LONDON/OSLO (Reuters) – Last year was the world’s second hottest behind 1998 in a temperature record dating back to 1850, the director of research at Britain’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) Phil Jones said on Wednesday.

Jones’ unit, compiling data with the Met Office Hadley Centre, is one of three main groups worldwide tracking global warming. Last week the other two, based in the United States, said 2010 was tied for the hottest on record.

LONDON/OSLO (Reuters) – Last year was the world’s second hottest behind 1998 in a temperature record dating back to 1850, the director of research at Britain’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) Phil Jones said on Wednesday.

Jones’ unit, compiling data with the Met Office Hadley Centre, is one of three main groups worldwide tracking global warming. Last week the other two, based in the United States, said 2010 was tied for the hottest on record.

LONDON/OSLO (Reuters) – Last year was the world’s second hottest behind 1998 in a temperature record dating back to 1850, the director of research at Britain’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) Phil Jones said on Wednesday.

Jones’ unit, compiling data with the Met Office Hadley Center, is one of three main groups worldwide tracking global warming. Last week the other two, based in the United States, said 2010 was tied for the hottest on record.

LONDON (Reuters) – Fossil fuel investments will continue to outstrip low-carbon alternatives this year, darkening a sector struggling to shake off the financial crisis and sagging political momentum on climate change.

Soaring fossil fuel prices, where the European oil benchmark is pushing $100 a barrel, favour oil and coal producers, while falling gas prices have undermined wind power generation especially in the United States.

LONDON (Reuters) – Fossil fuel investments will continue to outstrip low-carbon alternatives this year, darkening a sector struggling to shake off the financial crisis and sagging political momentum on climate change.

Soaring fossil fuel prices, where the European oil benchmark is pushing $100 a barrel, favor oil and coal producers, while falling gas prices have undermined wind power generation especially in the United States.

LONDON (Reuters) – Record high world food prices threaten to limit the use of land for low-carbon energy crops just as British efforts to pioneer growth of the giant grass miscanthus in Europe are poised to gather pace.

Miscanthus giganteus is a 3-meter high Asian elephant grass whose tawny leaves are now at their tallest before harvesting next month.

CANCUN, Mexico (Reuters) – Evidence of green business profits and more direct industry engagement may be needed to push U.N. climate talks out of stale rich-poor rivalries to a global agreement.

Negotiations like the just-finished 190-nation U.N. climate talks in the Mexican resort of Cancun do not give businesses or investors a formal role, consigning them instead to hold side events in hotels far from the conference centre.

CANCUN, Mexico (Reuters) – Evidence of green business profits and more direct industry engagement may be needed to push U.N. climate talks out of stale rich-poor rivalries to a global agreement.

Negotiations like the just-finished 190-nation U.N. climate talks in the Mexican resort of Cancun do not give businesses or investors a formal role, consigning them instead to hold side events in hotels far from the conference center.

CANCUN, Mexico (Reuters) – The world’s governments agreed on Saturday to modest steps to combat climate change and to give more money to poor countries, but they put off until next year tough decisions on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The deal includes a Green Climate Fund that would give $100 billion a year in aid to poor nations by 2020, measures to protect tropical forests and ways to share clean energy technologies.

CANCUN, Mexico (Reuters) – A new deal among 190 nations to slow climate change throws a lifeline to U.N.-led talks but they will still struggle to find a deal extending the Kyoto Protocol for cutting carbon emissions beyond 2012.

Most delegates said the main achievement of the two-week conference in Cancun, Mexico was simply to have an agreement, and thereby restore some faith in a damaged U.N. process after a Copenhagen summit in 2009 failed to agree a treaty.