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Construction can resume on a massive Southern California solar energy project after wildlife officials determined it will not jeopardize the threatened desert tortoise, federal officials said Friday.

As Nasa prepares to retire its fleet of space shuttles, it is encouraging private companies to build new rockets to get its astronauts into orbit. Among the firms landing huge contracts to build the next generation of spacecraft is SpaceX. Science correspondent David Shukman visited the company's rocket factory in California for a look inside the prototype capsule.

The frustrating search for a shady spot to park is about to get easier. But the new trees being planted at nine big parking lots in the San Jose, Calif., area aren't leafy green saplings, they're big silver specimens with 12-foot-tall trunks and broad steel canopies that will shield cars from the sun - and produce solar power.

"The projected snow loss, a result of climate change, could get even worse by the end of the 21st century, depending on how the world reacts. Sustained action to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions could keep annual average snowfall levels steady after mid-century, but if emissions continue unabated, the study predicts that snowfall in Southern California mountains will be two-thirds less by the year 2100 than it was in the years leading up to 2000."

The time may finally be right to sell Americans on eco-driving, according to a group of transportation experts from four University of California campuses as well as representatives from industry and government who attended an all-day conference on May 18.

The demise of the world's forests some 250 million years ago likely was accelerated by aggressive tree-killing fungi triggered by global climate change, according to a new study by a University of California, Berkeley, scientist and her Dutch and British colleagues.

Hoping to accelerate the adoption of solar energy by a wider audience, the city of San Jose, together with the Bay Area Climate Collaborative, recently launched a new program that will allow businesses and governments throughout the region to take advantage of similar "solar group buys."

The authors of a recent Perspectives piece in the journal Nature Climate Science say it is not enough to intuit the success of climate communications. They contend the evaluation of climate communication should be met with the same rigor as climate science itself. Here, someone uses the 220 megapixel HiPerWall display at the University of California, San Diego to discuss 10 time varying Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change simulation runs.

Containers made from plastics are used in most traditional greenhouse operations. While plastic containers are practical, strong, and can be formed to any size, shape, or color, the extensive use of these petroleum-based containers creates significant waste disposal problems for the greenhouse industry and consumers. One example: a 2008 report found that a typical greenhouse operation in California discards over 3560 pounds of plastic trays, flats, and containers annually.

The University of Connecticut and California State University researchers found that seafloor communities in a restricted fishing area in NOAA's Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary showed indications of recovery from chronic fishing gear impacts but is not fully stable. The finding is significant because bottom trawlers, dredges and certain gillnets, for example, can alter the ocean floor and benthic ecosystems that provide food and shelter for fish and other marine species.

Daily temperature fluctuations, not just high temperatures, play a significant role in the transmission of dengue, a deadly mosquito-borne disease that strikes millions of people in tropical and subtropical countries, according to ground-breaking research led by French, Thailand and U.S. scientists and conceived by medical entomologist Thomas Scott of the University of California, Davis.

Precipitation and runoff in California's major river basin will not fall dramatically with climate change, according to a new federal study that shows rising temperatures will have an uneven effect on the West's water supplies.

When you get into your car, for the daily commute or for a relaxing weekend visit to a friend house you give off energy. Not just the energy from the fossil fuels that you burn, but a different kind of energy, vibrational energy. Most of us do not give that energy a second thought, unless we're trying to do something that requires fine motor skills, such as putting the lid back onto your slightly deformed cup of scalding hot coffee, but it is there.

Gray whales survived many cycles of global cooling and warming over the past few million years, likely by exploiting a more varied diet than they do today, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, and Smithsonian Institution paleontologists.