If you happened on Friday morning to walk into the Temple of Earth in Beijing — the nearly 500-year-old monument where Chinese emperors once prayed for good harvests — you would have noticed a steady drip. The environmental group Greenpeace placed ice sculptures of 100 children — made of the glacial meltwater that feeds China's great rivers — inside the temple, to symbolize the risk that climate change and disappearing ice poses to the more than 1 billion people ...

Humankind doesn't have a great track record when it comes to cleaning up environmental messes, but there was one time we really outdid ourselves. That was back in 1989, when over 190 nations signed the Montreal Protocol, phasing out the use of chlorofluorocarbons . The decade before, scientists had discovered that CFCs were blowing a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, exposing us to dangerous ultraviolet radiation and boosting the risk of skin cancer. Today, CFCs are no ...

Ancient man may have started global warming through massive deforestation and burning that could have permanently altered the Earth's climate, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. The study, published in the scientific journal Quaternary Science Reviews and reported on the University of Virginia's Web site, says over thousands of years, farmers burned down so many forests on such a large scale that huge amounts of carbon dioxide were ...

You're probably not thinking about what you would like for Christmas yet. But ask any environmentalist for their ideal gift and you'll get a version of this answer: a binding agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December that is strong enough to match the science. The talks are the latest in a line of climate conferences that began in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. This year the focus will be on the details of a ...

In the tree of life, we often envision evolution working like a patient gardener, pruning species that don't quite fit, bit by bit. But that's not how extinction works in practice. Throughout our planet's history, mass extinction has occurred five times — most recently 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs finally died out — taking out vast amounts of life all at once, usually due to a catastrophic and sudden climatic change. But it turns out that ...

The world's largest, fastest fully solar-powered boat is being built in preparation for a round-the-world challenge. The futuristic-looking "Planet Solar," which is 100 percent powered by sunlight, is the brainchild of Swiss engineer Raphael Domjan, a former paramedic with a passion for innovative design and renewable energies. The 30-meter vessel is currently being built in Kiel, Germany, and will be finished early next year. If all goes according to plan, the boat will begin sailing summer 2010 -- first in ...

Top U.S. and Chinese officials launched an expanded discussion of the crucial relationship between their two countries Monday, holding the first meeting of a "Strategic and Economic Dialogue" in Washington. President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan and Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo each addressed the opening session of the two-day meeting. The dialogue is intended to address a series of issues, including the two countries' response to the global ...

Add CO2 to the atmosphere and the climate will get warmer — that much is well established. But climate change and carbon aren't in a one-to-one relationship. If they were, climate modeling would be a cinch. How much the globe will warm if we put a certain amount of CO2 into the air depends on the sensitivity of the climate. How vulnerable is the polar sea ice; how rapidly might the Amazon dry up; how fast could the Greenland ...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's first day in India began on a solemn note as she signed a condolence book at a Mumbai luxury hotel ravaged last year by terrorists. Clinton also expressed sorrow over Friday's bombings of the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia, saying they serve as reminders that the threat of terrorism and extremism is real. The United States, she added, will work with partners to confront such attacks. Mumbai, India's financial capital, is Clinton's ...

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled Friday to Mumbai, India, the first stop on a weeklong visit to that country and Thailand, where she will attend meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Her goal is to "broaden and strengthen the strategic partnership between the United States and India" on issues such as climate change and nonproliferation, according to a State Department briefing held before she left. Pakistan also is expected to be on the agenda, given the ...