The war on carbon heats up globally, but strategies for change remain local. For all the talk about a unified response to global warming, what is emerging is a crazy quilt of often-competing local strategies. [News Source]

Quest for new climate treaty begins in earnest. Negotiators kicked off the final push Monday for a new climate change treaty - but with the U.S. government in transition, the E.U. in disarray and a worldwide economic crisis, chances were hazy for an agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. [News Source]

Carbon detectives are tracking gases in Colorado. Scientists are tracking where greenhouse gases come from and where they go over time in order to learn how to budget emissions for the long term. [News Source]

Jones gives hope to energy companies. President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for national security adviser, retired Marine Gen. Jim Jones, is giving hope to energy companies that backed Republican John McCain that their concerns may still get an airing in the new administration. [News Source]

30-mile debris pile becomes symbol of FEMA delays. A 30-mile scar of debris along the Texas coast stands as a festering testament to what state and local officials say is FEMA's sluggish response to the 2008 hurricane season. [News Source]

Baghdad hack. According to one recent estimate by Navy doctors, more than two-thirds of soldiers coming back from Iraq experience at least one episode of respiratory illness, and 36 troops have come down with a rare and sometimes fatal condition known as acute eosinophilic pneumonia. [News Source]

Gulf Coast states still waiting for FEMA aid after hurricanes. Two and a half months after Hurricane Ike hit the shoreline, alligators and snakes crawl over piles of building materials, trees, boats, thousands of animal carcasses, perhaps even the bodies of people killed by the storm. [News Source]

White possum said to be first victim of global warming. Scientists say a white possum native to Queensland's Daintree forest has become the first mammal to become extinct due to man-made global warming. [News Source]

Amphibian extinctions: Is global warming off the hook? The world's amphibians are in dire straits—but global warming may not be the problem, a new study suggests. [News Source]

Three-quarters of big Antarctic penguin colonies to disappear? Under any scenario, a temperature increase leads to a major reshuffling of emperor and Adélie penguin colonies — the two penguin species that rely on ice for hunting and breeding. [News Source]

Climate change upsetting food chain. Polar bears may be the poster animal for the challenges of global climate change, but the biggest problems faced by species may affect the smallest, most basic organisms at the bottom of the food chain. [News Source]