Research by Dr Johnathan Kool of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University, and his colleagues, has established that the richest marine region on Earth - the Coral Triangle between Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines - depends vitally for its diversity and resilience on coral and fish larvae swept in from the South China Sea and Solomon Islands.

The State and Federal government announced today that they would "pursue other alternative sources of energy, namely gas, to meet Sabah's power supply needs." Proposed for an undeveloped beach on the north-eastern coast of Borneo, the coal plant, according to critics, would have threatened the Coral Triangle, one of the world's most biodiverse marine ecosystems, and Tabin Wildlife Reserve, home to Critically Endangered Sumatran rhinos and Bornean orangutans. Local fishermen feared that discharges from the plant would have imperiled their livelihood.

Central America has suffered the highest rate of forest loss in Latin America over the last 10 years, despite a growing number of plans aimed at curbing the decline, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reports.

"Brandt's bat, a species not identified by science until 1970 and not seen in Ireland since 2003, has been declared probably extinct."

"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."

aryland utilities would have to sign multi-decade contracts to buy offshore wind energy under a proposal Gov. Martin O'Malley could introduce as soon as Thursday. A draft of O'Malley's offshore wind bill, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, would require the state's four utilities to sign fixed-price contracts of at least 20 years with offshore wind developers who are expected to build wind turbines a dozen miles off the coast of Ocean City.

26.6% of Hispanics lived in counties that violated 24-hour standards for fine particulate matter.

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?

One thing you can say about the winter of 2010-'11, for what it's worth: the Arctic doesn't seem so remote anymore. You don't have to be a meteorologist to get the feeling that the polar atmosphere has sprung a leak -- that the freezing down here has something to do with the warming up there.

10:10UK makes a complete 180 on how they want to talk about climate change. They made that tasteless video showing children blowing up for 10-10. Now they say the key is to be positive when talking about climate change.

Nestlé officials last year said they would refuse to buy palm oil that was not sustainably harvested. Palm oil, which is used in an increasing number of products, from cosmetics to food, has grown into a $20-billion industry worldwide.

From 1950 to 2006 the United Nation Food and Agriculture Agency (FAO) estimated that 12,700 metric tons of fish were caught in the Arctic, giving the impression that the Arctic was a still-pristine ecosystem, remaining underexploited by the world's fisheries. However, a recent study by the University of British Colombia Fisheries Center and Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences throws cold water on this widespread belief. According to the study, published in Polar Biology, the total Arctic catch from 1950 to 2006 is likely to have been nearly a million metric tons, almost 75 times the FAO's official record.

New research shows that the 2010 Amazon drought may have been even more devastating to the region's rainforests than the unusual 2005 drought, which was previously billed as a one-in-100 year event.

"The photovoltaic collector field will feature a 5.3-megawatt system, and will include 16,500 PV panels. The university says that once installed, the field will generate 5.5 percent of the campus' electrical power and bring down its energy costs by about 8 percent. Not too shabby. The 5.5 percent figure is an average stretched over the year. On super sunny days, the installation is capable of meeting up to 20 percent of the campus' power needs."

"Our paper is the first to publish accurate measurements for whale sharks in the field," says PhD candidate Christoph Rohner. "Other researchers have previously tried to measure the sharks with a tape measure, or by visually estimating size, which is obviously difficult to do accurately," he explains.

Some estimates predict that by 2013, 80% of the North American forests could be gone.

"Peak Oil being that high point on a bell curve where global petroleum extraction reaches maximum output and then starts to decline. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) production of conventional crude oil peaked in 2006, not that this stopped demand from increasing. The issues that stem from Peak Oil have to do with the crunch that will come when our demand exceeds remaining supply.]"