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Nine out of ten hospital wards may be at risk of overheating, increasing the dangers for vulnerable patients who are left sweltering in temperatures of more than 26C (78.8F), government advisers have warned. Poor ventilation, thin walls, low ceilings and big windows that can barely be opened are contributing to temperatures far exceeding acceptable levels during hot weather, according to the Committee on Climate Change. One fifth of domestic properties could also already be overheating, with flats especially vulnerable, it finds. The number of people dying prematurely from overheating could triple to 7,000 per year by the 2050s as global...

According to the Obama Administration’s newly released National Climate Assessment, climate change is already impacting communities in every corner of the country, with an increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events – storms, floods, and droughts – and rising sea levels destabilizing the everyday lives of Americans. Worse, the impacts of these changes are accelerating, and they are affecting communities around the world. The Pentagon’s most recent Quadrennial Defense Review warns that “climate change may increase the frequency, scale and complexity of future missions.” Some of the least stable states in the world will face changing weather patterns that...

Fighting climate change would help grow the world economy, according to the World Bank, adding up to $2.6tn (£1.5tn) a year to global GDP in the coming decades. The findings, made available in a report on Tuesday, offer a sharp contrast with claims by the Australian government that fighting climate change would “clobber” the economy. The report also advances on the work of economists who have argued that it will be far more costly in the long run to delay action on climate change. Instead, Tuesday's report found a number of key policies – none of which included putting an...

Across the edges of the Indian Ocean, the amount of rainfall differs greatly. If it rains particularly hard in the Sumatran rain forest, the already arid region of East Africa is onset with drought. Researchers from the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), the California Institute of Technology, the Univerity of Southern California and the University of Bremen found that this cyclic, bipolar climate phenomenon has likely been around for 10,000 years. The pilot study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), sheds light on the climate system of a region whose rainfall patterns have a...

The White House is finally addressing a serious, and misunderstood, problem with a new “bee plan.” The bee plan is a federal strategy to stop the sharp decline of pollinators, most notably bees, and restore pollinator populations to their previous buzzing glory. Can the White House end a problem that has alluded scientists and policy makers for over a decade? The bee plan is focused on habitats… and bureaucracy. The first step of the plan is form a task force. The group will include representatives from 14 major federal departments (click here for the full list).

And while tea party groups and talk radio hosts are celebrating the downfall of a Republican member of Congress who came to symbolize the “establishment,” there are indications that this enthusiasm is misplaced. In the wake of his victory, Brat joined MSNBC host Chuck Todd on Wednesday where he received a gentle grilling and was asked for his position on a variety of policy matters. Brat seemed entirely unprepared to have to speak on issues of substance. In fact, he suggested – perhaps (hopefully) jokingly – that he thought Todd invited him on the program merely to celebrate his victory....

Carbon dioxide and climate change will lower the quality of food in the future, claims a new study. Wheat, rice, maize and soybeans are key sources of nutrients for more than 2 billion people residing in poor countries. But with the rising amount of carbon dioxide in the air combined with climate change, nutrient level in crops is set to drop. The study was conducted by Harvard University researchers and colleagues who fear that several major crops - such as wheat and rice - with good nutrient value will have low levels of proteins and zinc in the future.

Skeletons of second world war soldiers are being washed from their graves by the rising Pacific Ocean as global warming leads to inundation of islands that saw some of the fiercest fighting of the conflict. On the day Europe commemorated the 70th anniversary of the storming of Normandy beaches in the D-Day landings, a minister from the Marshall Islands, a remote archipelago between Hawaii and the Philippines, told how the remains of 26, probably Japanese soldiers, had been recovered so far on the isle of Santo. "There are coffins and dead people being washed away from graves; it's that serious,"...

President Obama warned Friday that storms like Hurricane Sandy will become more frequent as climate change intensifies. While being briefed by emergency response officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) headquarters, Obama urged the public to prepare now for this year's hurricane season. "The changes we’re seeing in our climate means that, unfortunately, storms like Sandy could end up being more common and more devastating," Obama said. "And that’s why we’re also going to be doing more to deal with the dangers of carbon pollution that help to cause this climate change and global warming. And that’s why we’re...

KATHMANDU, May 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - M ountaineering tourism in Nepal faces a threat from global warming as melting glaciers feed the risk of more deadly disasters such as the avalanche on Mount Everest that killed 16 people last month, scientists said on Tuesday. More than 2,000 foreign mountaineers flock to the Himalayan nation sandwiched between India and China each year, mainly to climb the world's highest mountain, generating revenue of $3.4 million in permit fees for the impoverished country. Rising global temperatures have shrunk the total area of Nepal's glaciers by almost a quarter between 1977 and 2010,...

WASHINGTON >> The devastating wildfires scorching Southern California offer a glimpse of a warmer and more fiery future, according to scientists and federal and international reports. In the past three months, at least three different studies and reports have warned that wildfires are getting bigger, that man-made climate change is to blame, and it’s only going to get worse with more fires starting earlier in the year. While scientists are reluctant to blame global warming for any specific fire, they have been warning for years about how it will lead to more fires and earlier fire seasons.

Washington (CNN) -- Flooded rail lines. Bigger, more frequent droughts. A rash of wildfires. Those are some of the alarming predictions in a White House climate change report released Tuesday, part of President Barack Obama's broader second-term effort to help the nation prepare for the effects of higher temperatures, rising sea levels and more erratic weather. "Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present," the National Climate Assessment says, adding that the evidence of man-made climate change "continues to strengthen" and that "impacts are increasing across the country." "Americans are noticing changes...

If you think Washington is scary now, consider this: Al Gore is not ruling out a 2016 run for president. Al Gore 2000 was awful, proving himself willing to divide the country and put it through hell during his attempt to sue his way into the White House. Al Gore 2016 would be many times worse. He would be a single-issue president, and that issue would be the total destruction of the economy in the name of the debunked global warming hoax.

Another insane cold wave — not the infamous “polar vortex ” but its evil twin — is bringing sub-zero and single-digit temperatures to much of the nation. And global warming may be even more extreme, and potentially more catastrophic, than climate scientists had feared. This is, of course, no contradiction. The rallying cry of the denialists — “It’s really cold outside, so global warming must be a crock!” — can be taken seriously only by those with a toddler’s limited conception of time and space. They forget that it’s winter, and apparently they don’t quite grasp that even when it’s...

The next time you hear someone dispute that human activity is destabilizing our climate, remember this pie chart. It represents geochemist James Lawrence Powell's review of 2,258 peer-reviewed scientific articles about climate change, written by 9,136 authors, published between Nov. 12, 2012 and December 31, 2013. Of all those hundreds of papers and thousands of researchers, Powell found one article, authored by a single scientist, that attributed climate change to something other than human actions: "The Role of Solar Activity in Global Warming," by S.V. Avakyan, appearing in the Herald of the Russian Academy of Science, Vol. 83, No. 3....

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Whatever became of Glenn Beck's announcement to name a Republican Senator that was calling FreedomWorks members traitors?

Glenn Beck told his audience on Monday that the following morning on his radio program, he will reveal the name of a Republican lawmaker who said anyone who stands with FreedomWorks or the Senate Conservatives Fund is a “traitor” to the Senate.

Say what you will about us millennials—we’re a wilting bouquet of narcissistic, socialistic, overeducated, underemployed, tatted-up hipsters who still live at home—but, from this day forward, don’t you dare say we’re climate change deniers. A strong majority (66 percent!) of young independent voters, ages 18 to 34, accept as dogma that man and his dirty deeds are causing, and will continue to cause, climate change—this according to a study conducted by a bipartisan pair of political strategy groups for the League of Conservation Voters.

Wells dry up and underwater tables fall so fast in the Middle East and parts of India, China and the US that food supplies are seriously threatened, a leading resource analyst has warned. Lester Brown, head of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, claims that 18 countries, together containing half the world's people, are overpumping their underground water tables to the point – known as "peak water" – where they are not replenishing and where harvests are getting smaller each year. The situation is most serious in the Middle East. According to Brown: "Among the countries whose water supply has...