Things are looking up today — climate talks are reportedly going well, America beats the world in geothermal R&D, and great white sharks now have their very own singles bar. Ain’t life Cool?

1. How are things in Barcelona (aside from the shocking underperformance of its namesake soccer team this year)? For the climate talks now underway there, Climate Feedback’s Jeff Tollefson reports there’s some optimism that the world can reach political agreement on a climate deal in Copenhagen, with a binding legal agreement following in 2010.
2. We’re #1! (in funding for geothermal R&D, that is!) EcoGeek says the United States government has announced $300 million in such spending — putting it ahead of every other country and Google.org (which is its own planet, isn’t it?)
3. Another, not so nice kind of #1 — the  2009 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is out, and Ecoworldy says Ecuador tops the list of countries with the most such imperiled fauna (2,211).
4. Great white sharks aren’t such sociopathic loners, after all — the Washington Post says they like to hook up in a spot halfway between Hawaii and California that researchers are calling “the cafe.”
5. Noah’s Ark Deux? A team of scientists is proposing an effort to sequence the genomes of 10,000 vertebrate species in an effort to aid their conservation, says a report in the Journal of Heredity. (No talk of cloning…yet. Hat tip: Journal Watch Online.)

Posted: November 5th, 2009 under Animals, Climate Change, Energy, Fish, Policy, Science, South America, United States.
Tags: Barcelona climate, Climate Feedback, Copenhagen climate, EcoGeek, EcoWorldly, Ecuador, genome sequencing, geothermal, geothermal R&D, google, great white shark, IUCN Red List, Jeff Tollefson, Journal of Heredity, Journal Watch Online, shark cafe, vertebrate conservation, Washington Post