"New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg joined with the Sierra Club on Thursday in a $50 million, four-year plan to campaign for replacing one-third of aging U.S. coal-fired power plants with clean energy."

Kate Sheppard observes that it is very hot outside in much of the eastern U.S. She notes a blog post by Miles Grant citing NOAA records showing "June 2011 was the 316th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average." Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh says that the Heat Index is a government conspiracy.

"The persistent inability of the United Nations to forge international consensus on climate change issues was on display Wednesday, as Security Council members disagreed over whether they should address possible instability provoked by problems like rising sea levels or competition over water resources."

"Polar bear cubs forced to swim long distances with their mothers as their icy Arctic habitat melts appear to have a higher mortality rate than cubs that didn't have to swim as far, a new study reports."

"The House of Lords has taken the unprecedented step of publishing a 'cease and desist' letter on its website demanding that Lord Christopher Monckton, a prominent climate sceptic and the UK Independence party's head of research, should stop claiming to be a member of the upper house."

"Politicians might not believe in climate change, but insurance companies do. They track disasters, and it turns out that disasters just in the first six months of this year already cost the world more than any other year of disasters on record."

"Five million people are at risk of cholera in drought-hit Ethiopia, where acute watery diarrhea has broken out in crowded, unsanitary conditions, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday."

"As consensus mounts, and their states confront torrid heat, these politicians maintain global warming is a hoax."

"Isle Royale in Lake Superior used to be too cold for deer ticks. But not anymore."

"A major American utility is shelving the nation’s most prominent effort to capture carbon dioxide from an existing coal-burning power plant, dealing a severe blow to efforts to rein in emissions responsible for global warming."