Obama Left With Little Time to Curb Global Warming

WASHINGTON  - When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid.

Since Clinton's inauguration, summer Arctic sea ice has lost the equivalent of Alaska, California and Texas. The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton's second inauguration. Global warming is accelerating. Time is close to running out, and Obama knows it.

Companies Could Buy Areas of Rainforest in Return for Being Allowed to Pollute

The destruction of the world's rainforests is currently responsible for a fifth of the world's carbon emissions and that is set to get worse according to the Met Office.

The problem is a core part of negotiations going on at the UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland, this week to try to halt global warming.

Delegates want to find a way to help poorer nations to protect the rainforests so that the whole world can benefit from the role the forests play in absorbing carbon, releasing oxygen and ultimately regulating the climate.

Al Gore Calls for Tougher Global Limit on CO2 Levels

Gore, a former US vice president, told UN climate talks in Poznan, Poland that even the most ambitious existing targets would be unable to hold world temperature rise to safe levels.

'Don't Leave Climate Change to the World Bank'

POZNAN - Leading environment groups have opposed plans to hand over financing to check climate change to the World Bank.

Industrialised countries may be required to provide more than 100 billion dollars for developing countries to build low-carbon economies, according to unofficial estimates. This money should not be handled by the World Bank, 142 organisations fighting for climate justice said in a joint statement Tuesday (Dec. 9) at the UN climate talks under way in the Polish city Poznan.

Victims of Global Warming Could Sue Oil and Power Companies

Myles Allen, a physicist at Oxford University, said: "We are starting to get to the point that when an adverse weather event occurs we can quantify how much more likely it was made by human activity.

"And people adversely affected by climate change today are in a position to document and quantify their losses. This is going to be hugely important."

Too Late? Why Scientists Say We Should Expect the Worst

At a high-level academic conference on global warming at Exeter University this summer, climate scientist Kevin Anderson stood before his expert audience and contemplated a strange feeling. He wanted to be wrong. Many of those in the room who knew what he was about to say felt the same. His conclusions had already caused a stir in scientific and political circles. Even committed green campaigners said the implications left them terrified.