Reuters - Canada will set up a new environmental monitoring system for the northern Alberta oil sands as it seeks to fend off harsh international criticism following revelations that oversight of the huge petroleum development has been insufficient.

Around 250 million years ago, most life on Earth was wiped out in an extinction known as the "Great Dying." Geologists have learned that the end came slowly from thousands of centuries of volcanic activity.

Reuters - The U.S. Agriculture Department on Friday awarded $40.2 million in grants to farmers, ranchers and farmer-controlled rural business ventures aimed at spurring locally produced food supplies and renewable energy ventures.

AP - Federal safety officials will vote Feb. 9 on whether to approve what could become the nation's first nuclear plant in a generation.

LiveScience.com - Hundreds of species never before seen in a Peruvian national park have been found during an inventory of the Amazonian forests there, according to a conservation group.

They are tiny, ugly, disease-carrying little blood-suckers that most people have never seen or heard of, but a new discovery in a one-of-a-kind fossil shows that "bat flies" have been doing their noxious business with bats for at least 20 million years.

AP - British leader David Cameron made a third unwanted shake up of his government since 2010 on Friday after Cabinet minister Chris Huhne quit as prosecutors charged him over an alleged attempt to pin a speeding penalty on his ex-wife.

Many living organisms suffer from parasites, which use the hosts’ resources for their own purposes. The problem of parasitism occurs at all levels right down to the DNA scale. Genomes may contain up to 80% “foreign” DNA but details of the mechanisms by which this enters the host genome and how hosts attempt to combat its spread are still the subject of conjecture. Nearly all organisms contain pieces of DNA that do not really belong to them.

For the past three years, promoters of shale gas and environmentalists opposed to coal-fired power plants have hailed the sudden abundance of U.S. natural gas as a bridge to a renewable-energy future.

One success the Obama administration can duly claim is the rebirth of the electric-car industry in the United States. The question is: Will it last?

Let’s face it, human beings are not very good at dealing with distant, relatively uncertain threats. By the time some of the worst consequences of climate change clearly manifest themselves as near-term challenges, it will be too late to stop them.

Poor, urban and minority residents are most at risk for health problems linked to climate change, according to a new California Department of Public Health analysis of Los Angeles and Fresno counties.

A generation of "fast" nuclear reactors could consume Britain's radioactive waste stockpile as fuel, providing enough low-carbon electricity to power the country for more than 500 years, according to figures confirmed by the chief scientific adviser to the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Over the last decade, reports of proliferating jellyfish have multiplied, as have fears that they are overrunning the world’s oceans. In a new study, however, researchers argue that there simply isn’t enough long-term data to conclude that global jellyfish numbers are on the rise.

In India, electricity from solar is now cheaper than that from diesel generators. The news - which will boost India's "Solar Mission" to install 20,000 megawatts of solar power by 2022 - could have implications for other developing nations too.

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. But weather forecasters, many of whom see climate change as a natural, cyclical phenomenon, are split over whether they have a responsibility to educate viewers on the link between human activity and the change in the Earth's climates.

The biggest oil companies in the world have calculated that few, if any, of today's drivers will see electric cars outnumber gasoline and diesel models in their lifetimes.

At a time of accelerating production of both wind and solar energy, Duxbury officials have decided to buy solar energy produced elsewhere and take their own wind project off the table.

A warming ocean is encouraging the growth of coral in the far Southern Hemisphere, according to new research published in Science – suggesting that temperature changes play a bigger role, at least in the near term, in the fate of corals than any ocean acidification.

German scientists say they’ve found more evidence showing links between declining Arctic sea ice and shifting weather patterns, with cold, snowy winters more likely in Europe following summers when Arctic sea ice is low.