Climate change may carry a higher risk of flooding than was previously thought, the journal Nature reports. Researchers say efforts to calculate flooding risk from climate change do not take into account the effect carbon dioxide (CO2) has on vegetation. Higher atmospheric levels of this greenhouse gas reduce the ability of plants to suck water [...]

The Arctic has now lost about a third of its ice since satellite measurements began 30 years ago, and the rate of loss has accelerated sharply since 2002. And now there’s a great land grab going on, but most of the land is at the bottom of the seafloor. Under that seafloor lie giant, but largely unexplored, oil and gas fields …

The mayor plans to increase congestion charging to £25 next year for heavier polluting vehicles, and also remove the residents exemptions meaning some owners could face an extra bill (tax) of £5000 for living in London. Looks like the congestion charge is set to be a fully-fledged green tax.

The US Justice Department has said that internet service providers should be allowed to charge for priority traffic. The agency said it was opposed to “network neutrality”, the idea that all data on the net is treated equally. The comments put the agency at odds with companies such as Microsoft and Google, who have called for legislation to guarantee equal access to the net.

Assuming this melting remains constant, we have nearly 100 years to plan and implement defences for such a rise. However, given the exponential rise in melting and dramatic, unexpected shifts in the behaviour of the ice fields, we may not have as much time as even the revised estimates suggest.