NEW YORK (CNNMoney) −− Rivals Ford Motor and Toyota Motor announced an agreement Monday to work together to develop a new hybrid system for use in light trucks.

The agreement is expected to produce hybrid rear−wheel drive pickups and SUVs sometime later this decade. The agreement brings together Toyota (TM), which has been a leader in hybrid technology, with Ford (F, Fortune 500), which still has a leading position in the pickup and SUV portion of the market, where hybrids are still less common.

The evidence of climate change is all around us. Every day, new stories and scientific studies pour in documenting impacts of climate change we’re already experiencing. The message is clear: Climate change is not an abstract problem for the future. Climate change is happening now, we are causing it, and the longer we wait to act, the more we lose and the more difficult the problem will be to solve.

In 15 years, a new car that gets less than 50 miles per gallon could be considered a gas-guzzler−−if new fuel economy regulations President Obama plans to announce tomorrow stick. Automakers have agreed to support the new standards, which would U.S. vehicles to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Current standards require an average fuel economy of 31.4 miles per gallon by 2016.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2011) − Researchers at MIT have found a way to make significant improvements to the power−conversion efficiency of solar cells by enlisting the services of tiny viruses to perform detailed assembly work at the microscopic level.

MIT researchers and their collaborators have come up with an unusual, high performance and possibly less expensive way of turning the sun’s heat into electricity.

Their system, described in a paper published online in the journal Nature Materials on May 1, produces power with an efficiency roughly eight times higher than ever previously reported for a solar thermoelectric device...

The sheet of paper looks like any other document that might have just come spitting out of an office printer, with an array of colored rectangles printed over much of its surface. But then a researcher picks it up, clips a couple of wires to one end, and shines a light on the paper. Instantly an LCD clock display at the other end of the wires starts to display the time.

MIT researchers have developed a new application of carbon nanotubes that shows promise as an innovative approach to storing solar energy for use whenever it’s needed.

Storing the sun’s heat in chemical form − rather than first converting it to electricity or storing the heat itself in a heavily insulated container − has significant advantages: in principle, the chemical material can be stored for long periods of time without losing any of its stored energy.

It starts with a warning. Then it’s just a matter of which way the wind blows.

In the evening, someone will go from house to house and tell the neighborhood that tomorrow will be a windy day and perhaps, a bad air day. The next afternoon−if the conditions are just wrong−a toxic dust called coal ash picks up from the landfills and slag ponds of the coal−fired Reid Gardner Power Station and heads towards the reservation like a sandstorm.

There is simply no exaggerating the importance of the oceans to earth’s overall ecological balance. Their health affects the health of all terrestrial life. A new report by an international coalition of marine scientists makes for grim reading. It concludes that the oceans are approaching irreversible, potentially catastrophic change.

The experts, convened by the International Program on the State of the Ocean and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, found that marine “degradation is now happening at a faster rate than predicted.” The oceans have warmed and become more acidic as they absorbed human−generated carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They are also more oxygen−deprived, because of agricultural runoff and other anthropogenic causes. This deadly trio of conditions was present in previous mass extinctions, according to the report.

As my colleague John Broder and I reported in Thursday’s paper, American Electric Power is dropping its plan to build a commercial−scale version of a carbon dioxide scrubber at Mountaineer, its coal−fired power plant in New Haven, W.Va.

The company decided that since public service commissions in West Virginia and Virginia had refused to give it full reimbursement for a pilot version that it ran for two years, it could not expect to recover its investment for the full−scale version − even if the Energy Department was going to pony up $334 million, or half the cost.

MIT researchers have shown how solar panels can be printed on paper and other cheap materials, opening a range of possibilities including homes with solar−panel window shades or wallpaper.

Last year, CNET’s Martin LaMonica reported on how MIT had developed the world’s first solar panel printed on paper. A recent MIT study in the journal Advanced Materials by Karen Gleason and colleagues details the innovation.

Ice sheets simmering in warmer ocean waters could melt much quicker than realized. New research is suggesting that as oceans heat up they could erode away the ice sheets much faster than warmer air alone, and this interaction needs to be accounted for in climate change models.

“Ocean warming is very important compared to atmospheric warming, because water has a much larger heat capacity than air,” study researcher Jianjun Yin, of the University of Arizona, said in a statement. “If you put an ice cube in a warm room, it will melt in several hours. But if you put an ice cube in a cup of warm water, it will disappear in just minutes.”

Editor’s note: Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor Company, spoke at the TED2011 conference in March. TED is a nonprofit organization dedicated to “Ideas worth spreading, ” which it distributes on its website.

(CNN) −− Sustainability is the biggest issue facing global business in the 21st century. While breakthroughs like improved battery technology will likely provide a solution to the CO2 challenge, another issue −− “Global Gridlock” −− is quietly taking its place.

(CNN) −− Michel Laberge quit his job to invent a “glorified jackhammer” that he hoped would save the planet. That was 10 years ago.

Now, investors are betting more than $30 million on that jackhammer idea, which may yield a holy grail of energy −− a safe, clean and unlimited power source called hot fusion.

ScienceDaily (June 22, 2011) − Everything has its price, even the weather. New research indicates that routine weather events such as rain and cooler−than−average days can add up to an annual economic impact of as much as $485 billion in the United States.

The study, led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), found that finance, manufacturing, agriculture, and every other sector of the economy is sensitive to changes in the weather. The impacts can be felt in every state.

OSLO (Reuters) − Life in the oceans is at imminent risk of the worst spate of extinctions in millions of years due to threats such as climate change and over−fishing, a study showed on Tuesday.

Time was running short to counter hazards such as a collapse of coral reefs or a spread of low−oxygen “dead zones,” according to the study led by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO).

PARIS (AFP) − Schemes to convert croplands or marginal lands to forests will make almost no inroads against global warming this century, a scientific study published on Sunday said.

Afforestation is being encouraged under the UN’s Kyoto Protocol climate−change treaty under the theory that forests are “sinks” that soak up carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air through photosynthesis.

If it feels like your lawn is ready to shrivel up and blow away, you may not be wrong. According to the new drought monitor, 9% of the continental U.S. is in exceptional drought which is the worst drought level possible. This is the largest area of excpetional drought on record!

Drought Statistics
−−281,000+ square miles in drought
−−An area equal to the 13 Northeast states and Washington D.C.
−−7.54% of U.S. (including Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico) in “exceptional drought”

CANBERRA (Reuters) − Charlie Bragg gazes across his lush fields where fat lambs are grazing, his reservoirs filled with water, and issues a sigh of relief. Things are normal this year and that’s a bit unusual of late.

His 7,000−acre farm near the Australian town of Cootamundra is testament to the plight facing farmers around the globe: increasingly wilder weather is making food production more unpredictable. It’s the new normal they must prepare for.

ScienceDaily (June 6, 2011) − The tropics and much of the Northern Hemisphere are likely to experience an irreversible rise in summer temperatures within the next 20 to 60 years if atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase, according to a new climate study by Stanford University scientists.

THERE’S more than meets the eye in the battery−powered model car sitting in Emile Greenhalgh’s laboratory at Imperial College London.

The model has been modified by the researcher’s team to increase the amount of electrical energy it can store − but not by installing a bigger battery. Instead, the team added body components that double as capacitors, devices that hold an electrical charge until they are tapped.

ScienceDaily (June 1, 2011) − Research from North Carolina State University shows that so−called biodegradable products are likely doing more harm than good in landfills, because they are releasing a powerful greenhouse gas as they break down.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 25, 2011) − In a study to be published in the April 21st issue of Science, researchers at Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science report their findings that the ozone hole, which is located over the South Pole, has affected the entire circulation of the Southern Hemisphere all the way to the equator. While previous work has shown that the ozone hole is changing the atmospheric flow in the high latitudes, the new Columbia Engineering paper demonstrates that the ozone hole is able to influence the tropical circulation and increase rainfall at low latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere.

BEIJING (AFP) − Central China’s worst drought in more than 50 years is drying reservoirs, stalling rice planting, and threatens crippling power shortages as hydroelectric output slows, state media said Wednesday.

Rainfall levels from January to April in the drainage basin of the Yangtze, China’s longest and most economically important river, have been 40 percent lower than average levels of the past 50 years, the China Daily said.

TOKYO (AFP) − Japanese telecom company Softbank is to work with local authorities in a drive towards renewable energy, its president said on Wednesday after announcing the construction of 10 large solar power plants.

Since Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami sparked a nuclear emergency, Softbank CEO and president Masayoshi Son, Japan’s richest man, has been a high−profile advocate for a shift away from atomic power and toward renewables such as solar, wind and geothermal.