress would cost U.S. households only about $175 annually in higher energy and consumer prices, far less than the $3,100 "burden" opponents have claimed would result, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate. http://www.enn.com/business/article/40103 The potential energy savings achievable through state actions is significant. EPA estimates that if each state were to implement cost-effective clean energy-environment policies, the expected growth in demand for electricity could be cut in half by 2025, and more demand could be met through cleaner energy supply. This would mean annual savings of more than 900 bil­lion kilowatt-hours (kWh) and $70 billion in energy costs by 2025, while preventing the need for more than 300 power plants and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equivalent to emissions from 80 million of today’s vehicles. http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/40101 Arctic nations are promising to avoid new "Cold War" scrambles linked to climate change, but military activity is stirring in a polar region where a thaw may allow oil and gas exploration or new shipping routes. http://www.enn.com/energy/article/40100 If you've been waiting for the chance to get more done during the day, today, Sunday is your day, but only by a fraction of a second. Like a giant timepiece, Earth and sun are configured for the summer solstice once again. This year it happens June 21, the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun will be up a fraction of a second longer than the day prior or the day after. (The length of the full day, including night, does not change, of course.) http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/40099 The ancient plants are dying in the park, the southern-most boundary of their limited growing region, scientists say. Already finicky reproducers, Joshua trees are the victim of global warming and its symptoms -- including fire and drought -- plus pollution and the proliferation of non-native plants. Experts expect the Joshuas to vanish entirely from the southern half of the state within a century. http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/40098 In the 1960s, a group of businessmen bought 16,000 acres of swampy bottomland along the Ouachita River in northern Louisiana and built miles of levee around it. They bulldozed its oak and cypress trees and, when the land dried out, turned it into a soybean farm. Now two brothers who grew up nearby are undoing all that work. In what experts are calling the biggest levee-busting operation ever in North America, the brothers plan to return the muddy river to its ancient floodplain, coaxing back plants and animals that flourished there when President Thomas Jefferson first had the land surveyed in 1804.