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The debate over global warming has turned hysterical in the wake of the Democratic takeover of Congress and the most recent United Nations report asserting a 90% likelihood of human-caused climate change. And anybody who disagrees had better be prepared for attacks on their scientific credentials, their honesty, and even their right to speak out. Case in point — the singularly nasty attack by the left-wing Guardian newspaper of England a week or so ago attacking a distinguished American think tank, the American Enterprise Institute of Washington, D.C., for soliciting scholarly papers that might disagree with the so-called global warming...

The melting of Greenland's glaciers can slow as rapidly as it can accelerate, making the ice's effect on rising sea levels tough to forecast, a study says.

The European Commission has sought to step up punishment of environmental crimes, with plans for criminal penalties, including jail sentences, across the European Union. Currently, member states define what is a crime against the environment, but the European Union's executive arm considers that sanctions vary too much and that many are too lax. "The proposed directive is crucial to avoid criminals profiting from the existing discrepancies in member states' criminal law systems which damage the European environment," said EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini on Friday. "We cannot allow safe-havens of environmental crime inside the EU," he added. Under the proposals,...

Ex-US vice president Al Gore's global warming documentary will be shown at public schools across Portugal as part of a campaign to tackle climate change, Prime Minister Jose Socrates said. "I think the duty of a politician is to divulge a political message so that all citizens are more aware of what they can do to solve this global problem," Socrates, a former environment minister, said after meeting with Gore. Gore's Oscar-nominated film, "An Inconvenient Truth," warns that urgent action is needed to reduce carbon emissions soon or else the planet will suffer disastrous consequences from climate change. Last month...

Dire warnings from top scientists that mankind is to blame for global warming set off alarm bells everywhere -- but many of the world's churches have already "gone green" in the race to save the planet. For Christians, Jews and Muslims, the message is the same -- mankind has "stewardship" of the earth which it has a duty to protect for future generations. And environmentalists hailed churches for stepping up to the plate with a real sense of urgency. "Caring for the environment is a key part of many religions. Any contribution which highlights and tackles issues such as climate...

Two private advocacy groups told a congressional hearing Tuesday that climate scientists at seven government agencies say they have been subjected to political pressure aimed at downplaying the threat of global warming. The groups presented a survey that shows two in five of the 279 climate scientists who responded to a questionnaire complained that some of their scientific papers had been edited in a way that changed their meaning. Nearly half of the 279 said in response to another question that at some point they had been told to delete reference to "global warming" or "climate change" from a report....

Later this week in Paris, climate scientists will issue a dire forecast for the planet that warns of slowly rising sea levels and higher temperatures. But that may be the sugarcoated version. Early and changeable drafts of their upcoming authoritative report on climate change foresee smaller sea level rises than were projected in 2001 in the last report. Many top U.S. scientists reject these rosier numbers. Those calculations don't include the recent, and dramatic, melt-off of big ice sheets in two crucial locations: They "don't take into account the gorillas — Greenland and Antarctica," said Ohio State University earth sciences...

President George W. Bush refused to back down on his position on tackling global warming as he unveiled a new energy initiative this week that failed to convince environmentalists. Bush briefly discussed global warming during his annual State of the Union address to Congress Tuesday, proposing a plan to slash America's dependence on foreign oil by using new technologies. The US leader called for reducing US gasoline consumption by 20 percent over 10 years, mainly by raising the supply of alternative fuels like ethanol. "America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives...

FEDERAL WAY, Wash. (AP) - The Federal Way School Board has put the brakes on schools showing former Vice President Al Gore's global warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." In a vote last night, the board decided to require that an opposing view be presented in order for teachers to present the film. The board voted 3 to 0, with two members absent. Board president Ed Barney said he had received about a half-dozen complaints from parents that their child was taking the film as fact after viewing it at school. Barney said the film had been shown at some high...

Our understanding of climate change began with intense debates amongst 19th century scientists about whether northern Europe had been covered by ice thousands of years ago. In the 1820s Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier discovered that "greenhouse gasses" trap heat radiated from the Earth's surface after it has absorbed energy from the sun. In 1859 John Tyndall suggested that ice ages were caused by a decrease in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide. In 1896 Svente Arrhenius showed that doubling the carbon dioxide content of the air would gradually raise global temperatures by 5-6C - a remarkably prescient result that was...

Temperatures in rugged Tibet have hit record highs in recent days, China's state press has reported, as a scientific survey warned of the impact of global warming in the Himalayan region. Friday's temperature in the Qamdo area of eastern Tibet was 21.8 degrees Celsius (71 degrees Fahrenheit), 1.7 degrees higher than the previous record set for the same day in 1996, Xinhua news agency reported. In Dengqen county, also in eastern Tibet, the mercury reached 16.6 degrees Celsius on Thursday, 2.5 degrees higher than the previous record for the same day set in 2001, it said. Eight other places across...

A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists offers the most comprehensive documentation to date of how ExxonMobil has adopted the tobacco industry's disinformation tactics, as well as some of the same organizations and personnel, to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue. According to the report, ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science. "ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused...

National Guard troops headed for snowbound fields in trucks piled high with hay Thursday and prepared their helicopters to resume an emergency haylift that had already dropped more than 900 bales across Colorado's rangeland in an effort to save stranded and starving cattle. Using smaller helicopters, ranchers landed near frozen streams and used sledgehammers to chop ice from the water for the livestock to drink. The situation on the snowbound plains is getting dire. Typically, cattle can survive only five to 10 days without food or water in good conditions, state veterinarian John Maulsby said. For the cattle in eastern...

Whether it's because of global warming, El Nino, or just a really long warm spell, weather in New York City this winter has been awfully strange. With temperatures continually hovering around the 50 degree mark and even occasionally nearing 60, perhaps the most bizarre weather-related incident happened in Brooklyn where cherry blossoms decided to make an early appearance. At the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, it hardly seems like the dead of winter. Most cherry blossoms don't bloom until the beginning of spring when the winter chill finally begins to warm up. But there hasn't been a winter chill for most of...

Australia's crippling drought, which some lawmakers have called the worst for 1,000 years, is a natural occurrence and has no link to global warming, the country's top science organization said on Thursday. Australia had experienced around 30 periods of drought over a period of about 10,000 years, said Barrie Hunt, a researcher at the Melbourne-based Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization (CSIRO) atmospheric research center. "I think it's probably a bit too early yet to say we're having a greenhouse effect on rainfall," Hunt told local radio. Hunt based his research on three sites scattered from the country's mostly arid west,...

The Bush administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the U.S. government on record as saying that global warming could drive one of the world's most recognizable animals out of existence. The administration's proposal -- which was described by an Interior Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity -- stems from the fact that rising temperatures in the Arctic are shrinking the sea ice that polar bears need for hunting. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the department will submit the proposal today for publication in the...

There are signs that key U.S. officials are ready to take on global warming, even as much of the world community failed to show its will to deal with the impending threat at a recent global conference. Despite intense calls for new and radical actions, last week delegates at the UN-sponsored meeting in Kenya agreed on many outstanding issues, but not on further cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental groups widely described the outcome as a failure, but not all were expressing despair. Though equally unhappy with the results, some believe that meaningful global action on climate change is not...

Europeans are overwhelmingly convinced that human activity is contributing to global warming, and a majority would be prepared to accept restrictions on their lifestyle to combat it, according to a poll for the Financial Times. Research carried out this month by Harris Interactive in Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Spain found that 86 per cent of people believed humans were contributing to climate change, and 45 per cent thought it would be a threat to them and their families within their lifetimes. ADVERTISEMENT More than two-thirds – 68 per cent – said they would either strongly or somewhat support...

A rise in the Earth’s temperature could lead to an increase in the number of insects worldwide, with potentially dire consequences for humans, a new study suggests. New research shows that insect species living in warmer areas are more likely to undergo rapid population growth because they have higher metabolic rates and reproduce more frequently. The finding has scientists concerned that global warming could give rise to more fast-growing insect populations and that we could see a spike in the number of six-legged critters. The consequences could be more serious than just a few extra bug bites each summer. “If...

Below is a link to a great article from The NY Times titled “Beyond Fossil Fuels” by Robert B. Semple Jr. The piece acknowledges that while stopping global warming is an overwhelming and daunting task, everyone has the power to make a difference by making simple, conscious decisions in their every day lives. The Streisand Foundation supports the non-profit group Earth Day Network, and they have compiled a list of a few easy ways you can conserve energy and help protect the environment from further deterioration: 1) Change old, incandescent lights to newer energy-saving models (compact fluorescent lights), turn off...