Amid increasing incidents of climate protesters disrupting the operations of fossil-fuel industries and airports in Britain and elsewhere, Gore suggests the scale of the emergency means non-violent lawbreaking is justified. "Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play," he says. "And I expect that it will increase, no question about it."

"The clock is ticking with respect to solving the crisis," Gore, 59, said Thursday as he sat in pinstripes and black cowboy boots in an environmentally certified conference room, with glass walls and white surfaces. Our Choice, A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, which debuted Tuesday, "offers us the tools to find a way out." "

On the eve of a 10-day meeting in Brazil of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), environmentalists accused the group of ignoring the advice of its own scientists and setting fishing quotas for bluefin tuna that have drastically depleted stocks.

So great were their numbers - even 20 years ago - that they were able to shake off man's puny imprint on the great barren lands like so many flies on a rump."

In an interview with AFP at the UN climate talks in Barcelona, Jean-Francois Durieux, in charge of climate change at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said the question "remains taboo.""

The readers of "The Oil Drum" are familiar with the concept of "Energy Return of Energy Invested" (EROI or EROEI). It is the ratio of the energy produced by an energy plant during its life cycle to the amount of energy needed to build, operate and dismantle the plant. "

In a report released today, Friends of The Earth says that carbon markets have been hijacked by financial organisations that are creating ever more complex products which echo the mismanagement and greed which initiated the banking and credit crisis.

The study, for the Wales Audit Office led by auditor general for Wales Jeremy Colman, estimated that flood risk will increase 20-fold by the next century, and the cost of flood damage could rise from £70 million to £1.4 billion.

I found Dickens' contradictions particularly helpful for understanding the totality of global environmental problems, as recently documented by my bedside reading: two peer-reviewed articles published in the Sept. 18 issue of the journal Science. "

In the fall, cold conditions and polar darkness return to the Arctic. As is typical for this time of year, ice growth was brisk in October, growing at an average 96,000 square kilometers per day (37,000 square miles per day). "

GENEVA - A rare Panamanian tree frog, a rodent from Madagascar and two lizards found only in the Philippines are among over 17,000 species threatened with extinction, a leading environmental group said Tuesday.

Yet from my vantage point, internationally negotiated climate agreements are fast becoming obsolete for two reasons. First, since no government wants to concede too much compared with other governments, the negotiated goals for cutting carbon emissions will almost certainly be minimalist, not remotely approaching the bold cuts that are needed.

In a presentation on the sidelines of the UN climate talks, a network of scientists branded Southeast Asia the world leader in greenhouse gases that seep from degraded peat soils."

Russia doesn't seem to care two bits about global warming, and it's not hard to see why. Most Russians would probably be happy if the country was a little warmer. Officials even joke that once climate change has run its course, people may start pouring in to Siberia instead of trying to escape it. If the polar icecaps melt any further, Russia would also be able to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean, where it's believed to have huge fossil fuel reserves. For the rest of the planet, however, the picture is not so cheerful. "

That is the stark conclusion of a major report from environmental consultancy Acclimatise, which assessed oil and gas companies' responses to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and found that while more than three quarters accepted that already inevitable levels of climate change would affect their business through increased downtime, system failures and rising safety risks, only 19 per cent were taking action to address those risks. "