Climate Change: latest news and comment

15.11.2004 Global warming has had little noticeable impact in Washington, D.C., but that uncertainty may have shrunk somewhat with the release last week of two scientific reports suggesting that global warming is not just a hypothetical possibility, but a real phenomenon that has already started transforming especially sensitive parts of the globe.

15.11.2004 The space agencies of India and France signed an agreement on Friday to cooperate in launching a satellite in four years that will help make climate predictions more accurate.

12.11.2004 REYKJAVIK − Global warming is melting the Arctic ice faster than expected, and the world's oceans could rise by about a meter (3 feet) by 2100, swamping homes from Bangladesh to Florida, the head of a study said on Tuesday.

06.11.2004 Some of the world’s poorest countries are planning to demand that developed countries adhere to the 'polluter-pays principle' at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference in Argentina next month.

06.11.2004 China's capital is in "a state of emergency" because of air pollution, and one of the biggest polluters in the city, host of the 2008 Olympics, will slash production till the end of the year, state media said on Thursday.

21.10.2004 Global warming threatens to reverse human progress and make international targets on halving world poverty by 2015 unattainable, a study published today said.

15.10.2004 European environment ministers are planning to limit fluoridated greenhouse gases, which are thousands of times more damaging to the climate than carbon dioxide. In today's Environment Council meeting they started to think ahead to climate policies after the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period which runs from 2008 to 2012.

15.10.2004 A worrying rise in the levels of so-called greenhouse gases linked to climate change highlights the importance of the Kyoto Protocol, British Environment Minister Elliot Morley said on Wednesday.

06.10.2004 The chief scientific advisor to the UK government recently claimed that climate change is a more serious problem than terrorism partly because global warming would increase the number of people threatened by hunger, disease and extreme weather conditions.

In this letter, Indur M. Golkany of the US Department of the Interior, argues money would be better spent addressing present-day vulnerabilities to malaria, flooding, and food and water than on "heroic" efforts to mitigate climate change.

06.10.2004 The United States is planning to try and block European plans to make airlines pay for the climate-changing gases they emit. The move will be a major challenge to Tony Blair who has promised to champion the EU proposals on the international stage, and follows in the wake of the Russian cabinet's decision to approve the Kyoto protocol on tackling climate change.