"The Interior Department, facing an avalanche of petitions and lawsuits over proposed endangered species designations, said Tuesday that it had negotiated a settlement under which it will make decisions on 251 species over the next six years."

"The flooding Mississippi River is done watching and waiting. And anyone who doubts that the river has become T.S. Eliot's personification of 'a strong brown god' need only walk up the slope of the levee and peer over the top."

A new study released by the American Physical Society says that the dream of pulling carbon dioxide out of ambient air as a cure for global warming would be prohibitively expensive.

"Nations and individuals have a duty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enact policies that mitigate global warming, said a Vatican-sponsored working group."

"A federal judge in Utah on Monday tossed Koch Industries’s lawsuit against the pranksters who set up a fake website and sent out a bogus press release saying the company had found religion on climate change."

"Renewable energy could meet nearly 80 percent of the world's energy needs by mid-century and play a crucial role in fighting global warming, the UN's climate scientists said Monday in a major report."

"A recent report by a federal watchdog agency says pipes meant to carry radioactive waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation could leak, spray or even explode."

"Thursday night's Republican debate was worth watching if only to see Tim Pawlenty try to talk his way around his previous support for efforts to cut planet-warming emissions. As governor of Minnesota, Pawlenty not only acknowledged that climate change is a problem, but also endorsed a cap-and-trade plan to deal with it. That makes him something of a pariah among other Republicans these days."

"As the Mississippi River continued carrying near-record amounts of water past Memphis, draining storm-drenched lands stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, officials combined messages of reassurance and caution."

"The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident exposed flaws in the Japanese government's measures to guard the country's reactors against earthquakes and tsunamis. U.S. officials in recent years also have worried that Japanese officials haven't taken enough precautions to protect the facilities from terrorist attacks, according to diplomatic documents released over the weekend on the WikiLeaks website."