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Challenged by strict air-quality rules, dairy farmers face costly changes to generators used to burn methane to produce power. With the intention of using these generators to eliminate methane waste, along with electricity bills, farmers now meet an unexpected consequence- the conversion of methane into electricity produces nitrogen oxides, or NOx. This pollutant exacerbates the state's smog problem. After already spending several hundreds of thousands of dollars on their "dairy digester" systems at the urge of the state, farmers are forced to abide by the state's air quality standards by purchasing expensive additional equipment, or shut down their waste-consuming generators. The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District's limit of 11 parts per million of NOx for new digester systems works out to equal the emissions of 26 cars for every 1,000 cows, said Frank Mitloehner, an associate professor at UC Davis' department of animal science.

"Our ecological footprint - what we take out of the planet - is now 1.3 times the biological capacity of the Earth. In the words of Professor Bob Watson, Defra's chief scientific adviser and former chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we are in danger of approaching "a point of no return". So the action we take in the... See More next couple of decades will determine whether the stable environment on which human civilization has depended since the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago will continue. "

"We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it. Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganized researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. As with many small research groups their internal procedures were rather informal."

Anyone who's ever squeezed a whole bag of oranges into a single glass of juice knows (at least intuitively) that a whole lot of water goes into that one little refreshing gulp - but would you believe 518 liters of water for just one carton of juice?

"Studying past climates can help scientists predict how the planet will change in the future. Using historical data, scientists at the University of Bristol, have developed a new model of climate change they believe is more accurate than previous estimates. Leaving certain data out of climate models, researchers discovered, has led to exceedingly modest estimates of the effect of carbon emissions on the planet."

"Today, the State Council announced that China will commit to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP, or carbon intensity, by 40 to 45 percent of 2005 levels by 2020. It was also announced separately by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Premier Wen Jiabao (also the chair of the State Council, and pictured right, showing what President Hu meant by a "notable margin"…at least in my imagination) will attend the Copenhagen climate conference that begins in less than two weeks."

"Today, Target became the first major US retailer to stop selling farmed salmon products! Salmon consumption in the United States is a huge market for retailers. Aquaculture (farming fish) is often called the future of the seafood industry, but some types of aquaculture - such as conventional open-net salmon farming - can cause tremendous damage to the environment. Parasite infestations, concentrated fish waste, the uncontrolled spread of genetic material, and the unsustainable use of wild fish to feed farmed animals all pose significant threats to the sanctity of our marine ecosystems."

"Eating outside of your home generally requires three things: food, food containers, and food utensils. For the majority of Americans, oil is involved in all three of these components. Food, especially processed food, requires tremendous amounts of oil to grow, process, and transport it. The plastic food containers we use are made from oil. Likewise, the great majority of our disposable forks, spoons, and knives are made from petroleum-based plastics."

"Warmer global temperatures aren't just wiping out the habitat of polar bears and penguins. They're also affecting many species closer to home -- including some right in your back yard. In this year's State of the Birds report, issued earlier this month, researchers from the National Audubon Society, U.S. Department of Interior, Cornell Lab or Ornithology, and others studied how climate change is affecting the habitats, ranges, and populations of birds across North America. OnEarth takes a look at eight vulnerable bird species from across the continent."

"Whalers cited "violent interference" and other clashes lasting 31 days with Sea Shepherd as "paralyzing" the hunt. Takashi Mori of Japan's Fisheries Ministry added, "The lack of samples could affect the accuracy of our research." According to Sea Shepherd calculations, their efforts cost Japan's whaling fleeting about $132 million, as the average value of each whale is a quarter of a million dollars. The same estimates show that this season the fleet lost money, as 700 whales need to be killed to meet operating expenses."

"New research indicates that the middle [of the food chain] -small insectivorous birds and lizards-are critically important to overall health of an ecosystem, and actually help promote greater biomass." "Gruner and a team of other researchers looked at more than 100 studies insect predation by birds, bats or lizards and found that, regardless of the predator in question, their presence was associated with a 40 percent reduction in damage to plants. In turn, a healthy population of insectivores was linked to a 14 percent increase in plant biomass."

"That amount of waste reduction is the equivalent of simply not producing 15 million pairs of shoes. And Nike's overall use of recycled polyester, like for the World Cup jersey, doubled between 2009 and 2010, and has now taken 82 million plastic bottles out of landfills and back into the product stream."

"The low-intensity red LEDs (light emitting diodes) in Christmas lighting strands had up to eight times the amount of lead allowed under California law, and while the white bulbs had less lead than the colored ones, they had high levels of nickel, according to a team of researchers at the University of California, Irvine, and the University of California, Davis."

"Yesterday, Brazilian politicians took a decisive step towards opening the door to massive new Amazon deforestation, by voting in favor of radical changes to the Brazilian Forest Code - the primary legal instrument for protecting the Amazon.  If these changes become law they will let hundreds of forest criminals off the hook, and massively expand the amount of forest under threat from the chainsaws"

"As part of Major League Baseball's ongoing commitment to environmental stewardship, MLB today announced its development of a comprehensive software system designed to collect and analyze environmental data related to stadium operations across the 30 Clubs. Moreover, this software tool will keep track of and distribute best practices related to environmental stewardship across MLB's 30 Clubs as well. The full roll out of this path breaking program to all the Clubs will happen during this 2010 season."

"The woodlands and pastures of southern Spain once provided fertile hunting ground for the Iberian lynx, but habitat destruction, loss of prey, and trapping diminished the population of the reclusive feline dramatically, to just 100 animals a decade ago, making it the most endangered cat in the world. Now, thanks to a combination of political action, high-tech monitoring, and improved public awareness, the lynx is making a slow, if not always steady, comeback in Andalusia."

Overall strength of storms as measured in wind speed would rise by 2 to 11 percent, but there would be between 6 and 34 percent fewer storms in number, a new report from a World Meteorological Organization panel of 10 experts indicates. There would be fewer weak and moderate storms and more of the big damaging ones. "An 11 percent increase in wind speed translates to roughly a 60 percent increase in damage, said study co-author Kerry Emanuel, a professor of meteorology at MIT."

"In 2006, Ron Suskind published "The One Percent Doctrine," a book about the U.S. war on terrorists after 9/11. The title was drawn from an assessment by then-Vice President Dick Cheney, who, in the face of concerns that a Pakistani scientist was offering nuclear-weapons expertise to Al Qaeda, reportedly declared: "If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping Al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response." Cheney contended that the U.S. had to confront a very new type of threat: a 'low-probability, high-impact event.' Soon after Suskind's book came out, the legal scholar Cass Sunstein, who then was at the University of Chicago, pointed out that Mr. Cheney seemed to be endorsing the same "precautionary principle" that also animated environmentalists. Sunstein wrote in his blog: "According to the Precautionary Principle, it is appropriate to respond aggressively to low-probability, high-impact events - such as climate change."

"Researchers at the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft have given scientists studying carbon dixoide a new tool - daily global measurements of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. The data shown in the tool includes information gathered during more than 7 years of research on the concentration and distribution of CO2 in our mid-trophosphere - or, 3-7 miles above the Earth's surface - and how that CO2 travels across the globe. The video after the jump shows an animation of the carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere with the Mauna Loa curve laid over it. The visualization is intense."

">In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the problems associated with climate change are regarded with great apprehension. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), in a report released during the conference, warned that the region could bear one of the heaviest costs of climate change. The organization said that up to 40 percent of the biodiversity of some Latin American nations could be wiped out by 2100 if steps are not taken immediately to control carbon emissions."