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(CNN)—NASA's rockets are astounding machines, capable of blasting into space at thousands of miles per hour and withstanding temperatures twice the melting point of steel. But they can't take off underwater. Rising sea levels caused by melting ice caps threaten to disrupt a handful of NASA launch sites along U.S. coastlines, the space agency warns. In the coming years, launch facilities at Florida's Kennedy Space Center and other places may need to be retrofitted or even moved inland, NASA says. "Every NASA center has its own set of vulnerabilities, and some are more at risk than others," NASA climatologist...

GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush says that he believes human activity is contributing to climate change, and that the U.S. is obligated to do something about it. “The climate is changing; I don’t think anybody can argue it’s not. Human activity has contributed to it. I think we have a responsibility to adapt to what the possibilities are without destroying our economy, without hollowing out our industrial core,” Bush said in an interview with Bloomberg BNA published Thursday.

Over the past year and a half, we've seen much in the way of speculation of what Obama is really up to, what his true agenda might be behind all the soothing and meretricious rhetoric. It was quite clear that "Obama" was a construct, a carefully manufactured image, as all politicians are to one extent or another. But Obama was an extreme example -- all image, most of it having little or no connection with any discernable substance. The gap between what he said and what he would then proceed to do was wide and glaring. This obvious and undeniable...

A Washington state senator has survived a campaign by Western Washington University students who demanded their school revoke his master’s degree because he’s not radical enough on global warming. Doug Ericksen, a Republican and chair of Washington’s Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee, has blocked efforts to force businesses and residents to go green, but he supports voluntary compliance. He opposes mandated cap-and-trade programs and low-carbon fuel standards. But the effort to yank Ericksen’s degree — he earned his MA in political science and environmental policy at WWU — met with a stiff rebuke last week from the university’s president....

Thank you for contacting me regarding climate change. I appreciate knowing your thoughts on this issue. Last year, President Obama announced a plan to address climate change. Unfortunately, most of the Administration's proposals would simply impose burdensome regulations on American business that would be harmful to the U.S. economy. While I welcome the opportunity to debate proposals in the Senate, I do not support the use of executive orders to implement policy and place costly new regulations on the American industry. According to extensive international scientific studies, including reports by the National Academy of Sciences and the Intergovernmental Panel on...

With California’s growing cap-and-trade program expected to yield a budgetary bonanza, lawmakers and interest groups have ample ideas for how to spend the money. Floating proposals ahead of a pivotal period for budget negotiations, they say they want to fund port improvements, pay for heavy-duty trucks and ferries, nurture urban rivers, sponge up carbon in soil and provide discounted bus passes. They are vying for a surge in new revenue that will be available this budget cycle and could continue pouring in for years to come.

Jeb Bush on Friday in New Hampshire called for the U.S. "to work with the rest of the world to negotiate a way to reduce carbon emissions.” The remarks at a "Politics & Eggs" event brought praise from billionaire Tom Steyer's group NextGen Climate, which has spent millions in recent elections blasting Republicans on climate change. "Jeb Bush demonstrated leadership today on the issue of climate change—distancing himself from the other Republican presidential hopefuls and demonstrating why climate change doesn’t have to be a partisan issue," the group said in an email to reporters. "Today in New Hampshire, Bush expressed...

Every year, Al Gore pauses from his overscheduled itinerary of making a fool of himself at climate change speeches around the world to pause at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, where he drops by to make a fool of himself in front of hipsters, activists and a sizable jumble of uninterested partiers. This year, the rhetoric got harsh — as in “punish-the-deniers” harsh. While Gore was talking specifically about politicians who reject the idea that government should divert public funds to combat the effects of a changing climate, his tone toward anyone who thinks the jury’s still...

California is always honing its suicidal skills. In its continuous drive toward the ultimate sunset, the Golden State has made its war on America and what America stands for abundantly clear. It wants to become a territory of Mexico and a haven for illegal aliens supported by the dwindling number of actual American saps it can squeeze every nickel out of… bringing the state inexorably closer to its final demise. Among California’s most glaring self-inflicted wounds is its cap and trade program under which businesses, deemed to be enemies of the socialist utopian dream, must pay a tax above and...

The California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) plan to offer cap and trade offset credits to California rice farmers to change the way they farm is like chumming fish. The government’s upfront offer of cash is a scam to encourage rice farmers to invite bureaucrats into their business. CARB will undoubtedly later change the farming rules by mandating the type of severe regulations that will strangle rural community success. Sacramento Valley rice farming is a $5 billion industry that specializes in premium grains used in risotto, paella, and sushi. California rice commands a high price and is exported to more than...

Starting on January 1st some claim California drivers will start paying a new "Hidden Gas Tax." How much will you pay? We have a two part Special Report on Eyewitness News coming up tomorrow - Tuesday November 25th at Six and Eleven. When the story airs I'll send a link to Free Republic.

This lawless administration plans to bypass the two-thirds requirement for Senate ratification on a climate change treaty by entering into a "politically binding" hybrid agreement to "name and shame" climate scofflaws. Apparently letting the Environmental Protection Agency run amok with regulations fulfilling candidate Obama's pledge to bankrupt the coal industry, and enact a de facto cap-and-trade regime the president couldn't get through Congress, is not enough. The man who said his nomination was the moment the seas began to recede and the planet began to heal now plans to deal the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution yet another...

Arena Profile: Peter Goldmark Peter Goldmark currently directs the Climate and Air program for Environmental Defense Fund. Prior to joining Environmental Defense, he was Chairman and CEO of the International Herald Tribune. Peter has had exceptional careers in both the public and private sectors. His public service was highlighted by his tenure as Budget Director for the State of New York during the 1970s city- and state-wide fiscal crisis where he was an architect of its rescue; and as Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey through to 1983. He served as president of the...

The agencies said their needs are too different and manufacturers are not yet ready to build trains that can run on both Amtrak's 100-year-old rail lines and the high-speed corridors planned for California's system. ... Several unfavorable court rulings have also delayed work. In the most high-profile case, a Sacramento County Superior Court judge halted the sale of $8.6 billion in state rail bonds and ordered the state to write a new funding plan, delaying work on the first 28-mile segment from Madera to Fresno. The state has appealed. But the $108 billion budget that Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed...

This is how stupid we've become: Does Obama do one stupid thing to cover for the other stupid thing? Does he do the stupid prisoner exchange to make up for the stupid carbon plan? Or is all the stupidity organic? Getting past the fact that none of this makes anybody in United States look very good, I think these are legitimate questions. Because it seems to me that Obama has waved the red meat, and the conservative lions have attacked. The red meat in this case being the exchange of prisoner Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban terrorists. CNN...

The U.S. power sector must cut carbon dioxide emissions 30 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels, according to federal regulations unveiled on Monday that form the centerpiece of the Obama administration's climate change strategy. The Environmental Protection Agency's proposal is one of the most significant environmental rules proposed by the United States, and could transform the power sector, which relies on coal for nearly 38 percent of electricity. Gina McCarthy, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said on Monday that between 2020 and 2030, the U.S. amount of carbon dioxide the proposal would reduce under the plan would be more...

Having failed to get the Democrats’ cap-and-trade scheme through Congress, President Obama intends to create it through fiat, with the Environmental Protection Agency scheduled to issue today what amounts to a bill of attainder against coal-fired electricity generators. The regulation will set a national limit on greenhouse-gas emissions from coal plants and then offer states a phony menu of choices for meeting that standard, stacking the policy deck in such a way as to force them into cap-and-trade programs administered by multistate cartels. It is far from obvious that the Obama administration has anything like the legal authority for this;...

Despite being soundly rejected a few years ago, cap-and-trade will soon get its U.S. encore — but not in Congress. The Obama administration will likely use its executive power to unilaterally impose carbon dioxide emissions trading systems. The plan is being sold as a “flexible” one. By allowing states a menu of policy options to meet federal mandates, the standards will ostensibly meet the unique needs of each individual state. But the stark reality behind the proposal is that it will be a boon for states that have already imposed cap-and-trade systems — which are overwhelmingly Democratic states. “While President...

Washington Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee is not waiting for the state legislature to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, but instead has issued an executive order to implement a cap-and-trade program, eliminate coal power and fund green energy projects. “This is the right time to act, the right place to act and we are the right people to act,” Inslee said. “We will engage the right people, consider the right options, ask the right questions and come to the right answers — answers that work for Washington.” Inlsee argues that more action is needed if the state is to meet climate goals passed by...

Once upon a time, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration was blithely professing confidence that they wouldn’t need to hit up taxpaying Californians to continue financing his pet high-speed rail project beyond the initial $10 billion in bonds he asked for (not to mention a casual few billion in stimulus funds from the Obama administration), because private investors would almost assuredly come a’clamoring to drop major dollars in what he felt — and apparently still feels — is an amazingly practical and affordable transit project.How’s that working out? Via the WSJ: As envisioned, California’s $68 billion bullet-train system, the nation’s first, would...