“The problem with The Great Global Warming Swindle, which caused a sensation when it was broadcast on Channel 4 last week, is that to make its case it relies not on future visionaries, but on people whose findings have already been proved wrong. “

“What matters about climate change is not whether we can predict the future with some desired level of certainty and accuracy; it is whether we have sufficient foresight, supported by wisdom, to allow our perspective about the future, and our responsibility for it, to be altered.”

Scientists have discovered that the clouded leopard found on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra is an entirely new species of cat.The secretive rainforest animal was originally thought to be the same species as the one found in mainland South-east Asia.

The news comes just a few weeks after a WWF report showed that scientists had identified at least 52 new species of animals and plants over the past year on Borneo.

“Who said a leopard can never change its spots?” said Stuart Chapman, WWF International Coordinator of the Heart of Borneo programme.

“We now know that protecting the boreal forest is one of the most cost-effective and efficient things McGuinty can do to mitigate climate change,” says ForestEthics director Tzeporah Berman. “It’s essential that it become a component of any plan.” Forestry contributes the same amount of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere in Ontario as do all the province’s cars and light trucks.

Data shows that arctic ice has been shrinking since 1979, and the chances of reversing the trend look poor.

The winter that is just now passing has already been determined to be the warmest on record, nearly three quarters of a degree warmer than 2004, the previous record holder.

Just as the chorus of anti-environmental and faux-environmental voices attacks the G8 meeting to look for a post-Kyoto agreement reaches a crescendo, a host of alternative solutions to intergovernmental treaties to cut CO2 emissions start to make Kyoto look not only feasible but inexpensive.

Sometimes conspiracy theories are true. The Bush administration ran a systematic campaign to play down the dangers of climate change, demanding hundreds of politically motivated changes to scientific reports and muzzling a pre-eminent expert on global warming, Congress was told yesterday.

• Markets for biofuels reached $20.5 billion and are projected to grow to $80.9 billion by 2016;
• Wind power is projected to expand from $17.9 billion to $60.8 billion in 2016;
• Solar PV will grow from a $15.6 billion industry to $69.3 billion by 2016;
• The fuel cell and hydrogen market will grow from a $1.4 billion industry to $15.6 billion over the next decade.

Together, these four clean-energy technologies are projected to quadruple to more than $226.5 billion within a decade.

The planet’s major rivers are threatened by overexploitation and global warming, according to the WWF.