"A massive California rain event -- one expected to occur once every 200 years -- would far surpass destruction caused by a "Big One" earthquake, causing more than $700 billion in damage and hobbling the state's economy for decades, federal scientists are warning."

"Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao of China, who is in Washington on an official state visit, said in a joint statement this afternoon that they 'view climate change and energy security as two of the greatest challenges of our time.' In an open letter today, U.S. environmental leaders urged the presidents to adopt 'a wartime-like mobilization' to cut greenhouse gas emissions."

"Fraudsters are targeting climate scientists with fake conferences in a bid to make cash and obtain details." Is it a ploy to plant spy programs on scientists' computers?

Arch Coal's announcement of a second West Coast shipping terminal signals a trend toward increasing exports of strip-mined western coal to Asian nations like China, where demand outstrips supply. The implications for greenhouse emissions and accounting schemes for controlling them are huge.

Water managers, farmers, electric utilities, skiers and some 30 million water users breathed a sigh of relief in recent weeks with news that snowpack in the basin of the Colorado River was better. The relief may be temporary. The drought that has plagued the region for 11 years may become the new "normal."

"Shrinking ice and snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere is reflecting ever less sunshine back into space in a previously underestimated mechanism that could add to global warming, a study showed."

"Higher ocean levels force Ventura officials to move facilities inland, an action that is expected to recur along the coast as the ocean rises over the next century."

"Last year tied for the warmest since data started in 1880, capping a decade of record high temperatures that shows mankind's greenhouse gas emissions are heating the planet, two U.S. agencies said."