Inter Press Service: The Caribbean does not have the luxury of time for decisive action on climate change and global warming. In fact, it is on the brink of calamity, according to a prominent scientist. Conrad Douglas, a Jamaican scientist who has published over 350 reports on environmental management and related matters, has warned that "urgent action at all levels [is] required now", cautioning the region against complacency in dealing with climate change. Noting that earlier models forecast that an atmosphere...

BBC: Scientists say the recent downturn in the rate of global warming will lead to lower temperature rises in the short-term. Since 1998, there has been an unexplained "standstill" in the heating of the Earth's atmosphere. Writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades. But long-term, the expected temperature rises will not alter significantly. The slowdown in the expected rate of global warming has been studied for several years...

New York Times: When a handful of retired homeowners from Osborn Island in New Jersey gathered last month to discuss post-Hurricane Sandy rebuilding and environmental protection, L. Stanton Hales Jr., a conservationist, could not have been clearer about the risks they faced. “I said, look people, you built on a marsh island, it’s oxidizing under your feet — it’s shrinking — and that exacerbates the sea level rise,” said Dr. Hales, director of the Barnegat Bay Partnership, an estuary program financed by the Environmental...

ScienceDaily: For decades, ecologists have assumed the worst invasive species -- such as brown tree snakes and kudzu -- have an "away-field advantage." They succeed because they do better in their new territories than they do at home. A new study led by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center reveals that this fundamental assumption is not nearly as common as people might think. The away-field advantage hypothesis hinges on this idea: Successful invaders do better in a new place because the environment...

Summit Voice: The world`s major ice sheets -- on Greenland and Antarctica -- haven`t really started a major meltdown yet. But the rest of the world`s glacial regions have been losing ice at a rate of about 260 billion metric tons annually, raising sea level by about 0.03 inches per year -- about a third of the observed sea level rise. The biggest ice losses are happening in Arctic Canada, Alaska, coastal Greenland, the southern Andes and the Himalaya. Combined, the areas contribute as much to sea level rise...

Sussex County Post: Sussex County Council members are not on the same wave length regarding the debatable issue of sea level rise. At the May 7 council meeting, Susan Love, a planner with the Department of Environmental Control and Natural Resources’ Coastal Management Program, delivered an update on progress made by the state’s Sea Level Rise Advisory Committee, which is developing an adaptation plan for the state that will provide a path forward for planning for impacts of sea level rise. Ms. Love’s presentation...

Globe and Mail: Another kind of Canadian government would take this opportunity as Arctic Council chair to lead a diplomatic effort to demilitarize the region, to make it a northern Antarctica where, by international treaty, military activities are banned. Of course, the Arctic Council alone couldn't bring about demilitarization since it has no such power, but it could become an important place to put the issue on the international agenda. Canada should borrow a slogan from someone Americans love - Ronald Reagan,...

Associated Press: Giant leatherback turtles, some weighing half as much as a small car, drag themselves out of the ocean and up the sloping shore on the northeastern coast of Trinidad while villagers await wearing dimmed headlamps in the dark. Their black carapaces glistening, the turtles inch along the moonlit beach, using their powerful front flippers to move their bulky frames onto the sand. In years past, poachers from Grande Riviere and nearby towns would ransack the turtles' buried eggs and hack the critically...

EcoWatch: A study featured in the current issue of Nature reveals that ocean warming has already affected fisheries around the world over the past four decades as fish populations shift in response to changing sea temperatures. The findings provide an indicator of the effect that climate change has on the distribution and abundance of fish. The study also points to the need for wildlife officials in New England and around the world to give fish and the ecosystems they rely upon a better chance to adapt to...

Telegraph: Fiji's picturesque Natewa Bay must be a hard place to leave, and for none more so than the villagers of Vunidogoloa, who are preparing to abandon their ancestral home in the face of the rising sea. But they have little choice: big waves now overtop a once-protective sea wall, their salt-polluted vegetation is dying. They are to move as a community a mile inland, and uphill, to a new site on the northern island of Vanua Levu. Devout Methodists, they have named Kenani, Fijian for Canaan – the promised...

Guardian: Fisheries ministers from across Europe came to an agreement on a sweeping reform of fisheries policies early on Wednesday morning, but fell short of the most ambitious changes that green campaigners had demanded. They agreed to ban the wasteful practice of discarding healthy fish at sea, but most of the ban will be phased in from 2015 instead of this year as had been proposed, and there are significant caveats for some species. Fish quotas will be based on scientific advice on what is the "maximum...

Climate Central: As the planet warms under the influence of rising greenhouse gases, and melting ice drives sea level higher, scientists have focused mostly on changes in the vast ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica. If either one melts substantially or slides into the ocean, the results would be catastrophic. But there's another ice reserve to worry about: the many thousands of smaller glaciers unconnected to continental-scale ice sheets. They're melting, too, and a new report in Science shows that...

National Geographic: Everest isn't the same mountain it was when Jim Whittaker became the first U.S. climber to summit the peak in 1963. The world's highest peak has been shedding snow and ice for the past 50 years, possibly due in part to global warming, new research says. (Take an Everest quiz.) New analyses show Mount Everest has lost significant snow and ice cover over the past half century. In nearby Sagarmatha National Park, glaciers have shrunk by 13 percent. Weather data reveal the larger Everest region has...

ScienceDaily: While 99 percent of Earth's land ice is locked up in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the remaining ice in the world's glaciers contributed just as much to sea rise as the two ice sheets combined from 2003 to 2009, says a new study led by Clark University and involving the University Colorado Boulder. The new research found that all glacial regions lost mass from 2003 to 2009, with the biggest ice losses occurring in Arctic Canada, Alaska, coastal Greenland, the southern Andes and the Himalayas....

ScienceDaily: For decades, scientists have used ancient shorelines to predict the stability of today's largest ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Markings of a high shoreline from three million years ago, for example -- when Earth was going through a warm period -- were thought to be evidence of a high sea level due to ice sheet collapse at that time. This assumption has led many scientists to think that if the world's largest ice sheets collapsed in the past, then they may do just the same in our modern,...

Smithsonian: The chemistry of the ocean is changing. Most climate change discussion focuses on the warmth of the air, but around one-quarter of the carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere dissolves into the ocean. Dissolved carbon dioxide makes seawater more acidic--a process called ocean acidification--and its effects have already been observed: the shells of sea butterflies, also known as pteropods, have begun dissolving in the Antarctic. Tiny sea butterflies are related to snails, but use their muscular...

Summit Voice: After four years of studies and more than 150 peer-reviewed papers, The EU-funded ice2sea program has concluded that melting ice may not contribute as much to sea level rise as some other studies have suggested. Under a moderate greenhouse gas emissions scenario, the contribution from continental ice will likely amount to between 3.5 and 36.8 centimeters (1.4 to 14.5 inches) by 2100, the program`s leaders said this week, unveiling a new report that summarizes their research. The report is online...

Yale Environment 360: In the years leading up to the massive tsunami of March 11, 2011, it seemed that Japan’s coastal ecosystems could hardly decline in health any further. Decades of coastal engineering had divided land from ocean, turned quaint seaside towns grey with concrete, and pushed once-familiar species like loggerhead sea turtles and common orient clams towards extinction. Nearly half of the island nation’s perimeter was modified in some way; cliffs comprised most of what remained untouched. Even within the...

PhysOrg: The tattoos on Ashley Cryan's ankles depict a chicken and a pig. Since the days of Captain Cook, sailors have donned the animals' likenesses to help them walk on water and guard against drowning. According to folklore, the animals-which survived shipwrecks more often than humans-had a special power that protected them from succumbing to the sea. Cryan, whose grandfather taught her to sail when she was 11, got her tattoos after surviving a shipwreck. She said they symbolize strength and survival,...

Time: It’s easy to forget that global warming doesn’t just refer to the rising temperature of the air. Climate change is having an enormous, if less well understood, impact on the oceans, which already absorb far more carbon dioxide than the atmosphere. Like so much of what goes on in the vast depths that cover more than two-thirds of our planet’s surface, the effect of climate change on the oceans remains a black box--albeit one that scientists are working to illuminate. Here’s one way: fisheries....