"I would guess a few Green readers had the experience, over the holidays, of arguing yet again about global warming with a parent or brother-in-law who thinks it’s all a big hoax. ... Fortunately, the M.I.T. climate scientist Kerry Emanuel has provided us with a solution to this problem: an updated edition of 'What We Know About Climate Change,' his 2007 book explaining the science of global warming."

"PITTSBURGH -- An ongoing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study on natural gas drilling and its potential for groundwater contamination has gotten tentative praise so far from both industry and environmental groups."

Will the world end Friday? Well, actually, it's already Friday in Kiribati (a Pacific island vulnerable to sea-level rise), and we have no reports of apocalypse. NASA scientists were so confident that they issued their retrospective world-didn't-end video 10 days ahead of time. Turns out the whole story was whomped up by some stoned hippies decades ago. Mayan scholars call it baloney. As to climate-caused sea-level rise, NASA is still issuing warnings. The entire nation of Kiribati is still planning to relocate ahead of rising seas.

"A signature battle of the energy boom, a public fight over a waste-water deep disposal well, plays out amid scientific uncertainty over safety in a small town."

"MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- It didn't take long for the new associate professor at West Virginia University to give the state's most powerful industry a bad case of heartburn."

"A WikiLeaks-style Web dump of drafts of the 2013 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provides fresh evidence that the organization’s policies and procedures are a terrible fit for an era in which transparency will increasingly be enforced on organizations working on consequential energy and environmental issues."

"NOAA’s leader, Jane Lubchenco, announced [Wednesday] morning she is leaving the agency at the end of February (2013)."

"Jerry Mahlman, a leading climatologist who for many years headed the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dyamics Lab, died on November 28. In the 1990s I saw him play a pioneering role in interpreting the science of global warming to policymakers and the public. In 2006, in comments we posted, he called out NOAA Administrator Lautenbacher for political interference with science communication at his agency. A sad loss of a terrific guy and a great asset to the community."

"Spurred by mounting scientific evidence, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is initiating a new effort to examine whether low doses of hormone-mimicking chemicals are harming human health and whether chemical testing should be overhauled."