Feature Article

As a recent policy adviser to the United Nations in a programme intended to address environmental threats in the Amazon, I would caution readers of your Special Report 'Brazil goes to war against logging' (Nature 452, 134

Climatologists have called for massive investment in computer and research resources to help revolutionize modelling capabilities. The eventual aim is to provide probabilistic climate predictions that are as useful, and usable, as weather forecasts. At the end of a four-day summit held last week at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK, the scientists made the case for a climate-prediction project on the scale of the Human Genome Project.

Air travel shows no sign of losing its allure but its environmental impact is not going to go away. Katharine Sanderson looks at some of the ways that scientists and engineers hope to reduce the carbon wing-print of aircraft.

Scientists have decried the decision by two German universities to pull the plug on field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops, calling it a "disgraceful' interference with scientists' freedom to research.

A former US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientist is suing the agency's officials and researchers at the University of Georgia in Athens, alleging that they manufactured and published false data to support the use of potentially harmful sewage sludges as fertilizers. The sludges have been linked to health problems in humans and cattle

Some 30 years ago, as the United States began to tighten its environmental regulations on residential and industrial wastewater, operators of sewage-treatment plants embraced what seemed an eminently sensible idea. They decided to take the rich organic sludge left over after clean water is extracted and sell it to farmers as fertilizer. The programme might well be as sensible as it seems. It is possible that the millions of tonnes of sludge being spread across the rural landscape contain no significant levels of toxic chemicals, heavy metals or disease-causing organisms.

Few scientific creations have had greater impact on public opinion and policy than computer models of Earth's climate. These models, which unanimously show a rising tide of red as temperatures climb worldwide, have been key over the past decade in forging the scientific and political consensus that global warming is a grave danger. (Editorial)

Significant changes in physical and biological systems are occurring on all continents and in most oceans, with a concentration of available data in Europe and North America. Most of these changes are in the direction expected with warming temperature. Here the authors show that these changes in natural systems since at least 1970 are occurring in regions of observed temperature increases, and that these temperature increases at continental scales cannot be explained by natural climate variations alone.

Arunachal Pradesh is awarding hydroelectric projects to private companies at the breakneck speed of one every nine days without proper scrutiny. The government says hydroelectricity is the key to the state

In May 2005, the Arunachal Pradesh government filed an application in the Supreme Court regarding the Subansiri (Lower) project, expressing serious concerns about large storage dams: "