The Obama administration has delayed release of its new Nuclear Posture Review to at least the end of March, but anonymous officials widely quoted in the media say it will call for "dramatic reductions" in the US nuclear arsenal. Release of the NPR was originally slated for December, and the repeated postponements have sparked much speculation on possible meaningful steps towards the nuclear-free world that Obama set forth as a goal in his Prague speech last April. However, anonymous officials (almost certainly being authorized by the White House to float trial balloons to the press) also say the administration has ruled out pledging that the US will never initiate a nuclear first strike. (BBC News, AlJazeera, March 2; Global Security Newswire, March 1; NYT, Feb. 28)

The Native Alaskan coastal village of Kivalina, its lands rapidly eroding, is appealing a lawsuit against oil, power and coal companies, charging that climate change endangers their community. The town of Kivalina and a federally recognized tribe, the Alaska Native village of Kivalina, filed the case in federal court in San Francisco in 2008, but it was dismissed in October. The appeal has been filed with the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals. ExxonMobil and BP are among two dozen defendants named in the suit.

Sea ice in Canada's Arctic is melting faster than previously expected, the lead investigator in Ottawa's largest climate-change study yet said Feb. 5—raising a worst-case scenario of an ice-free Arctic by 2013. University of Manitoba professor David Barber, leader of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study, said "It's happening much faster than our most pessimistic models suggested."

The US and Russia have reached an agreement for the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty since 1991, officials said Feb. 1. The landmark treaty, which will replace the recently expired Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), will include significant reductions in both the number of deployed nuclear weapons as well as the number of nuclear-delivery systems. US Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller is in Paris to finalize the treaty after an agreement in principle was reached last week between US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

President Barack Obama is set to boost funding for nuclear weapons programs next year, even as his administration promotes nonproliferation and pledges to reduce the world's stockpile of nuclear arms. The new White House budget request seeks more than $7 billion for the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), an increase of $624 million from FY 2010.

More than 50 countries, including the US, China, and EU member states, submitted plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the UN Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC) prior to a Jan. 31 deadline set by the non-binding Copenhagen Accord. Relative to 2005 levels, the US has pledged to reduce emissions to 17%, while China has targeted a 40 to 45 percent reduction per GDP unit. EU members pledged a 20% reduction below 1990 levels. The countries submitting plans to the UNFCC represent two-thirds of worldwide emissions. Critics of the Copenhagen Accord say it lacks the enforcement mechanisms needed to ensure compliance, and is unlikely to limit global temperature rise to the indicated levels. Another round of climate change talks are scheduled for December, with the hope being that a binding resolution can be developed from the pledges made under the current accord. (Jurst, Feb. 1)

Citing budgetary constraints, President Barack Obama has cancelled the US project designed to take humans back to the Moon. The Constellation program envisaged a new crew ship called Orion to put astronauts on the lunar surface by 2020. But in his 2011 budget request issued Feb. 1, Obama said the project is too costly, "behind schedule, and lacking in innovation." The president said he plans to turn to the private sector for launch services. "While we're cancelling Constellation, we're not cancelling our ambitions," said Jim Kohlenberger, chief of staff at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). (BBC News, Feb. 1)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has now admitted that it made a mistake in asserting that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 in its last report, and the climate change deniers have been having the predictable feeding frenzy. But as IPCC chair Dr. Rajendra Pachauri told the BBC News Jan. 25, "Let me emphasize that this does not in any way detract from the fact that the glaciers are melting, and this is a problem we need to be deeply concerned about."