The Independent, By Michael McCarthy, January 7

Britain's bird of the year in 2008 may turn out to be a beautiful white heron whose original home was Africa.

The cattle egret, which has been spreading steadily northwards through Europe, perhaps because of climate change, is thought to be on the point of colonising southern England.

This winter, so many of the birds are present along coasts in the south and west that breeding is thought likely to happen soon, not least because the process appears to be a replica of colonisation by a closely related species, the little egret, in the mid-1990s.

From being a rare vagrant which delighted birdwatchers, little egrets began to arrive in substantial numbers on the south coast, and in 1996 a pair bred for the first time in Britain in the heronry on Brownsea Island in Poole harbour, Dorset. Their population has doubled every year since and Britain now has several hundred breeding pairs. Birdwatchers and ornithologists alike think the cattle egret may be about to do the same.

New York Times, By Andrew C. Revkin, January 8

The ancient frozen dome cloaking Greenland is so vast that pilots have crashed into what they thought was a cloud bank spanning the horizon. Flying over it, you can scarcely imagine that this ice could erode fast enough to dangerously raise sea levels any time soon.

Along the flanks in spring and summer, however, the picture is very different. For a lengthening string of warm years, a lacework of blue lakes and rivulets of meltwater have been spreading ever higher on the ice cap. The melting surface darkens, absorbing up to four times as much energy from the sun as unmelted snow, which reflects sunlight. Natural drainpipes called moulins carry water from the surface into the depths, in some places reaching bedrock. The process slightly, but measurably, lubricates and accelerates the grinding passage of ice toward the sea.

Most important, many glaciologists say, is the breakup of huge semisubmerged clots of ice where some large Greenland glaciers, particularly along the west coast, squeeze through fjords as they meet the warming ocean. As these passages have cleared, this has sharply accelerated the flow of many of these creeping, corrugated, frozen rivers.

All of these changes have many glaciologists “a little nervous these days — shell-shocked,” said Ted Scambos, the lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., and a veteran of both Greenland and Antarctic studies.

Some fear that the rise in seas in a warming world could be much greater than the upper estimate of about two feet in this century made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year. (Seas rose less than a foot in the 20th century.) The panel’s assessment did not include factors known to contribute to ice flows but not understood well enough to estimate with confidence. All the panel could say was, “Larger values cannot be excluded.”

[...]

“It is too early to reassure that all will stabilize, and similarly there is no way to predict a catastrophic collapse,” Dr. Rignot said. “But things are definitely far more serious than anyone would have thought five years ago.”

The Christian Science Monitor, By Brad Knickerbocker, January 8

Lease sales could produce 15 billion barrels of oil, but environmentalists say drilling would threaten already melting habitat.

A controversial proposal to extract vast supplies of oil and gas from Alaska's outer continental shelf pits America's energy needs against environmental protection. Unlike similar clashes in the past, there's a complicating factor this time: global warming.

The US Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) is offering the sale of oil and gas leases covering nearly 46,000 square miles in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska.

Initial geological studies indicate that the area, roughly the size of Pennsylvania, has the potential to produce 15 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Together with the potential energy development from lease sales offered recently in the nearby Beaufort Sea, that's enough to fuel 25 million cars and heat 46 million homes for 30 years.

"It's a significant slice of the energy we consume, based upon current rates," says Richard Ranger, an adviser with the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group. "The potential, we would argue, is of strategic significance."

BBC, January 8

Producing biofuels from a fast-growing grass delivers vast savings of carbon dioxide emissions compared with petrol, a large-scale study has suggested.

A team of US researchers also found that switchgrass-derived ethanol produced 540% more energy than was required to manufacture the fuel.

One acre (0.4 hectares) of the grassland could, on average, deliver 320 barrels of bioethanol, they added.

Their paper appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The five-year study, involving 10 farms ranging in size from three to nine hectares, was described as the largest study of its kind by the paper's authors.

Associated Press, January 8

WHEATLAND, WIS. — A freak cluster of tornadoes raked across an unseasonably warm Midwest, demolishing houses, knocking railroad cars off their tracks and even temporarily halting justice in one courthouse.

Record temperatures were reported across much of the country Monday, and storms continued to pummel the nation's midsection as darkness fell. More warmth and storms were in store for Tuesday.

Tornadoes were reported or suspected Monday in southwest Missouri, southeastern Wisconsin, Arkansas, Illinois and Oklahoma. Two people were killed in Missouri.

Eleven houses in Wisconsin's Kenosha County were destroyed, five others had heavy damage and four had moderate damage, authorities said. About 13 people were injured, none seriously.

“I have never seen damage like this in the summertime when we have potential for tornadoes,” Sheriff David Beth said. “To see something like this in January is mind-boggling to me. This is just unimaginable to me.”

BBC, January 9

At least 28 people are reported to have died in Iran's heaviest snowfall in recent years.

Eight people froze to death as severe blizzards left 40,000 people stranded in their cars, authorities said.

Although most have now been rescued, another 20 people are reported to have died in car crashes caused by the weather, officials said.

Tehran has declared two days of national holiday, urging people to stay at home to avoid the bitter cold.

The temperature has been down as low as -24 degrees Celsius, and for the first time in living memory there has been snow in the country's southern deserts.

The Guardian, By James Randerson, January 10

Caribbean coral reefs have suffered significant damage from over-fishing and run-off from agricultural land, according to a study of 322 sites across 13 countries. The study provides compelling evidence that proximity to a large human population spells bad news for the survival of reefs.

"It is well acknowledged that coral reefs are declining worldwide but the driving forces remain hotly debated," said author Camilo Mora at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. "In the Caribbean alone, these losses are endangering a large number of species, from corals to sharks."

He estimates that the reefs provide $4bn in so-called ecosystem services - quantifiable benefits in terms of fishing, tourism and protecting the coast from storms.

Numerous threats to coral reef ecosystems have been identified previously including over-fishing, rising sea temperatures due to climate change, and pollution, but his team aimed to go beyond local effects and identify significant factors at a regional level. The study used data on the health of corals, fish and large algae such as seaweed from 322 sites between 1999 and 2001.

Guardian Unlimited, James Orr, Andrew Sparrow & agencies, January 10

A new generation of nuclear power stations was today given the go-ahead by the government.

The business secretary, John Hutton, told MPs that new stations must be built to ensure future security of supply and help produce a balanced energy mix.

"New nuclear power should have a role to play in the future energy mix," Hutton said.

His announcement, ending years of uncertainty over Labour's energy plans, will delight the pro-nuclear lobby, which has urged ministers to replace the UK's current nuclear power stations, most of which are due to close by 2023.