Climate Change

"From its perch in a spacious brand-new headquarters blocks from the White House, the Cato Institute has built on its reputation as a venerable libertarian research center unafraid to cross party lines. Now, however, a rift with one of its founding members — the billionaire conservative Charles Koch — is threatening the institute's identity and independence, its leaders say, and is exposing fault lines over Mr. Koch's aggressive and well-financed brand of Republican politics."

Ice -- on both sea and land, near the poles and at high altitudes -- is connected in a number of ways with changing climate, as both a symptom and a cause. Several news stories about ice melt have come out recently. Charlie Petit at MIT's Knight Science Journalism Tracker has done a bang-up job of summarizing them. So we will save time and effort by linking directly to his work, which will richly reward the climate-curious.

"When at least 80 tornadoes rampaged across the United States, from the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico, last Friday, it was more than is typically observed during the entire month of March, tracking firm AccuWeather.com reported on Monday. According to some climate scientists, such earlier-than-normal outbreaks of tornadoes, which typically peak in the spring, will become the norm as the planet warms."

"RICHMOND -- After two years and more than half a million dollars in legal fees, the Virginia Supreme Court on Friday rejected Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II's assertion that the state's flagship university had to turn over documents related to global warming. The decision was a defeat for Cuccinelli (R), a global-warming skeptic who has garnered national attention for a string of high-profile lawsuits, just as he kicks off his campaign for governor next year. ..."

"The world's oceans are turning acidic at what could be the fastest pace of any time in the past 300 million years, even more rapidly than during a monster emission of planet-warming carbon 56 million years ago, scientists said on Thursday.

Looking back at this bygone warm period in Earth's history could offer help in forecasting the impact of human-spurred climate change, researchers said.

"An associate of the Heartland Institute, the thinktank devoted to discrediting climate change, taught a course at a top Canadian university that contained more than 140 false, biased and misleading claims about climate science, an expert audit has found."

"U.S. environmental regulators have proposed a new rule that limits requirements for factories to hold permits for greenhouse gas carbon emissions to the largest sources such as big coal-fired power plants and big manufacturers."

"If the importance and complexity of a court case can be established based on the number of lawyers at the lectern, then the battle over the Obama administration greenhouse gas regulations is of epic proportions. When the three interlinked cases are argued over two days at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit this week, no fewer than 18 different attorneys will advocate for their clients before the three-judge panel."

"Earth's clouds got a little lower - about one percent on average - during the first decade of this century, finds a new NASA-funded university study based on NASA satellite data. The results have potential implications for future global climate."