Inter Press Service: For the first time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has publicly released a draft plan on how the department's programmes will adapt to global warming, in a move that could lay additional groundwork for important new emissions rulemaking the agency may announce in coming months. Obama is being urged to set new carbon standards on U.S. power plants, cutting their greenhouse gas emissions by at least a quarter by 2020. Credit: public domain The EPA is tasked with oversight of the...

Huffington Post: Hurricane Sandy survivors and environmental advocates met in front of the White House on Monday to demand action from President Barack Obama on climate change ahead of his State of the Union address. "We're here to deliver over 280,000 signatures to President Obama asking for climate action now," said Brad Johnson, campaign manager for the environmental group Forecast the Facts, which, along with 350.org, CREDO and Moms Clean Air Force, helped gather signatures and put together the demonstration....

BBC: The fishing industry in Iceland is shrugging off the prospect of European trade sanctions if it continues to over-fish one of Scotland's most valuable stocks. The EU has agreed a package of measures against the country - and its neighbour, the Faroe Islands - for use if they do not stop fishing significant quantities of mackerel. But, in Iceland, there is a feeling the sanctions would have almost no impact. HB Grandi is one of Iceland's biggest fish processing firms, handling about 20,000...

New York Times: A group of prominent officials from several nations are creating an independent body dedicated to making environmental protection a top priority in global policymaking involving the high seas. The organization, the Global Ocean Commission, is to be led by the former Costa Rican president José María Figueres; Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s planning minister; and David Miliband, a former British foreign secretary. So far there is no American representation. Mr. Milibrand described the United Nations...

ScienceDaily: Increasingly frequent extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, severe storms, and heat waves have focused the attention of climate scientists on the connections between greenhouse warming and extreme weather. Because of the potential threat to U.S. national security, a new study was conducted to explore the forces driving extreme weather events and their impacts over the next decade, specifically with regard to their implications for national security planning. The report finds that the early...

New York Times: Here`s a Dot Earth postcard from the South Pacific, describing the final step in the creation of a vast international sanctuary for sharks. It`s written by Jessica Cramp, a young woman who, after working as a biologist in a drug discovery laboratory in San Diego for nearly a decade, decided it was time to pursue her passion for marine life. Cramp is now the program manager for the Pacific Islands Conservation Initiative, a nonprofit environmental group based in the Cook Islands: I’m writing from...

Yale Environment 360: NASA is expected to launch today its newest Earth-observing satellite, Landsat 8, at a time when previous Landsat satellites have either stopped working or have developed serious technical problems. NASA scientists say the launch of the $855 million satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California is vital to the space agency’s mission of monitoring the Earth during a period of unprecedented environmental change — from disappearing glaciers and sea ice, to widespread forest loss, to intensifying...

Guardian: It is a fantastically surreal propostion. An Icelandic whaler, Kristján Loftsson, is powering his whaling ships using "biofuel" composed of 80% diesel – and 20% whale oil. Loftsson claims the oil is additionally friendly to the environment as it is rendered out of whale blubber using heat from Iceland's volcanic vents. The story might seem a bizarre development even in the Alice in Wonderland world of modern whaling, where Japanese whaling fleets claim to be conducting "scientific research" and...

Bellona: The truth will likely lie in between as he addresses the annual joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate tomorrow evening. But one of the strongest indicators that he could let loose with some of the oldie-but-goodie environmental tunes that cemented his popularity during his early first term is that he essentially has nothing to lose as a second-term president, who, judging by his across the board populist rhetoric at his inauguration, could aim for the jugular on his signature...

Ecologist: Over the last 100 years the global population has increased four-fold to seven billion people and may reach nine billion by 2075. How to produce enough food to feed all these people is one of the biggest global challenges. Throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first century, food production has been dramatically increased by improving agricultural yields, particularly by applying nitrogen fertilisers. In 1908, the German chemist Fritz Haber invented a method for producing ammonia fertilizer...

Guardian: If the EU decides to ban fishing boats from discarding the edible fish they catch, it'll land the British government in a spot of bother. It's been using the discards issue as its excuse for justifying overfishing. Last week the European parliament, pressed among others by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's excellent Fish Fight campaign, voted to stop industrial fishing ships from dumping dead fish back into the water. If the proposal is accepted by the council of ministers, it will mean the end of...

3News NZ: Australia will give $18.5 million (A$15 million) to the Pacific island nation of Kiribati towards the cost of rebuilding a main road damaged by rising sea levels. Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr who is visiting Kiribati says fixing the road will ensure people can get to schools, health clinics and markets. "Kiribati is at the front line of climate change," Senator Carr said in a statement on Monday, adding its highest point is now just three metres above sea level. Without help in the...

AAP: Australia will give $15 million to the Pacific island nation of Kiribati towards the cost of rebuilding a main road damaged by rising sea levels. Foreign Minister Bob Carr who is visiting Kiribati says fixing the road will ensure people can get to schools health clinics and markets. "Kiribati is at the front line of climate change," Senator Carr said in a statement on Monday, adding its highest point is now just three metres above sea level. Without help in the fight against climate change,...

AlertNet: When the heavy rainfall came last month, floodwaters poured into Magdalena Lweno's house and washed away her hard-won belongings: her mattresses, couches, television set, clothing and her daughter's school books. Worst of all, it took the cooking utensils the mother of three uses to run her business as a food vendor, leaving her without an income. "I can't work right now because my working tools have been swept away,' the 39-year-old resident of low-lying Jangwani suburb complained, from the...

Reuters: It was hours before dawn on a heaving Arctic sea, and snow showers were making it hard for Kurt Ludvigsen to find his fishing buoys with the trawler's powerful searchlight. But the 49-year-old Norwegian was less bothered by the conditions than by the large numbers of cod flailing in the nets he and his younger brother Trond winched aboard. "It's paradoxical but we have too many fish this year," the older Ludvigsen said. "Prices have fallen 30 percent ... We're having to work far harder." Just...

Seacoast: By the end of 2014, the town is expected to have the most rigorous climate change adaptation plan on the Seacoast. Through a $683,472 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of New Hampshire and Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve are working with the town to develop a plan based on Exeter's perspectives using hydraulic and hydrologic modeling and climate change scenarios. Paul Kirshen, a research professor with UNH's Institute for the Study...

Guardian: The trawler was a mass of battered metal looming high above our little boat, a great bucket of rust on the bright blue Hebridean sea. For two days last July we watched it plough up and down a shallow patch inshore, just where we'd been used to seeing a school of basking sharks feeding. But those had gone, and so had the seals that sunbathed on the nearby rocks. A clanking noise filled the air, broken kelp fronds were washing up on the beach, and the water in the shallows, usually crystal-clear, was...

Independent: The north-eastern United States and eastern Canada were pummelled yesterday by a severe blizzard which brought furious winds and hours of snowfall, knocking out power for more than 600,000 people across the region, and forcing the cancellation of thousands of flights and other transport links. In places, there was more than 3ft of snow. At least six deaths were blamed on the storm conditions, according to the Associated Press. A man in his seventies was reported to have died when a driver lost control...

Grand Island Independent: Now that President Obama put climate change back on the table in his second inaugural address, a new national poll finds growing public support for regulating greenhouse gas emissions and requiring utilities to switch to lower-carbon fuel sources. The percentage of Americans who think climate change is occurring has rebounded, according to the Duke University national survey, and is at its highest level since 2006. The study also finds that while Americans support regulating greenhouse gas emissions,...

Reuters: The U.S. Northeast started digging itself out of a blizzard that dumped up to 40 inches of snow with hurricane force winds, killing at least nine people and leaving about half a million customers without power. Airports slowly cranked back to life on Sunday, rare travel bans in Connecticut and Massachusetts were lifted, but roads throughout the region remained treacherous, according to state transportation departments. As the region recovered, another large winter storm building across the...