Atmospheric methane levels appear to be on the upswing after nearly a decade of relative stability, and scientists are trying to find the reason.

The rise in methane levels has been small, especially compared with the growth in carbon dioxide emissions. But the increase is still worrisome because pound for pound, methane is 25 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Some scientists believe that making big strides in methane reduction could buy time to deal with the trickier problem of reducing carbon dioxide.

The increase “comes on top of a period where methane barely increased at all,” said Ed Dlugokencky, a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.

The best hope for cold-water chinook salmon to survive global warming may be near sweltering Fresno, Calif., in the San Joaquin River, experts say — where salmon have been extinct for 60 years.

A half-billion-dollar project to restore fish runs in the San Joaquin is set to begin in 18 months. Fishery experts say salmon living in the river would be able to withstand the effects of climate change better than salmon in cooler places like Northern California.

The reason: The highest part of the High Sierra would continue to provide the cold water that the salmon must have to survive in the San Joaquin River. Northern California has the lower end of the Sierra and, scientists say, will eventually lose much of its snowpack and much of its cold water.

Climate change could radically transform the streets of downtown Miami over the next century. Just 3 feet of sea level rise could swamp existing beaches and turn large swaths of the city into oceanfront property, according to an analysis released by a Miami-Dade County task force.

That is one reason the county — which stretches from Florida’s southeastern coast to Everglades National Park in the west — is among a handful of U.S. communities that are trying to prepare for the effects of global warming. With little precedent to guide them, they are developing plans to minimize emissions and to handle higher seas, changes in rain and snow patterns, more wildfires and potential influxes of “climate refugees.”

In Miami-Dade, that could include a broad swatch of actions ranging from converting the area’s taxi fleet to hybrid vehicles to limiting coastal development and setting strict new height rules for roads and buildings in likely future flood zones. Those steps were part of an initial plan approved earlier this month by county commissioners.

More than two decades after an international whale-hunting moratorium went into effect, some whales appear to be making a comeback off Chile’s coast.

Researchers have confirmed the presence of two seasonally resident populations along the coast, including 100 to 150 humpbacks in the glacier-rimmed Strait of Magellan and several hundred blue whales. Blue whales are believed to be Earth’s largest animal at 100 feet long and more than 100 tons.

“The likelihood is that they were not completely hunted out, and these are just remnant populations,” said Bruce Mate, who heads the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University, and who worked to tag Chilean blue whales and track them via satellite. “It just wasn’t commercially viable to hunt till the very last whale.”

High food prices and export limits among food-producing countries are leaving the residents of Africa’s poorest nations increasingly desperate as they struggle to feed themselves.

The U.N. World Food Program has flagged 30 nations confronting mounting food insecurity this year as a direct result of market forces; 22 of them are in Africa. As prices climb, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Senegal and other net food importers have been racked by civil unrest. Hunger is spiking in parts of the continent in patterns similar to past bouts of drought, floods or civil strife.

In Mauritania — a nation of 3 million straddling Arab and black Africa — the number of people not getting enough food is up this year by 30 percent in rural areas despite a relatively good annual harvest, according to the WFP. A food emergency has been declared in broad sections of the country, with the food program rushing to roll out feeding stations.

In the first experiment involving a natural environment, scientists at Brown University have shown that richer plant diversity significantly enhances an ecosystem’s productivity.

New new cancer treatments, new painkillers, a new generation of antibiotics, new treatments for HIV, thinning bones, kidney failure, and macular degeneration…

“A silent tsunami which knows no borders sweeping the world”. That is how the head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) summed up the global food shortages.

EIF 58 Halpern

Aubrey K. McClendon has one big problem in selling his message that natural gas is a fuel that will become available in great abundance within the United States and “that will continue to be a bargain.” It is that many of his peers in the gas production business and other industries that consume large volumes of gas don’t believe him.

The message, delivered in dozens of full-page ads in major newspapers and now running on television — all financed primarily by McClendon, the chairman and chief executive of Chesapeake Energy Corp. — has roiled the industry like few issues have.

To be sure, there have been fights among the nation’s big natural gas producers before. But the custom has been to settle disputes behind closed boardroom doors so the industry can present a united face to Congress in times of crisis, such as now, when Congress is about to take up the multibillion-dollar question of how to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.