"Global wheat crops are taking it on the chin, thanks to a drought and fires in Russia, too much rain in Canada, and locusts in Australia. Prices are at levels not seen in almost two years." Climate-driven harvest failures in other parts of the world may be good news for US grain dealers -- and may alter the balance of UN climate talks.
"Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill asked Russians to pray for rain on Sunday as wildfires raged across the European parts of the vast country, sweltering since June in an unprecedented heat wave."
"Forest fires continue to rage around several Russian cities and officials say at least seven people have died, including two firefighters."
"Can light-colored rooftops and roads really curb carbon emissions and combat global climate change? The idea has been around for years, but now, a new study by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that is the first to use a global model to study the question has found that implementing cool roofs and cool pavements in cities around the world can not only help cities stay cooler, they can also cool the world, with the potential of canceling the heating effect of up to two years of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions."
"The Great Lakes are feeling the heat from climate change. As the world's largest freshwater system warms, it is poised to systematically alter life for local wildlife and the tribes that depend on it, according to regional experts."
"The NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies now reports that the first six months of 2010 are the warmest on record, both in terms of atmospheric data and in combined atmospheric/ocean readings."
"The latest skirmish in the decades-long scientific battle over the health risks of the most toxic form of dioxin is heating up."
"The upper ocean warmed considerably over the past decade and a half, according to a new study that attempts to make sense of conflicting analyses of the amount of heat stored in the world's seas."
The vast deposits of deepwater methane hydrates may have been a major factor in the Deepwater Horizon blowout and explosion. Methane hydrates expand 164 times in volume when destablilized by heat and reduction in pressure. Such conditions may have existed the night of the explosion, causing a quickly expanding bubble of methane gas to shoot up the drill column before exploding on the platform on the ocean's surface.
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