BBC: Climate change is to blame for a drop in the number of some birds that visit Britain each winter, the RSPB says. The charity said many wildfowl no longer needed to migrate as far as the UK from places like Greenland and Siberia because of warmer winters. Numbers of seven regular visitors, including the shelduck, mallard and turnstone, are declining, it warned. But the overall number of waterbirds wintering in the UK has doubled since the late 1970s, a report adds. …

WASHINGTON, DC (July 25, 2007) — The Farm Bill heading for a House floor vote tomorrow contains a provision that would hamstring efforts to promote the use of safe pest-control methods to replace dangerous pesticides, according to agriculture and public health experts at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

ScienceMode: Researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder are now forecasting a 92 percent chance that the 2007 September minimum extent of sea ice across the Arctic region will set an all-time record low. The researchers, who forecast in April a 33 percent chance the September minimum of sea ice would set a new record, dramatically revised their prediction following a rapid disintegration of sea ice during July, said Research Associate Sheldon Drobot of CU-Boulder’s Colorado Center for …

Russia, Denmark, Canada and Norway stake claims for territory around the North Pole

CanWest News Service: Restoring and protecting forests would do far more to reduce the carbon load in the atmosphere than dedicating vast tracts of land to "energy crops," a new report says. Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently announced a $1.5-billion, nine-year plan to make Canada a leader in biofuel production. But there is concern in many quarters about the "green" energy boom, which critics say is having a serious environmental impact around the globe as forests are levelled and …

Independent (UK): The environmental campaign against air travel moved towards a more confrontational phase and spread outside the climate-change camp at Heathrow yesterday as small groups of protesters launched simultaneous demonstrations against two airports in the South-east. Eleven people were arrested outside Biggin Hill in Kent, an airport popular with business figures and celebrities flying private jets, after protesters chained themselves to gates and lay down on the main access road to the …

Christian Science Monitor: Behind the walled farmhouses, where fields of cotton and fennel bask in bright sunshine, the desert begins. Pale ochre sand dunes loom over rows of carefully tended crops that represent a lifetime of labor for the 21 families who live here. As the desert closes in, this community has been told to leave, so that their fields can be replanted with native grass. Local authorities say this will revive the parched land and halt the sand dunes, and have promised new land and housing to …

The latest outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK has raised questions over the safety of vaccines against the highly contagious disease

Telegraph (UK): A US blogger has caused a stir in the climate debate by forcing Nasa scientists to admit errors in some of their data showing increases in global warming. Amateur meteorologist Steve McIntyre, who has in the past challenged "the hockey stick" model of climate change data used by green campaigners, emailed Nasa suggesting there were anomalies in their data. Mr McIntyre noticed that analysts at some North American monitoring stations were recording unexpected trends in …

Panos London: The Coalition of Rainforest Nations, led by Costa Rica, Papua New Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have told the UN climate change summit in Nairobi, Kenya that they want to be rewarded for the vast swathes of rainforest they have left intact. The Coalition says it wants to receive ‘carbon credits’ similar to ones given to countries like Brazil, which has chopped down many of its rainforests and is now receiving credits for new plantations. The carbon credits …