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"The trip began a day before the election, and Mr. Kerry had confidently predicted a Hillary Clinton victory." Ah! It was the best of times, it was the best of times. Not a hint that anything could possibly ruin the upbeat mood of what was essentially an Election Day victory lap by Secretary of State John Kerry and his merry band of liberals to the bottom of the world. Fortunately, for the eternal amusement of posterity, New York Times science reporter Justin Gillis was on hand to record the tragicomic scene. First let us begin as he notes the jubilant visitors touring Antarctica...

LAMONT, Okla. — For decades, a small group of scientific dissenters has been trying to shoot holes in the prevailing science of climate change, offering one reason after another why the outlook simply must be wrong. Over time, nearly every one of their arguments has been knocked down by accumulating evidence, and polls say 97 percent of working climate scientists now see global warming as a serious risk. Yet in recent years, the climate change skeptics have seized on one last argument that cannot be so readily dismissed. Their theory is that clouds will save us. They acknowledge that the...

Could ExxonMobil be guilty of fraud for taking a public stance on global warming? New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman thinks so, and news that he’s demanded years of records from the oil giant shows how creative some lawyers have become in using litigation to try and achieve the sort of policy changes once left to legislators. The New York Times reports Schneiderman issued a subpoena Wednesday evening seeking emails, financial records and other information about the company’s activities around climate science since the late 1970s, “including a period of at least a decade,” the Times says, “when ExxonMobil funded...

The New York attorney general has begun an investigation of Exxon Mobil to determine whether the company lied to the public about the risks of climate change or to investors about how such risks might hurt the oil business. According to people with knowledge of the investigation, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman issued a subpoena Wednesday evening to Exxon Mobil, demanding extensive financial records, emails and other documents. The investigation focuses on whether statements the company made to investors about climate risks as recently as this year were consistent with the company’s own long-running scientific research. The people said the...