"As the new decade opens up, researchers are gathering data that will redefine weather pattern averages for the nation."

"A food scandal in Germany deepened Friday, as regional authorities shut down more than 4,700 farms after tests showed animal feed had been contaminated by a chemical that can cause cancer."

"Although many shark species are still at risk of extinction, around the world shark conservation advanced last year. In Washington on Tuesday, President Barack Obama signed into law the Shark Conservation Act of 2010, which increases protection for sharks from the practice of shark finning...."

"The errors and misjudgments that led to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling rig last spring weren't the result just of blunders by BP and its contractors, but reflect industry-wide problems that require new regulations and standards, a presidential commission has concluded."

"The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization announced this week that food prices hit a record high last month. Its Food Price Index was 214.7 for December, the highest level since the organization created the index to measure the price of a standard basket of goods in 1990."

"An international team of researchers has for the first time quantified how effectively mothers pass 87 common environmental contaminants to their children. Their findings provide a way to correlate pollutant concentrations in a mother's blood to levels in her developing baby, which may help regulators pinpoint compounds that are hazardous to unborn and nursing babies."

"It wasn't a secret government spraying program, Martians or gas seeping out of the New Madrid fault that killed the 5,000 or so blackbirds that died New Year's Eve in Beebe, Ark. It was someone shooting off professional grade fireworks in a residential district, scaring the night-blind birds out of their roost into a 25-mph flight that ran them into houses, signs and even the ground, says Karen Rowe, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission ornithologist."

"Scientists have found evidence of a 'drastic' shift since the 1970s in north Atlantic Ocean currents that usually influence weather in the northern hemisphere, Swiss researchers said on Tuesday."

Some time in the year 2011, the earth's human population is expected to reach 7 billion. By 2045 global population is projected to reach nine billion. Can the planet take the strain?

The earth's glaciers and icecaps seem to be melting faster in recent years. Climate change is suspected, but the behavior of the earth's cryosphere does not lend itself to simple generalizations.