UVa lawyers: Investigation by Cuccinelli ‘unlawful.’ Lawyers for the University of Virginia on Tuesday denounced an investigation by Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli into a former climate change scientist as “unlawful” and an “impermissible intrusion on academic and scientific speech and research.” [News Source]

Lord Lawson: ‘We need to get off this carbon-cessation hook.’ Lord Lawson of Blaby, one of the most prominent sceptical voices in the climate change debate, has warned that it is “madness” for Britain to try to lead the world in reducing carbon emissions. [News Source]

Opposition strong on eve of ETS. On the eve of the emissions trading scheme (ETS) coming largely into effect, Climate Change Minister Nick Smith was still squaring up to opposition and facing calls for the scheme to be reviewed or delayed. [News Source]

Is CO2 really in charge of the climate? The prime suspect for swings in Earth's climate is carbon dioxide: hot periods over the past half a billion years coincided with high levels of CO2. However, there may been cold periods when CO2 levels were high, or hot when CO2 levels were low. So what was going on at these times? Are we missing part of the climate puzzle? [News Source]

Why climate stumps even the brightest scientists. Climate scientists are almost unanimous in their view that the earth is slowly warming up and that human activity, particularly the combustion of fossil fuels, is the primary cause. But beneath that unanimity, predictions vary about how much the planet will warm because of rising greenhouse gases. [News Source]

Climategate jibes fly over El Niño impact on warming. New research takes issue with a suggestion that greenhouse gases are not primarily responsible for global warming. A 2009 report suggests that two-thirds of global warming in the past 30 years was caused by the growing influence of the warm phase of the El Niño climate cycle in the Pacific Ocean. [News Source]

China sets sail for the Arctic. A Chinese research vessel and ice-breaker is due to set sail this week for the Arctic, a region much coveted by Beijing for its wealth of scientific data and natural resources. [News Source]

Rising seas map nearly ready for councils. It's taken years to develop and still has plenty of bugs to be ironed out, but coastal councils will soon have a new mapping tool to help them identify areas likely to be flooded by rising sea levels. [News Source]

Perfect storm warning issued on climate. A perfect storm is coming and we are not ready for it. Unless local governments take a fresh approach to the impacts of climate change, many could be "one shock away from disaster," an international climate change conference on the Gold Coast has been told. [News Source]

Positive feedbacks in a warming Arctic. The Arctic is warming, almost twice as fast as the global average, according to a recent study. Much of the accelerated warming here is due to positive feedbacks, including one related to the loss of summer sea ice in recent decades. [News Source]

Can fermenting microbes save us from climate change? Just as bacteria and fungi are methodically breaking down the millions of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, microbes might help us with another uncontrolled emission due to human activity—carbon dioxide. [News Source]