'Safe' climate means 'no to coal'

"To avoid dangerous climate change, we will have to limit the total amount of carbon we inject into the atmosphere, not just the emission rate in any given year," said Myles Allen from the physics department at Oxford University.
"Climate policy needs an exit strategy; as well as reducing carbon emissions now, we need a plan for phasing out net emissions entirely."

For the full story by Richard Black go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8023072.stm

Ocean Acidification

The UK government has launched an £11m ($16m) five-year research programme into ocean acidification.
Researchers say seas are becoming more acidic as a result of CO2 from human activities being absorbed by seawater, which alters the oceans' chemistry.
Ministers say acidification of the oceans will be one of the major environmental concerns of this century.
The study will focus on the Atlantic, Antarctic and Arctic oceans and assess how marine ecosystems are affected.

See the whole report by Roger Harrabin, BBC Environment News Reporter at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8021459.stm

75 ways to reduce your carbon emissions

Bloom - part of the BBC environment website looking ways to tackle carbon emissions and climate change. Register, find some actions you can do, like using more reusable shopping bags, changing to more efficient light bulbs, switching to diesel cars and for each action you can grow a digital flower. The more actions you sign up to, the more beautiful your flower garden will look. Go on, sign up and see how you can help in the smallest of ways and keep our blue marble looking just as beautiful.

Gray Whales granted rare reprieve

Gray whales are one of the most critically endangered species on the planet. Conservation groups are celebrating a victory as some oil and gas companies have agreed to suspend seismic work to give the whales chance to breed. It is thought that only 35 of the 130 whales left are breeding females. For the full story and background visit BBC Science & Environment.

Earth Day: The Best of the Web

The Guardian rounds up the best from the web.
http://tinyurl.com/dhqeef

Mission: Planet Earth

Welcome to The Blue Marble. A Yale College Learning Resource Centre Blog all about the Environment and the issues that affect Planet Earth.

Type Environment into Google search and you get 380,000,000 hits! And that will probably increase by tomorrow. We aim to narrow that down and get you to informative sites quicker than it will take to search Google.

Some links to sites and blogs have already been put in place and over the coming months we will be recommending more for you to visit. We also aim to bring you breaking news items and to look at how we in the Yale community can help in local issues.

We hope you like the site and if you have any suggestions for links or comments please feel free to do so.

The LRC has other interesting blogs for you to view, these can be accessed by clicking on View my complete profile.