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Exotic microbes living around mud volcanoes on the seabed are helping to offset global warming by munching heat-trapping methane seeping from the depths, scientists said on Wednesday. They said the microbes, studied at a mud volcano on the floor of the Arctic Barents Sea between Greenland and Norway, were part of fragile habitats that could also hold industrial clues about how to convert methane into more easily used fuels. "Methane-consuming microbes ... are helping to control climate change," the journal Nature said of the report it published by scientists at German and French institutes. Microbes around the Haakon Mosby Mud...

A Chinese expert on glaciology said Monday that the world's glaciers may help curb the effects of global warming. Not only are the geographical features good sources of freshwater on earth, they are also "monitors" and "adjusters" of global temperatures, said Zhang Wenjing of the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment with the Chinese Academy of Science. Think you know everything about Server Virtualization? What technology did Gartner name as the best potential for server consolidation? What solution enables software and management savings? What had 3 fantastic reviews over the last few months? Discover SWsoft's Virtuozzo, OS Server Virtualization. With...

The increasingly urgent need to combat climate change will probably spawn U.S. policies to impose fossil fuel charges and so dramatically favor nuclear power, Citigroup said in a research note on Wednesday. Burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil is one of the biggest sources of the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists fear are leading to dangerous climate change. In response, a carbon market in Europe already charges heavy industry to emit carbon dioxide (CO2) above a certain limit -- requiring companies to buy tradeable carbon credits -- and some U.S. states are set to adopt similar schemes. This...

Global warming has done nothing to melt the chill between Bill Clinton and his former vice president, Al Gore, Democratic Party sources say. Following the suggestion of his advisers, Gore iced the charismatic consensus-builder out of his own 2000 presidential campaign. Clinton went on to fight poverty and AIDS in the Third World, and Gore recently made the environmental documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." But last month, the former President announced his Clinton Climate Initiative in a press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the mayors of Los Angeles and San Francisco, effectively eclipsing Gore. "Clinton has said privately...

Global warming could be causing some glaciers to grow, a new study claims. Researchers at Newcastle University looked at temperature trends in the western Himalaya over the past century. They found warmer winters and cooler summers, combined with more snow and rainfall, could be causing some mountain glaciers to increase in size. The findings are significant, because temperature and rain and snow trends in the area impact on water availability for more than 50 million Pakistanis. Researchers focussed on the Upper Indus Basin, which is the mainstay of the national economy of Pakistan and has 170,000 sq km of irrigated...

The icecap may not be the only thing shrinking in the Arctic. The genitals of polar bears in east Greenland are apparently dwindling in size due to industrial pollutants. Scientists report this shrinkage could, in the worst case scenario, endanger polar bears there and elsewhere by spoiling their love lives and causing their numbers to peter out. In fact, all marine mammals could get affected by these pollutants, "especially the Arctic fox, killer whale and pilot whales," wildlife veterinarian and toxicologist Christian Sonne at the National Environmental Research Institute of Denmark in Roskilde told LiveScience. These animals bodies also carry...

A Washington pollster says the majority of U.S. residents are connecting intense weather events like Hurricane Katrina and heat waves to global warming. The Zogby America telephone poll, sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation, says majorities of likely voters in both political parties favor requirements on industries to limit "greenhouse" emissions. Nearly three of every four of those surveyed said they are more convinced today that global warming is a reality than they were two years ago, the polls said. Eighty-seven percent of Democrats said they believe in global warming, with 56 percent of Republicans agreeing. Eighty-two percent of independents...

Folks who sweated through last month's blistering heat wave may be surprised to know it was only the second hottest July on record for the United States. More than 2,300 daily temperature records were broken from coast to coast, and the average temperature for the 48 contiguous states was 77.2 degrees Fahrenheit, the National Climatic Data Center reported Monday. July 1936 still holds the record at 77.5, while July 1934 fell to third place at 77.1, the agency said. The average July temperature is 74.3 degrees based on records going back to 1901. Overall, the first seven months of 2006...

Apocalyptic visions of climate change used by newspapers, environmental groups and the UK government amount to "climate porn", a think-tank says. The report from the Labour-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says over-use of alarming images is a "counsel of despair". It says they make people feel helpless and says the use of cataclysmic imagery is partly commercially motivated. However, newspapers have defended their coverage of a "crucial issue". 'Nobody knows' The IPPR report also criticises the reporting of individual climate-friendly acts as "mundane, domestic and uncompelling". The style of climate change discourse is that we maximise the problem...

With signs that the world is warming, even Inuit peoples of the far north are ordering air conditioning. Better known for building igloos during hunts on the polar ice, Inuit in the village of Kuujjuaq in Quebec, Canada, are installing 10 air conditioners for about 25 office workers. "These are the times when the far north has to have air conditioners now to function," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a leading campaigner for the rights of 155,000 Inuit in Canada, Alaska, Russia and Greenland. "Our Arctic homes are made to be airtight for the cold and do not 'breathe' well in the...

French President Jacques Chirac issued a stark warning to his G8 partners, saying "humanity is dancing on a volcano" and urging them to live up to commitments to combat global warming. "We cannot discuss energy security while standing still on climate change," Chirac told the leaders of Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and Russia at their summit in Saint Petersburg. "Humanity is dancing on a volcano." Chirac described the Kyoto Protocol, which took effect in February last year, as "only a first step". "I regret that the United States is not taking part. But all the others...

Scientists had thought that there was one potential upside to global warming: more food to feed the world. Years of laboratory tests led them to believe that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could fertilize food crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat and rice, offsetting the plant-damaging effects of higher global temperatures and less rainfall. But a new study with field tests in Illinois and other spots around the globe is challenging that assumption, suggesting that any increase in crop yields due to the buildup of greenhouse gases would be modest or non-existent. Lower-than-expected yields could have dire consequences for...

The Supreme Court plunged on Monday into the acrimonious debate over global warming and whether the government should regulate ‘‘greenhouse’’ gases, especially carbon dioxide from cars. The ruling could be one of the court’s most important ever on the environment. Spurred by states in a pollution battle with the Bush administration, the court said it would decide whether the Environmental Protection Agency is required under the federal clean air law to treat carbon dioxide from automobiles as a pollutant harmful to health. The decision could determine how the nation addresses global warming. President Bush has rejected calls by environmentalists and...

The Earth is running a slight fever from greenhouse gases, after enjoying relatively stable temperatures for 2,000 years. The National Academy of Sciences, after reconstructing global average surface temperatures for the past two millennia, said Thursday the data are "additional supporting evidence ... that human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming." Other new research showed that global warming produced about half of the extra hurricane-fueled warmth in the North Atlantic in 2005, and natural cycles were a minor factor, according to Kevin Trenberth and Dennis Shea of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a research lab sponsored...

Global warming accounted for about half of the extra hurricane-fueling warmth in Atlantic waters off the United States in 2005, while natural cycles were smaller factors, according to a study released Thursday by the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "The global warming influence provides a new background level that increases the risk of future enhancements in hurricane activity," co-author Kevin Trenberth wrote in the study. A statement issued by the center said that the study "contradicts recent claims that natural cycles are responsible for the upturn in Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995. It also adds support to the premise that...

Scientists have found something about the North Pole that could send a shiver down Santa's spine: It used to be downright balmy. In fact, 55 million years ago the Arctic was once a lot like Miami, with an average temperature of 74 degrees, alligator ancestors and palm trees, scientists say. That conclusion, based on first-of-their-kind core samples extracted from more than 1,000 feet below the Arctic Ocean floor, is contained in three studies published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Scientists say the findings are both a glimpse backward at a region heated by naturally produced greenhouse gases run...

Former US President Bill Clinton noted that global warming will pose a greater risk than terror in the future and added that all countries should take precautions in this frame. Talking to a graduating class of the University of Texas' Lyndon Johnson School of Public Affairs, Clinton made some warnings about global warming. Clinton defended that the United States should adopt policies on global warming that will bring more strategic partners and fewer enemies and use channels of institutionalized cooperation. “Climate change is more remote than terror but a more profound threat to the future of the children and the...

Millions of people around the world face death and devastation due to floods, famine, drought and violence caused by global warming, according to a report by a charity group. A report to be released today by Christian Aid said 162 million people in sub-Saharan Africa could die of disease directly attributable to global warming by the end of the century. It urged the British government to lead the world's richer countries in taking urgent action to curb global warming. Poorer regions, the group added, should be encouraged to use renewable energy sources. If sub-Saharan Africa switched from fossil fuels to...

New Rule: Nobody can use the phrase "our greatest problem" anymore unless you're talking about global warming. President Bush has been saying we're in a war on terror, and now I get it: he's not saying terr-or, he's saying Terra, as in Terra Firma, as in the earth. George Bush is an alien sent here to destroy the earth – I know it sounds crazy, but it made perfect sense when Tom Cruise explained it to me last week. Last Sunday on "60 Minutes," James Hansen, who is NASA's leading expert on the science of climate, delivered the world's most...

The warming of the world during the last century is greater – and more widespread – than any other shift in the global climate in the last 1,200 years, researchers reported Thursday. The analysis of data from tree rings, fossil shells, ice cores and actual temperature measurements from 14 locations on three continents shows that the current warming trend is the most extensive change — warm or cold — since the time of the Vikings. In their report in the current issue of the journal Science, climatologists Timothy Osborn and Keith Briffa of the University of East Anglia, home to...