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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

Find out the cold, hard numbers on how much you can reduce your numerical carbon footprint and your grocery bill by switching to these seven low emission eats.

Britain is the world centre of a multibillion dollar "carbon offset" industry which is failing to lower global greenhouse gas emissions, a major report from Friends of the Earth claimed today.

BBCs Series "Develop or Die" looks at Developing Countries around Asia, and the different challenges each face to continue their development amindst Global Concerns about Climate Change, CO2 Emissions, increasing Pollution, and public demand for increased sustainable development both in developed Countries but also the rapidly developing regions of the Planet. In this Episode Malaysia (Part 1 of 2) highlights the challenges faced as transport and construction boom, while in Part 2 Vietnam sets an example with regard to the increasing Tourist Industry in Asia.

A new analysis has shown that payments to reduce carbon emissions from the forests could generate more income than palm oil production on deforested land.

Low-lying Pacific island nations have long been saying that the climate change commitments coming from the wealthy nations of the world, including the G8 pledge to hold global temperature rise to 2°C, are inadequate to protect their future. Now they have some more allies -- A coalition of the world's poorest countries,

Estimates of the carbon legacy of bringing a child into the world suggest that the green choice may be to stop at two kids

A map launched at the Science Museum in London has been developed using the latest peer-reviewed science from the Met Office Hadley Centre and other leading impact scientists. It shows that the land will heat up more quickly than the sea, and high latitudes, particularly the Arctic, will have larger temperature increases