Free Republic

PARIS (Reuters) - The United States wants to rejoin the global warming debate after rejecting the Kyoto protocol but the world's largest polluter is adamant that its lone approach to environmental issues is a success. Mike Leavitt, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) (EPA) of the Bush administration, is meeting this week with environment ministers at an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) forum in Paris. "(I will) make clear that the United States continues to have an interest in success of the OECD and that we want to be full participants in...

Loggerhead turtles have begun nesting much sooner than in years past. A University of Central Florida study reported that global warming has increased water temperature by a degree and a half in the last 14 years, WESH NewsChannel 2 reported. The increase in temperature has caused the turtles to head to shore 10 days earlier than in the past. There is concern among experts because if the babies hatch out before the food supply of crabs and shrimp are easy to get to, the hatchlings may not survive.

<p>In the political and scientific debate about the greenhouse effect and global warming, it has long been presumed that human-induced global warming is a modern phenomenon: a byproduct of the industrial revolution and its intensive use of carbon dioxide - producing fossil fuels. Prior to about 1800, most people presume, our ancestors simply weren't numerous or technologically sophisticated enough to alter the Earth on such a large scale.</p>

WASHINGTON Is Senator John Kerry the answer to European and Japanese prayers on global warming? Perhaps, but contrary to international expectations, President Kerry would not get the United States into the Kyoto Protocol. When it comes to the environment, President George W. Bush and John Kerry are like oil and water. The environment is a bottom-rung priority for Bush, while Kerry has the greenest voting record in the U.S. Senate and speaks passionately about global warming. On the campaign trail, Kerry characterizes Bush's unilateral rejection of Kyoto as evidence of the Texan's high-handed, shortsighted and arrogant foreign policy. Kerry's new...

When Helen and Michael Allen got married in England last year, the wedding bill included an unusual item -- about $220 to clean up gases blamed for causing global warming. When the Rolling Stones went on tour in Britain last year, they added about 27 cents to the price of each ticket to plant 3,000 trees to soak up the concerts' pollution and show, as they said, that "rock and roll is not a gas." One Dutch car rental company adds about one percent to its prices to help plant forests to soak up the vehicles' emissions of carbon dioxide,...

ALBUQUERQUE (AP) - Work by a New Mexico researcher suggests global warming may be less severe than some predictions. But the research by Ken Minschwaner, an atmospheric physicist at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, also undercuts an argument made by global warming skeptics that a lack of water vapor could cool the planet. Those results put Minschwaner, along with fellow researcher Andrew Dessler of the University of Maryland, in the middle between the skeptics and those who argue warming caused by human burning of fossil fuels could be extremely severe. "It's kind of a nice place to...

WASHINGTON, D.C., Mar 15 (OneWorld) -- Ten years after the ratification of a United Nations treaty on climate change, greenhouse gas emissions that lead to global warming are still on the rise, signaling a "collective failure" of the industrialized world, according to the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI), a leading environmental think-tank. "We are quickly moving to the point where the damage will be irreversible," warned Dr. Jonathan Pershing, director of WRI's Climate, Energy and Pollution Program. "In fact, the latest scientific reports indicate that global warming is worsening. Unless we act now, the world will be locked into temperatures...

UK scientists claim they now know how Earth recovered on its own from a sudden episode of severe global warming at the time of the dinosaurs. Understanding what happened could help experts plan for the future impact of man-made global warming, experts say. Rock erosion may have leached chemicals into the sea, where they combined with carbon dioxide, causing levels of the greenhouse gas to fall worldwide. UK scientists report the details of their research in the journal Geology. About 180 million years ago, temperatures on Earth rapidly shot up by about 5 Celsius. The cause is thought to have...