After a months-long political stand-off, the Senate confirmed Daniel Ashe as director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"The United Nations [Thursday] added 18 new sites to its global list of biosphere reserves, bringing the total to 581 in 114 countries."

"As record-shattering heat cripples Oklahoma, Sen. Jim ('global warming is a hoax') Inhofe (R-OK) failed to show for an fossil-industry-funded climate denial conference. A shrinking band of far-right economists, lawyers, and a few scientists have gathered in Washington, DC, for the Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, funded, like Inhofe himself, by Koch Industries and Exxon Mobil. Inhofe was scheduled to be the denier conference’s keynote speaker, but he bailed out, explaining appropriately that he is 'under the weather'"

'Internal emails seen by Guardian show PR campaign was launched to protect UK nuclear plans after tsunami in Japan.'

"Scripps scientists find plastic in 9.2% of lanternfish collected. The small fish are commonly eaten by larger species, and the plastic could end up in the food chain."

"A federal judge in Wyoming yesterday said the government must not delay decisions over whether to issue oil and gas leases in the West but that the Interior Department may refuse to issue leases even after a company has submitted a winning bid."

'The cap-and-trade program, which would force industries to cut greenhouse gases by the end of the decade, continues to be challenged in court.'

"A federal judge [Thursday] upheld the George W. Bush administration's decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act."

"It's been a busy week for anyone following the national debates over hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking,' the controversial method used to cut into shale rock to extract natural gas. In New Jersey, a strong bipartisan majority in both chambers of the legislature approved a bill banning fracking in the state as its neighbor to the north, New York, appeared ready to end its moratorium on the practice."

"A study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research estimates that the bottom-line cost of all the meteorological craziness is a staggering $485 billion per year in the U.S. alone, as much as 3.4% of the country's GDP."