Climate Change: latest news and comment

10.12.2004 The United States stood by its refusal to sign a landmark global warming agreement, insisting at an environmental conference here that it is doing more to battle climate change than many nations.

06.12.2004 This week's issue of Nature features the first study to demonstrate a link between greenhouse gas emissions and an extreme weather event — in this case, the unusually high temperatures in Europe during the summer of 2003 that led to 14,000 deaths more than the seasonal average in France alone.

06.12.2004 The world must do far more to reduce greenhouse gases than merely meet the targets set in 1998 at the Kyoto environmental conference in Japan, Australia's environment minister said Monday.

29.11.2004 The ice is melting and the heat is on for international delegates assembling in Buenos Aires next week to find new ways to confront global warming under the 194-nation treaty on climate change.

29.11.2004 More than 2.5 million people in the Asia and Pacific region die each year due to environmental risks, such as exposure to urban and indoor air pollution, unsafe water, poor sanitation and hygiene, and climate change.

22.11.2004 BRUSSELS, Belgium, November 19, 2004 (ENS) - The European Union took two big steps in the past 24 hours. The Council of Ministers and Parliamentappointed a new executive branch under a new president, and the EU stepped up efforts to get rid of the world’s most toxic chemicals by ratifying the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs).

22.11.2004 One of the internationally agreed mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gas emissions was set into motion yesterday (18 November), as Russia officially gave its ratification of the Kyoto Protocol to Kofi Annan, secretary-general to the United Nations.

19.11.2004 Melting glaciers caused by climate change pose an urgent threat to Mount Everest's unique environment, activists said Wednesday, launching a campaign to protect the Himalayan mountain range and the world's highest peak.

19.11.2004 NAIROBI, Kenya, November 18, 2004 (ENS) - The 90 day countdown to the Kyoto Protocol’s entry into force was triggered today by the receipt of the Russian Federation’s instrument of ratification by the United Nations Secretary-General. The Protocol will become legally binding on its 128 Parties on February 16, 2005.

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.