AFP: Bjoern Lomborg, the bad boy of the climate debate who has rejected for years quot;alarmistquot; prophecies from environmentalists, stresses in a new book the need to invest billions to fight global warming. In quot;Smart Solutions to Climate Change,quot; Lomborg lashes out at current policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions but also highlights the need to spend 100 billion dollars a year on intelligent research and green technologies. By spending billions in a smart way, the world could ...

Guardian: Transocean, the American rig owner at the centre of BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, has been accused of compromising safety in the North Sea by quot;bullying, harassment and intimidationquot; of its staff. The allegations, in a damning report by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) seen by the Guardian, will deeply embarrass Transocean, which on Tuesday appears before a House of Commons investigation into the lessons to be learnt from the Deepwater Horizon spill. The offshore and ...

Inter Press Service: Every year, more than a million Amazonian turtle eggs do not make it to the hatching period, nor do they serve as food for humans in the Tabuleiro de Embaubal, a series of beaches along the final stretch of Brazil's Xingú River. Thousands of turtles lay 1.8 million eggs each year in Embaubal, in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. But about 70 percent are destroyed by flooding or by the mothers themselves, which dig up sand where eggs have already been laid, explained biologist Juarez ...

Sunday Mail: PRINCE Charles faced ridicule yesterday for taking the Royal train on a week-long nationwide tour to promote cycling. The prince has ordered the nine carriage train for a five-day, 1300-mile quot;green tourquot; of Britain, starting from Glasgow tomorrow. His trip is aimed at promoting environmentally friendly lifestyles and ethical modes of transport and he has boasted that the train will run on biofuels. But yesterday experts accused Charles of hypocrisy after it emerged the ...

Guardian: Climate scientists meeting in Britain this week hope to build a database to predict natural disasters precisely. And records of the voyages of the Bounty and Beagle will assist them in their task Leading climate scientists will gather in the UK this week to finalise plans for a revolutionary project aimed at transforming their ability to predict meteorological disasters. The goal is to create an international databank that would generate forecasts of unprecedented ...

Guardian: The government will this month sound the death knell for the world's largest tidal energy project ndash; to be built across the Severn estuary between Somerset and south Wales ndash; when it rules out public funding for the controversial £20bn plan. The announcement will please some environmentalists, who were worried about the impact on bird life in the estuary, but others say such spending cuts will make a mockery of David Cameron's pledge to be the quot;greenest government everquot;. The ...

Independent (UK): Farmers in England are to be issued with licences to cull badgers under plans to halt the spread of tuberculosis in cattle herds, which will spark a storm of protest from animal lovers. Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, will risk legal action -- and the wrath of generations of Wind in the Willow readers -- to give the go-ahead for a cull in the areas worst affected by the disease. The coalition will launch a public consultation later this month on the precise details ...

Guardian: The soaring price of wheat has raised questions about the UK's commitment to biofuels as it attempts to wean itself from its dependence on oil. A network of biorefineries that convert wheat and other crops into bioethanol that can then be blended with petrol are being developed as the UK looks to meet its EU renewable transport fuels obligations. But the huge amounts of wheat that will be used in the process ndash; up to a fifth of the UK's current annual production within four ...

LiveScience: As the Deepwater Horizon oil spill unfolded earlier this summer, a mechanical engineer helped cleanup crews keep up with the moving target by developing a steady stream of forecasts that predicted where the oil slick would spread several days in advance. The engineer's three-day forecasts successfully showed where and when oil would wash ashore in the Mississippi River Delta locations of Plaquemines Parish and Grand Isle, La., as well as on the white-sand beaches of Pensacola, Fla., ...

NYT: Crews hoisted the blowout preventer that once sat atop BP's stricken well to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday night, and the federal leader of the spill response said that there was no longer any risk that the well might leak again. quot;This well does not constitute a threat to the Gulf of Mexico at this point,quot; the leader, Thad W. Allen, a former Coast Guard admiral, said during a conference call with reporters. quot;The well has been effectively secured regarding any potential ...

NYT: THE scientific rebel J. Craig Venter created headlines ndash; and drew comparisons to Dr. Frankenstein ndash; when he announced in May that his team had created what, with a bit of stretching, could be called the first synthetic living creature. Two months later, only a smattering of reporters and local dignitaries bothered to show up at a news conference to hear Dr. Venter talk about a new greenhouse that his company, Synthetic Genomics, had built outside its headquarters here to conduct ...

Guardian: It has been a summer of record temperatures ndash; Japan had its hottest summer on record, as did South Florida and New York. Meanwhile, Pakistan and Niger are flooded and the eastern US is mopping up after hurricane Earl. None of these individual events can definitively be attributed to global warming. But to see how climate change will play out in the 21st century, you needn't look to the Met Office. Look, instead, to the deaths and burning tyres in Mozambique's quot;food riotsquot; to see what happens ...

Independent: David Cameron's claim to lead the quot;greenest government everquot; was thrown into the heart of the Labour leadership contest last night, amid concern about plans for a deep-sea drilling operation in the North Sea. David Miliband, one of the candidates to succeed Gordon Brown as Labour leader, said the coalition's refusal to impose a moratorium on deep-sea drilling in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico disaster exposed its commitment to the environment as quot;nothing but spinquot;. He said: ...

AP: A crane hoisted a key piece of oil spill evidence to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, giving investigators their first chance to personally scrutinize the blowout preventer, the massive piece of equipment that failed to stop the gusher four months ago. It took 29 1/2 hours to lift the 50-foot, 300-ton blowout preventer from a mile beneath the sea to the surface. The five-story high device breached the water's surface at 6:54 p.m. CDT, and looked largely intact with black ...