Within just four years, most Australians will be able to drive an electric car and recharge it at special plug-in points at home, the office or shopping centres.

The mass use of electric cars moved a giant step closer to reality today, with power company AGL and finance group Macquarie Capital signing an agreement with international group Better Place to provide infrastructure to support the environmentally-friendly vehicles.

Under the agreement, Macquarie will raise $1 billion to build an electric-vehicle network in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, and AGL will power it with renewable energy.

Better Place, established by American entrepreneur Shai Agassi, has designed the infrastructure model, which is already being rolled out in Israel and Denmark.

Mr Agassi said under the agreement, by 2012 the three major Australian cities will each have a network of between 200,000 and 250,000 charge stations where drivers can recharge their electric cars.
These are likely to be at home, in businesses, car parks and shopping centres, he said.
In addition, there will be some 150 switch stations in each city and on major freeways, where electric batteries can be automatically replaced in drive-in stations similar to a car wash.

"We call it a ubiquitous charging network across the cities," Mr Agassi said in Melbourne today.
"It's a massive infrastructure project ... and that means new jobs for Australians."
Drivers will pay to recharge their cars through various power supply agreements, similar to mobile phone contracts, where consumers choose the rate that best reflects their car use.

The Arctic is losing its old, thick ice faster than in previous years, according to satellite data. The loss has continued since the end of the Arctic summer, despite cold weather across the northern hemisphere. Ice more than two years old now makes up about 30% of all the ice in the Arctic, down from 60% two decades ago.

The shrinking of Arctic ice has global implications, as its white surface reflects solar energy back into space whereas the open ocean absorbs it.

The winter ice loss is thought to be driven mainly by the transport of old floes from Arctic waters out into the Atlantic Ocean. The currents driving this are stronger than usual as a consequence of another natural cycle, the Arctic Oscillation. The net result is that most of the cover consists of ice that has formed since last summer.

The scientists behind these findings believe this year's cooling should not obscure the long term warming trend, with temperatures across the Arctic rising about twice as fast as the global average.

"Weather comes and goes, and it's the long term average that really matters," observed Josefino Comiso from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center. Dr Comiso said he believed that the change of albedo - the change from a white, reflective surface of ice to a dark, absorbing surface of sea - was already happening.

With the ice pack containing such a high proportion of thin, salty ice, the scientists believe another major melt is likely in the summer.

"It's becoming thinner and thinner and much more susceptible to melting during the summer - much more likely to melt away," commented Walt Meier from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder. "It may look OK on the surface, but it's like looking at a Hollywood movie set - you see the facade of a building and it looks OK, but if you look behind it, there's no building there."

Last summer, the sharp melt meant that the Northwest Passage, the fabled navigation route linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans across the top of North America, was easily navigable. The disappearance of ice cover has countries around the Arctic eagerly eyeing the mineral reserves that may become accessible.

Most projections of climate change in the Arctic suggest the ocean may become ice-free by the middle of the century, but one forecast released late last year said it could happen by 2013.

In a formal survey the researchers said that a number of systems that influence the Earth's weather patterns could begin to collapse suddenly if there's even a slight increase in global temperatures.

At greatest risk is arctic sea ice, the Greenland ice sheet and the west Antarctic ice sheet.

The researchers have listed and ranked nine ecological systems that they say could be lost this century as a result of global warming. The nine tipping elements and the time it will take them to undergo a major transition are:

• Melting of Arctic sea-ice (about 10 years)
• Decay of the Greenland ice sheet (about 300 years)
• Collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet (about 300 years)
• Collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation (about 100 years)
• Increase in the El Nino Southern Oscillation (about 100 years)
• Collapse of the Indian summer monsoon (about 1 year)
• Greening of the Sahara/Sahel and disruption of the West African monsoon (about 10 years)
• Dieback of the Amazon rainforest (about 50 years)
• Dieback of the Boreal Forest (about 50 years)

Many of Earth's climate systems will undergo a series of sudden shifts this century as a result of human-induced climate change, a study suggests. A number of these shifts could occur this century, say the report's authors.

They argue that society should not be lulled into a false sense of security by the idea that climate change will be a gradual process.

The global demand for energy is set to grow inexorably through to 2030 if governments do not change their policies, warns a top energy official.

Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said such a rise would threaten energy security and accelerate climate change. He said energy needs in 2030 could be more than 50% above current levels, with fossil fuels still dominant. Mr Tanaka was speaking at the launch of the IEA's World Energy Outlook report.

Rapid economic growth in China and India would be the main drivers behind the rise, he said as he unveiled the agency's annual flagship publication. "The emergence of new major players in global energy markets means that all countries must take vigorous, immediate and collective action to curb runaway energy demand," he warned.

"Rapid economic development will undoubtedly continue to drive up energy demand in China and India, and will contribute to a real improvement in the quality of life for more than two billion people. "This is a legitimate aspiration that needs to be accommodated and supported by the rest of the world."

The World Energy Outlook 2007 report warned that much of the increased demand for energy would be met by coal. As a result, energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions could rise by 57% - from 27 giga-tonnes in 2005 to 42 giga-tonnes in 2030.

Even in the report's "alternative policy scenario", which takes into account the governments' proposed action to save energy and cut emissions, CO2 levels are set to rise by 25%.

But it offered a glimmer of hope within its "450 Stabilisation" case study. It described a notional strategy for governments to stabilise CO2 levels in the atmosphere at about 450 parts per million (ppm), which some scientists and policy makers suggest is an acceptable concentration.

"Emissions savings come from improved efficiency in industry, buildings and transport, switching to nuclear power and renewables, and the widespread deployment of carbon capture and storage," the report said. This approach would see global emissions peak in 2012 then fall sharply below 2005 levels by 2030, it suggested. But it added: "Exceptionally quick and vigourous policy action by all countries, and unprecedented technological advances, entailing substantial costs, would be needed to make this case a reality."

Mr Tanaka stressed the need for urgency in the battle against climate change: "We need to act now to bring about a radical shift in investment in favour of cleaner, more efficient and more secure energy technologies."

The UK's Energy Secretary, John Hutton, endorsed the IEA's findings and agreed that urgent action by politicians was needed. As the IEA states, it is a lack of international political will, not technological innovation, that is preventing us from reducing emissions while securing energy supplies to power our homes and businesses for the years ahead.

It is time for the industrialised world to wake up and change its behaviour before the Arctic, its people and its wildlife are lost forever, argues explorer Glenn Morris. In this week's Green Room, he shares his experiences of travelling by kayak along part of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic.

 "It's so hot," an Inuit elder said, fanning herself while sitting on a bench outside the Northern Stores in Paulatuk. Her face, etched with lines, hinted at a past life that would be alien to the young people of the hamlet today. Her complaints about the heat were said in a way that might have been comical if it were not for the sinister underlying reasons. I later learned that she had been born in a snow house.

Change for the people of the north is both fast and relentless. Colin Adjun, an Inuit hunter, told us that he remembered winter temperatures in Kugluktuk often dropping to between -50 and -60C; now they are more likely to be between -25 to -30C.

The summers, too, seem much warmer. Before our journey, we had consulted the Admiralty Arctic Pilot manual, which gave the upper summer temperature for the part of the Canadian Arctic we were traversing as 21C. Yet we experienced temperatures of 34C, and it was almost impossible to sleep.

Rising temperatures are having an effect on every aspect of life in the Arctic. As the permafrost melts, homes and roads are affected. Inuit hunters and other residents told us that new insects and flowers are appearing and animals that previously lived in the lower environs are now moving north. During our journey we had often stared into the clear waters below the kayaks and remarked to each other on the complete absence of life below us.

The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world's oceans has reduced, scientists have said. University of East Anglia researchers gauged CO2 absorption through more than 90,000 measurements from merchant ships equipped with automatic instruments.

Results of their 10-year study in the North Atlantic show CO2 uptake halved between the mid-90s and 2000 to 2005. Scientists believe global warming might get worse if the oceans soak up less of the greenhouse gas.

Researchers said the findings, published in a paper for the Journal of Geophysical Research, were surprising and worrying because there were grounds for believing that, in time, the ocean might become saturated with our emissions.

BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin said: "The researchers don't know if the change is due to climate change or to natural variations.

"But they say it is a tremendous surprise and very worrying because there were grounds for believing that in time the ocean might become 'saturated' with our emissions - unable to soak up any more."

He said that would "leave all our emissions to warm the atmosphere". Of all the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, only half of it stays there; the rest goes into carbon sinks.

There are two major carbon sinks in the biological cycle: the oceans and the land "biosphere", which includes plants and the soil.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere have risen 35% faster than expected since 2000, says a study.

International scientists found that inefficiency in the use of fossil fuels increased levels of CO2 by 17%. The other 18% came from a decline in the natural ability of land and oceans to soak up CO2 from the atmosphere. About half of emissions from human activity are absorbed by natural "sinks" but the efficiency of these sinks has fallen.

The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), was carried out by the Global Carbon Project, the University of East Anglia, UK, and the British Antarctic Survey.

It found that improvements in the carbon intensity of the global economy have stalled since 2000, leading to an unexpected jump in atmospheric CO2.

"In addition to the growth of global population and wealth, we now know that significant contributions to the growth of atmospheric CO2 arise from the slow-down of natural sinks and the halt to improvements in the carbon intensity of wealth production," said the study's lead author, Dr Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project.

The weakening of the Earth's ability to cope with greenhouse gases is thought to be a result of changing wind patterns over seas and droughts on land.

"The decline in global sink efficiency suggests that stabilisation of atmospheric CO2 is even more difficult to achieve than previously thought," said report co-author Dr Corinne Le Quere of the British Antarctic Survey.

"We found that nearly half of the decline in the efficiency of the ocean CO2 sink is due to the intensification of the winds in the Southern Ocean." The declining power of the seas to soak up industrial pollution is not only being recorded in the southern hemisphere, however.

According to a separate 10-year study published recently, the effect is also being seen in the North Atlantic.

The Arctic is being hit by melting ice, hotter air and dying wildlife, according to a US government report on the impact of global warming there.

A new wind circulation pattern is blowing more warm air towards the North Pole than in the 20th Century, scientists found. Shrubs are now growing in tundra areas while caribou herds are dwindling in Canada and parts of Alaska. The report stresses that the fate of the Arctic affects the entire planet.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) report found that in 2007 winter and spring temperatures were "all above average throughout the whole Arctic and all at the same time" unlike in previous years.

"This is an unusual feature and it looks like the beginning of a signal from global warming," the Noaa's James Overland told reporters. Scientists have expected polar regions to feel the first impacts of global warming, and the 2006 US State of the Arctic report provided a benchmark for tracking changes.

A Korean firm, Kyosemi Corporation, has developed a highly efficient spherical solar cell. It's called the Sphelar and represents a huge leap forward in solar development.

Instead of conventional solar cells which lay flat and only have one surface to collect the sun's energy, these spheres, measuring between 1-1.5mm in diameter, will be able to harness the energy from most of their whole surface. This gives their panels flexibility as their structures do not need to be rigid, allowing them to be used in more applications than conventional PV.

As an added bonus these cells do not block light and can therefore be embedded in clear objects without fully compromising clarity, giving energy-producing windows a chance.

Physorg reports that "the Sphelar is made by a process of melted silicon that is subjected to free fall, whereby spheres are created naturally by the microgravity conditions. The result creates little or no waste of raw materials. This feature is cost effective and provides efficient use of the rare component silicon."

No word yet on their electrical production potential, but we'll certainly keep our eyes out for this one and report back to you. World Changing has a fantastic interview with Kyosemi's lead engineer. Check it out for a great read.

Arctic sea ice shrank to the smallest area on record this year, US scientists have confirmed.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said the minimum extent of 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles) was reached on 16 September. The figure shatters all previous satellite surveys, including the previous record low of 5.32 million sq km measured in 2005.

Earlier this month, it was reported that the Northwest Passage was open.

The fabled Arctic shipping route from the Atlantic to the Pacific is normally ice-bound at some location throughout the year; but this year, ships have been able to complete an unimpeded navigation.

Arctic sea ice loses area in summer months and regrows in the winter cold.

The researchers at NSIDC judge the ice extent on a five-day mean. The minimum for 2007 falls below the minimum set on 20-21 September 2005 by an area roughly the size of Texas and California combined, or nearly five UKs.

Speaking to BBC News on Monday this week, Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the NSIDC, said: "2005 was the previous record and what happened then had really astounded us; we had never seen anything like that, having so little sea ice at the end of summer. Then along comes 2007 and it has completely shattered that old record." He added: "We're on a strong spiral of decline; some would say a death spiral. I wouldn't go that far but we're certainly on a fast track. We know there is natural variability but the magnitude of change is too great to be caused by natural variability alone."

In December 2006, a study by US researchers forecast that the Arctic could be ice-free in summers by 2040.

A team of scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the University of Washington, and McGill University, found that "positive feedbacks" were likely to accelerate the decline of the region's ice system.

Sea ice has a bright surface which reflects 80% of the sunlight that strikes it back into space. However, as the ice melts during the summer, more of the dark ocean surface becomes exposed. Rather than reflecting sunlight, the ocean absorbs 90% of it, causing the waters to warm and increase the rate of melting.

Scientists fear that this feedback mechanism will have major consequences for wildlife in the region, not least polar bears, which traverse ice floes in search of food.

On a global scale, the Earth would lose a major reflective surface and so absorb more solar energy, potentially accelerating climatic change across the world.

The most direct shipping route from Europe to Asia is fully clear of ice for the first time since records began, the European Space Agency (Esa) says.

The findings, based on satellite images, raised concerns about the speed of global warming. The Northwest Passage is one of the most fabled sea routes in the world - a short cut from Europe to Asia through the Canadian Arctic. Recent years have seen a marked shrinkage in its ice cover, but this year it was extreme, Esa says.

There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100, 000 sq km (38,600 sq miles) per year on average, so a drop of 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) in just one year is extreme. The Northeast Passage through the Russian Arctic has also seen its ice cover shrink and it currently "remains only partially blocked."

Scientists have linked the changes to global warming which may be progressing faster than expected. The opening of the sea routes is already leading to international disputes. Canada says it has full rights over those parts of the Northwest Passage that pass through its territory and that it can bar transit there. But this has been disputed by the US and the European Union. They argue that the new route should be an international strait that any vessel can use.

Sea ice in the northern hemisphere has plunged to the lowest levels ever measured, a US Arctic specialist said Friday, adding that it was likely part of the long-term trend of polar ice melt driven by global warming.

University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana Arctic climate expert William Chapman told AFP that Arctic sea ice had plunged to new lows some 30 days before the normal point of the annual minimum. He also said that with a lower ice cover and fewer clouds this year, the waters of the Arctic are being exposed to more intense sunlight, further warming them. Current summer ice cover in the northern hemisphere is averaging 25-30 percent below what it was 50 years ago.

"The trend has been going down since the late 1970s at least, and maybe 50 years. This summer is also relatively clear, not 90 percent cloudy as usual," he said, allowing more sun to warm the waters and melt the ice.

"The concern is that the Arctic ocean is absorbing a lot of heat."

One interesting aspect this year is that the drop in sea ice is more geographically sweeping than in previous low years. In earlier low years, big drops in the level of sea ice were confined to specific areas, such as the North Atlantic, the Bering Sea, the Beaufort Sea, or other locales. This comes in part from prevailing winds blowing ice from one area or sea to another.

"The character of 2007's sea ice melt is unique in that it is dramatic and covers the entire Arctic sector. Atlantic, Pacific and even the central Arctic sectors are showing large negative sea ice area anomalies."

Global warming is forecast to set in with a vengeance after 2009, with at least half of the five following years expected to be hotter than 1998, the warmest year on record, scientists reported on Thursday.

Climate experts have long predicted a general warming trend over the 21st century spurred by the greenhouse effect, but this new study gets more specific about what is likely to happen in the decade that started in 2005.

The real heat will start after 2009, they said.

Until then, the natural forces will offset the expected warming caused by human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels, which releases the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

In another climate change article in the online journal Science Express, U.S. researchers reported that soot from industry and forest fires had a dramatic impact on the Arctic climate, starting around the time of the Industrial Revolution.

Industrial pollution brought a seven-fold increase in soot -- also known as black carbon -- in Arctic snow during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, scientists at the Desert Research Institute found.

Soot, mostly from burning coal, reduces the reflectivity of snow and ice, letting Earth's surface absorb more solar energy and possibly resulting in earlier snow melts and exposure of much darker underlying soil, rock and sea ice. This in turn led to warming across much of the Arctic region.

The focus on reducing carbon emissions has blinded us to the real problem - unsustainable lifestyles, says Eamon O'Hara. In this week's Green Room, he argues that bigger problems await us unless we shift our efforts.

Is it not time to recognise that climate change is yet another symptom of our unsustainable lifestyles, which must now become the focus our efforts?

Yet governments, and those organisations who have now assumed the role of combating climate change, subscribe to the notion that climate change is our central problem and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is the cause of this problem. Undeniably, climate change is a serious problem but it is only one of a growing list of problems that arise from a fundamental global issue. For many decades, the symptoms of unsustainable human exploitation of the natural environment have been mounting: species extinction, the loss of biodiversity, air and water pollution, soil erosion, acid rain, destruction of rainforests, ozone depletion - the list goes on.

These problems all clearly have a common origin, yet the search for solutions has invariably focused on targeted treatments rather than addressing the root cause. Success has, at best, been patchy. In general, none of these problems have completely disappeared and many have continued to worsen.

Global warming - the latest in this list of environmental woes - is a particularly worrying development, not only because it is potentially catastrophic, but because it is going to be incredibly difficult to control. The solutions currently being put forward, such as those being championed by the European Union, focus almost exclusively on reducing carbon emissions. However, by focusing on the need to reduce CO2 emissions has reduced the problem to one of carbon dioxide rather than on the unsustainable ways we live our lives.

This oversight has led to the assumption that if we reduce emissions then our problems are solved, hence the focus on carbon sequestration, renewable energies and environmental technologies. This approach to curing our problems is a bit like relying on methadone to cure an addiction to heroin.

The large-scale transition to renewable resources might provide a safer alternative to oil and gas and other finite resources, but it will not remove our energy and resource dependency, which will continue to expand in line with economic growth. Before long, we will discover that even renewables have their limits. We are already being warned about the dangers of excessive demand for biofuels, which is reportedly leading to the clearing of rainforests and increasing competition for land between food and energy production.

Ultimately, our problem is consumption, and the environment is not the only casualty. The modern Western lifestyle also has an inbuilt dependency on the cheap resources and the low carbon footprint of developing countries, which has compounded global injustice. Worse still, maintaining our relatively wealthy, comfortable and unsustainable lifestyles is now dependant on maintaining this imbalance.

Seventy-five percent of the world's population - more than 4.5bn people - live on just 15% of the world's resources, while we in the West gorge on the remaining 85%. The world simply does not have the resources, renewable or otherwise, to sustain Western lifestyles across the globe.

So, what can we do? Obviously, the first thing we need to do is act, and act fast.

Every day we wait, another 30,000 children needlessly die; between 100-150 plant and animal species become extinct; 70,000 hectares of rainforest is destroyed and another 150m tonnes of CO2 is released into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, another $3.0bn (£1.5bn) is spent on arms and weapons of mass destruction.

We urgently need to think about the more fundamental concept of sustainability and how our lifestyles are threatening not only the environment, but developing countries and global peace and stability. In my view, we need to embrace this as an opportunity and not see it as a responsibility. Living a more sustainable lifestyle does not have to be a burden, as some people fear.

It could be a liberating and rewarding experience to participate in creating a better world. After all, how good do we really have it at the moment? How many people are tired and weary of modern living? The endless cycle of earning and consumption can be exhausting and does not necessarily bring happiness and fulfillment. Can we do things differently, and better? If we don't, then we are heading for certain disaster, regardless of whether or not we manage to reduce our emissions.

Ozone could be a much more important driver of climate change than scientists had previously predicted.

Ozone near the ground damages plants, reducing their ability to mop up carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. As a consequence, more CO2 will build up in the atmosphere instead of being taken up by plants. This in turn will speed up climate change.

Scientists already knew that ozone higher up in the atmosphere acted as a "direct" greenhouse gas, trapping infrared heat energy that would otherwise escape into space. Ozone closer to the ground is formed in a reaction between sunlight and other greenhouse gases such as nitrogen oxides, methane and carbon monoxide.

Greenhouse emissions stemming from human activities have led to elevated ozone levels across large tracts of the Earth's surface. This study is described as significant because it shows that O3 also has a large, indirect effect in the lower part of the atmosphere.

Research into ground-level ozone has tended to concentrate on its harmful effects on human lungs but the gas also damages plants, reducing their effectiveness as a "carbon sink" to soak up excess CO2 from the atmosphere.

A key US space agency (Nasa) satellite important for detecting hurricanes and providing other climate data will go silent in the next few years, and missions to replace it have been cancelled or delayed.

The QuickScat satellite, caught in a controversy that cost the director of the National Hurricane Center (NHC) his job, provides useful data on wind that helps weather forecasters detect major storms, such as the one that hit Japan this past week. The decision not to replace it will diminish forecasters' ability to predict some hurricanes and comes at a time when the need for climate data is paramount.

While the instrument still works, the satellite that carries it has begun to show signs of age. Some of the sensors that provide orientation have failed and its transmitter is wearing out.

"I can't imagine it's going to last three more years," said David Long, an engineer with QuickScat and director of the Brigham Young University Center for Remote Sensing. "And there's nothing else scheduled to go up," he said.

As hurricanes approach land, the NHC relies more on reconnaissance planes and radar. The NHC has said its ability to make accurate forecasts for hurricanes making landfall in the Atlantic and Caribbean will not be compromised when QuickScat fails. However, the satellite is more important for tracking hurricanes far offshore, beyond the reach of aircrews, in the tropical Atlantic and Pacific where the planes don't fly.

The scatterometer aboard QuickScat helps detect changes in wind speed and direction that lead to the formation of a hurricane. Unlike ground-based instruments, it provides a global picture of the world's oceans.

Nasa scrapped a proposed mission to replace QuickScat in 2006. The Ocean Vector Winds (OVW) mission would have provided continuity with QuickScat, but was never funded.

An updated version, the Extended OVW Mission (XOVWM), is listed as a priority mission and recommended for launch between 2013 and 2016, in a major study released this year by the National Research Council (NRC). But it does not have funding either.

China's massive capacity to recycle waste-paper is preventing many forests around the world from being destroyed. The nation's paper industry imported almost 20 million tonnes in 2006, primarily from the US, Europe and Japan, according to NGO Forest Trends. The group said about 60% of the fibre used in producing paper was recycled.

In the last four years alone, China has prevented 65 million tonnes of waste-paper from heading to landfills in the US, Japan and Europe.

Waste-paper can only provide so much fibre, and with huge new paper mills coming online in China, there is a legitimate concern that future growth in the industry is going to happen at the expense of already stressed natural forests in the tropics.

The biggest environmental challenge... is to prevent demand for fibre from driving ever more forest destruction in places like Indonesia and eastern Russia. On Tuesday, China's Forestry Ministry published a draft handbook "sustainable forestry" for the nation's logging companies operating in other countries. The ministry said the booklet would "guide and standardize Chinese companies' sustainable forestry activities overseas."

More and more cities are banning bottled water and turning to tap.

Millions of people attended the concerts and the 10,000+ “Friends of Live Earth” events and house parties in 195 countries. Millions of people watched or heard the event online, on TV, or on the radio. Millions pledged to change their own actions and hold our leadership accountable.

Live Earth marks the beginning of a multi-year campaign led by the Alliance for Climate Protection, The Climate Group and other international organizations to drive individuals, corporations and governments to take action to solve global warming.