Dear coal plants, you’re doomed. Climate scientists have written directly to the chiefs of the country's main coal companies and users, warning them that coal-fired power stations are doomed and that the Federal Government's carbon capture and storage plans are likely to be a waste of time and money. [News Source]

UCSD scientists say climate change altering ocean. In the first broad study of its kind, scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography say climate-induced changes are altering fish migration patterns and shifting populations. [News Source]

A move to make the insurance industry part of a post-Kyoto approach to climate risks. Mobilizing one of the world's largest industries to help protect populations from climate change is seen as an important and powerful way to avert some of the worst damages associated with a warming planet. [News Source]

China studying carbon tax ideas: Report. Chinese state thinktank researchers will soon issue preliminary proposals for a carbon tax that may one day become part of the government's efforts to tame growing greenhouse gas emissions, experts told local media. [News Source]

Biochar - one way to deal with more fire-prone forests. Joseph Duda, forest management supervisor for the Colorado State Forest Service, is going to have a lot of wood on his hands. But a thousand-year-old technique used to make charcoal may keep him from being buried in it. [News Source]

As California aims at carbon, Canada sees itself in bull’s-eye. Canadian oil exporters fear that a low-carbon fuel standard adopted by California last week threatens to upset a thriving North American trade in petroleum if the regulation spreads throughout the United States. [News Source]

Phasing out coal power in Canada? The environment prime minister of Canada said that coal-fired electrical plants will have limits imposed on their emissions. But he also suggested that operators of coal-fired plants would be eventually required to replace them with plants using some other form of generation. [News Source]

Study challenges cosmic ray-climate link. If rising levels of greenhouse gases aren't pushing up global temperatures, what else could be? The leading alternative has been a fickle sun, and cosmic rays. Now scientists have published the first comprehensive modeling of how the sun might indirectly thin cloud cover and thus warm the planet. [News Source]

Glaciers show north-south climate divide. Southern hemisphere glaciers evolve quite differently from those in the north, according to a new study. [News Source]

Studies call for fuel consumption cap. If the world wants to limit global warming to 2°C by 2050, it will have to leave three quarters of its proved reserves of oil, gas and coal in the ground, according to two climatological studies. [News Source]

Gene discovery could help make crops resistant to heat, drought. After a decades-long search, researchers say they have finally found an elusive group of proteins that help plants survive stresses such as drought, cold and heat that may increase with climate change. [News Source]