"The treeless ecosystem of mosses, lichens, and berry plants is giving way to shrub land and boreal forest. As scientists study the transformation, they are discovering that major warming-related events, including fires and the collapse of slopes due to melting permafrost, are leading to the loss of tundra in the Arctic."

"China has begun operating what is, by several measures, the world's fastest rail line."

"It sounded like a good idea: Provide a little government money to convert wood shavings and plant waste into renewable energy. But as laudable as that goal sounds, it could end up causing more economic damage than good."

"A $40 million federal stimulus project to drill up to 50 new wells in California moves forward despite drying aquifers and community complaints."

"Frigid weather that has gripped swathes of the northern hemisphere this winter is unusual but does not undermine an overall global trend of warming, experts said on Monday."

"While President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget proposal is expected to sound a death knell for the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, the administration has so far failed to launch the blue-ribbon commission it promised almost a year ago to decide on a waste-disposal alternative."

After getting major concessions in return for bare acquiescence on the House climate bill, the nation's main agribusiness lobby declared it will try to kill climate legislation altogether in the Senate, using conservative rhetoric about a federal "power grab" and expressing doubt about whether human activities are causing global warming.

"In the past dozen years, three new diseases have decimated populations of amphibians, honeybees, and — most recently — bats. Increasingly, scientists suspect that low-level exposure to pesticides could be contributing to this rash of epidemics."

"The futuristic anti-whaling protest boat struck by a Japanese harpoon vessel near Antarctica finally sank on Friday, prompting Australia to voice official concern about safety in the remote Southern Ocean."

"Basalt formations off the East Coast of the U.S. could suck up a billion tons of carbon dioxide, according to a new study. Paleontologist Paul Olsen, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, explains how to get the CO2 into the rocks, and why scientists believe it won't leak out."