Climate Change

"MIAMI -- Hurricane season 2012, which officially ends Saturday, will go down in hstory as the year of Superstorm Sandy, which carved a path of death and devastation from the Caribbean to the Jersey Shore."

"Scientifically speaking, it also was notable for something it was not: intense. For the third consecutive season, the tropics churned out what not long ago would rank as an abnormally large number of storms - yet curiously only one of 19 managed to reach Category 3 strength.

"Time is running out for Kiribati as the effects of climate change cause more people to lose their homes while the world procrastinates on the issue."

Don't believe everything you read in the news media. A new study of 13,950 peer-reviewed scientific articles published between 1 January 1991 and 9 November 2012 reports that only 24 of them, or 0.17% rejected the idea that human activity was causing global warming. It was self-published by geologist-blogger James Lawrence Powell.

"Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire (D) ordered state agencies on Tuesday to take steps to address the ocean’s increasing acidity, making it the first state to adopt a policy to take on what scientists describe as a growing environmental concern."

"WASHINGTON -- Scientists who study the Arctic say they’re worried that nations meeting this week to set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions aren’t adequately considering how much carbon dioxide and methane could be released from the world’s rapidly thawing permafrost."

"Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a skeptic of man-made global warming, is set to take over the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology in the 113th Congress."

"Rising temperatures, persistent drought, and depleted aquifers on the southern Great Plains could set the stage for a disaster similar to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, scientists say."

"Sea level is rising as the planet warms up, but how much it will rise, and how fast is still something climate scientists are working out. And according to study released late Tuesday in Environmental Research Letters the ocean is already rising faster than the most recent authoritative report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was projecting as recently as 2007."

"DOHA, Qatar -- Though it's tricky to link a single weather event to climate change, Hurricane Sandy was 'probably not a coincidence' but an example of the extreme weather events that are likely to strike the U.S. more often as the world gets warmer, the U.N. climate panel's No. 2 scientist said Tuesday."

"President Obama has signed into law a bill that requires U.S. airlines be excluded from European carbon emissions fees."