Orlando Sentinel: Central Florida should brace for another drought in 2009. The Climate Prediction Center shows a big part of Florida — from near Tallahassee to Lake Okeechobee — will be withering in a dry spell by early spring. The federal agency’s experts think sparse rainfall will persist across much of the Southeast until late spring. It would be the state’s fourth year in a row for drought, and the eighth this decade. State officials are standing by with response plans that include …

Asian News International: A new study has determined that global warming might be leading to the birth of too many male fish. According to a report in Live Science, some experts believe that the gender of many fish is determined by temperature, because temperature-dependent sex determination, or TSD, occurs in many species. But, a critical analysis of the fish literature by Natalia Ospina-Alvarez and Francesc Piferrer, both of the Marine Science Institute in Barcelona, Spain, casts doubt on that …

Independent: Forget milk float. Forget golf buggy. The tarnished image of the electric car is about to be smartened up. The first proper-performance, four-seater electric car from a major manufacturer is about to be launched on the UK market. The i-MiEV — pronounced eye-meev — from Mitsubishi, is a saloon car which will carry four adults and reach a top speed of 87mph. It will be available in the UK, initially for leasing, from the middle of 2009 and can travel up to 100 miles without …

ScienceDaily: Deriving plentiful electricity from sunlight at a modest cost is a challenge with immense implications for energy, technology, and climate policy. Scientists are developing a relatively new approach to solar cells: lacing them with nanoscopic metal particles. As the authors describe in a new article, this approach has the potential to greatly improve the ability of solar cells to harvest light efficiently. Like plants, solar cells turn light into energy. Plants do this inside …

Tallahassee Democrat: On that historic morning, Sept. 12, 2001, I woke up with the strong conviction that our path to national security lay in becoming energy independent. In his brilliant, yet common-sense book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded," Thomas Friedman has reached the same conclusion with an airtight case. He has had the opportunity to speak to the top echelons of government and industry the world over and has deeply researched this idea: America must fully create and implement "Code Green," which is a …

Canadian Press: Canada is being slowly pushed aside as the rest of the world sets the agenda for opening up the rapidly melting Arctic, say leading northern experts. With Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government focused on building a military presence in the North, agencies such as the European Union are seizing the initiative over developing rules which will eventually govern fisheries, energy exploration and transportation in the region. "The opportunity for us to take constructive steps …

Associated Press: The U.S. Forest Service plans to alter its environmental standards to allow a proposed $800 million natural-gas pipeline to run through 47 miles of Mount Hood National Forest. The proposed Palomar pipeline would require opening a path measuring 120 feet wide. The path would stretch through forest areas that have been protected from clear-cutting and other disturbances under the department’s management plans. The Forest Service would also have to revise other rules, such as …

ScienceDaily: Plants, genetically modified to ease the breaking down of their woody material, could be the key to a cheaper and greener way of making ethanol, according to researchers who add that the approach could also help turn agricultural waste into food for livestock. Lignin, a major component of woody plant material,, is woven in with cellulose and provides plants with the strength to withstand strong gusts of wind and microbial attack. However, this protective barrier or "plastic wall" also …

Express Buzz: A joke doing the rounds in environmental circles is that half of the global warming is caused by hot air emitted by climate change experts at international conferences! As Gen X increasingly goes green, they are demanding action, not words. That’s the credo of the Indian Youth Climate Network (IYCN), a coalition of Indian youth, which has just returned from the recently concluded 14th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Poznan, Poland, from December …

New York Times: Old Man Winter, it turns out, is no friend of renewable energy. This time of year, wind turbine blades ice up, biodiesel congeals in tanks and solar panels produce less power because there is not as much sun. And perhaps most irritating to the people who own them, the panels become covered with snow, rendering them useless even in bright winter sunshine. So in regions where homeowners have long rolled their eyes at shoveling driveways, add another cold-weather chore: cleaning …