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Emissions of carbon dioxide, the main culprit linked to a warming climate, also pose potential risks to the oceans, new research suggests. The oceans have absorbed vast amounts of carbon dioxide released in the industrial age and have measurably changed, chemically and ecologically, as a result. Advertisement In water, carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid. The buildup of the gas, mainly in the shallow layers of the oceans so far, is reducing the natural alkalinity of seawater, new studies show. In tank tests, such conditions can interfere with the reef-building ability of corals and shell production in some mollusks and tiny...

London, July 18: Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research. A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the Sun is responsible for recent global climate changes. Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: “The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures. “The Sun is in...

A Minnesota Senate committee recently held a hearing on global warming. But rather than provide diverse viewpoints — what I thought was the purpose of any legislative hearing — committee chairwoman Ellen Anderson, DFL-St. Paul, proclaimed the “scientific community’s consensus” exactly one minute into the two-hour hearing. The declared “consensus” was global warming is a dire and impending threat. The “scientific community” was four University professors, who might as well have been the four horsemen of the apocalypse given all the doom and gloom they preached. This might come as news to professors David Tilman, Peter Wyckoff, Lucinda Johnson and...

Extreme temperatures, which have killed at least 22 people in Romania in the space of a week, continued to plague Europe, with Greece sweltering in a heatwave and an open-air performance of Verdi's "Traviata" canceled in Italy. Four people, two of them teenage shepherds, were struck by lightning in Romania at the weekend, when a heatwave that had killed at least 18 people during the week gave way to hailstorms and gale-force winds, the interior ministry said on Sunday. Fierce winds damaged 400 houses, mainly in the north, ripped up trees and cut power supplies to 300 areas, while hailstorms...

President Vladimir Putin's recent announcement that Russia will move to ratify the Kyoto Protocol received little attention, but may signal that the agreement will finally become legally effective. That would be welcome, not because Kyoto is a perfect agreement, but because, even with its imperfections, the protocol has several elements that will contribute to a sensible long-term solution to global warming. Foremost among these is Kyoto's recognition that emissions trading — an American invention now embraced by Europe — can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions at low cost. Still, the six and a half years that have passed since the...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (news - web sites), Jun 28 (OneWorld) - More than 80 percent of the U.S. public supports pending legislation to cut the emission of greenhouse gases, while two thirds said they are willing to pay the U.S.$15 a month - or nearly $200 a year - that experts believe the legislation, the Climate Stewardship Act (CSA), will cost the average household, according to a nationwide poll released Friday. Public support is also strong for using tax incentives to encourage utility companies to use cleaner energy technologies and car-buyers to purchase more energy-efficient cars, according to the survey, which...

Washington, June 26 (ANI): Dr. Ben Rostron, a University of Alberta researcher has said that a new approach that is one of the first to successfully store carbon dioxide underground may have huge implications for global warming and the oil industry. Rostron is part of an extensive team working on the 28 million dollars International Energy Agency Weyburn CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project that has safely buried the greenhouse gas and reduced emissions from entering the atmosphere. "It's one thing to say that underground is a great place to store carbon dioxide, but it's another thing to be able to...

A new US supercomputer has shown that global temperatures could be rising more than scientists had thought, experts said. The computer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research projects that temperatures could rise by 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit) if countries continue to emit large amounts of carbon dioxide. The previous estimates were a rise of about two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Information from the Community Climate System Model, known as CCSM3, will be presented to the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, an international body of experts established by the United Nations (news - web sites) to assess...

In "The Day After Tomorrow," temperatures skyrocket as a result of global warming before quickly veering into a deep freeze, suspending modern civilization in an ice age. On Wednesday, the Boulder-based National Center for Atmospheric Research released a program that forecasts its take on the story. The center's model — so accurate it can reproduce past temperatures within a tenth of a degree Celsius — shows if carbon dioxide emissions continue at their current level, it's going to get hotter than scientists previously thought. But no ice age. Although Tinseltown's tale and the scientific model clash on many fronts, they...

MAINZ, Germany (Reuters) - One of the world's leading environmentalists and a renowned skeptic went face-to-face on Monday to put their case on the merits of fighting global warming. On the home territory of Klaus Toepfer, head of the United Nations (news - web sites) Environment Program, controversial author Bjorn Lomborg argued money spent on slowing global warming would be much better spent fighting more immediate human misery. In a high-spirited exchange, the two warmed up by putting their cases to journalists before continuing their battle in front of a curious audience of some 300 at the University of Mainz...

Scientists have developed a serum to reduce methane gas in burping sheep, cows and other ruminants to combat global warming, a German magazine reported on Monday. The Hanover-based monthly Technology Review will report in its July issue that Andre-Denis Wright, a molecular biologist at Australia's CSIRO Institute, has found a vaccine that reduced the methane emissions of sheep by eight percent. The magazine said that scientists believe the amounts can be reduced even further and more testing is planned. Sheep produce 20 grams of methane each day, or seven kg per year, the magazine with 80,000 subscribers reported. Cows produce...

What causes global warming? Carbon dioxide and other air pollution that is collecting in the atmosphere like a thickening blanket, trapping the sun's heat and causing the planet to warm up. Coal-burning power plants are the largest U.S. source of carbon dioxide pollution -- they produce 2.5 billion tons every year. Automobiles, the second largest source, create nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually. Here's the good news: technologies exist today to make cars that run cleaner and burn less gas, modernize power plants and generate electricity from nonpolluting sources, and cut our electricity use through energy efficiency. The challenge...

For years, a discrepancy in global climate data has fuelled debate over global warming. Temperatures in the troposphere, the first 11km of the atmosphere, have been rising slower than models predict given the rate of increase in temperature on the Earth's surface. But polar orbiting satellites show that cooling in the stratosphere - the next layer of the atmosphere - explains the inconsistency, according to research published in Nature. Once the effects of this stratospheric cooling have been taken into account, the scientists found that statistical analyses produced temperature trends consistent with observed surface warming and the predictions of climate...

Australian scientists have found the Earth may be more resilient to global warming than first thought, and they say a warmer world means a wetter planet, encouraging more plants to grow and soak up greenhouse gases. "The global water cycle has changed in response to greenhouse emissions," almost 100 Australian greenhouse scientists said in an annual statement on their research received on Wednesday.

A super storm envelops the globe, sending tornadoes skittering through Los Angeles, pounding Tokyo with hail the size of grapefruit and burying New Delhi in snow. Brace yourself. After decades spent tackling volcanoes, aliens, earthquakes, asteroids and every other disaster imaginable, Hollywood has turned its attention to one of the hottest scientific and political issues of the day: climate change. No one is pretending the forthcoming film "The Day After Tomorrow" is anything but implausible: In the $125 million movie, global warming triggers a cascade of events that practically flash freeze the planet. It's an abruptness no one believes possible,...

THE Earth may be fighting back against global warming, say scientists who believe the world is getting wetter as it warms, improving the planet's ability to soak up carbon dioxide. Research from Australian scientists released during the annual science meeting of the Co-operative Research Centre for Greenhouse Accounting, supports the notion that the Earth is self-regulating. The centre's communique suggests that, contrary to popular perceptions, the Earth is getting wetter - not necessarily through greater rainfall but through a reduction in evaporation caused by cloudier days that prompt more efficient photosynthesis. Research centre chief Chris Mitchell said such conditions could...

As mothers are honored across the United States on Mothers Day, World Wildlife Fund wants the public to help some of most famously devoted mothers of the wild world, polar bear mothers and their cubs. Polar bear mothers and cubs are among the most vulnerable to global warming caused by heat-trapping emissions of carbon dioxide, a by-product from the burning of fossil fuelscoal, oil and gasfor energy. Global warming (news - web sites) is linked to the disappearance of the arctic sea ice which polar bears depend on for their survival. The sea ice is forming later and breaking up...

<p>A POLITICALLY-charged disaster movie about global warming is burning up the George Bush campaign, while John Kerry backers hope "The Day After Tomorrrow" will sway eco-conscious voters to their side.</p> <p>The partisan swirl surrounding the $125 million thriller is underscored by Al Gore's decision to hold a huge environmental rally just a few blocks away from the May 24 premiere at the Museum of Natural History.</p>

<p>British Prime Minister Tony Blair is seeking help from business to tackle global warming.</p> <p>Speaking at a major conference Tuesday in London Blair is making what is considered his most outspoken statement yet on the threat of global warming to a host of leading corporate and government executives.</p>

Britain's annual bill for flood damage could increase 20-fold this century unless steps are taken to combat the global warming which is causing it, a report by the government's chief scientist said Thursday. The report, written by David King, head of the Office of Science and Technology for the Ministry of Trade and Industry, forecast that the cost of flood damage would rise from one billion pounds (1.49 billion euros, 1.77 billion dollars) a year to 21 billion pounds by 2080. It said the probability of floods along British rivers and coasts could be between two and 20 times higher...