"The Obama administration's greenhouse gas ruling Monday was meant to send a warning to industry, the U.S. Congress, and the world: with or without a law, Washington will tackle global warming in a serious way."

"In the long term, the Earth's temperature may be 30-50% more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than has previously been estimated, reports a new study published in Nature Geoscience this week."

"The largest and most important U.N. climate change conference in history opened Monday, with organizers warning diplomats from 192 nations that this could be the best, last chance for a deal to protect the world from calamitous global warming."

"A very large, 30-year study of just about everyone in Scandinavia shows no link between cellphone use and brain tumors, researchers reported on Thursday."

"Germany's top climate researcher says he hopes he and his fellow scientists around the world have got it all wrong about global warming. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told Reuters he gets no pleasure at all in being a prophet of doom and hopes he and his colleagues have overlooked effects that could still arrest climate change."

"The release of toxics once bound within glaciers may be a little-anticipated consequence of climate change. Adverse effects are likely occurring, or could occur, on almost every continent."

"A new top inspector took charge Tuesday of the International Atomic Energy Agency as it faces one of the most turbulent periods in its 52-year history." Also: "The newly elected chemical weapons chief says he will pursue the last seven holdouts — including Israel, Egypt and Syria — to get them to sign a disarmament treaty and submit weapons stockpiles for inspection."

"Twenty-five years ago Thursday, a leak of the chemical methyl isocyanate -- MIC -- killed thousands of people who lived near a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. It was the worst industrial disaster in history. Since then, residents of the Kanawha Valley have lived with and periodically complained about the huge stockpile of MIC at a sister facility, the former Carbide plant in Institute."

"The heads of the world's largest international financial institutions today called for a comprehensive agreement to combat climate change at this month's United Nations conference in Copenhagen and agreed to further coordinate their own efforts to help achieve the meeting's ambitious goals."