The Washington region, with its crawling traffic and several coal-fired power plants, produces more carbon dioxide than several medium-size European countries, according to a new study of pollution.

Estimates show 65.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide were emitted in the region in 2005 — more than in all of Hungary, Finland, Sweden, Denmark or Switzerland. And each of those countries have more people than the Washington area.

[Read](http://www.usatoday.com/weather/environment/2007-09-30-dc-emissions_N.htm “Read the Story”) (AP via USA Today)

Global warming is a boon for farmers and fishermen but a hardship for ice-dependent Inuit.

Perhaps nowhere else in the world are the effects of climate change as obvious as in Greenland, where warming temperatures have brought a mixed blessing to its 56,000 residents. As winter sea ice disappears, the traditional means that the indigenous Inuit people have developed to survive in the Arctic – sled dog mushing, seal hunting, ice-hole fishing – are rapidly becoming obsolete. Farming, an occupation all but unheard of a century ago, has never looked better.

[Read](http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1001/p01s02-wogn.html “Read the Story”) (Christian Science Monitor)

Freshwater [mussels](http://www.answers.com/topic/mussel “Answers.com Mussels Article”) may start disappearing from dinner plates as species increasingly become extinct or endangered by human activities, scientists say. North America has historically had a very diverse community of freshwater mussels, but populations have been on the decline for the past few decades. Mussels now are one of the most endangered groups of animals on the continent

[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20823440/ “Read the Story”) (LiveScience via MSNBC)

Saltwater crocodiles are homebodies who will travel more than 250 miles back to their stomping ground, according to a team of Australian researchers. The discovery has implications for managing problem crocodiles as it may rule out relocation as an option.

The team is yet to understand how the crocodile navigated its way home. Crocodiles are more closely related to birds, so maybe they are using similar navigational tools such as magnetic fields and smell.

[Read](http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/09/26/crocodiles_ani.html?category=animals&guid=20070926110000&dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000 “Read the Story”) (Discovery Channel)

In Siberia’s northernmost reaches, high up in the Arctic Circle, the changing temperature is thawing out the permafrost to reveal the bones of prehistoric animals like mammoths, woolly rhinos and lions that have been buried for thousands of years.

Private collectors and scientific institutes will pay huge sums for the right specimen, and bone-prospectors have turned this region, eight time zones from Moscow, into a paleontological Klondike.

Prehistoric bones are not very hard to find. The permafrost is thawing and breaking up so rapidly that in certain places in the tundra, every few meters (yards) bones poke out through the soil. Some just lie on the surface.

If someone is lucky, a local can earn 200,000 roubles ($7,800) in just one day. Normally it would take a year to earn that much.

The bones make their way into museums in places like the United States and South Korea. Now promising new markets are opening up in emerging economies like China too.

[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20841327/ “Read the Story”) (Reuters via MSNBC)

For millennia, layers of animal waste and other organic matter left behind by the creatures that used to roam the Arctic tundra have been sealed inside the frozen permafrost. Now climate change is thawing the permafrost and lifting this prehistoric ooze from suspended animation.

But Sergei Zimov, a scientist who for almost 30 years has studied climate change in Russia’s Arctic, believes that as this organic matter becomes exposed to the air it will accelerate global warming faster than even some of the most pessimistic forecasts.

When the organic matter left behind by mammoths and other wildlife is exposed to the air by the thawing permafrost, his theory runs, microbes that have been dormant for thousands of years spring back into action. As a by-product they emit carbon dioxide and — even more damaging in terms of its impact on the climate — methane gas.

[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20819312/ “Read the Story”) (Reuters via MSNBC)

On the Mississippi River below the bluffs that mark the far southern Minnesota-Wisconsin line, the federal government is waging a multi-million dollar campaign against the elements. For the last few weeks, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has transformed a 3-mile stretch of river into a floating construction zone, restoring and creating new river islands.

The goal is to restore wildlife habitat lost to a half-century of erosion and, in turn, bolstering fishing, waterfowl migration and the overall health of the river’s northern stretches. No one has tried a restoration program of this size on such a large river.

Bluegill samples taken from the area where island building and depth reductions have occurred increased from about 20 fish taken per 15 minutes in the late 1990s to about 60 fish per 15 minutes from 2002 to 2004. It’s not known for sure if the islands play a role, but other, untouched parts of river haven’t seen such increases.

[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20824217/ “Read the Story”) (AP via MSNBC)

Droughts seem to make the Amazon rainforest even greener, a new study suggests, giving scientists hope that global warming’s effects on the lush South American ecosystem won’t be quite as bad as has been predicted.

Researchers found that the greenness of the forest actually increased during the drought. They think this could be because trees actually had more access to sunlight and could dig their roots deeper down in the soil to access water.

[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20908711/ “Read the Story”) (LiveScience via MSNBC)

The growing number of deformed frogs in recent years is caused at least partly by runoff from farming and ranching, new research indicates.

Nitrogen and phosphorous in the runoff fuel a cycle that results in a parasitic infection of tadpoles, resulting in loss of legs, extra legs or other deformities.

[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20960546/ “Read the Story”) (AP via MSNBC)

Chesapeake Bay blue crabs are in serious danger of being over-fished this year and are not reproducing well enough to rebound from the kind of pressure being placed on them, Maryland natural resources officials say.

The concern comes from the results of the dredge survey, which counts crabs in the bay during the winter, when they burrow into the bottom and are easy to see. The survey, which is considered an accurate depiction of what is living in the bay, found the second-lowest number of juvenile crabs since the state began counting in 1989.

[Read](http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.crabs22sep22,0,7176824.story?coll=bal-opinion-utility “Read the Story”) (Baltimore Sun)

Tens of thousands of derelict crab pots – enough to fill every bleacher seat at Camden Yards for 23 games – litter the shallows of the main stem of the bay.

The traps, usually set adrift by storms, are potential deathtraps for fish, terrapins and crabs – and a threat to the bay’s fragile ecology. They’re a major headache for fishermen and boaters, who call them “floating mines” for their ability to disrupt navigation and foul boat propellers. And they’re a financial burden for commercial watermen, who must not only replace the lost traps but might also be competing against them for crabs.

[Read](http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/bal-te.sp.ghostpots16sep16,0,2352581.story?coll=bal_sports_football_promo “Read the Story”) (Baltimore Sun)

The most common type of gorilla is now “critically endangered,” one step away from global extinction, according to the 2007 Red List of Threatened Species released Wednesday by the [World Conservation Union](http://www.iucn.org “World Conservation Union Website”).

The [Ebola virus](http://www.answers.com/ebola?cat=health&gwp=13 “Answers.com”) is depleting [Western Gorilla](http://www.answers.com/topic/western-gorilla-1 “Answers.com”) populations to a point where it might become impossible for them to recover.

Commercial hunting, civil unrest and habitat loss due to logging and forest clearance for palm oil plantations are compounding the problem

[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20754796/ “Read the Story”) (AP via MSNBC)

Experts studying the evolution of human behaviour have discovered chimpanzees will raid fruit to attract a mate.

The study found that males will abscond with fruits like papaya from nearby orchards and give it to females.

The finding is the only recorded example of regular sharing by unrelated non-provisioned wild chimpanzees.

[Read](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/6987795.stm “Read the Story”) (BBC)