According to the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, there have been more than four times as many weather-related disasters in the last 30 years than in the previous 75 years. The United States has experienced more of those disasters than any other country.

Climate change has the power to unsettle boundaries and shake up geopolitics, usually for the worse. But while most of the world sees only peril in the island’s meltwater, Greenland’s independence movement has explicitly tied its fortunes to the warming of the globe.

The Arctic may get some temporary relief from global warming if the annual North American wildfire season intensifies, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Colorado and NOAA.

Climate change will pose "substantial" threats to human health in the coming decades, the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday -- issuing its warnings about heat waves, hurricanes and pathogens just days after the agency declined to regulate the pollutants blamed for warming.

California has been hit by 2,000 fires this year, and climate scientists are predicting that the situation will worsen as temperatures rise.

Former Vice President Al Gore challenged Americans yesterday to switch all of the nation's electricity production to wind, solar, and other carbon-free sources within 10 years, a goal that he said would solve global warming as well as economic and natural security crises caused by dependence on fossil fuels.

But behind the congratulatory speeches on Wednesday, some experts said, was a more sobering reality. The documents issued by the participating countries had very few of the concrete goals needed to keep greenhouse gases from growing at their torrid pace, they said.

An international aid agency is highlighting how women around the world are hardest hit by storms, floods and droughts caused by global warming. And it is stepping up pressure on the Scottish government to agree on tough targets to cut the pollution causing the problems.

The fire season has gotten longer throughout the West in the past few years. Fires touch off in April or earlier, and the season sometimes stretches into October. But a longer season can't be blamed solely on climate change or drought.

The global food crisis will only worsen because of climate change, the U.N. climate chief said Friday, urging leaders of the world's richest countries meeting in Japan next week to set goals to reduce carbon emissions within the next dozen years.

Space agency NASA has created maps that could boost renewable energy supplies by pinpointing high wind areas in the Earth's oceans for turbine farms.

The Gulf Stream—a massive and highly energetic ocean current which holds great potential for electric power generation and other renewable power sources—physically connects Florida with the United Kingdom. Researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Center for Ocean Energy Technology recently accompanied Florida Governor Charlie Crist to the UK to formalize agreements on ocean energy research and development.

 The world's wetlands, threatened by development, dehydration and climate change, could release a planet-warming "carbon bomb" if they are destroyed, ecological scientists said on Sunday.

Global warming is mainly caused by greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activities; however, current climatic variations may be affected “around 15% or 20%” by solar activity, according to Manuel Vázquez, a researcher from the Canary Islands’ Astrophysics Institute.

Antarctic worms, sea spiders, urchins and other marine creatures living in near-shore shallow habitats are regularly pounded by icebergs. New data suggests this environment along the Antarctic Peninsula is going to get hit more frequently. This is due to an increase in the number of icebergs scouring the seabed as a result of shrinking winter sea ice.

According to a comprehensive survey by the Global Marine Species Assessment (GMSA) published Thursday in Science, one-third of the more than 700 species of reef-building corals are threatened with extinction. Compare that to a decade ago, when only 2% of corals were endangered.

A reader-friendly summary of geoengineering and proposed geoengineering schemes, including levitated particles, ocean algae, sulphur dioxide, "carbon-eating trees," and more.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said only seven years remained for stabilising emissions of global-warming gases at a level widely considered safe.

Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, writing with lead author Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawaii and two co-authors, note that the oceans have absorbed about 40% of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by humans over the past two centuries. This has slowed global warming, but at a serious cost.

Green power programs allow consumers to purchase renewable energy, usually at a premium, without having to go through the far greater expense of erecting a windmill or installing a solar panel. The programs are widely available, yet there are estimates that fewer than 1 percent of residential consumers nationwide receive their electricity from green power providers.

New York City's yellow taxi fleet now will go green at the rate of 300 new hybrid cars a month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Wednesday, citing an agreement with car-makers to supply the fuel-light cabs.

A coalition of U.S. states and Canadian provinces that have banded together to cut greenhouse gases will launch their carbon cap and trade system in 2012, according to a draft plan released on Wednesday.

Texas regulators have approved a $4.93 billion wind-power transmission project, providing a major lift to the development of wind energy in the state. The planned web of transmission lines will carry electricity from remote western parts of the state to major population centers like Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio.

How much real impact can offsetting have on tackling climate change? Or is it just a convenient way for people to assuage their guilt while not having to change their lifestyles? The latter view is shared by many environmentalists, who have compared the growth of offsets with the Catholic Church's practice in the Middle Ages of selling indulgences to get to heaven.

Toyota Motor Corp said on Thursday it would start building its Prius hybrid in the United States in 2010 and suspend production of slow-selling big trucks for three months in a sharp reversal of strategy forced by slumping sales and high gas prices.

As governments haver over the best ways to tackle global warming, private enterprise is forging ahead - and making money.

Measuring the costs and benefits of projects intended to offset the emission of greenhouse gases is one of many thorny issues that the state of California must tackle as it begins drafting a cap-and-trade system of carbon credits.

With oil prices hitting dizzying levels and the world struggling with global warming, Japan is hoping to use its conservation record to take a rare leadership role on a pressing global issue. Japan is home to many marvels of energy efficiency, including the Taiheiyo Cement factory detailed in this article.

California's effort to limit vehicle emissions of gases that contribute to global warming hit a snag Friday when a federal appeals court ruled that the state and environmental groups acted too early when they sued the Bush administration in January for blocking the law.

California issued new building standards Thursday, which state officials said would push developers to reduce the energy use of buildings by 15% and target a 50% reduction in water for landscaping.

The British government admitted on Thursday what experts have been saying for some time -- that it will miss by a large margin its own target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2010.

The United States unveiled plans on Tuesday to bury climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions deep underground to keep the greenhouse gas from further heating up the atmosphere.

The Bush administration yesterday unveiled but immediately disparaged a proposal to seek public comment on whether the government should regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, declaring at the outset that the proposed approach would be unworkable.

The administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday disavowed any obligation to regulate greenhouse gases under existing law, saying that to do so would involve an “unprecedented expansion” of the agency’s authority that would have “a profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy.”

Hungary successfully linked to a carbon trading scheme under the Kyoto Protocol on Friday, allowing the country to sell government-level emissions permits, a Hungarian ministry spokesperson said.

Prospects that the G8 would reach a meaningful agreement to how best to fight global warming at their annual summit dimmed on Sunday as leaders began arriving in northern Japan with a raft of global problems on their minds.

European Union energy chiefs considered an accord with Brazil over biofuels on Saturday at the end of a three day meeting in Paris during which they backed away from the EU's controversial biofuels target.