Climate Change

"WASHINGTON — The Department of Energy has successfully completed an unprecedented test of harvesting the vast storehouse on Alaska’s North Slope of methane hydrate, essentially natural gas locked in ice crystals under the permafrost.

"Polar bears are capable of swimming vast distances, a potential survival skill needed in an Arctic environment where summer sea ice is vanishing, a study led by the U.S. Geological Survey showed on Tuesday."

"Some of the main proposals in a draft text for negotiation at a U.N. sustainable development conference next month are being watered down at informal talks in New York, observers said on Tuesday, heightening fears the summit will fail to deliver."

Early headlines in some "news" media about a study discussing the effect of wind turbines on local microclimates drastically misstated the findings and implications of the study, various debunkers point out.

"A Fox TV commentator, midgame, links global warming to home runs, and fans on all sides of the climate debate call foul."

"Climate scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have discovered that particulate pollution in the late 20th century created a "warming hole" over the eastern United States-that is, a cold patch where the effects of global warming were temporarily obscured."

"Get ready for the heat. Scientists at Stanford University in California and Purdue University in Indiana say global warming is going to hit hard in Corn Belt states where it most matters -- the corn market. The study, financed by the U.S. Department of Energy, says that the corn market will be walloped in the coming years by climate change."