Trees, shrubs and other plants that make up mountainside forests are shifting to higher ground to escape the warming climate, researchers have found.

Common species found on mountain ranges across Europe have steadily spread to higher altitudes during the 20th century, thriving on land that is on average 29m higher each decade, records show.

French scientists who examined plant records for six mountainous regions, including the western Alps and northern Pyrenees, said their findings point to the dramatic affect climate change is having on plant life.

"For the first time we have showed that climate change is already having a significant effect on a large set of plant species," said Jonathan Lenoir, lead author on the study at AgroParis Tech, a consortium of French academic institutions.

The study is particularly significant because the mountain ecosystems are not regarded as especially sensitive to climate change, unlike many others regions on the planet.

Writing in the US journal Science, the researchers describe how parts of France have witnessed greater temperature rises in the 20th century than the global average. In some alpine regions, temperature rises have exceeded 0.9C over the period.

In the study, Lenoir and his team examined 3991 historical inventories of plant life that had been conducted between 1905 and 1985 or over a later period from 1986 to 2005. The surveys showed how the distribution of 171 different plant species varied with time across six mountain ranges, including the Western Alps, the Northern Pyrenees, the Massif Central, the Western Jura, the Vosges and the Corsican range. All of the plants grew between sea level and an altitude of 2,600m.

The surveys showed that as temperatures increased over the decades, the altitudes plants thrived at also rose, with short-lived species such as grasses and ferns heading for higher, and cooler ground, more quickly than long-lived species such as trees and shrubs.

Plants that grow almost entirely on mountainsides, such as sidebells wintergreen (Orphilia secunda), moved more than plants that are also found in lowlands, such as the paris herb. Fast breeding species were also found to have moved to higher latitudes than slow-breeding woody plants, such as the whitebeam (Sorbus aria).

Not all of the plants included in the study shifted to higher altitudes. Of those studied, 53, or nearly one third moved down mountainsides to lower land, the surveys revealed.

"Our results show that species displayed different rates of movement, behaving in a seemlngly idiosyncratic way in response to climate change," Lenoir said.

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Eight hundred thousand dollars should buy a lot of water. But in Los Angeles county, where a recently declared drought is starting to bite, lawmakers plan to spend that much firing silver iodide particles into the sky in the hope of boosting rainfall by as much as 15%.

"There are no assurances or guarantees that it will produce anything," Richard Hansen, general manager of Three Valleys Municipal Water District told the Associated Press. "But it doesn't hurt to try."

Los Angeles engaged in cloud-seeding from the 1950s to the 1990s, when the practice was suspended because of concerns that it could trigger landslides.

But other areas, including nearby Santa Barbara, have continued to use the method, typically employing airplanes or ground-based generators to spray silver iodide above mountains and watersheds.

Los Angeles county plans to place generators along the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, north of the city. The generators will use propane burners or flares to spray the particles into the air, where the silver iodide will interact with naturally occurring clouds to create additional ice crystals.

The exercise will take place during the winter rains, to minimise the risk of fire and because, for the theory to work, there need to be natural clouds.

A study by the National Academy of Sciences released in 2003 found that there was no evidence that cloud-seeding worked, although experts acknowledge that it is difficult to gauge whether a cloud is producing more rain than it might normally do.

"It's something that I wish there were more good hard research on," Maury Roos, California's chief hydrologist told the Los Angeles Times. "I think there's something to it. The question is, how much, versus how much is it going to cost?"

Should the practice catch on, it will mark a return to the days of one of southern California's earliest obsessions with modifying nature and the exploits of "Hatfield the Rainmaker".

Practicing his craft in the first decades of the 20th century, Charles Mallory Hatfield would place "evaporating tanks" filled with chemicals in drought-affected areas. His most notable achievement was to coax 16 inches of rain in two days from the skies over San Diego in 1916. The city, however, refused to pay Hatfield, declaring, "We told you merely to fill the reservoir - not to flood the community."

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An environmental group has been stirring up anger with its campaign to buy up parts of the Amazon rainforest. Its tactics may end up making things worse.

Cool Earth, a British environmental group, has declared itself to be "bewildered" at reports that the Brazilian authorities were investigating the activities of its founder Johan Eliasch for allegedly urging foreigners to buy up the Amazon rainforest. Hopelessly naive might be a better description.

Eliasch, a Swedish-born businessman, is a former deputy treasurer of the Conservative party, and now serves as Gordon Brown's special representative for deforestation. In the course of a speech in 2006 he said that hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico had cost insurance companies "$75bn" and it might be cheaper to buy the entire Brazilian rainforest for "$50bn" thereby preventing deforestation and making hurricanes less frequent.

Eliasch has himself bought up around 400,000 acres of Amazon rainforest, an area about the size of Sao Paulo, Brazil's biggest city. He made the purchase in 2005 and is believed to have paid around £8m for it.

According to its website, the idea behind Cool Earth is that "rainforests are worth much more left standing both for the planet and for local communities." His organisation, Cool Earth, invites people to donate money to "secure one area of land that would otherwise be sold to loggers and ranchers and to price deforestation out of the market". The charity says that it puts its money into a local trust and that it "employs local people to do the work, helping them to get income from the forest without cutting it down, and make sure the rainforest is worth more standing than cut down".

Last week President Lula said that said that foreigners need to "understand that the Amazon has an owner, and that is the Brazilian people". On Monday one of Brazil's main newspapers reported that the police and intelligence services were investigating Eliasch for his claim about buying the forest and Carlos Minc, Brazil's new environment minister, said he was shocked by the report. He announced that one of his first acts in his new post would be to open an inquiry into the matter and it has also been raised within the ministry for external affairs.

Matthew Owen, the director of Cool Earth, has issued a statement saying that the organisation "does not own any land in Amazon, we fund conservation projects but we are not interested in owning lands which we think would be an inappropriate use of a UK-based charity." He added, "the ownership of the Amazon is a very politicised topic and understandably the government wants to understand what all players are doing. We are successful in bringing ... funding for the protection of the Amazon but there is no evidence whatsoever that we infringed any regulations."

Cool Earth's only real offence has probably been a marketing campaign, which might appeal to potential donors but is grossly insensitive towards the feelings of its intended beneficiaries – a bit like the "sponsor a black baby" adverts that some aid charities used to run. The reality is that the organisation could not buy up the Amazon, even if it wanted to, since much of it is already in public hands. However, as Greenpeace Brazil has pointed out, Cool Earth could actually exacerbate the problem caused by the profusion of false property titles which means that it might end up funding the grilleiros (land-grabbers) and buying lands that are already protected by law.

Good idea / bad idea? What do you think?

Comments are appreciated!

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There is more than twice as much oil in the ground as major producers say, according to a former industry adviser who claims there is widespread misunderstanding of the way proven reserves are calculated.

Although it is widely assumed that the world has reached a point where oil production has peaked and proven reserves have sunk to roughly half of original amounts, this idea is based on flawed thinking, said Richard Pike, a former oil industry man who is now chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Current estimates suggest there are 1,200 billion barrels of proven global reserves, but the industry's internal figures suggest this amounts to less than half of what actually exists.

The misconception has helped boost oil prices to an all-time high, sending jitters through the market and prompting calls for oil-producing nations to increase supply to push down costs.

The environmental implications of his analysis, based on more than 30 years inside the industry, will alarm environmentalists who have exploited the concept of peak oil to press the urgency of the need to find greener alternatives.

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Don't forget that June 9th is National Liftshare Day so make sure that one day next week during one of the regular journeys that you make that you share the journey with someone else. It needs though to be a journey that you make frequently!

Liftsharing is, quite simply, offering a lift to or accepting a lift from, someone making the same journey as you. There are now 33m vehicles on Britain's roads, the bulk of which are cars. The average UK motorist drives 8,700 miles each year, emitting 3.1 tonnes of CO2 in the process. In 2006, 60% of cars on the road only had one occupant: the driver.

According to a 2005 report by liftshare and Transport 2000 (now the Campaign for Better Transport), doubling the number of car-passenger trips (assuming the passengers were previous drivers) could reduce the number of trips made as a car-driver by 56%. It claims this alone would enable the UK to achieve 82% of its target for cutting emissions by 20% by 2010.

The workplace is a good starting point for promoting liftsharing because commuting and business trips represent 29% of the total distance travelled by car. If you have no other option but to travel by car, try to find other colleagues who make the same journey as you and take it in turns to drive. Not only will you save money and have someone to talk to on the journey, but you'll be chauffeur-driven for half your journeys to work.

Encourage your company to make it easier for employees to make more sustainable decisions on travel. The government has just released The Essential Guide to Travel Planning, aimed at helping businesses do just that.

It claims that by making simple changes such as setting up a car-share register, establishing a car-park management system and installing cycle shelters, can help cut the number of people driving to work by 15%. A firm of 2000 whose staff mostly drove to work could slash their total annual mileage by a million miles in this way.

Liftshare hosts a national network of online car-sharing systems. After registering your details on its website, you can post details of a journey you wish to make either as a driver or passenger. The site will provide a range of possible matches and you can choose the best one. It claims that 36% of journeys listed result in a match being contacted.

National liftsharing schemes targeting particular types of journey include: StudentCarShare.com and School-run.org. There are also more local networks, such as CarshareSouthWest.com, CentralLondonLiftshare.com and BracknellForestTravelShare.co.uk. You can find liftsharing schemes in your area at carshare.com.

The hope for this week's pledge is that by liftsharing on a regular journey for one week, you'll see the benefits of reducing your carbon footprint while cutting congestion, and will continue double-up for this journey in the future. The UK currently looks likely to miss its target to cut emissions by 20 per cent by 2010; your actions could help make the difference.

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The Guardian newspaper (UK) today reported:

From a distance the bizarre structures sprouting from the high Alentejo plain in eastern Portugal resemble a field of mechanical sunflowers. Each of the 2,520 giant solar panels is the size of a house and they are as technically sophisticated as a car. Their reflective heads tilt to the sky at a permanent 45 degrees as they track the sun through 240 degrees every day.

The world's largest solar photovoltaic farm, generating electricity straight from sunlight, is taking shape near Moura, a small town in a thinly populated and impoverished region which boasts the most sunshine per square metre a year in Europe.

When fully commissioned later this year, the £250m farm set on abandoned state-owned land will be twice the size of any other similar project in the world, covering an area nearly twice the size of London's Hyde park. It is expected to supply 45MW of electricity each year, enough to power 30,000 homes.

Portugal, without its own oil, coal or gas and with no expertise in nuclear power, is pitching to lead Europe's clean-tech revolution with some of the most ambitious targets and timetables for renewables. Its intention, the economics minister, Manuel Pinho, said, is to wean itself off oil and within a decade set up a low carbon economy in response to high oil prices and climate change.

"We have to reduce our dependence on oil and gas," said Pinho. "What seemed extravagant in 2004 when we decided to go for renewables now seems to have been a very good decision."

He expects Portugal to generate 31% of all its energy from clean sources by 2020. This means lifting its renewable electricity share from 20% in 2005 to 60% in 2020, compared with Britain's target of 15% of all energy by 2020. Having passed its target for 2010 it could soon top the EU renewables league.

In less than three years, Portugal has trebled its hydropower capacity, quadrupled its wind power, and is investing in flagship wave and photovoltaic plants. Encouraged by long-term guarantees of prices by the state, and not delayed by planning laws or government indecision, it has proved a success. Firms are expected to invest £10bn in renewables by 2012 and up to £100bn by 2020.

However, Portugal says it wants to develop a renewables industry to rival Denmark or Japan. When the government invited companies for tenders to supply wind, solar and wave power, it demanded they work with manufacturing companies to establish clusters of industries.

This is a great success, say regional governments. In northern Portugal, where the world's biggest wind farm, with more than 130 turbines, is now being strung across the mountainous Spanish border, a German firm employs more than 1,200 people building 600 40-metre-long fibreglass wind turbine blades a year.

The turbines are earmarked for Portuguese farms first, but orders are being taken from Britain and other countries. Half the workforce are women who once worked in the declining textile industry.

It is Portuguese plans for wave power that are prompting the most interest in Europe. The world's first commercial wave farm is being assembled near Porto. Three "sea snakes", developed by the Edinburgh-based company Pelamis, will shortly be towed out to sea and will start pumping modest amounts of electricity into the grid later this year.

It is the start of a potentially giant global industry with Portuguese firm Enersis planning to invest more than £1bn in a series of farms that together would power 450,000 homes.

Pinho dismisses nuclear power. "When you have a programme like this there is no need for nuclear power. Wind and water are our nuclear power. The relative price of renewables is now much lower, so the incentives are there to invest. My advice to countries like the UK is to move as fast as they can to renewables. With climate change and the increase in oil prices, renewables will become more and more important.

"Countries that do not invest in renewables will pay a high price in future. The cost of inaction is very high indeed. The perception that renewable energy is very expensive is changing every day as the oil price goes up."

He added: "Energy and environment are the biggest challenge of our generation. We need to develop a low-carbon model for the world economy. The present situation is dangerous."

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Half a million jobs and 500 years of tradition are to be phased out in Brazil's booming sugar cane industry to satisfy western demands for more socially acceptable work practices in the biofuel sector.

Sugar cane cutters who have been working Brazil's land since 1525, when Portuguese colonialists first experimented with growing the crop, are to make way for mechanisation.

The Brazilian Sugar Cane Industry Association (UNICA) said 80% of the 500,000 jobs would be gone within three years and admitted that moving to a tractor-based system would cause pain and upheaval for its migrant workforce.

"This will not solve the problem of migration — there will still be a social problem," Marcos Jank, the president of the association, told a briefing on biofuels in Sao Paulo, adding the group had signed a new "social" and "green" protocol with the government to improve overall conditions in the field.

The condition of sugar workers was rarely noticed when the commodity was exported for sugar but the position has changed now that Brazil is the world's second-largest exporter of sugar-based ethanol to use as a biofuel in petrol.

Behind the move to phase out sugar cane cutters are tales of exploitation that have damaged the image of Brazilian biofuels in big importing countries such as Sweden and potentially in Britain, where the government has mandated that 2.5% of all petrol come from biofuels.

Critics have accused Brazil's sugar cane industry of presiding over child labour, high accident rates and workers earning as little as $1.35 (67p) an hour. Employers insist that pay is three times that level.

Manual labour is also blamed for poor environmental practices such as crop wastage and the burning of stubble. Mechanised systems will be able to harvest more of the crop and allow Brazil to use by-products for powering electricity plants, argues UNICA.

Brazilian ethanol output grew by nearly a quarter during 2007 to a record 22bn litres, with around 4bn being exported.

The government believed it was going to be able to build a huge new export industry around biofuels. But that dream is under threat as the emerging crop-based fuel sector becomes mired in arguments over "food for fuel" and the idea that rising food prices can be attributed to farmers using land to grow fuel crops.

There are also claims that biofuels are causing deforestation in sensitive areas such as Brazil's Amazon Basin, seen by scientists as the lungs of the world because the trees there absorb so much carbon.

UNICA says subsidies in America and Europe for farmers and biofuels may be one element of the rising price of food which has caused riots in Haiti and other countries. But Jank insists Brazil is not contributing to that development because only 1% of arable land is used for ethanol production.

He is also adamant that increased ethanol production is not affecting the Amazon, claiming the area is too wet to grow sugar and insisting other farming is not being pushed into the rain forests to make way for ethanol elsewhere.

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It has long been the holy grail for those who believe that technology can save us from catastrophic climate change: a device that can "suck" carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, reducing the warming effect of the billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas produced each year.

Now a group of US scientists say they have made a breakthrough towards creating such a machine. Led by Klaus Lackner, a physicist at Columbia University in New York, they plan to build and demonstrate a prototype within two years that could economically capture a tonne of CO2 a day from the air, about the same per passenger as a flight from London to New York.

The prototype so-called scrubber will be small enough to fit inside a shipping container. Lackner estimates it will initially cost around £100,000 to build, but the carbon cost of making each device would be "small potatoes" compared with the amount each would capture, he said.

The scientists stress their invention is not a magic bullet to solve climate change. It would take millions of the devices to soak up the world's carbon emissions, and the CO2 trapped would still need to be disposed of. But the team says the technology may be the best way to avert dangerous temperature rises, as fossil fuel use is predicted to increase sharply in coming decades despite international efforts. Climate experts at a monitoring station in Hawaii this month reported CO2 levels in the atmosphere have reached a record 387 parts per million (ppm) - 40% higher than before the industrial revolution.

The team is working to build a prototype at a laboratory in Tuscon, Arizona. Run by a company called Global Research Technologies (GRT), of which Lackner is vice president of research, the laboratory unveiled a "pre-prototype" air capture machine last year, based on a different technique -rinsing trapped CO2 off the membrane with liquid sodium carbonate, and then using electricity to liberate the CO2 from the fluid.

The team is also working on ways to dispose of the pure CO2 gas produced by each scrubber.

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