"'There's a long tradition of people who don't like a particular message turning to attack the person delivering the message,' former Vice President Al Gore just said on NPR's Talk of the Nation."

"This week marks two anniversaries of global green campaigning groups that could scarcely be more different, while holding almost identical aims."

"Five years after the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore returns to the world stage with an updated slide show. Can his message be any more successful this time around?"

"Environmental groups and their critics are trading blows over the findings of a recent Government Accountability Office report on environmental litigation costs. In the face of Republican claims that environmentalists game the legal system to win attorneys' fees, GAO experts examined lawsuits filed against U.S. EPA and found 'no discernible trend' over the last 16 years."

Hundreds of anti-fracking protestors rallied outside a Marcellus Shale industry conference in Philadelphia. Aubrey McClendon, the chief executive of Chesapeake Energy Co., called people concerned about the safety of their families' drinking water "extremists," even as an industry-friendly report noted that fracking could be costly to communities.

"MONUMENT VALLEY, Utah (AP) — The stretch of high desert on the Arizona-Utah border gives way to towering rock formations that resemble huge mittens, chimney spires and castles. But to the west of Monument Valley lies a reminder of what has been blamed for much heartache and tragedy in Elsie Mae Begay's family: A mesa stained with a gray streak where uranium was mined decades ago."

"Protesters hope to persuade President Obama not to approve the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline that would run from Canada to Texas. But the State Department already says its safe, and supporters point to thousands of new jobs."

"Dozens were arrested at the White House Saturday as protesters began a two-week sit-in expected to draw over 2,000 opponents of a proposed pipeline from Canada to the US Gulf Coast."

"At long last, mainstream media begins to pay attention to the flat denial of basic climate science being pushed by right-wing Republican presidential candidates."

"Two Australian retirees invoke the 'father of modern science' in their fight against the hegemony of settled climate science. But their arguments - and the advisors supporting them - draw from a deep history of climate science denial and distortion."

Douglas Fischer reports for The Daily Climate August 16, 2011. [34]