"For those who might be keeping score, we just passed the 333rd consecutive month of global temperatures above the 20th-century average."

"Spain's oldest nuclear plant Garona is shutting down on Sunday ahead of new taxes included in a government energy reform that would render the plant unviable."

"A mercury-containing preservative rarely used in the United States should not be banned as an ingredient in vaccines, U.S. pediatricians said Monday, in a move that may be controversial."

"OSLO -- The amount of land needed to grow crops worldwide is at a peak and an area more than twice the size of France can return to nature by 2060 due to rising yields and slower population growth, a group of experts said on Monday."

"As economic activity and populations continue to expand in coastal urban areas, particularly in Asia, hundreds of trillions of dollars of infrastructure, industrial and office buildings, and homes are increasingly at risk from intensifying storms and rising sea levels."

"Study published by Lancet says surge in car use in south and east Asia killed 2.1m people prematurely in 2010."

"Global funding for the fight against malaria has stalled in the past two years, threatening to reverse what the World Health Organisation (WHO) says are 'remarkable recent gains' in the battle to control one of the world's leading infectious killers."

"The operator of a Japanese nuclear power plant that blew up after a tsunami last year said on Friday its lack of safety and bad habits were behind the world's worst nuclear accident in 25 years, its most forthright admission of culpability."

"PARIS -- The French parliament voted Thursday to ban the use of bisphenol A, a chemical thought to have a toxic effect on the brain and nervous system, in baby food packaging next year and all food containers in 2015."

"A WikiLeaks-style Web dump of drafts of the 2013 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provides fresh evidence that the organization’s policies and procedures are a terrible fit for an era in which transparency will increasingly be enforced on organizations working on consequential energy and environmental issues."

"Debris that gathered this past summer on Alaska's Kayak Island made walking on its beaches feel like walking through a natural disaster zone, a federal biologist said Thursday."

"Superstorm Sandy killed 80 people on the U.S. East Coast while entire neighbourhoods, including Lower Manhattan, were flooded. Power failures affected 4.6 million homes and there was an estimated $50 billion in damage. While B.C. is not prone to hurricanes, climate change experts say the province will likely see similar violent weather, including more frequent, more intense storms as the planet gets warmer."

"The sale of advanced battery maker A123 to China's Wanxiang Group could recoup US taxpayer funds. But critics warn the threats to US security outweigh any benefits from the pending sale of A123."

"Today -- to the dismay of whale lovers and friends of marine mammals, if not divers and submarine captains -- the ocean depths have become a noisy place."

Negotiations over an international treaty to combat mercury emissions will reach a climax next month in Geneva.