International

"The United States and Canada are nearing an international agreement to clean up the emissions of ships traveling within 200 nautical miles of shore."

"U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Thursday for swifter work on a climate treaty, saying inaction could spell economic disaster and a rise in sea levels of up to 6.5 feet by 2100."

"The human-driven buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere appears to have ended a slide, many millenniums in the making, toward cooler summer temperatures in the Arctic, the authors of a new study report."

"Less than two weeks after the State Department gave the go-ahead for a major new pipeline to carry Alberta oil sands crude into the United States, a network of environmental and Native American groups filed a lawsuit to stop it."

"BP announced on Wednesday the discovery of what it characterized as a giant oil field several miles under the Gulf of Mexico, but it may take years to assess how much crude can actually be recovered."

A new study using CFTC data shows that speculators have come to dominate the oil futures market since Congress eased commodity regulations in 2000.

"Scientists who returned to the Bay Area this week after an expedition to the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" brought piles of plastic debris they pulled out of the ocean — soda bottles, cracked patio chairs, Styrofoam chunks, old toys, discarded fishing floats and tangled nets."

"The Prius hybrid automobile is popular for its fuel efficiency, but its electric motor and battery guzzle rare earth metals, a little-known class of elements .... That makes Toyota's market-leading gasoline-electric hybrid car and other similar vehicles vulnerable to a supply crunch predicted by experts as China, the world's dominant rare earths producer, limits exports while global demand swells."

"A Global Framework for Climate Services that would provide climate forecasting the way that weather forecasting services do is in the works."

"Humans may have to reset the Earth's natural thermostat and develop new technologies like reflecting sunlight back into space if climate talks fail, Britain's top science academy said on Tuesday."