Methane hydrates not the cause of past ice age global warming
By studying gas bubbles frozen in ancient Greenland ice, University of Victoria researchers have dispelled a popular theory that marine gas hydrates caused a significant release of methane gas into the Earth’s atmosphere, triggering a period of global warming at the end of the last ice age. “Understanding the behaviour of global atmospheric methane is important because it’s the third strongest greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and water vapour,” says UVic biogeochemist Dr. Michael Whiticar, part of the Canada-U.S. team that conducted the study. “Atmospheric methane concentrations have increased about 250 per cent in the last 250 years, and they continue to rise about one per cent a year.”

Texas cool to confront warming
Evidence of global trouble lurks in the bays of coastal Texas. The brackish water that circulates between marshes and barrier islands - water that has sheltered and nourished a rich soup of marine life for millennia - is changing, and fast. During the past three decades, the water in Texas' coastal bays has warmed by 3 degrees Fahrenheit. The state scientist who discovered that big increase says it is not proof alone of global warming on home shores, but it is worrisome.

Climate change 'will hit gardens'
Britain’s 27 million gardening enthusiasts are at the ‘front line’ of climate change, according to the government. Environment minister Ian Pearson said that in future gardeners will need to use water sparingly - with a can instead of a hosepipe - and be ready to choose drought-resistant Mediterranean plants. ‘Most gardeners in the UK will already know that changes have started. Some will have been struggling with serious drought during the last 18 months and all of us faced July's heatwave.

Study acquits sun of climate change, blames humans
The sun's energy output has barely varied over the past 1,000 years, raising chances that global warming has human rather than celestial causes, a study showed on Wednesday. Researchers from Germany, Switzerland and the United States found that the sun's brightness varied by only 0.07 percent over 11-year sunspot cycles, far too little to account for the rise in temperatures since the Industrial Revolution. "Our results imply that over the past century climate change due to human influences must far outweigh the effects of changes in the sun's brightness," said Tom Wigley of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research.