European Union renewable energy targets may have increased greenhouse gas emissions because the dirtiest biofuels produce three times the emissions of diesel oil, according to the most complete EU analysis yet carried out.

Simply implementing its Paris climate conference commitments on reducing greenhouse gas emissions could save the US billions of dollars – and save hundreds of thousands of lives.

LONDON,  13 March, 2015 − Scientists have worked out how the US could save as many as 300,000 lives by 2030, and get a tenfold return on its investments at the same time.

It could be a key to unlocking a mystery about the world’s climate: a piece of ice so old it formed when ice ages were more frequent, about a million years ago. It may even give scientists insight into what is happening now, as the planet warms. But first they have to find it.

This won’t be as easy as picking up a hammer and knocking a few chips off a block. First, they need an ice core that allows them to see changes in the atmosphere over time. Cores are 4 to 5 inches (10 to 13 centimeters) in diameter and stretch for almost 2 miles (3 kilometers) when all the pieces are laid end to end, said Ed Brook, a professor of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences at Oregon State University in Corvallis. And the oldest ones retrieved to date are 800,000 years old.

With the stroke of Gov. Kate Brown's signature Friday, Oregon became the first state to eradicate coal from its power supply through legislation and now boasts some of the most stringent demands for renewable energy among its state peers.

The new law will wipe out coal-generated energy in phases through 2030 and requires utilities to provide half of customers' power with renewable sources by 2040, doubling the state's previous standard.

Rising sea levels driven by climate change could upend the lives of more than 13 million Americans by the end of the century, according to a study released Monday.

If global warming lifts oceans 1.8 meters (six feet) by 2100, as some scientists forecast in worst-case scenarios, 13.1 million people living in U.S. coastal areas will become vulnerable to flooding and storm surges, the study said.

One in four deaths worldwide are due to environmental factors like air, water and soil pollution, as well as unsafe roads and workplace stress, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday.

An estimated 12.6 million people died in 2012 as a result of living and working in unhealthy environments, 23 percent of all deaths reported globally, according to the new study.

Increasing Canada's contribution to international peacekeeping, the fight against climate change and advocacy for women's rights are on the agenda for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's visit to the United Nations, his office said Monday.

His visit to U.N. headquarters in New York on Wednesday comes one month after Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praised Ottawa's renewed engagement on the world stage.

Climate change could kill more than 500,000 people a year globally by 2050 by making their diets less healthy, according to new research published in the Lancet.

The research is the first to assess how the impacts of global warming could affect the quality of the diets available to people and found fewer fruit and vegetables would be available as a result of climatic changes. These are vital in curbing heart disease, strokes and diet-related cancers, leading the study to conclude that the health risks of climate change are far greater than thought.

Greenland’s vast ice sheet is in the grip of a dramatic “feedback loop” where the surface has been getting darker and less reflective of the sun, helping accelerate the melting of ice and fueling sea level rises, new research has found.

The snowy surface of Greenland started becoming significantly less reflective of solar radiation from around 1996, the analysis found, with the ice absorbing 2% more solar energy per decade from this point. At the same time, summer near-surface temperatures in Greenland have increased at a rate of around 0.74C per decade, causing the ice to melt.

Climate scientists have bad news for governments, energy companies, motorists, passengers and citizens everywhere in the world: to contain global warming to the limits agreed by 195 nations in Paris last December, they will have to cut fossil fuel combustion at an even faster rate than anybody had predicted.

Joeri Rogelj, research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, and European and Canadian colleagues propose in Nature Climate Change that all previous estimates of the quantities of carbon dioxide that can be released into the atmosphere before the thermometer rises to potentially catastrophic levels are too generous.