The earth struck back this year, according to the Associated Press. Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super-typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter of a million people in 2010 — the deadliest year in more than a generation. And we have ourselves to blame most of the time, say scientists and disaster experts.

Northern Europe was hit this week by days of extreme winter weather, with snow and ice cutting off travel links across Britain, France, Germany and elsewhere, the Associated Press reported. New research, said Agence-France Presse, shows that global warming has contributed to the continent’s winter woes.

As icy gusts swept up from the Southern Ocean, AFP noted, snow also fell in Australia’s eastern mountain regions in what is normally the peak of the summer wildflower season.  

Regulators in California approved the first US system to give polluting companies such as utilities and refineries financial incentives to emit fewer greenhouse gases, the Associated Press said. Meanwhile, the state is braced for the worst of a seven-day series of severe storms, the Los Angeles Times said.

US scientist Charles David Keeling’s discovery of the increasing CO2 level in the atmosphere transformed the scientific understanding of humanity’s relationship with the earth, according to The New York Times. Now, five years after his death, his find is the touchstone of a worldwide political debate over global warming.

The Ecuadorean judge hearing a US$27 billion environmental damages case against Chevron told Reuters he has closed the evidentiary phase of the trial. Farmers and indigenous tribes in Ecuador's Amazon region want the oil company to pay for the clean-up of areas they say were polluted by faulty drilling practices in the 1970s and 1980s.

US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks revealed how close BP came to a major oil spill at an offshore platform in Azerbaijian’s Caspian waters in 2008, Time said. The incident contained uncanny echoes of the US disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last April, including the likely cause – a faulty cement job.

General Electric has been ordered to dredge deeper into the Hudson river as part of an effort to remove cancer-causing chemicals dumped into the New York waterway over decades, Reuters reported. The chemicals -- polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs -- once were used as an insulator in electric components.

Two Russian fertiliser groups have combined to create the world’s largest potash producer in a US$23.9 billion merger that underlines the growing value of an industry fuelled by rising food consumption in countries such as China and India, The Financial Times said. China, India and Brazil are among the largest buyers of potash, a key ingredient used to increase crop yield.

chinadialogue’s global environmental update in “News Focus” will be back on January 5, 2011, following the Christmas and New Year holidays. A number of feature articles will be published on the chinadialogue website during the holidays.