From his perch as chief economist for the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol is virtually shouting his global warming predictions from the Paris rooftops.

Unless the United States, Europe, China, India and the other emerging economies get on a crash course to slash greenhouse gases, Birol contends, world leaders can simply forget about one of their oft-talked-about goals: stabilizing the average global temperature rise at 2 degrees Celsius.

By Heather Somerville

ScienceDaily (Aug. 14, 2010) — A change in the color of ocean waters could have a drastic effect on the prevalence of hurricanes, new research indicates. In a simulation of such a change in one region of the North Pacific, the study finds that hurricane formation decreases by 70 percent. That would be a big drop for a region that accounts for more than half the world's reported hurricane-force winds.