"When it comes to reporting on climate change, European media are from hothouse Venus, and their American counterparts are from considerably more frigid Mars. The divide between them may be having a profound impact on climate and energy policy in either part of the world."
"Aid agencies have launched multimillion-pound appeals to address a mounting humanitarian emergency in east Africa, where severe drought and high food prices have left 10 million people requiring assistance."
"As record-shattering heat cripples Oklahoma, Sen. Jim ('global warming is a hoax') Inhofe (R-OK) failed to show for an fossil-industry-funded climate denial conference. A shrinking band of far-right economists, lawyers, and a few scientists have gathered in Washington, DC, for the Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, funded, like Inhofe himself, by Koch Industries and Exxon Mobil. Inhofe was scheduled to be the denier conference’s keynote speaker, but he bailed out, explaining appropriately that he is 'under the weather'"
'The cap-and-trade program, which would force industries to cut greenhouse gases by the end of the decade, continues to be challenged in court.'
"A study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research estimates that the bottom-line cost of all the meteorological craziness is a staggering $485 billion per year in the U.S. alone, as much as 3.4% of the country's GDP."
"For the planet as a whole, 2010 was one of the two warmest years on record, according to three independent datasets detailed in the latest State of the Climate report, released today by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the American Meteorological Society."
"There’s a ripple of unease among many scientists who study the warming of the planet these days. Some have faced harassment, legal challenges and even death threats related to their research, the American Association for the Advancement of Science reports."
"It took farmer Ghulam Hussain almost a year to start re-building his house, destroyed last year in floods that left vast swathes of Pakistan underwater, and disrupted the lives of more than 18 million people. Now, his small, two-room mud and brick house -- just a few hundred meters from the Indus River -- is almost complete, but he is worried as to how long it will survive."
Congress still forbids the Congressional Research Service to release publicly reports that taxpayers have paid for. Thanks to groups like the Federation of American Scientists, however, taxpayers can read the reports online despite the charade.
"Willie Soon, a U.S. climate change skeptic who has also discounted the health risks of mercury emissions from coal, has received more than $1 million in funding in recent years from large energy companies and an oil industry group, according to Greenpeace."
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