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'Brown Clouds' Are World's Newest Environmental Threat By TINI TRAN AND JOHN HEILPRIN / AP WRITER Friday, November 14, 2008 BEIJING - A dirty brown haze sometimes more than a mile thick is darkening skies not only over vast areas of Asia, but also in the Middle East, southern Africa and the Amazon Basin, changing weather patterns and threatening health and food supplies, the UN reported. The huge smog-like plumes, caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and firewood, are known as "atmospheric brown clouds." Cars drive through thick smog on a street in Beijing in September 2008. Enormous brown clouds of pollution hanging over Asia are killing hundreds of thousands of people, melting glaciers, changing weather patterns and damaging crops, the United Nations said. (Photo: AFP) When mixed with emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming the earth's atmosphere like a greenhouse, they are the newest threat to the global environment, according to a report commissioned by the UN Environment Program and released Thursday. "All of these points to an even greater and urgent need to look at emissions across the planet," said Achim Steiner, head of Kenya-based UNEP, which funded the report with backing from Italy, Sweden and the United States. Brown clouds are caused by an unhealthy mix of particles, ozone and other chemicals that come from cars, coal-fired power plants, burning fields and wood-burning stoves. First identified by the report's lead researcher in 1990, the clouds were depicted Thursday as being more widespread and causing more environmental damage than previously known. Perhaps most widely recognized as the haze this past summer over Beijing's Olympics, the clouds have been found to be more than a mile (kilometer) thick around glaciers in the Himalaya and Hindu Kush mountain ranges. They hide the sun and absorb radiation, leading to new worries not only about global climate change but also about extreme weather conditions. "All t

The Global Campaign for Climate Action is running the "Human Voices" campaign, a key component of which is the Climate Orb over on the TckTckTck website. It just went live at the end of last week and now you can add your experience to the project.

We all know that adapting to climate change is going to cost us -- but that doing nothing will ultimately cost us even more -- however, a new report from the International Institute for Environment and Development says that the real costs of adaptation are likely to be 2-3 times greater than those estimated by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change :

New Oxfam report warns multiple climate impacts could reverse 50 years of work to end poverty

human impacts of climate change - not strictly on the syllabus but interesting nonetheless could be good to use as an example of forced migration though

Climate change: a development challenge Climate change: building the resilience of poor rural communities Desertification Fighting water scarcity in the Arab countries Fighting rural poverty: the role of ICTs Food prices: Smallholders can be part of the solution The future of world food security Land tenure security and poverty reduction Linking land and water governance Remittances Rural finance: Small amounts making a big difference Women

Climate change in Malawi is pushing people further into poverty and women are suffering most, according to our new report (Wed June 17).

Migration and displacement, caused by climate change, could vastly exceeds anything that has occurred before, according to a report launched today. Whole human populations may be forced to move for their own survival.

The Indonesian Maritime Minister's proposal comes as a report this week reinforces the need to accommodate forecast increasing numbers of people displaced by climate change

high-powered group of senior Republicans and Democrats led two missions to China in the final months of the Bush administration for secret backchannel negotiations aimed at securing a deal on joint US-Chinese action on climate change, the Guardian has learned.

Intercative climate change map for the UK

And as you might imagine, it's not pretty- climate change's usual suspects like more severe tropical storms, drought, and raising sea levels make appearances, but it's some of the lesser-known threats detailed here that make the report truly scary

Climate change photos in the Nepalese mountains before and after