Carbon future in black and white
<p>Making sense of recent energy trends can seem like a high-stakes Rorschach test. Some experts see the boom in renewable energy and the shift away from coal in many countries as evidence that the world
Jeff Tollefson
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Climate e-mail rerun
Arriving at work on 5 March, Stanford University ecologist Paul Ehrlich found a rambling and highly profane voice message from someone identifying himself as John Q Public. In one of his more lucid moments, the caller labelled Ehrlich and his colleagues in the climate-science community as "progressive communists attempting to destroy America".
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Asian pollution delays inevitable warming
<p>The grey, sulphur-laden skies overlying parts of Asia have a bright side — they reflect sunlight back into space, moderating temperatures on the ground. Scientists are now exploring how and where pollution from power plants could offset, for a time, the greenhouse warming of the carbon dioxide they emit.</p>
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World looks ahead post-Copenhagen
Two lines of evidence nearly brought down the last-minute climate agreement brokered in Copenhagen by US President Barack Obama: studies indicating that the impacts of global warming could be more severe than previously thought, and that rich countries could do more to counter the problem without breaking the bank.
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Satellites beam in biomass estimates
Additional detail could help bring woodland into a future climate treaty.
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End of the road for Copenhagen?
Expectations are dropping as December
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Brazil mulls major climate action
Building on an existing pledge to slash deforestation rates in the Amazon, Brazil is considering a commitment to substantially reduce cumulative greenhouse-gas emissions over the next decade.
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Ozone protocol squares up to climate
Europeans back efforts to amend the Montreal Protocol to address global warming.
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Counting carbon in the Amazon
If the next climate treaty tackles deforestation, tropical nations will need to monitor the biomass of their forests. One ecologist has worked out a way to do that from the sky, finds Jeff Tollefson.
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Time running out for climate talks
Rift between developed and developing nations might be too great.