A new U.S. government report paints a disturbing picture of the current and future effects of climate change and offers a glimpse of what the nation’s climate will be like by century’s end. By michael d. lemonick, reposted with permission from Yale’s

A new comprehensive analysis indicates that the financial risk to companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-Stock Index would vary greatly under a cap-and trade program requiring the purchase of carbon emission credits. The earnings of most companies would be relatively unaffected, but a few could face costs that could more than offset all their earnings. The analysis also finds that the greenhouse gas emissions from companies in the S&P 500 total more than all the car, truck, bus and aircraft emissions in the United States.

A new report made public by the Commission underlines the crucial role that soils can play in mitigating climate change. Soils contain around twice the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and three times the amount to be found in vegetation. Europe's soils are an enormous carbon reservoir, containing around 75 billion tonnes, and poor management can have serious consequences: a failure to protect Europe's remaining peat bogs, for example, would release the same amount of carbon as an additional 40 million cars on Europe's roads.

“I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants.” - Al Gore

High-tech smuggling operations may not be what you'd normally associate with the ongoing clearance of the Amazon rainforest, but logging companies intent on plundering it for timber have been using hackers to break into the Brazilian government's sophisticated tracking system and fiddle the records.

Written by a collaborative of leading thinkers across a diverse range of industries, "Worldchanging" demonstrates that the means for building a better future lie all around us. Filled with information, resources, reviews and ideas, "Worldchanging" gives readers access to the tools they need to make a difference.

The westerly winds over the Southern Ocean are intensifying due to global climate change. But what is the response of the Southern Ocean circulation and its ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere? A study led by scientists from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) in Kiel, Germany, provides new and partly surprising results using data from a worldwide network of profiling deep-ocean drifters.

Variations in the strength of the Gulf Stream can in part attributed to currents off South Africa. This is the result of studies recently published in the world-renowned scientific journals Nature and Geophysical Research Letters by oceanographers of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR), Kiel and the University of Cape Town.

The massive expansion of agrofuels is responsible for forest destruction, livelihood loss and increased food costs. Certification of agrofuels will do nothing to address the problems. By Chris Lang