President Barack Obama may attend the December climate summit in Copenhagen aimed at forging a new treaty to reduce greenhouse-gas pollution, U.S. envoy Todd Stern said today in London.

Stern made the remarks at the Major Economies Forum meeting after U.K. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said the world’s biggest greenhouse-gas polluters had narrowed gaps in three key areas during two days of talks on climate change.

The U.S., China, European Union and 14 other countries moved closer to agreement on the need for more climate aid for developing nations, on how that money will be managed and on how commitments by developed and developing countries will be reflected in an international agreement, Miliband said.

President Barack Obama may attend the December climate summit in Copenhagen aimed at forging a new treaty to reduce greenhouse-gas pollution, U.S. envoy Todd Stern said today in London. --snip--
The U.S., China, European Union and 14 other countries moved closer to agreement on the need for more climate aid for developing nations, on how that money will be managed and on how commitments by developed and developing countries will be reflected in an international agreement, Miliband said.

SEDIMENT cores from a small Arctic lake in Canada stretching back 200,000 years show unprecedented gains in global warming since 1950, indicating human activity is the likely cause. "The past few decades have been unique in the past 200,000 years in terms of the changes we see in the biology and chemistry recorded in the cores,'' University of Colorado glaciologist Yarrow Axford said.

"We see clear evidence for warming in one of the most remote places on Earth at a time when the Arctic should be cooling because of natural processes." Mr Axford is the chief author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For thousands of years, environmental changes in a remote lake on Canada's Baffin Island closely matched natural, cyclical climate changes such as those caused by the Earth's periodic wobble as it swings around the sun, the researchers said. However, lake sediment cores dating from 1950 show that expected climate cooling was overridden by human activity like greenhouse gas emissions.

Researchers were able to reconstruct the local climate over the past 200,000 years by analysing algae, insect fossils and geochemical traces in sediment cores extracted from the 40ha lake.

# The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for September 2009 was 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20th Century average of 15.0°C (59.0°F). This was the second warmest September on record, behind 2005, and the 33rd consecutive September with a global temperature above the 20th Century average. The last below-average September occurred in 1976.
# The global land surface temperature for September 2009 was 0.97°C (1.75°F) above the 20th Century average of 12.0°C (53.6°F), and ranked as the second warmest September on record, also behind 2005.

bloomberg

Six developing countries will join five western nations, including the United States and Australia, to combat climate change by better managing forestry resources, the World Bank said Tuesday.

The Forest Investment Program (FIP) will meet for the first time on October 29 in Washington to kickstart the program and discuss the criteria for selecting countries or regions of the world that could benefit most from the effort.

Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Morocco, Nepal, and Romania will join donor nations Australia, Denmark, Norway, Britain and the United States, who have jointly pledged some $US350 million ($A378.34 million) dollars to fund the project.

A federal appeals court in New Orleans has given the go-ahead for a groundbreaking class-action lawsuit over global warming to proceed.

The case, titled Ned Comer, et al. v. Murphy Oil USA, et al. [pdf], involves a group of residents and landowners along the Mississippi Gulf Coast who suffered severe property damage during Hurricane Katrina. They allege that the defendants -- energy, fossil fuels and chemical companies -- emitted greenhouse gases that contributed to global warming, which in turn caused a rise in sea levels that increased the storm's ferocity.

THOUSANDS of households in western NSW are facing an unprecedented water crisis and the State Government is stepping up plans to help truck water to several towns, while others will be restricted to using water only for critical human needs.

The Lachlan River is expected to cease flowing west of Condobolin within weeks after the decision was taken yesterday to at least halve water flows from the region's biggest dam, Wyangala, on November 1.

''I don't think people understand that, under the present conditions, by next April the dam will have less than 1 per cent left in it,'' said the chairman of Lachlan Valley Water, Dennis Moxey.

''Towns like Cowra and Forbes may not have any water, either. There are going to be hundreds, even thousands, of households that will have to truck water in to … live in their houses or they will have to walk away. I never imagined it could get this bad.''

Legislators from 16 major economies will meet on Saturday to seek consensus on a raft of climate-related policies ahead of December talks in Copenhagen. The 120 delegates believe that the policies could address 70% of the emissions cuts necessary before 2020.

A consensus, if reached, could ensure the policies are put into practice regardless of the outcome of the landmark climate talks in December. The group will present its results to the Danish PM who will host the talks.

The delegates will include a number of MEPs and former UK Foreign Office head Lord Michael Jay alongside people holding in climate- and environment-related posts in 16 nations.

The meeting has been organised by the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (Globe).

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.

Barack Obama's efforts to forge a new American consensus around the need for action on climate change has run into a brick wall of Republican opposition, with senators threatening a boycott of a proposed law to cut carbon emissions.

The Senate opens a three-day blockbuster of hearings on Tuesday, calling 54 administration officials and environment experts to try to push ahead on a climate change law before a meeting in Copenhagen that is supposed to produce a global action plan on climate change.

With that deadline looming, Obama has made his most forceful appeal to date for Congress to act on climate change. The president said on Friday that Americans had now arrived at a point of convergence on the need to move towards cleaner energy. "I do believe that a consensus is growing," he said. Those still unpersuaded, he said in a speech at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), were outside the mainstream.

The global economy is still in bad shape, and with so much to worry about it can be hard to understand all the fuss about reaching a tougher UN climate deal in December in Copenhagen.

Following are some questions and answers on the importance of crafting a new agreement from 2013.

What does it mean to me?--A new deal will change the way energy is used, priced and created. In short, it will change the global economy.

For you and me, this will most probably mean higher fuel and electricity bills, while catching a plane will also be more expensive, as will buying imported food and drink. Insurance premiums covering storm damage or other natural disasters are also likely to rise.

In short, we'll be forced to make tougher lifestyle choices.

The flip side is that governments will help make renewable energy and greener transport more attractive, allowing people to make the switch to cleaner alternatives.

Financing from rich nations could also drive a green revolution in developing countries, boosting investment, creating jobs and cutting emissions.

What can one person do? --A lot. Switch to compact fluorescent lighting in the home and office, use public transport, buy locally produced food and recycle your rubbish. Take reusable bags when shopping and switch off unused appliances at home. Every little bit helps because it gets people talking.

Deutsche Bank’s Asset Management division (DeAM) today published research which provides investors with an analysis of climate change policies and assigns a risk rating to 109 countries, states and regions based on key government mandates and supporting policy frameworks. The report, titled "Global Climate Change Policy Tracker: An Investor’s Assessment” (Climate Tracker), was produced by DB Climate Change Advisors (DBCCA), DeAM's institutional climate change investment and research business, working with the Columbia Climate Center at the Earth Institute, Columbia University.

The "Climate Tracker” is the first publicly-available analysis of its kind. It incorporates results of a model prepared by Columbia Climate Center researchers that estimates the impacts on carbon emissions of each of 270 major climate policies, and aggregates them at country, regional and global levels. The "Climate Tracker” provides a risk rating of countries and regions based on their relative attractiveness to investors. It is designed to help investors identify the best risk-adjusted returns in climate change investment opportunities around the world.

The effects of a critical greenhouse gas on global warming have been significantly underestimated, according to research suggesting that emissions controls and climate models may need to be revised

Methane’s impact on global temperatures is about a third higher than generally thought because previous estimates have not accounted for its interaction with airborne particles called aerosols, Nasa scientists found.

When this indirect effect of the potent greenhouse gas is included one tonne of methane has about 33 times as much effect on the climate over 100 years as a tonne of carbon dioxide, rather than 25 times as in standard estimates.

Drew Shindell, of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, who led the study, said that the findings added to the importance of measures to contain methane emissions, as well as those of carbon dioxide, which will be discussed at the Copenhagen climate summit in December.

Greenlanders have been the world’s master survivors, stubbornly carving a life for thousands of years out of the most inhospitable desert on the planet. They have little to fear from warming. Tom Ostermann told us: “I have no concerns that the people of Greenland will survive and will be OK. We have always been able to adapt. We are more concerned about places like Holland, for when the sea level increases. It’s those places where people have to be worried.” He leaned forward in his boat, smiling mischievously, and added: “One up to the Eskimo.”

The head of the international group leading the fight against climate change has accused countries of pushing science aside in favour of self-serving "political myopia" ahead of the vital Copenhagen summit.

Senior officials and negotiators are increasingly gloomy about the prospects for a global warming deal next month, with the British government admitting there is now no chance of a legally binding treaty.

Speaking as officials gather in Barcelona tomorrow for a final round of negotiations, Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said: "I gave all the world's leaders a very grim view of what the science tells us and that is what should be motivating us all, but I'm afraid I don't see too much evidence of that at the current stage.

"Science has been moved aside and the space has been filled up with political myopia with every country now trying to protect its own narrow short-term interests. They are afraid to have negotiations go any further because they would have to compromise on those interests."