Climate change quickens, seas feared up 2 meters 
OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming is happening faster than expected and at worst could raise sea levels by up to 2 meters (6-1/2 ft) by 2100, a group of scientists said on Tuesday in a warning to next month's U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen.
In what they called a "Copenhagen Diagnosis," updating findings in a broader 2007 U.N. climate report, 26 experts urged action to cap rising world greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 or 2020 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
"Climate change is accelerating beyond expectations," a joint statement said, pointing to factors including a retreat of Arctic sea ice in summer and melting of ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica.
China doesn't want "empty" Copenhagen deal-Xinhua
BEIJING, Nov 25 (Reuters) - China will demand next month's Copenhagen climate summit culminates in a real deal, Xinhua news agency quoted a Chinese negotiator as saying, but appears to have accepted that a legally binding agreement must wait until 2010.
"We will try to make the summit successful and we will not accept that it ends with an empty and so-called political declaration," Li Gao, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said at a forum on Wednesday.
"The Copenhagen conference will be a milestone and written into history, therefore, too much expectation has been put on it," Li was quoted saying, adding that talks so far had made some progress, but not enough.
"Big Bang" machine set to yield surprises
GENEVA (Reuters) - Scientists could begin garnering information on the origins of the universe in the coming months as the world's biggest particle collider starts moving to full power next year, a project leader said Monday.
But it may not be until 2011 that what is dubbed the "Big Bang Machine" -- the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) -- straddling the Swiss-French border at the CERN research center will hit its top velocity, physicist Steve Myers added.
The LHC -- a nearly $10 billion experiment involving scientists worldwide -- was relaunched at the weekend after a technical accident 14 months ago brought it to a halt just nine days after its start-up.
Antarctica Loses Ice From East as Well as West, Scientists Say
Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Antarctica is losing ice from itslarger eastern side as well as the western part, an indicationthe southernmost continent may add “significantly more” torising seas, researchers in Texas said.
The eastern sheet lost ice at a rate of about 57 billionmetric tons a year from 2002 to 2009, contributing to thecontinent’s total annual average loss of about 190 billion tons,scientists at the University of Texas at Austin said in thejournal Nature Geoscience.
United Nations scientists in 2007 said most of Antarctica’scontribution to rising sea levels amid global warming comes fromthe western sheet, with the eastern part either holding steadyor gaining mass. The latest findings for East Antarctica are“surprising” because they differ from other estimates, saidglaciologist Jonathan Bamber, who wasn’t involved in the study.
Scientist: Leak of climate e-mails appalling
LONDON — A leading climate change scientist whose private e-mails are included in thousands of documents that were stolen by hackers and posted online said Sunday the leaks may have been aimed at undermining next month's global climate summit in Denmark.
Kevin Trenberth, of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Colorado, said he believes the hackers who stole a decade's worth of correspondence from a British university's computer server deliberately distributed only those documents that could help attempts by skeptics to undermine the scientific consensus on man-made climate change.
Trenberth, a well respected atmospheric scientist, said it did not appear that all the documents stolen from the university had been distributed on the Internet by the hackers.
Astronaut's wait over as daughter born back home
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Astronaut Randolph Bresnik is a new dad again, after launching into space and taking a spacewalk, all for the first time.
He announced the birth of his daughter, Abigail, on Sunday morning on NASA's airwaves.
His wife, Rebecca, gave birth to their second child back home in Houston on Saturday at 11:04 p.m. CST. They have a 3-year-old son, adopted from Ukraine.
Stolen e-mails reveal venomous feelings toward skeptics
Electronic files that were stolen from a prominent climate research center and made public last week provide a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes battle to shape the public perception of global warming.
While few U.S. politicians bother to question whether humans are changing the world's climate -- nearly three years ago the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded the evidence was unequivocal -- public debate persists. And the newly disclosed private exchanges among climate scientists at Britain's Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia reveal an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack, and eager to punish its enemies.
In one e-mail, the center's director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University's Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science.
Digest: After false alarm, astronauts finish spacewalk
NASA
After alarm, astronauts complete spacewalk
NASA astronauts at the International Space Station on Saturday completed a spacewalk that had been delayed after a false alarm woke the crews of the station and the visiting space shuttle Atlantis.
After alarm, astronauts complete spacewalk
NASA
After alarm, astronauts complete spacewalk
NASA astronauts at the International Space Station on Saturday completed a spacewalk that had been delayed after a false alarm woke the crews of the station and the visiting space shuttle Atlantis.
In the trenches on climate change, hostility among foes
Electronic files that were stolen from a prominent climate research center and made public last week provide a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes battle to shape the public perception of global warming.
While few U.S. politicians bother to question whether humans are changing the world's climate -- nearly three years ago the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded the evidence was unequivocal -- public debate over the debate persists. And the newly disclosed private exchanges among climate scientists at Britain's Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia reveal an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack, and eager to punish its enemies.
In one e-mail, the center's director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University's Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science.
