Agence France-Presse: The Asia-Pacific faces an era of large-scale natural disasters which could kill up to one million people at a time, with Indonesia, the Philippines and China most at risk, according to an Australian report. The Sydney Morning Herald cited a scientific report which found that the impact of natural events such as earthquakes and tsunamis would in coming years be amplified by rising populations and climate change. The paper said the report, by government body Geoscience Australia, …

Boston Globe: Environmental advocates, wildlife officials, and land trusts charged with protecting the natural world are beginning to take a new approach to climate change: rather than focus only on stopping it, they are also thinking about how to adapt to what’s coming. That may mean accepting that certain northern species - such as moose or loon - may not be part of Massachusetts’ future ecology. More immediately, it means restoring bogs that could help prevent flooding, or serve as a fallback …

Bernama: The Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) Summit is expected to be held in North Sulawesi of Indonesia from May 11-15 next year, Indonesia’s Antara news agency reported. The summit will discuss efforts to save the sea from the threats of climate change, global warming and criminal acts as well as seek ways to safeguard coral reefs in the region, the news agency on December 26 quoted Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as saying. The six countries which are directly involved …

Associated Press: Indonesia’s coral reefs damaged by the 2004 tsunami are recovering rapidly, helped by natural colonization and a drop in illegal fishing, scientists said Friday. Surveys taken after the Dec. 26, 2004, disaster showed up to a third of reefs were damaged and experts predicted it would take a decade for full recovery. Scientists from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, working with the Indonesian government and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for …

San Francisco Chronicle: With the economy in recession, California’s plan to ask the federal government for billions of dollars to help build the nation’s first high-speed rail system might seem like wishful thinking rather than a feasible financial strategy. But transportation officials say that California’s high-speed rail project seems to be on a fast track to a hefty federal contribution - perhaps as much as $15 billion to $20 billion. That optimism in the face of a dire economic outlook is the …

Reuters: Like many African women, Mazoe Gondwe is her family’s main food provider. Lately, she has struggled to farm her plot in Malawi due to unpredictable rains that are making her hard life even tougher. "Now we can’t just depend on rain-fed agriculture, so we plant two crops - one watered with rain and one that needs irrigating," she explained. "But irrigation is back-breaking and can take four hours a day." Gondwe, flown by development agency ActionAid to U.N. climate change talks …

Agence France-Presse: Standing in the Himalayan valley of Langtang, Rinjin Dorje Lama remembers where he used to play as a child in the 1960s. "When I was a kid, it was a lot longer," said Lama, pointing at the Lirung glacier surrounded by snowy peaks on Nepal’s northern border with Tibet. "We used to play on the glacier, and it came right down to the monastery, but now it’s about two kilometres (1.2 miles) further back." Temperatures in the Himalayas are rising by around 0.06 degrees Celsius …

Washington Post: The United States faces the possibility of much more rapid climate change by the end of the century than previous studies have suggested, according to a new report led by the U.S. Geological Survey. The survey — which was commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and issued this month — expands on the 2007 findings of the United Nations Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change. Looking at factors such as rapid sea ice loss in the Arctic and prolonged drought in the …

New York Times: What may be the nation`s largest spill of coal ash lay thick and largely untouched over hundreds of acres of land and waterways Wednesday after a dam broke this week, as officials and environmentalists argued over its potential toxicity. Federal studies have long shown coal ash to contain significant quantities of heavy metals like arsenic, lead and selenium, which can cause cancer and neurological problems. But with no official word on the dangers of the sludge in Tennessee, …

A major new report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and carried out by the U.S. Geological Survey, cryptically entitled Synthesis and Assessment Report 3.5: Abrupt Climate Change, finds that future climatic shifts have been underestimated [ark], and warns of relatively low probability but debilitating “abrupt” shift in climate [search] that would be devastating. The new report builds upon earlier IPCC findings, and notes that better information means predictions continue to improve. For the United States they predict an arid and desolate Southwest as a result of drought, and a four foot rise globally in sea levels by 2100 (IPCC predictions are 1.5). The authors downplay the risk of large methane releases, but note its continued possibility.

In my twenty years as a climate advocate, the observable evidence and scientific revisions have consistently been to increase upward predictions regarding the speed and severity of climate change (to say nothing of oceans, toxics, soils, forests, water, etc.). These are not wild-eyed radicals, they are America’s best scientists, and what they have to say should give pause to us all. The risk of abrupt and cataclysmic climate change that “would be life-changing” appears increasingly likely and thankfully is being given greater scientific attention and credibility. The question now is does existing political authority have the will and skill to completely restructure economic and social systems to not destroy the atmosphere? If not, it is up to us to bailout the Earth.