Climate Change

"The legislation is approved in a largely party-line vote. It's unlikely to win much support in the Democratic-ruled Senate."

"A report commissioned by the United States Navy concludes that climate change will pose profound challenges for the sea service in coming decades, including a need to secure Arctic shipping lanes, prepare for more frequent humanitarian missions and protect coastal installations from rising seas."

"A bill to strip U.S. EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions cleared its first hurdle today on the road to likely House passage."

"The vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are melting faster than previously estimated and that melting is accelerating, according to a new report that verifies 18 years of melting via two independent techniques."

"U.S. EPA's plan to give businesses another three years to show how they calculate their greenhouse gas emissions will weaken the agency's new reporting requirements and could be illegal, environmental groups said before yesterday's deadline to comment on the proposal."

Coffee yields from Columbia are declining and prices are rising, because of warmer, wetter weather. Many scientists think global warming is responsible.

The extent of Arctic sea ice cover reached a record low this winter, tying the record low mark set in the winter of 2005, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Scientists consider the decline of sea ice to be a sign of manmade global warming.

"Democrats have attempted to get Republicans to confront the science on climate change, in an effort to halt moves to block regulation of greenhouse gas pollution. But it's not clear that the appeal to reason worked."

Henry Waxman (D-CA), ranking member of the House Energy Committee, speaking Monday at the Center for American Progress, said "The Republicans in Congress have become the party of science deniers, and that is profoundly dangerous."

Besides being a keystone of the ocean ecosystem, coral reefs are of huge commercial value. But they are seriously threatened by floods, runoff, rising ocean temperatures and acidity which are all symptoms of our fossil-fuel economy.