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ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — President Barack Obama said denying climate change is like arguing the moon is made of cheese, as he issued a call to action on global warming to Saturday's graduates of the University of California, Irvine.

Saying that climate change ranks among the world's most serious problems -- such as disease outbreaks, poverty, terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called on all nations to respond to "the greatest challenge of our generation."

Major negative effects of climate change are here now and they're only getting worse. We've gathered some notable effects of climate change below. 1. Climate change will be insanely expensive. 2. Hundreds of millions of people may be displaced by 2050. 3. Dengue and malaria could spread in the U.S. 4. Western wildfires could burn up to eight times as much land by 2100. 5. An additional 8% of the world population will experience water scarcity by 2100. 6. Hurricanes could become up to 11% more intense and 20% wetter by 2100. 7. Four times as many New Yorkers could...

Few of us are inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth, and that applies in spades to journalists running with a sensational news story. But even by normal media standards, recent reports about the bones of 796 babies being found in the septic tank of an Irish orphanage betray a degree of cynicism and irresponsibility rarely surpassed by allegedly reputable news organizations. Although the media attributed the “dumped in a septic tank” allegation to Catherine Corless, a local amateur historian, she denies making it. Her attempt to correct the record was reported by the Irish Times newspaper on...

Few of us are inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth, and that applies in spades to journalists running with a sensational news story. But even by normal media standards, recent reports about the bones of 796 babies being found in the septic tank of an Irish orphanage betray a degree of cynicism and irresponsibility rarely surpassed by allegedly reputable news organizations. Although the media attributed the “dumped in a septic tank” allegation to Catherine Corless, a local amateur historian, she denies making it. Her attempt to correct the record was reported by the Irish Times newspaper on...

A 2005 Senate trip to Canada opened Hillary Clinton’s eyes to the dangers of climate change and inspired her to push for aggressive actions to fight it, the former secretary of state wrote in her book released Tuesday. Clinton described flying over the Yukon Territory with three Republican senators and seeing large areas of spruce trees that had been killed by beetles driven north temperature changes. “A tribal elder recounted how he had returned to a lake where he had fished as a boy only to find it dried up,” Clinton said in her second book, “Hard Choices.” “I met...

WHEN it comes to dealing with the world’s climate and energy challenges I have a simple rule: change America, change the world. If America raises its clean energy standards, not only will others follow — others who have hid behind our inaction — we’ll also stimulate our industry to invent more of the clean air, clean power and energy efficiency systems, and move them down the cost curve faster, so U.S. companies will be leaders in this next great global industry and American consumers will be the first to benefit. That is why the new Environmental Protection Agency rules President...

Few places in the nation are more vulnerable to rising sea levels than low-lying South Florida. It's a tourist and retirement mecca built on drained swampland. Other coastal states and the Obama administration are taking aggressive measures to battle the effects of global warming. But Florida's top Republican politicians are challenging the science and balking at government fixes.

White House counselor John Podesta is “fairly confident” that proposed EPA greenhouse gas restrictions can survive scrutiny under the next president — and that Democrats can campaign on the climate change issue in races this year. “If you’re a climate denier trying to run nationally, I think you’re going to have a very hard road to go getting elected president of the United States,” he said. “There’s no doubt there’s some states where this is an issue that presents a different set of political challenges, particularly coal-producing states,” he said. “And there’s no doubt that the polluters have come after...

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy put herself at the mercy of the Internet on Wednesday by taking part in a question-and-answer session on the popular forum reddit. "Ask Me Anything," McCarthy wrote. reddit's users obliged. The account Gina_EPA, endorsed by McCarthy's Twitter account and the EPA website as authentic, answered 15 questions over the span of two hours. Many users seemed underwhelmed by her responses.

An Associated Press analysis of federal temperature records shows Carson City has warmed the most than any other city in the nation in the last 30 years. The average temperature in Carson City has risen 4.1 degrees since 1984. Boise, Idaho, came in second, posting a rise of 4 degrees. Las Vegas, known for its sweltering summers, was sixth, with an increase of 3.4 degrees. But it's the boost in summertime heat that really makes Carson City stand out.

The United States is warming fastest at two of its corners, in the Northeast and the Southwest, an analysis of federal temperature records shows. Northeastern states - led by Maine and Vermont - have gotten the hottest in the last 30 years in annual temperature, gaining 2.5 degrees on average. But Southwestern states have heated up the most in the hottest months: The average New Mexico summer is 3.4 degrees warmer now than in 1984; in Texas, the dog days are 2.8 degrees hotter. "In the United States, it isn't warming equally," said Kelly Redmond, climatologist at the Western Regional...

President Barack Obama might be the only black person on the planet who cares about climate change. Well, not really, but close—the ill-fated climate-change debate is as white as late-night talk shows. It’s that way for a number of reasons: from who funds either side of the heated climate conversation to allegations that environmentalists routinely dis black perspectives on the topic. Most egregious is a pervasive lack of urgent black political action on the subject. Even within the context of climate change’s devastating and disproportionate impact on communities of color, black politicos won’t follow the president’s lead on the issue....

For many congressional Democrats, new regulations on power plants are as much about health care as they are the environment. "The destructive effect of unrestrained carbon pollution is felt not only in rising temperatures and increased, more powerful natural disasters, but also in higher asthma rates in our children," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said it was a "moral imperative that we bequeath to our children a healthy planet with clean air and water." "As a mother, I’m concerned about the detrimental effects of pollution on our children’s health," the Florida congresswoman...

President Obama today pushed back against critics of his plan to dramatically cut U.S. carbon emissions, telling supporters it’s a necessary to confront a looming threat to “this beautiful blue ball in the middle of space that we’re a part of.” Opponents of the policy — both Republican and Democrat — have variously voiced skepticism of a human role in climate change, the costs of such change and concern about harm to the U.S. economy by unilaterally imposing new restrictions on American energy companies. The president however was undeterred, asserting his executive authority and arguing that the new standards “are...

A coronal mass ejection burst off the side of the sun on May 9, 2014 and NASA's newest solar observatory caught it in extraordinary detail. The giant sheet of solar material erupting was the first CME seen by NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS. The field of view seen here is about five Earths wide and about seven-and-a-half Earths tall.

President Barack Obama kicked off a campaign to promote new restrictions on U.S. power plant emissions on Saturday by tying the fight against climate change with efforts to promote better health for children and the elderly. In his weekly radio address, Obama said the United States had to do more to reduce carbon emissions so that children suffering from asthma and other related ailments did not face further problems as a result of polluted air. Obama said the new guidelines would reduce smog and soot that threaten vulnerable populations such as the young and the aged and he said up...

Visit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem to Pope Francis. Final day of the historic trip to the Holy Land to the Pope that he stopped for a moment of prayer between the stones of the wall. As predecessors Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI left a prayer card between the large stones. After this ritual is a very strange phenomenon appeared in the skies of Jerusalem. A double sun remained in the sky for 2 minutes at around 14:30 pm and was filmed and photographed by thousands in attendance. The Pope said: "This is a sign of divine...

Results of the study show that the term “Climate Change” is too bland to excite peopleStory submitted by Eric WorrallBryan Walsh, writing for Time Magazine, has published a claim by the Yale Project on Climate Communication, that the term “global warming” is more effective at engaging people’s attention than  “climate change”. People apparently associate “Global Warming” with terrifying climate catastrophes, such as melting ice and coastal flooding. See the story here: http://time.com/119517/global-warming-climate-change/“Climate Change”, on the other hand, tends to be associated with unusual, but not necessarily terrifying weather events.Bryan concludes with the suggestion that environmentalists should consider their use...

What is the origin of the false belief—constantly repeated—that almost all scientists agree about global warming?Last week Secretary of State John Kerry warned graduating students at Boston College of the "crippling consequences" of climate change. "Ninety-seven percent of the world's scientists," he added, "tell us this is urgent." Where did Mr. Kerry get the 97% figure? Perhaps from his boss, President Obama, who tweeted on May 16 that "Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous." Or maybe from NASA, which posted (in more measured language) on its website, "Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that...