Global Warming Controversy 2005 through 2010
"Greenhouse Effect", Ice Age Reversal, Climatic Changes, Ozone Layer.
The year 2005 through 2010

The year 2005.


• 1/3/2005 - Record number of tornadoes in 2004 by Associated Press.
      The total number of tornadoes reported in the United States reached a record of 1,717 in 2004, surpassing the previous mark by almost 300 of 1,424 in 1998, according to officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.    One tropical storm and five hurricanes and several outbreaks in May affecting areas from Florida to the mid-Atlantic states contributed to the toal number.
• 1/10/2005 - Tsunami's toll: Countries still reeling by Paul ALexander, Associated Press.
      The death toll from South Asia to Africa is more than 150,000 people in 11 nations after two weeks.    This was the biggest earthquake in 40 years, with the energy of a million atomic bombs and may have even affected the Earth's orbit briefly.
• 1/21/2005 - Researchers say global warming caused ancient mass extinction by Randolph E. Schmid.
      Washington - An ancient version of global warming may have been to blame for the greatest mass extinction in Earth's history.    Some 250 million years ago, 90 percent of all marine life and nearly three-quarters of land-based plants and animals went extinct.    The cause of the calamity was unknown and occurred before the era of dinosaurs.    Peter Ward of the University of Washington thinks the answer is global warming caused by volcanic activity from studies done in the Karoo Basin of South Africa and China, using chemical, biological and other evidence to relate layers of sediment tied to the marine extinction at the same period, which occurred gradual over about 10 million years.
• 2/16/2005 - Bush questions benefits of Kyoto climate treaty by Associated Press.
      The Bush administration contends that the long-term benefit from the Kyoto climate treaty won't be worth the immediate economic cost.    Without U.S. participation, the effectiveness could be limited.    The nations that have committed to reducing carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other compounds, which the United States the single biggest source of greenhouse gases will not.
• 2/17/2005 - Kyoto global warming pact takes effect - Proponents take aim at America by Joseph Coleman, Associated Press
      Kyoto, Japan - Climate change is a global problem and it can only be dealt with with a global approach, so the proponents of the pact's goal is to persuade the United States to join.    The United States signed the protocol in 1997 under President Bill Clinton, but the Senate refused to ratify it.    President Bush renounced it in 2001.    Proponents hope that the increasing profitability of technologies and businesses targeted at reducing gas emissions would demonstrate that battling climate change could lead to new industries and jobs.    Some claim Washington's reluctance to join is the U.S. automakers' failure to produce fuel-efficient cars in the 1970s.    So the new market would be for climate-friendly technologies.    The accord took effect yesterday.
• 3/10/2005 - Senate committee thwarts Bush's 'Clear Skies' plan - Environmental bill faces tough road - by Associated Press.
      Washington - A Senate committee dealt President Bush a setback by rejecting his top environmental priority - a bill that would give power plants, factories and refineries more time to reduce their air pollution.    Opponents wanted a plan that also would target global warming, as in regulating carbon dioxide emissions.    Bush proposed amending the law to reduce nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and mercury in the air by letting smokestack industries trade pollution rights among themselves, within overall government caps.    He had hoped to set for reducing the three pollutants by 70 percent.
• 5/22/2005 - Antarctica's ice cap offsetting rising seas - Sheet counters global warming - by Robert Lee Hotz, Los Angeles Times.
      As glaciers from Greenland to Kilimanjaro recede at record rates, the central ice cap of Antarctica, a 2-mile-thick wasteland of ice larger than Australia, has grown steadily for the past 11 years, partially offsetting rising seas due to the melt waters of global warming.    This effect has been predicted as a likely result of climate change, claimed by David Vaughan, an independent expert on the ice sheets at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England.    It should not have snowed in the temperatures in this region, but the warming caused more moisture in the air and the additional snowfall is enough to account for the extra water added to the ice sheet every year.    He said this supports global warming.    It also concerns me in the balance of the Earth in the future.
• 6/14/2005 - Putting spin on science by Associated Press.
      White House officials who had lobbied for the American Petroleum Institute, for years have minimized the dangers of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, just as the tobacco industry minimized the risks of smoking.    Have we been subjected to a well established pattern of manipulation, suppression and misrepresentation?
• 6/23/2005 - Senate rejects amendment on greenhouse gas emissions by Justin Blum, The Washington Post.
      Washington - The Senate rejected a measure calling for mandatory limits on emissions to 2000 levels by 2010 linked to global warming, siding with the Bush administration's position that restrictions would cost jobs, drive industry overseas and run up consumer energy bills.    They have disputed the conclusions of most scientist who have linked greenhouse gas emissions with global warming.    Can this be done without hurting the U.S. economy?
• 7/10/2005 - NASA details rising sea level with satellites by Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post.
      NASA's Cryospheric Sciences Branch at Goddard Space Flight Center will be using a series of new satellites and observation systems to identify how rapidly sea level is changing.    More than 100 million people could be affected by a 3-foot increase in sea level, which for the past 50 years at a rate of .07 of an inch each year, accelerating to an annual rate of 0.12 of an inch the past dozen years.
      Scientists are using new technology to monitor disappearing ice shelves and moving glaciers: One 10,000-year-old ice shelf in the Antarctic peninsula recently melted in just three weeks, according to NASA.    Global warming is not something just for the future, it is happening now.
• 7/10/2005 - Melting ice pack taking toll on polar bears - Numbers may drop 30% in 35 years - by Blaine Harden, The Washington Post.
      Seattle - Experts believe that melting ice from global warming will cause polar bears unprecedented environmental stress causing their numbers to plummet.    They project that 30 percent of polar bear's population of 20,000 to 25,000 will decline over the next 35 to 50 years in the Arctic.    Polar bears evolved from brown bears about a quarter-million years ago to become specialist carnivores thriving on seals.    They do not have time to evolve backwards.
• 7/31/2005 - Study finds global fish diversity on a sharp decline by The Washington Post.
      Washington - The variety of species in the world's oceans has dropped by as much as 50 percent in the past 50 years, from a combination of overfishing, habitat destruction and climate change.    The main spots this is occurring is off the east coast of Florida, south of Hawaii, near Australia's Great Barrier Reef, near Sri Lanka and the South Pacific.    Will there be any left 20 years from now?
• 8/2/2005 - Pacific Coast wildlife crisis: Odd year or global warming - Ecosystem disrupted by weather patterns - by Terence Chea, Associated Press.
      San Francisco - Marine biologists are seeing mysterious and disturbing things along the Pacific Coast this year.    Water temperatures are higher by 5 to 7 degrees, catches of fish are plummeting by 20 to 30 percent, four times the usual dead birds are littering beaches, and there is very little plankton - the tiny organisms that are a vital link in the ocean food chain.    Is this just a freak year or is this global warming?
• 8/24/2005 - A chronology of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
      Tropical Depression 12 strengthens into Tropical Storm Katrina over the Central Bahamas; a hurricane watch is issued for the southeastern Florida coast.
  8/25/2005 - Hurricane Katrina strikes Florida between Hallandale Beach and North Miami Beach as a Category 1 hurricane with 80 mph winds.
  8/26/2005 - Katrina weakens over land before moving over the Gulf of Mexico.    It grows into a Category 2 hurricane, winds to 100 mph.    10,000 National Guard troops are dispatched across the Gulf Coast.
  8/27/2005 - Eleven people dead in Florida from hurricane-related causes.    Katrina becomes a Category 3 storm, with 115 mph winds; a hurricane warning is issued for Louisiana's south eastern coast, including New Orleans, Lake Pontchartrain and the northern Gulf coast.    New Oreleans Mayor Ray Nagin declares a state of emergency and urges residents in low-lying areas to evacuate.    Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour declares a state of emergency.    A mandatory evacuation is ordered for Hancock County.    Coastal Gulf residents jam freeways and gas stations in rush to evacuate.
  8/28/2005 - Katrina grows into a Category 5 storm with 160 mph winds and heads for the northern Gulf Coast.    Nagin orders the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans.    Ten shelters are set up, including the Superdome, for those unable to leave.    Evacuation orders are posted along the Mississippi coast.    Alabama Gov. Bob Riley declares a state of emergency.
  8/29/2005 - Katrina, a Category 4 hurricane with 145 mph winds, makes landfall near Buras, La., at 6:10 a.m. CDT.    President Bush makes emergency disaster declarations for Louisiana and Mississippi, freeing up federal funds.    Katrina rips two holes in the Superdome's roof.    Some 10,000 storm refugees are inside.    At least eight Gulf Coast oil refineries shut down or reduce operations.    Airports close in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Biloxi, Mobile and Pensacola.    Hundred of flights are canceled or diverted.
  8/30/2005 - The hurricane death toll in Mississippi surpasses 100.    Two levees break in New Orleans and water pours in, covering 80 percent of the city and rising to 20 feet deep in some areas.    Many people climb onto roofs to escape.    Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco says an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people must be evacuated from New Orleans.    Crowds swell at the Superdome and the New Orleans convention center.
  8/31/2005 - Nagin estimates death toll in the thousands.    Looting grows, forcing police to abandon rescue efforts.    The Governor asks the White House for help, which were dispatched.    Gasoline prices surge above $3 a gallon with shortages cropping up.    Five offshore oil rigs are reported missing, and two are adrift.
  9/1/2005 - Looting, carjacking and other violence spreads forcing a 30,000 National Guard deployment.
  9/2/2005 - Congress approves $10.5 billion for rescue and relief efforts.    Bush orders more than 7,000 active duty forces to the Gulf Coast.
• 9/11/2005 - Climate changes affect Arctic life - Scientists blame global warming - by Jan Olsen, Associated Press.
      Ilulissat, Greenland - In 2002-2003, a six-mile-long stretch of the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier broke off and drifted out of the fjord near Ilulissat, Greenland's third-largest town, 155 miles north of the Arctic Circle.    The indigenous people fear that the gradual changes could have profound impact, affecting the plants that wildlife feed on, and their hunting and fishing they live off of.   
• 9/22/2005 - Katrina could dent global growth - Storm exacerbates energy-price rise - by Associated Press.
      Washington - Hurricane Katrina's reach is global, as higher energy prices cast a cloud of uncertainty over the world economy, according the the International Monetary Fund's chief economist, Raghuram Rajan.
• 9/29/2005 - Arctic ice cap melting faster than usual, scientist say by The New York Times.
      Climate experts claim the ice cap on the Arctic ocean shrank to its smallest size in at least a century, attributing it to human-caused global warming.
• 10/10/2005 - Coral reefs face threat by Associated Press.
      Chris Langdon, associate director of the National Center for Carribean Coral Reef Research at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science studied how doubling carbon dioxide has affected two coral species, making the sea water more acidic, decreasing coral skeleton growth by 50 percent.    If this process continues the acidity of the ocean will increase 200 to 300 percent in the next 50 to 100 years.
• 10/14/2005 - Update on the Pakistan earthquake by Associated Press.
      The U.N. has estimated that 2 million people are homeless from the 7.6-magnitude earthquake last week, and is still receiving 5.6-magnitude aftershocks.    The death toll was more than 35,000 to 40,000, with tens of thousands who were injured.    India has reported more than 1,350 deaths
• 10/30/2005 - Is the increase of Atlantic storms from natural weather cycles or global warming?
      10 years of hurricane turbulence - Major Hurricanes:
      In 1995 Opal, Category 3; 1996 Fran, Cat. 3; 1999 Floyd, Cat. 2;
      In 2001 Allison; 2003 Isabel, Cat. 5;
      In 2004 Charley, Cat. 4; Frances, Cat. 2; Jeanne, Cat. 3; Ivan, Cat. 3;
      In 154 years of record-keeping, the year 2005 had the most storms (26, including Tropical Storm Epsilon), previous record was 13, and 4 hitting the United States, with 3 of them in the Category 5 range.    In 2005 Dennis, Category 4; Katrina, Cat. 4; Rita, Cat. 3; Wilma, Cat. 3.
      Forecasters say 2006 could be another brutal year, claimed to be caused by higher sea temperatures, lower wind shear.    We can definitely see a trend for the increase in the intensity of hurricanes in each year.
• 11/20/2005 - Agency says global warming causes 150,000 deaths a year by Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post.
      Earth's warming climate is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year, according to the World Health Organization, a toll that could double by 2030.    There is an increase of malaria, malnutrition and diarrhea worldwide, especially in poor countries that did little to create the problem such as the Asian and South American Pacific coast, as well as the Indian Ocean coast and sub-Saharan Africa.    Large cities also are likely to experience more severe health problems because they produce what scientists refer to as urban "heat island" effect.
• 11/25/2005 - Ice samples boost warming data - Carbon dioxide levels are rapidly increasing - by Lauran Neergaard, Associated Press.
      Washington - By analyzing tiny air bubbles preserved in Antarctic ice for millennia, a team of European researchers has highlighted how people are dramatically influencing the buildup of greenhouse gases.    Their study shows there is up to 27 percent more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today than at any point during the past 650,000 years.    Levels of carbon dioxide have climbed from 280 parts per million two centuries ago to 380 ppm today.
• 12/4/2005 - Weaker ocean currents linked to global warming by Usha Lee McFarling, Los Angeles Times.
      The powerful ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream that transport heat around the globe and keep northern Europe's weather relatively mild appear to be weakening as a consequence of global warming according to British scientists.    They claim that the overall movement of water had slowed 30 percent in the past five decades, particularly in the flow of cold water back to the south.    In the past, the currents have stopped completely - most recently 8,200 years ago, climate records show, when temperatures in parts of Europe dropped by 10 to 20 degrees within a decade.    The episode happened when a large, ice-dammed lake in North America suddenly drained and freshened the Arctic, according to Richard Alley, an expert on abrupt climate change at Penn State University.    There is much uncertainty in this data due to measurement difficulties, and will probably require 10 more years of data to confirm.
• 12/11/2005 - U.S. rejects climate-conference agreement - 150-plus nations back new talks on emissions - by Charles J. Hanely, Associated Press.
      A U.N. conference on global warming ended with an agreement by more than 150 nations to open talks on mandatory post-2012 reduction in greenhouse gases.    The Bush administration rejects the cutbacks and only agrees to a second phase to join an exploratory global "dialogue" on future steps to combat climate change, with no new commitments.
      Climate talks are moving at glacial pace, Mother Nature is laughing.
  
  The year 2006.
  
  
• 1/20/2006 - Future grim if governments don't act - U.N.-commissioned study wide-ranging - by Usha Lee McFarling, Los Angeles Times.
      By the year 2050, the planet's population will increase to 9 billion with most people migrating to massive cities.    Better vaccines will lessen the epidemic of HIV and offset flu pandemics.    The global economy will guadruple.    Demand for food, fresh water and raw materials for construction and heat will stretch natural resources to their limits, according to an analysis comissioned by the United Nations for the last four years by 1,300 scientists from 95 countries.
      If major changes are not made in the way humans consume natural resources, there will be widespread famine, severe shortages of clean water and huge effects from natural disasters such as hurricanes.    Cities will be palgued by vast amounts of wastewater and sewage.
      Sea levels will rise, fisheries will collapse, emerging disease epidemics will sweep across the globe and coral reefs will die off.    Curtailing the use of fossil fuels will be important to limit the effect of climate change, which could raise temperatures by 3.5 degrees by 2050 and increase sea levels by several inches.
• 1/22/2006 - Severe cold continues to claim lives in Russia by Associated Press.
      Moscow - Russia's severest cold in a quarter of a century, with temperatures in Moscow below zero, has killed at least 40 people and strained the nation's crumbling infrastructure, with residents piling on the blankets and heating bricks to keep warm.    The big freeze extended to neighboring countries, killing four people in Estonia, one in Moldova and knocking out power and delaying trains in Poland.    In Moscow, rescue workers found five homeless or druck people dead, bringing the number of deaths to more than 20 in the capital during the six-day cold snap.
• 1/24/2006 - 'We can't wait' on warming.
      The Bush administration's policy of deny, delay and do nothing regarding global warming has become as obvious as the utter irresponsibility of its shoot first, plan later rush into Iraq.    The Democrats are pushing to do something and not wait to see if the science of global warming is bad and the evidence inconclusive.    Global warming is real, the effects are already being felt, and the consequences could be dire.    If we continue to allow humankind's emissions of greenhouse gases to grow we are courting almost certain disaster.
• 1/25/2006 - Death toll from cold wave climbs in Europe by Associated Press.
      Vienna, Austria - Vienna's subway tracks cracked, German authorities shut a key canal to ships after it iced up, and a zoo moved its penguins indoors as a deep freeze tightened its grip on much of Europe.    The cold wave, which has been blamed for more than 50 deaths in Russia, and claimed at least 13 lives and 30 hospitalized elsewhere.    Romania reported 15 deaths in the past few days, after temperatures dropped as low as minus 22 degrees.    The cold hit a record low of minus 24 degrees in the Lower Austria town of Gross Gerungs.
• 1/29/2006 - Scientists vows to keep speaking - Climate expert: NASA trying to muzzle him - by Andrew C. Revkin, The New York Times.
      New York - The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
      James Hansen, 63, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that officials at NASA headquarters ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, Web postings and requests for interviews from journalists.    Of course he said he will ignore the restrictions.    NASA denied the allegations, only that they disagree with him speaking for the agency, which should be left up to appointed speakers.    Hansen has been issuing public warnings since 1988 about the threat of heat-trapping emissions, dominated by carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels.    This is not the first politicians he has irked, and he has been invited to the White House to brief on climate change.    He fell out of favor in 2004 after giving a speech at the University of Iowa before the presidential election, claiming that government climate scientists were being muzzled.
      Its nice to hear a non political muzzled voice from the wilderness.
• 1/30/2006 - New look at sea-level rise by Associated Press.
      A new computer model from scientists from Germany and Britain suggest global warming might not produce the kind of sea-level change over the next century that had previously thought, according to a paper in the journal Nature.    It suggests that melting mountain glaciers and icecaps, which account for about a quarter of the expected sea-level rise, will produce about half the level of sea-level rise by 2100 that others have predicted.    Under the new model, which assumes icecaps melt more slowly than glaciers and that glaciers reach an equilibrium over time, the melting of these two ice forms will produce a sea-level rise of between 0.15 and 0.17 feet by 2100.
• 2/17/2006 - Higher temperatures causing more of Greenland's glaciers to melt into Atlantic Ocean by Andrew Bridges, Associated Press.
      St. Louis - Higher temperatures over the past decade have sped up the march of Greenland's southern glaciers to the Atlantic Ocean, where the ice and water they spill contribute more to the global rise in sea levels than previously thought.    Those faster-moving glaciers now dump twice as much ice into the Atlantic each year as they did in 1996, researchers said.    This accounts for nearly 17 percent of the estimated one-tenth of an inch annual rise in global sea-levels, or twice what was previously believed, said Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasedena, Calif.    They tracked the speeds of the glaciers from space, using satellite data collected between 1996 and 2005.
• 3/15/2006 - Atmospheric carbon dioxide sets record by Associated Press.
      The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere climbed to a record 381 parts per million last year, an increase sure to spark further debate on global warming.    The reading was up 2.6 parts per million, according to calculations by David Hofmann of the Office of Atmospheric Research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
• 3/24/2006 - Melting ice threatens to raise sea levels - Slipping glaciers cause quakes in Greenland - by Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press.
      Washington - By the end of this century, Arctic temperatures could rise to levels not seen in 130,000 years - when the oceans were several feet higher than now, according to research in the journal Science.    Giant glaciers have begun causing earthquakes in Greenland.    At the current rate of warming, Earth's temperature by 2100 will probably be at least 4 degrees warmer than now, with the Arctic at least as warm as it was 130,000 years ago, according to a report by Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona.
      Computer models indicate that warming could raise the average temperature in parts of Greenland above freezing for multiple months and could have a substantial impact on the melting of the polar ice sheets, according to Bette Otto-Bliesner of the Natioanl Center for Atmospheric Research.    Melting could raise sea level 1 to 3 feet over the next 100 to 150 years, she said.
      A team led by Goeran Ekstroem of Harvard University reported an increase in "glacial earthquakes," which occur when giant rivers of ice - some as big as Manhattan - move suddenly as meltwater eases their path.    That sudden movement cause the ground to tremble.
      Increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the next century could raise Arctic temperatures as much as 5 to 8 degrees.
• 4/23/2006 - Experts can agree Earth's warming; not on the effects - Unresolved issues are pace, extent - by Andrew C. Revkin, The New York Times.
      Most scientists believe that without big changes in emissions rates, warming from the buildup of greenhouse gases could lead to substantial, and largely irreversible, transformations of climate, ecosystems and coastlines later this century.    Mankind adds tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide and other long-lived greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, mainly by burning coal and oil.    By the clock of geology, this climate shift is unfolding at an unprecedented pace, but to people it is happening in slow motion.    So no one is jumping to take any action.
• 5/15/2006 - Report: Global warming could kill millions of people by Associated Press.
      London - Millions of people around the world face death and devastation because of floods, famine, drought and violence caused by global warming, according to a report by the charity group Christian Aid.    162 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone could die of disease directly attributable to global warming by the end of the century.    It urged the British government to lead the world's richer countries in taking urgent action to curb warming.    Poorer regions, the charity added, should be encouraged to use renewable energy sources.
• 5/22/2006 - Timeline blames climate by The New York Times.
      Most of North America's largest mammals, including the wooly mammoth, disappeared about 13,000 years ago, as the last ice age ended.    Some scientists think climate change was responsible, causing a shift in vegetation that favored certain animals.    Others blame people, who arrived around the same time.
      Humans may have hunted the mammals to extinction, says the so-called overkill hypothesis.    They may have brought diseases that had the same cataclysmic effect.    Or they may have only wiped out the mammoths, a "keystone" grazing species whose disappearance could have had a ripple effect.
      R. Dale Guthrie of the University of Alaska has compiled an extensive fossil timeline for the period that argues in favor of climate change, at least in what is now Alaska and the Yukon.
      Radiocarbon dating of many fossils of two extinct mammals, the Eurasian wild horse and mammoth, as well as the bison and wapiti, show that surviving species actually increased in number in the early part of human influx, even though they were hunted.
      That argues against overkill.    And horses became extinct in the region well before mammoths - a pattern that argues against the mammoth as a keystone species.
• 5/25/2006 - Al Gore's unlikely helpers by Sebastian Mallaby, The Washington Post.
      Washington - Al Gore starred in a movie "An Incovenient Truth," lecturing about climate change, with charts, bullet points and diagrams, maps of ocean currents and endless iceberg pictures.    Climate science is complex, and nobody can forecast the earth's temperature with complete confidence.    Scientists don't know everything but we should not ignore what they do know: that the earth is warming, glaciers are melting and sea levels are rising at an accelerating pace - and these changes are driven partly by fossil-fuel consumption.    The U.S. National Academies have confirmed this; their foreign counterparts also; and so has the world's top authority on the subject, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.    The Bush administration has done nothing about climate change, and has been silent on the link between oil consumption and global warming.
      Ads by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a group backed by the oil industry have called it "the alleged global warming crisis."    They are using the same tactics the tobacco industry used to create false doubt about the link between smoking and lung cancer.
      Gore states that climate change is real, it is happening now.    If it is not addressed soon, civilization, as we know it, will cease to exist.    The doomsday scenario claims rising sea levels will cause mass migrations (20 million around Beijing).    Desertification will destroy land currently used for farming (the rate of desertification has double since the 1970s).    New diseases will spread (West Nile is one recent example).
      Widespread adoption of existing technologies could bring U.S. emissions below 1970s levels.    Regulations of chloroflurocarbons, which began in 1987 with the signing of the Montreal Protocol, has halted and begun to reverse the destruction of the ozone layer.
      The temperature is rising and the clock is ticking.
• 6/4/2006 - Report rates countries on greenhouse gases by Associated Press.
      United Nations - Britain and Sweden are on target for reducing global-warming gases, but other countries will have to toughen policies and rely on "carbon trading" to achieve their Kyoto Protocol goals by 2012, says a new U.N. report.    In the U.S. emissions of so-called greenhouse gases climbed by 16 percent between 1990 and 2004, the U.S. EPA said in its latest assessment.    The U.S., by far the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and other gases, rejects the Kyoto pact on reductions.
• 6/10/2006 - Farmers return after volcano's rumblings by Associated Press.
      Mount Merapi, Indonesia - Hundreds of poor farmers concerned about their crops and livestock returned to the slopes of Indonesia's ash-spewing Mount Merapi, a day after fleeing the biggest eruption yet.    A monitoring station counted dozens of lava bursts and nine small emissions of gas from Indonesia's most dangerous volcano.    A thin layer of gray ash covered crops and village rooftops.    The burst, sent billowing gray clouds of hot ash three and half miles down the slope, and appears to be calming down now.
• 6/18/2006 - Global Warming - Kentuckiana begins to feel the heat of climate changes - by James Bruggers, The Courier-Journal.
      The blue-headed vireo, a songbird that winters along the Gulf of Mexico, arrived in Kentucky this spring 12 days earlier than it did 20 years ago, a state record.
      Evidence of global warming?    It might be, scientists say.
      And if your hay fever gets worse in the coming years, and spring storms seem more powerful, that might be evidence too.
      A Standford University researcher says, "Daffodils are coming up sooner.    Cherry trees are blooming earlier.    The increase in carbon dioxide and methane ... is helping cause the changes."    Global warming is also Local warming.    Greenhouse gases are higher than they have been in 650,000 years in readings from the Antarctic ice.
      Even in Kentucky and Indiana there will be no escape from global warming's impact.    Like changes in the region will be more powerful storms (from warmer winters and hotter summers), hardwood forest decline, more pollen to aggravate allergies, and droughts will be more common affecting water supplies and farming.    From 1989 to 2005 we have had the 20 warmest years since 1880.    James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies claims that people have 10 years to curb greenhouse gas emissions before climate change reaches a "tipping point" - where major changes cannot be stopped.    The opposition is more worried about the effect on the economy to do anything now, and think we will just have to adapt to the changes.
• 6/23/2006 - Report: Earth warmest in 400 years by John Heilprin, Associated Press.
      Washington - The Earth is running a slight fever from greenhous gases, after enjoying relatively stable temperatures for 2,000 years.    The National Academy of Sciences, after reconstructing global average surface temperatures for the past two millennia, said that the data are "additinal supporting evidence ... that human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming."
      Other new research showed that global warming produced about half of the extra hurricane-fueled warmth in the North Atlantic in 2005, and natural cycles were a minor factor, according to Kevin Trenberth and Dennis Shea of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
      The were asked to report to Congress on how they concluded the climate going back thousands of years, before data were available from modern equipment.    They looked at tree rings, corals, marine and lake sediment, ice cores, boreholes and glaciers, and combined that to give the panel a high level of confidnece that the last few decades were warmer than any in the last 400 years.
• 6/27/2006 - Court will hear case on global warming - Ruling could mean added regulation - by David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times.
      Washington - The Supreme Court entered the debate over global warming, agreeing at the urging of environmentalists (Sierra Club) to rule on whether new cars, trucks and power plants must be further regulated to slow climate change.    The ruling they want is to restrict the exhaust fumes that contribute to global warming and they accused the EPA of doing nothing for nearly a decade.    The case is to be heard in the fall and a ruling is expected next year after addressing all the global issues and complex science.    President Bush objected to the issue, and wants to focus on technological solutions and use nuclear power to meet the nation's energy needs.
      The legal dispute turns on standards set during the 1970s when Congress adopted the Clean Air Act.    One provision requires the government to regulate "any air pollutant" from motor vehicles or power plants that might endanger public health or welfare - incuding the "weather" or "climate."
      In 1999, environmental scientists petitioned the Clinton administration's EPA to impose regualtions to confront global warming.    They called upon the EPA to restrict emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons.    Four years later, under the Bush administration, the EPA rejected the petition, questioning the link between auto emissions and global warming, and ditched the new regulations.    Last year, that conclusion was upheld in a 2-1 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for DC.    So 12 states have appealed to the Supreme Court to require the EPA to regulate it.
• 7/15/2006 - Hot times: U.S. set record in first half of 2006 by Associated Press.
      Washington - The first half of this year was the warmest on record for the U.S., with the average temperature for the 48 states from January through June at 51.8 degrees Fahrenheit - 3.4 degrees above average for the 20^th century.    This was the warmest period since record keeping began in 1895.    No state was cooler than average and dry conditions spawned more than 50,000 wildfires, burning more than 3 million acres.
• 7/22/2006 - Warming is linked to rise in wildfires - Studies confirm global forecast - by Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press.
      Scientists worldwide are watching temperatures rise, the land turn dry and vast forest go up in flames.    In Siberian taiga and Canadian Rockies, in Southern California and in Australia they are finding evidence tying an upsurge in wildfires to climate change.    2006 already qualifies as an extreme fire season, sixth in the past eight years.    Snow melting much earlier in the spring, may be resulting in drier summer conditions.
• 8/1/2006 - Calif., Britain team up on climate - Two agree to share ideas on warming - by Michael R. Blood, Associated Press.
      Long Beach, Calif. - British Prime Minister Tony Blair and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced an agreement to bypass the Bush administration and work together to explore ways to fight global warming.    They met with business leaders on clean-energy and climate issues to collaborate on cleaner-burning fuels and technologies with market forces and incentives to curb pollution.    Environmentalists groups called it little more than a symbolic gesture, to share ideas and information, it is not a treaty.    California was the 12^th-largest source of greenhouse gases in the world last year.    Blair has called on Britain to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 60 percent of its 1990 amount by 2050.
• 8/2/2006 - NASA's climate-change research by The Washington Post.
      President Bush has pushed for a national effort to land Americans on the moon and Mars, but this has just cut deep into NASA's budget to monitor global climate change.    The White House is demanding more but has not put forth the funding to do such and has diverted over $3 billion from its science research budget over five years.    The climate monitoring funding has steadily decreased since fiscal year 2004.    NASA's satellite network that monitors global weather patterns - including hurricane formation - is aging, and replacements may arrive late or not at all.    The agency's Hydros spacecraft mission - which would have recorded soil moisture, an essential way to gauge the severity of global warming and its effects - got the ax.    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association are getting budget increases for research on global warming, but is not picking up NASA's slack with the new money.
• 8/3/2006 - Summer nights are getting hotter, federal data show - Trend seen as sign of global warming - by Seth Borenstein, Associated Press.
      Washington - A top federal research meteorologist looked over U.S. night minimum-temperatures records for the last 96 years and saw the trend toward hot summer nights.    From 2001 to 2005, on average nearly 30 percent of the nation has "much above normal" average summertime minimum temperatures, according to the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.    Something strange has happened in the last 10 to 15 years.    But it is not surprising, because climate models, used to forecast global warming, have been predicting this trend for more than 20 years.    It is a sign of global warming.
• 8/12/2006 - As Washington drags its feet on global warming, cities, states target ambitious goals by Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post.
      State and local officials across the country are adopting policies and forming international alliances aimed at reducing greenhouse gases.    The initiatives, which include demands that utilities generate some of their energy using renewable sources and mandates for a reduction in emissions from motor vehicles, to hopefully form the basis for broader national action.    Recently, 22 states and the District of Columbia have set standards demanding that utilities generate a specific amount of energy.
• 8/31/2006 - California leadrs agree on limiting greenhouse gases by Associated Press.
      Sacramento, Calif. - California the first state to impose a limit on all greenhouse gas emissions.    They are on a path to reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide by 25 perent by 2020.
• 9/7/2006 - Global-warming 'time bomb' discovered - Thawing permafrost is releasing methane - by Seth Borenstein, Associated Press.
      Washington - Global-warming gases trapped in the soil are bubbling out of the thawing permafrost in far greater quantities than previously thought and may trigger what researchers warn is a climate time bomb.    Methane is being released from the permafrost five times as fast as previously thought.    Warming already under way thaws permafrost, soil that has been frozen for thousands of years.    Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide.    These gases help trap heat on Earth, and the heat thaws more permafrost, and so on.    Most of the methane-releasing permafrost is in Siberia.    Methane is far more powerful in trapping heat, but lasts only about a decade before it dissipates into carbon dioxide and other chemicals.    Carbon dioxide traps heat for about a century.
• 9/16/2006 - Mayors see global-warming effects by Associated Press.
      Anchorage, Alaska - Portage Glacier has retreated so far, it no longer can be seen from the multimillion-dollar visitor center built for it in 1986.    Tourists have to cross a lake to see the glacial ice that looks sky blue on a cloudy day.    At a resort a few miles away, municipal leaders from 17 states are gathering to talk about global warming and see how it is changing the northern landscape.
• 9/18/2006 - Melting ice causing problems - Arctic thaw faster than expected - by Seth Borenstein, Associated Press.
      Arctic sea ice in winter is melting far faster than before, two NASA studies reported, a new and alarming trend that researchers say threatens the ocean's delicate ecosystem.    NASA claims it has never happened before, and this winter ice provides the kind of evidence that it is indeed associated with the greenhouse effect.
      Scientists have long worried about melting Arctic sea ice in the summer, but they had not seen a big winter drop in sea ice, even though they expected it.    For more than 25 years Arctic sea ice has slowly diminished in winter by about 1.5 percent per decade.    But in the past two years the ice has melted at rates 10 to 15 times faster.    From 2004 to 2005, the amount of ice dropped 2.3 percent; over the past year, it's declined by another 1.9 percent.
      A second NASA study found the winter ice in one region of the eastern Arctic has shrunk about 40 percent in just the past two years.
      The loss of winter ice is bad for the ocean because this type of ice, when it melts in summer, provides a crucial breeding ground for plankton, a bottom rung of the ocean's food chain.
• 9/19/2006 - Gore claims global warming a 'climate crisis' by Beth Fouhy, Associated Press.
      New York - Former Vice President Al Gore called for immediate action to stop global warming, describing the phenomenon as a 'climate crisis" that demands attention from American leaders.    Americans have not been given an honest accounting of the choices before us, Gore said, and accused the Bush administration of editing official scientific studies to downplay the impact of global warming and asking scientists at federal agencies to refrain from speaking out on the subject.
• 9/21/2006 - Automakers sued over greenhouse gas - Official alleges harm to California - by Samantha Young, Associated Press.
      Sacramento, Calif. - California's attorney general sued the six largest U.S. and Japanese automakers, including GM, Ford and Toyota, over greenhouse gas emissions.    The suit alleges that vehicle emissions have harmed residents' health, damaged the environment and cost the state millions of dollars to combat their effects.    Its part of a strategy to address global warming, and hold these automakers accountable for the monies taxpayers are spending to address these harms.
      Two years ago, the state enacted requirements for auto emissions, prompting carmakers to file suit.    The automakers claim they are already building cleaner more fuel-efficent vehicles.
• 9/22/2006 - $3 billion pledged to fight global warming - British mogul says future is in danger - by Deepti Hajela, Associated Press.
      New York - British mogul Richard Branson pledged to invest about $3 billion over the next decade to combat global warming and to promote alternative energy, saying it was critical to protect the environment for future generations.    These funds would come from the profits generated by his transportation sectors - trains and airline companies.    It will be invested in efforts to find renewable, sustainable energy sources in an effort to wean the world off oil and coal.
      Branson made the announcement during the Clinton Global Initiative, who was also at the annual conference and also Branson was inspired after meeting with Al Gore.
• 9/23/2006 - Indiana-sized hole opens in Arctic sea ice by The Baltimore Sun.
      Something unusual is going on in the Beaufort Sea, a remote part of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska.    Over the past six weeks, a huge "lake" bigger than the state of Indiana has melted out of the sea ice.
      Within the past week, this "polynya" - a Russian word for any open water surrounded by sea ice - finally melted through a part of the ice that separated it from the open ocean, forming a kind of bay in the planet's northern ice cap.
      "The reason we're tracking it is because we had never seen anything like that before," said Mark C. Serreze, senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, in Boulder, Colo.
      Polynyas occur every year in certain parts of the Arctic where warm currents and persistent winds clear swaths of sea ice.
      But this one, covering 38,000 square miles, is unique in the memory of scientists who watch the Arctic ice closely because they see it as a bellweather for the effects of global warming.    They've found that the area of the summer ice cap has been shrinking for at least three decades, and it's getting thinner.
      Last year, scientists at NASA and the NSIDC reported the most extensive summer meltdown of Arctic sea ice on record, and an acceleration in the rate of its long-term decline.
      The ice cap is crucial because it helps regulate the planet's temperature.    Its bright surface reflects 80 percent of the solar energy that strikes it, sending it back into space.    So if we have a smaller ice cap to reflect less solar energy and expose more open water, which is darker and absorbs 90 percent of the solar energy that falls on it.    It heats up, holds more of that heat from year to year, and makes it harder for ice to form again in the fall and winter.
• 9/26/2006 - Earth is warmest it's been in 12,000 years - Report says plants, animals affected - by Associated Press.
      Washington - Earth's temperature has climbed to heights not seen in thousands of years, a warming that has begun to affect plants and animals, researchers report in today's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.    The Earth has been warming at a rate of 0.36 degree Fahrenheit per decade for the last 30 years, according to the research team led by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.    That brings the overall temperature to the warmest in the current interglacial period, which began about 12,000 years ago.
      The researchers noted that a report in the journal Nature found that 1,700 plant, animal and insect species moved toward the poles at an average rate of about 4 miles per decade in the last half of the 20^th century.    The warming has been stronger in the far north, where melting ice and snow expose darker land and rocks beneath, allowing more warmth from the sun to be absorbed, and more over land than water.    They also noted that the warming in the Indian and western Pacific Oceans have had a major effect on climate and warming that could lead to more El Nino episodes affecting the weather.
      The study said the recent warming has brought global temperature to within about 1 degree Celsius - 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit - of the maximum temperature of the past million years.    If it reaches 2 or 3 degrees Celsius, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know.
• 9/28/2006 - Global-warming initiative becomes law by Associated Press.
      San Francisco - Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggar signed into law a global-warming initiative that imposes the nation's first ceiling on greenhouse-gas emissions.
• 10/20/2006 - Antarctic ozone hole is growing by Associated Press.
      Washington - This year's Antarctic ozone hole is the biggest ever, government scientists said.    The so-called hole is a region where there is severe depletion of the layer of ozone - a form of oxygen - in the upper atmosphere that protects life on Earth by blocking the sun's ultraviolet rays.    "From Sept. 21 to 30, the average area of the ozone hole was the largest ever observed, at 10.6 million square miles," said Paul Newman, atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.    That's larger than North America.
• 10/26/2006 - Study predicts 'wild ride' of drought, heavy rain by Associated Press.
      Washington - The world - especially the hot spots in the Western United States, the Mediterranean region and Brazil - will likely suffer more extended droughts, heavy rainfalls and longer heat waves over the next century because of global warming, a new study forecast by the National Center for Atmospheric Research based on computer models.    The Pacific Northwest may get a strange double whammy of longer dry spells punctuated by heavier rainfall.    In the tropical Pacific Ocean there will be more rain that will change the air flow for certain areas, much like El Nino weather ocillations now do, which will affect the U.S. West, Australia and Brazil.    The Mediterranean will get rainfall in the tropical Atlantic ocean that changes air currents.    Heat waves will worsen.
• 10/28/2006 - Britain to report on warming - World financial impact studied - by Thomas Wagner, Associated Press.
      London - The British governemnt plans to release a comprehensive report on the global economic cost of climate change.    The long-awaited review would say global warming could cost the world's economies up to 20 percent of their gross dometic product if urgent action is not taken to stop floods, storms and natural catastrophes.    Sir Nicholas Stern, a government adviser on climate change, is a former chief economist of the World Bank, is involved in the briefing.    It may cost the world to pay 1 percent of its annual GDP now to avert catastrophe.
      The EU's environment agency said Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain were not doing enough to fight global warming, jeopardizing the bloc's commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent by 2012 under the Kyoto treaty of 1997.
• 10/31/2006 - E.ON U.S. will join climate effort - Partnership to build plant that won't cause warming - by James Bruggers, The Courier-Journal.
      The German owned E.ON U.S., the parent company of LG&E and Kentucky Utilities, will announce that it plans to spend $25 million to join an industry government partnership to build a power plant that won't contribute to global warming.    E.ON U.S. became the 11^th member of the FutureGen Alliance, which seeks to create the world's cleanest coal-burning power plant.    Kentucky is the nation's third-largest producer of coal and it gets more than 90 percent of its electricity from the fuel.    The $1 billion FutureGen project announced in 2003 by President Bush and funded by the federal government would turn coal into a gas that would produce electricity from turbines similar to jet engines.    They claim the plant would emit nearly no air pollution of the type blamed for acid rain or lung-irritating ozone.    They plan to collect the carbon-dioxide emissions and then inject it thousands of feet into the ground to prevent the heat-trapping gas from getting into the atmosphere.
      Many experts claim that the world needs to reduce its carbon emissions at least 70 percent to prevent the serious consequences of warming.    Also, can carbon dioxide be safely injected into the ground or will it stay there?
• 10/31/2006 - Britain: Global warming expensive - Economic doom avoidable, it says - by Thomas Wagner, Associated Press.
      London - Britain released a 700-page report warning that the Earth faces a calamity on the scale of the world wars and the Great Depression affecting 200 million people, unless urgent action is taken.   
• 11/4/2006 - Greenhouse gases at record high, U.N. says by Associated Press.
      Geneva - Heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a record high in 2005 and are still increasing, the U.N. weather agency said.    The measurements coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) show that the global average concentrations of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide reached record levels last year and are expected to increase further this year.    Carbon dioxide is 35.4 percent more since the late 18^th century, it rose about 0.5 percent last year to reach 379.1 parts per million, where nitrous oxide was at 319.2 parts per billion, which is 0.19 percent higher than in 2004.    Levels of methane remained stable since last year.    The findings came from readings from 44 countries collected in Japan.
• 11/6/2006 - Nations will weigh next steps on climate change by Associated Press.
      Nairobi, Kenya - Government officials, scientists and activists converged in Kenya for the opening of U.N. conference on climate change.    The 189 parties to the 1992 U.N. climate treaty, gathered for their annual meeting, are divided into two groups: the 165 that have ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and a few others - led by the United States.    Under the Kyoto accord, 35 industrial countries are obliged to reduce their emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.    The U.S. accounts for 21 percent of the world's greenhouse gases.
• 11/7/2006 - U.S. defends its stance on global-warming curbs by Associated Press.
      Nairobi, Kenya - The chief U.S. climate negotiator, Harlan Watson, defended his nation's stand against compulsory limits on global-warming emissions and said the Bush administration is unlikely to alter its policy.    He claimed that the U.S. is doing better at restraining the growth of such gases voluntarily than some countries committed to reduction under the Kyoto protocol.
• 11/8/2006 - Ancient sites facing new threat - Report cites global warming - by Elizabeth A. Kennedy, Associated Press.
      Nairobi, Kenya - From ancient ruins in Thailand to a 12^th-century settlement off Africa's eastern coast, prized sites around the world have withstood centuries of wars, looting and natural disaster.    But experts say they might not survive a more recent menace: global warming.
      Tom Downing of the Stockholm Environment Institute released a report on threats to archaeological sites and other treasures.    Recent floods attributed to climate change have damaged the 600-year-old ruins of Sukhothai in northern Thailand, while increasing temperatures are "bleaching" the Belize barrier reef and the rising sea level is sending salt into the wetlands of Donana National Park in Spain.    Downing also said the ocean could eventually engulf ancient settlements such as the Old City on Kenya's Lamu island, which dates back to the 12^th century.
• 11/11/2006 - Critics see little progress on global warming by Associated Press.
      Nairobi, Kenya - Environmentalists complained that negotiations for industrial nations are moving too slowly at a U.N. conference to set controls on global-warming gases after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
• 11/12/2006 - Interfaith festival ends with warning about planet - Theme of dying extended to Earth - by Katya Cengel, The Courier-Journal.
      With a theme of dying, this year's Festival of Faiths wrapped up with a focus on ultimate death - what some see as the destruction of the planet.    On their eleventh annual festival, presented by the Center for Interfaith Relations, bringing together people of different faiths to help better the community.    Meeting at the Cathedral of the Assumption to discuss what Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club and one of the day's featured speakers, called the destruction of the natural world.
• 11/12/2006 - States and cities don't wait for federal rules by James Bruggers, The Courier-Journal.
      With Congress and President Bush reluctant to force federal greenhouse gas cuts, dozens of states are going on the offensive to curb the emissions blamed for global warming.    About 25 have set deadlines requiring a certain portion of their energy to come from renewable sources.    Of course Kentucky and Indiana are lagging behind because of their dependence on coal, but are considering the development of "clean coal technology," fuels derived from crops like corn and soybeans, and improved efficiency.
      More than 300 cities have pledged to voluntarily reduce their carbon emissions.
      Eleven biofuel plants have opened in Indiana in the past two years, to push E85, an 85 percent ethanol blend for vehicles.    Kentucky has one biodiesel plant, one corn-based ethanol plant and one plant that recycles discarded alcohol and sugar-based beverages into ethanol.    The closer states are to the coast where ice sheet melting can affect them the more excited they are at doing this.
• 11/12/2006 - Energy executive seeks national emission rules by James Bruggers, The Courier-Journal.
      Duke Energy's James Rogers, the head of the third-largest consumer of coal in the U.S., went to Congress last year and asked for regulations on carbon dioxide emissions.    He believes it would be better to have national consistency of rules rather than a patchwork of state rules.
  Caron dioxide emissions by state in millions of metric tons: Texas (669); California (367); Pennsylvania (258); Ohio (250); Florida (236); Illinois (225); Indiana (207); Michigan (189); Louisiana (183); Georgia (158); and Kentucky (145).
• 11/18/2006 - Climate conference ends with little concrete action by AP.
      Nairobi, Kenya - The U.N. climate conference ended with agreement on next steps toward negotiating future cuts in global-warming gases, a slow-paced timetable reflecting hopes the U.S., China and others will eventually join the controls regime.    Environmentalist called the timetable a modest step at best.
• 11/19/2006 - Climate conference wraps up by AP.
      Nairobi, Kenya - The annual U.N. climate conference wrapped up after two weeks on combating global warming.    In the coming months, the world will hear a lot from Washington about joining the Europeans and other industrial countries committed to reducing their emssions of greenhouse gases.    The science will grab headlines in February, when an authoritative U.N. network of 2,000 scientists issues its first detailed update in six years.    It will present much stronger evidence that manmade emissions are changing the climate.
• 11/27/2006 - High court to hear global-warming case by AP.
      Washington - The Supreme Court will hear arguments this week in a case that could determine whether the Bush administration must change course in dealing with global warming.    A dozen states plus environmental groups and large cities are trying to convince the court that the EPA must regulate, as a matter of public health, carbon dioxide coming from vehicles.    The Bush administration intends to argue before the court that the EPA lacks the power under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.    The EPA contends that even if it did have such authority, it would have discretion on how to address the problem without imposing emission controls.
• 11/30/2006 - Justices hear global warming case - States want EPA to regulate gases - by Mark Sherman, AP.
      Washington - Frustrated by Bush administration inaction on global warming, states and environmentalists urged the Supreme Court to declare greenhouse gases to be air pollutants that the government must regulate.    The court's first case on the politically charged topic showed an apparent split between its liberal and conservative justices on whether the administration must treat carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as air pollutants that imperil public health.    The Bush side claims that EPA regulation could have a significant economic impact on the U.S. because 85 percent of the economy is tied to sources of greenhouse gas emissions.    Of course the Democrats will make the issue a priority.    The state side claims failure to limit greenhouse gases will lead to economic decline and environmental ruin.
• 12/14/2006 - Scientists lament research controls by AP.
      Washington - The Bush adminstration is clamping down on scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the latest agency subjected to controls on research that might go against official policy.    New rules require screening of all facts and interpretations by agency scientists who study everything from caribou mating to global warming.    The rules apply to all scientific papers and other public documents, even minor reports or prepared talks.
      Scientists use to feel free from political interference but now they feel their objectivity of their work could be compromised, which borders on censorship.    The administration claims it will ensure the highest possible quality research, but most likely to avoid findings that are embarrassing to the administration.    I guess the rogue scientists will have to go underground now.
• 12/20/2006 - Global warming panel will meet today by The Courier-Journal.
      The Climate Change Committee of the Partnership for a Green City charged with helping Louisville voluntarily achieve the environmental commitments of an international global warming treaty will meet for the first time today.    The goal is to reduce heat-trapping gases to 7 percent below 1990 levels, the same goal written in the Kyoto protocol.
• 12/29/2006 Polar bears in jeopardy by AP.
      Washington - Polar bears are imperiled and need stronger government protection because of melting Arctic sea ice related to global warming, the Bush administration said.    The Interior Department cites thinning sea ice as the big problem; outside the government, other scientists studying the issue say pollution, overhunting, development and even tourism also may be factors.    Greenland and Norway have the most polar bears, while a quarter of them live mainly in Alaska and travel to Canada and Russia.    Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne proposed listing polar bears as a "threatened" species.    Environmentalists project a 30 percent deline in the number of polar bears over the next 45 years.    The sea ice is expected to decrease 50 percent or more over the next 50 to 100 years.
  
  The year 2007.
  
  
• 1/1/2007 2006 is city's 7th-wettest by AP.
      2006 was among the wettest on record for Louisville at 56.85 inches of rain measured, which is 12 inches above normal.    Computer models expect an increase by 20 percent in the coming decades as carbon dioxide levels increase in the atmosphere.    Research by global warming experts claim that the Western U.S. will get more extreme heat and drought and the Eastern U.S. will get warmer and wetter.    The recent flood in the area would normally only occur once in a 100 years.
• 1/2/2007 Honda forsees fuel-cell vehicles by 2018 by AP.
      Honda Motor Co. expects to sell fuel-cell vehicles by 2018, and has unveiled its FCX Concept car which may come out in 2008, but the price will be around $84,000.    A fuel-cell car runs on power generated by oxygen in the air combining with hydrogen stored in a fuel tank.    The end product is water vapor.
• 1/2/2007 Many look to carbon trading by The New York Times.
      While the trading of credits to emit carbon is under way in bits and pieces and California has moved to cap its production of greenhouse gases, no one expects nationally imposed limits to go into effect in the U.S. soon.    Most experts see 2010 as the earliest possible date.
      American companies are preparing for what they think will be a booming market after restrictions are applied.    Carbon trading is common in Europe and parts of Asia, where many countries operate under the Kyoto Protocol, which the U.S. has refused to join.
• 1/4/2007 Scientists: ExxonMobil has misinformed public by AP.
      ExxonMobil gave $16 million to 43 ideological groups between 1998 and 2005 in an effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming, the Union of Concerned Scientists asserted.
• 1/5/2007 '07 could be hottest year on record by AP.
      London - Deepening drought in Australia, stronger typhoons in Asia, floods in Latin America, has British climate scientists predicting that a resurgent El Nino climate trend combined with more greenhouse gases could touch off a fresh round of ecological disasters, and make this year the world's hottest on record.
• 1/10/2007 December makes '06 warmest in U.S. by AP.
      Washington - Last year was the warmest on record for the U.S., and the last half of December was a significant factor.
• 1/19/2007 High wind, rain pound N. Europe by AP.
      London - Hurricane force winds up to 118 mph and downpours hammered northern Europe killing 27 people.
• 1/20/2007 Wicked winter storms blamed for at least 74 deaths by AP.
      El Paso, Texas - A storm carrying the threat of more snow and ice moved across the Southern Plains (Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri) as more than 100,000 homes and businesses remaind in the dark from earlier blasts of cold, wet weather, which has caused 74 deaths.    The wave of storms also killed eight in New York, Michigan, Arkansas, Norht Carolina, Maine and Indiana.
• 1/21/2007 Environmentalists get new ally by The Courier-Journal.
      A political climate change lies behind a new statement by scientists and evangelical Christian activists, who are calling for action on global warming and other ecological crises.    The National Association of Evangelicals a conservative Protestant group is helping organize along with scientists to put curbs on using fossil fuels.
• 1/23/2007 Corporate leaders back action on global warming by AP.
      Duke Energy, DuPont and General Electric and seven others have joined with several environmental groups calling for action to slow global warming.    They want mandatory emissions caps, as President Bush has his State of the Union speech to discuss energy and climate change, and Congress is weighing several Climate change bills.
• 1/23/2007 Glaciers in Alps expected to disappear by 2050 by AP.
      Vienna, Austria - Glaciers will all but disappear from the Alps by 2050, scientists warned, based on mounting evidence of slow but steady melting of continental ice sheets.    In Austria's Alpine province of Tyrol, glaciers have been shrinking by about 3 percent a year, meaning their mass decreases annually by roughly three feet.
• 1/23/2007 Report: Global warming will get worse by AP.
      Washington - Top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman said human-caused global warming is here, visible in the air, water and melting ice, and is destined to get much worse.    He reviewed all 1,600 pages of the first segment of a four-part report.
• 1/25/2007 German chancellor champions globalization at forum by AP.
      Davos, Switzerland - German chancellor Angela Merkel, who is head of the European Union's revolving presidency and of the G-8 group of industrial nations, urged the world to exploit globalization and wants business leaders to battle climate change and secure energy supplies as among the planet's key priorities.
• 1/28/2007 Bush remark on global warming may signal shift by The Washington Post.
      Washington - President Bush's commitment to fight global warming in his State of the Union address has provoked debate about whether he is shifting his view of climate change.    He may be responding to the growing political momentum for grappling with climate change.
• 1/31/2007 Climate experts detail interference by AP.
      Washington - Federal scientists have been pressured by the White House to play down global warming, advocy groups testified at the Democrats first investigative hearing since taking control of Congress.    The White House was alleged to micromanage what scientists are allowed to tell the public, and a survey of 279 government climate scientists claim they have been subjected to political pressure aimed at downplaying the climate threat and disuaded from talking to the media.    Some of their reports were delayed or watered down.
• 1/31/2007 EPA scientists want stricter air standards by The Courier-Journal.
      John Millet an agency spokesman for the EPA said the current national standard 84 parts per billion of ground-level ozone is not adequate to protect public health and has recommended as much as a 29 percent reduction, to 60 parts per billion.    It is under consideration to change the standard by June 20.    Lung-irritating ozone is formed when pollutants emitted by vehicles, power plants, chemical plants and other sources react chemically in the air with sunlight.
• 2/2/2007 Report: Global warming 'very likely' man-made, unstoppable for centuries by AP.
      Paris - The world's leading climate scientists, in their most powerful language ever used on the issue, said global warming is "very likely" or 90 percent certainty is man-made.    The report projects higher temperatures and the rising sea levels by the year 2100 is essentially a runaway train that cannot be stopped for centuries.    They state it is not due to known natural causes alone in a 20-page report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with hundreds of scientists and representatives of 113 governments, contains the most authoritative science on the issue..    Human-caused warming and rises in sea level "would continue for centuries" because the process has already started, "even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized," it says.
      On sea levels, the report projects rises of 7-23 inches by the end of the century.    That could be augmented by the additional 4-8 inches if the recent and surprising melting of the polar ice sheet continues.    They have connected the recent increase in stronger hurricanes to man-made burning of fossil fuels.    Countries like China have increasingly turned to fossil fuels for its huge and growing energy needs.
      The Bush administration acknowledges that global warming is man-made and a problem that must be dealt with, but continue to reject mandatory limits.
• 2/3/2007 Warming puts region's coal in the cross hairs by The Courier-Journal.
      After scientists found that global warming is unstoppable and humans are the blame, the economic repercussions in coal-dependent states like Kentucky and Indiana are targets for the environmentalists, making increase pressure on the industry to reduce emissions by building a new generation of coal-fired plants that turn coal to gas and then store the captured carbon dioxide deep in the ground.
• 2/4/2007 Are global warming and climate change legitimate dangers? by AP.
      One opinion is that in the present political climate can man predict a thorough scientific study on whether global warming exist and is it man-made.
      Global warming and climate change is legitimate or there would not be a 25-square-mile hole in the ozone layer, or a millennia-old ice shelf would not have broken off its base in the Canadian Arctic and fallen into the sea, and mountain glaciers around the world would not be melting three times faster than they were in the 1980s.    This is just the tip of the iceberg compared to what could eventually happen if this is left unchecked.    Mankind has not seen these conditions in the past 10,000 years, so the doomsday clock has moved to 11:55 p.m.    Can mankind change what is coming?
      If not at least we can begin controlling our children's and grand-children's destiny by reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and our lifestyles in order to save this planet.
• 2/4/2007 46 nations, minus U.S., eye group to combat warming by AP.
      Paris - Forty-five nations answered France's call for a new environmental body to slow inevitable global warming and protect the planet perhaps with policing powers to punish violators.
      Of course the U.S., China and India were absent.
• 2/6/2007 340,000 flee flood in Indonesian capital by AP.
      Jakarta, Indonesia - Floodwater from days of torrential rain covered large parts of Indonesia's capital forcing 340,000 people from their homes and cutting off power and clean water in the city, where at least 29 people have died.
• 2/11/2007 Wanted: Carbon emissions - 'Trading' aims to fight warming by Los Angeles Times.
      The Chicago Climate Exchange is the first and only legally binding carbon emissions market in North America.    In the absense of federal controls on greenhouse gas emissions, it applies an axiom of economic theory to the problem of global warming: People in search of profit can be expected to do just about anything for a buck, even save the planet.    That concept of the market forms the cornerstone of regulatory efforts to fight global warming.    Interest in carbon trading as an arcane but powerful tool to fight global warming has intensified following the recent reports on global warming.
      The theory of the market is straightforward.     For the right price a farmer will agree to cultivate his fields without plowing, so the soil retains carbon dioxide that would otherwise seep into the air.    That "carbon credit" can then be purchased by exchange members and applied against their own emissions.    Should the price of carbon credits climb high enough, the theory goes, company executives one day will find it cheaper to reduce their own industrial emissions.
      It's a new form of environmental bookkeeping that theoretically reduces emissions of carbon dioxide and the other trace gases responsible for gradually rising global temperature.
      Since the exchange opened in 2003, almost two hundred companies, including the Ford Motor Co., Dupont, IBM Corp., Amtrak and American Electric Power Co. have volunteered to buy and sell the right to emit tons of carbon dioxide and five other key greenhous gases.
      California officials are beginning to frame market-based trading schemes, inspired in part by the Chicago Climate Exchange, to curb industrial carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent over the next 14 years.    State and federal regulators already use market trading to control the sulfur emissions responsible for acid rain.
      The big question is: Can the new carbon emissions market do anything but generate profits for market traders and just delay the changes that would forestall global warming?
      In Europe, where mandatory controls were imposed, the carbon emissions trading system has been marred by foot-dragging, chicanery and profiteering, even as its sales reached $22 billion.    It did nothing to reduce the risk of global warming.
      The exchange so far has traded 13.6 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions with 200 companies, cities and foundations at prices ranging from $4 to $8 a ton.
• 2/16/2007 January was hottest ever on record by AP.
      It may be cold comfort during a frigid February, but last month was by far the hottest January ever, caused by a waning El Nino and a gradually warming world.    Spurred on by unusally warm Siberia, Canada, northern Asia and Europe, the world's land areas were 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than a normal January.    Usually records are broken by a few hundredths of a degree at a time.
• 2/18/2007 Tycoon offers $25 million for solution to warming by AP.
      London - British tycoon Richard Branson dangled a $25 million prize before the world's top scientists to spur research into devising ways to suck greenhouse gases out of the air.    Branson hopes his offer will lead to a viable machine for vacuuming the Earth's atmosphere of carbon dioxide.
• 2/19/2007 Science group: Climate change is threat by AP.
      San Francisco - The world's largest scientific society American Association for the Advancement of Science joined the concern over global climate change, calling it a "growing threat to society."
• 2/21/2007 Australia to ban incandescent lights by AP.
      Sydney, Australia - The Australian government announced plans to phase out incandescent light bulbs across the country and replace them with more energy-efficent compact fluorescent bulbs.    They will restrict the sale of the old-style bulbs in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 4 million tons by 2012 and cut electric bills by up to 66 percent.    Australia produced almost 565 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2004.
      California and New Jersey are also considering a bill to ban the use of the bulbs.    Cuba had already initiated the program two years ago, as did Venezuela.
      Doing something is better than nothing, but still most of the emissions come from these countries coal-fire power stations.
• 2/21/2007 EU ministers OK cuts in greenhouse gases by AP.
      Brussels, Belgium - European Union environment ministers agree to drastically cut greenhouse emissions by 2020 to contain global warming, which will lead to mandatory limits on cars and pollution allowance for airlines.    The goal to get emissions 20 percent below the 1990 amount, but concerns are whether the newest members can endure the burden.
• 2/27/2007 Western governors team up on global warming by AP.
      Washington - The governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington agreed to develop a regional target to lower greenhouse gases and create a market-based program aimed at helping businesses reach these goals.    With no federal action being done, on something that should have been done 20 years ago, they are working together on the issue, and hope to see other states taking action.
• 2/28/2007 Scientists detail plan for saving the planet by AP.
      United Nations - An 18-member international panel of scientists presented the United Nations with a plan to combat climate change.    They recommended pouring billions of dollars into research and development of cleaner energy sources, mobilizing U.N. and other agencies to help affected people, and winning political agreement on a global temperature "ceiling."
• 3/3/2007 EPA plans reductions in diesel exhaust by AP.
      Washington - The EPA announced a plan that would do away with most of the smog and soot caused by diesel-burning trains and boats.    These standards, if adopted and phased in would reduce pollution from these engines by 90 percent and smog-forming nitrogen oxides by 80 percent.    These engines will be remanufactured and upgraded and the old phased out starting in 2009, and require that ultralow-sulfur diesel fuel is used.
• 3/4/2007 Report: U.S. emissions will rise by 2020 by AP.
      By 2020, the U.S. will emit almost one-fifth more gases that lead to global warming than it did in 2000, increasing the risks of drought and scarce water supplies.    This report came from the Bush administration that is more than a year overdue at the U.N., and is still responsible for roughly one-quarter of the world's carbon dioxide.
• 3/9/2007 German leader says EU must cut emissions faster by AP.
      Brussels, Belgium - German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned European Union leaders that Europe has everything to lose if it does not move faster to cut carbon dioxide emissions and invest in more environmentally friendly energy sources.    The leaders gathered to decide on a new green energy strategy to fight climate change and reduce Europe's dependence on oil imports.
• 3/11/2007 Grim warnings in report on climate by AP.
      Washington - The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won't have enough water, top scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will say next month at a meeting in Belgium.
      At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels.    Tropical diseases like malaria will spread.    By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone.    Pests like fire ants will thrive.
      Food will be plentiful in northern regions because of the longer growing season, but by 2080 hundreds of millions of people could face starvation.
      Changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems on every continent, compared to scattered regional effects in the year 2001.    Current problems are changes in species' habits and habitats, more acidified oceans, loss of wetlands, bleaching of coral reefs and increases in allergy-inducing pollen, and hurricanes, and wildfires, which can be blamed on global warming.
      The hardest hit continents are likely to be Africa and Asia.    North America, Europe and Australia are predicted to suffer the fewest of the harmful effects.
      If the world can slow its emissions of carbon dioxide within a generation some of the worst effects can be prevented.
• 3/14/2007 Bold environmental laws proposed by Britain by AP.
      London - Britain proposed the first environmental legislation in an industrialized country, that would set legally binding, long-term limits on carbon emissions, a move it hopes will prompt the U.S., China and India to follow suit.
• 3/15/2007 Coal's fate linked to capturing emissions by AP.
      Washington - The coal industry faces a bleak future unless ways are developed on a commercial scale to capture and store carbon dioxide to combat global warming, according to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.    Coal which accounts for half of the nation's electrical production, will remain the fuel of choice to produce electricity in the U.S. because it is relatively cheap and abundant.    That could change if carbon limits are imposed to address climate change unless the government and industry develop a program to capture and store tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide that spew from coal-burning smokestacks.    The capturing of carbon from coal burning is technically and economically possible, and would allow the industry increase production since more coal would be used in 2050 than is used today.
• 3/15/2007 Auto-industry leaders discuss climate change by AP.
      U.S. automakers, General Motors, Ford, Toyota and Chrysler and a top union official pledge to work with Congress to find new ways of dealing with global warming but declared their industry could not bear the burden alone.
• 3/22/2007 Gore implores Congress to fight global warming by AP.
      Washington - Al Gore made an emotional return to Congress to plead with lawmakers to fight global warming with moral courage.    Things got testy with him from Tex. Rep. Joe Barton over getting to the point, but Sen. Hillary Clinton asked for more details from him.
• 4/1/2007 Species will be lost as world warms, U.N. says by AP.
      From plankton in the ocean to polar bears in the far north and seals in the far south, global warming has begun changing life on Earth, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
      Animal and plant life in the Arctic and Antarctic is undergoing substantial change.    Rising sea levels are damaging coastal wetlands.    Warmer waters are bleaching and killing coral reefs, pushing marine species toward the poles and reducing fish populations in African lakes.    Frogs in some rain forests have disappeared because of dry periods, that leave them vunerable to a devastating fungus.    A bloodthirsty parasite is popping up in parts of Sweden where deep winter chills used to make survival difficult.    Ticks are spreading north in January along the Scandinavian country's shoreline, pestering pets and spreading infectious diseases to humans.
      If things do not change they estimate that one-third of species will be lost from their current range, either moved elsewhere or vanished by 2050.
• 4/1/2007 Poor nations bear brunt of warming by The New York Times.
      The world's richest countries who have contributed the most to atmospheric changes linked to global warming, are spending billions of dollars to limit their risks from its worst consequences, like drought and rising seas.    840 million people in countries along the equator are overwhelmingly poor and may not be able to do this making a climate divide.
• 4/3/2007 Justices: EPA can regulate emissions by AP.
      Washington - The Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide from automobile emissions, and that it has shirked its duty in not doing so as stated in the Clean Air Act, which the Bush adminstration had influenced a non action on the issue.
• 4/4/2007 EPA revives emission debate by AP.
      Sacramento, Calif. - The Bush administration has reopened California's stalled petition to control greehouse gases after the Supreme Court ruling that the government can regulate emissions from cars.    The action by the EPA breathes life into California's effort to become the first state to cut tailpipe emissions from cars, light trucks and sport utility vehicles, and they want to do it by 2009.
• 4/6/2007 Southwest getting drier, report says by AP.
      Washington - Global warming will change the climate of the American Southwest, making it so much hotter and drier that Dust-Bowl-scale droughts will become common, a new report concludes.
      The greatest effect will be felt along the Mexican border, and by the end of the century, rainfall in that region will have declined by 10 to 20 percent annually.
• 4/7/2007 Grim global warming report warns of effects on humans by AP.
      Brussels, Belgium - As the world gets hotter, millions of poor people will suffer from hunger, thirst, floods and disease unless drastic action is taken, scientists and diplomats warned in their bleakest report.    This report was the second of four coming this year from the IPCC.
• 4/8/2007 Fungus may be harbinger of future by AP.
      Victoria, B.C. - An animal pathologist at a British Columbia laboratory in 1999 viewed tissue from a dog on Vancouver Island under a microscope, and looked at a tiny cell that looked like a boiled egg.    She started seeing a lot of those.    Then dead porpoises started washing up on shore the next year and they found that their lungs seized by pneumonia and its other organs were swollen by strange flowerlike tumors.
      Then a 45-year-old lady became ill from a tropical disease which apparently was brought to North America by a warming climate.    An alien fungus took root on Vancouver Island eight years ago and has since killed eight people and infected at least 163 others, as well as many animals.    Similar cases were found in Washington state and Oregon.    The fungus was a member of the yeast family called Cryptococcus gattii, which is normally found in the bark of eucalyptus trees in Australia and other tropical zones.    This fungus was more virulent than the one in Australia in an area where they had no immunities to it.
• 4/11/2007 U.N. report: Climate change to have global impact by AP.
      Rising global temperatures could melt Latin America's glaciers within 15 years, cause food shortages affecting 130 million people across Asia by 2050 and wipe out Africa's wheat crop, and 30 percent of the world's coastline could be lost by 2080, according to a U.N. report from the IPCC.
      In Mexico City, scientists predicted that global warming could cost the Brazilian rain forest up to 30 percent of its species and turn large swaths into savannah.    They said ocean levels could rise 4.3 feet by 2080 and flood low-lying cities, including Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Buenos Aires, Argentina.
      Polar ice caps will likely melt, opening a waterway at the North Pole and threatening to make the Panama Canal obsolete.    Warmer waters will spawn bigger and more dangerous hurricanes that will threaten coastlines.
      Latin America's diverse ecosystems will struggle with intense droughts and flooding, and as many as 70 million people in the region will be left without enough water.
      Wheat, a staple in Africa, could disappear from there by 2080.    In Asia, nearly 100 million people will face the risk of floods from seas that are expected to rise 0.04 inches to 0.12 inches annually, slightly higher than the global average.
      A 3.6-degree increase in mean air temperature could decrease rain-fed rice yields by 5 percent to 12 percent in China.    In Bangladesh, rice production could fall by just under 10 percent and wheat by a third by 2050.
      The drops in yields plus rising populations could put close to 50 million extra people at risk of hunger by 2020, 132 million by 2050 and 266 million by 2080.
      Australia and New Zealand will experience more extreme weather, heat waves and fires.
• 4/16/2007 Canada has ground-level view of global warming by AP.
      Iqalutt, Nunavut - Inuit hunters are falling through thinning ice and dying.    Dolphins are being spotted for the first time.    There's not enough snow to build igloos for shelter during hunts.
      This is where a culture has lived for 5,000 years, relying on a very delicate, interconnected ecosystem and, one by one, small pegs of that ecosystem are being pulled out.    Now the Inuit hunters are being forced to adapt to a warming Arctic ocean and melting polar ice cap.    They are seeing creatures that they have never seen before, such as robins, finches and dolphins.    The thinning ice became noticeable about 10 years ago, forcing Arctic animals to migrate farther north.
• 4/17/2007 Water a problem in warmer world by AP.
      As the world warms, water is going to be the major problem for the U.S., scientists and military experts said.    It will be a domestic problem, with states clashing over control of rivers, and a national problem of shortages and floods worsen conflicts and terrorism elsewhere.
      In the Southwest regions they will need to find new sources of drinking water; the Great Lakes will shrink; fish and other species will be left high and dry; and coastal areas will on occasion be inundated because of sea-level rises and souped-up storms.
• 4/23/2007 Shrinking habitat for Arctic foxes by AP.
      When an animal's habitat starts to shrink and shift, it can stay and adapt, move or do neither and die off.    The Arctic fox, whose habitat has changed markedly since the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, and had the run of continental Europe.    But the planet has warmed and the ice sheets receded and the fox's habitat shifted northward and decreased.    The animals are now found in Scandinavia and Siberia.
      Dr. Love Dalen at the University of London analyzed DNA from fossilized fox bones found at European ice age sites and compared it with DNA from the current populations.    They found that there was no connection between the ancient and modern populations.    This means that the ancient population did not move and became extinct.    It was suggested that Scandinavia was probably repopulated by foxes from the part of northeastrn Siberia known as Beringia, which was not frozen over during the ice age.    The concern is that the current fox may not move during a global climate change and may die off.
• 4/24/2007 Global warming report to call for vast changes by AP.
      Bangkok, Thailand - U.N.-sponsored scientists from the IPCC who warned of the dangers of a warming Earth will issue a new study next month describing how to avert the worst: Everyone must embrace technologies ranging from nuclear power to manure control.
• 4/26/2007 EPA proposal said to flout court ruling by AP.
      The government proposed a pollution standard for power plants that critics said flouts the spirit of a Supreme Court ruling.    The proposal would make it easier for utilities to expand plant operations or make other changes to produce more electricity without installing new air pollution controls.    The EPA said the ruling dealt with the interpretation of earlier rules, not the validity of a new standard.    The proposal would allow the use of average hourly smokestack emissions when determining whether a plant's expansion or efficiency improvements require additional pollution controls.
• 4/30/2007 Greenhouse-gas plan criticized by Gore by AP.
      Toronto - Al Gore has condemned Canada's new plan to reduce greenhouse gases, calling it "a complete and total fraud" because it lacks specifics and gives industry a way to increase emissions.    Canada aims to reduce the current level of emissions 20 percent by 2020.    But the government acknowledged it would not meet its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, which requires 35 industrialized countries to cut emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
• 5/1/2007 U.S., China prefer to go slow on climate change by AP.
      Bangkok, Thailand - The U.S. and China want to amend a major report by U.N.-sponsored climate researchers the IPCC to play down its conclusion that quick, affordable action can limit the worst effects of global warming.
• 5/1/2007 Bush, EU leaders agree to address climate change by AP.
      Washington - President Bush and European leaders claimed progress in the effort to reduce global warming, largely by agreeing that climate change requires global action without infringement on the rights of nations to choose their own strategies.    All recognize there is a problem, and believe that technology is going to lead to a solution, and must share in those technologies.    This will be further discussed at the G8 summit next month in Germany.    China, India and the U.S. are still hestitant due to fears that stringent control of emissions will hurt their booming economies.
• 5/5/2007 Scientists rate costs of reducing global warming by The Washington Post.
      The IPCC put a price tag on what it would take to avoid the worst effects of global warming, concluding that the effort would be affordable and would be partially offset by economic and other benefits.
      To stabilize the levels of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels by 2030, would require measures that would add $100 to the costs associated with each ton of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere.    That would translate into an increase in gasoline prices of about $1 a gallon over a number of years.    The U.S. immediately rejected the options because it would cause global recession.
• 5/7/2007 Japan to aid push for green, clean development by AP.
      Kyoto, Japan - Japan pledged up to $2.1 billion in aid to the Asian Development Bank, which has 67 world governments, to combat global climate change and promote greener investments in the region.    Asia's energy consumption has grown by 230 percent, and is expected to double again by 2030.    The region already accounts for a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
• 5/9/2007 Climate Registry is launched without Kentucky and Indiana by The Courier-Journal.
      Thirty-one states, but not Kentucky and Indiana, have agreed to participate in a voluntary program the Climate Registry that allows uniform tracking of greenhouse gas emissions from state to state.
• 5/10/2007 Carbon dioxide to trade by AP.
      The New York Mercantile Exchange plans to offer contracts for trading carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.    The entry by Nymex Holdings Inc. into the sector may herald the start of fierce competition among energy exchanges to serve a multibillion dollar trading market for carbon-emission allowances.    The Chicago Climate Exchange has been the first in the U.S. to create and exchange for trading carbon credits.    Many expect that by 2010 Congress will impose a cap and allow companies to comply by purchasing allowance in place of cutting actual emissions.
• 5/11/2007 Study: Eastern U.S. summers to sizzle by AP.
      Washington - Future summers in the eastern United States could be much hotter than previously predicted, with daily highs about 10 degrees warmer than in recent years by the mid-2080s, a new NASA study says.    In the 2080s, the average summer high will probably be 102 degrees in Jacksonville, Fla., 100 degrees in Memphis, 96 degrees in Atlanta and 91 in Chicago and Washington.    Of course this is all done by computer models.
• 5/13/2007 Documents: U.S. out to weaken climate declaration by The Washington Post.
      Washington - Negotiators from the U.S. are trying to weaken the language of a climate-change declaration set to be unveiled at next month's summit of the world's leading industrial powers the Group of Eight in Bonn, Germany.    Included are agreements to reduce worldwide emissions to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, which the U.S. is trying to tone that section down.    The new declaration is to be titled "Growth and Responsibility in the World Economy," which is written as an imperative and not a choice as the U.S. would like it to be.
• 5/15/2007 Bush orders vehicle air-pollution rule by AP.
      Washington - President Bush, prodded by a Supreme Court ruling, said that his administration will decide how to regulate pollution from new motor vehicles by the time he leaves office.    Bush signed an executive order directing federal agencies to produce regulations that will cut gasoline consumption and emissions from motor vehicles and have it done by late 2008.
• 5/27/2007 Pelosi will talk climate in Europe by AP.
      Washington - House speaker Nancy Pelosi, D.-Calif., and seven other House members left for meetings with scientists and politicians in Greenland, Germany and Belgium on ways to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.
• 5/27/2007 Environmentalists claim U.S. to reject climate deal by AP.
      London - The U.S. is preparing to reject new targets on climate change at a Group of Eight summit next month, dashing hopes for a new global pact on emissions, according to Greenpeace.
• 6/2/2007 Study: Climate change models overstate droughts by USA TODAY.
      A study by Frank Wentz of Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, Calif., using measurements by NASA satellites found the models to be off the mark, saying the global rainfall may be three times greater than currently predicted.    They claim that the models underestimated how increased humidity in a warmer climate produces more rain clouds.
• 6/2/2007 Bush calls for warming summit by USA TODAY.
      Washington - Bush proposed that countries producing the most emissions meet and develop strategies to reduce emissions by the end of 2008, but most suspect this is just a way to unify members for support.
• 6/8/2007 Drought now covers at least a third of U.S. by USA TODAY.
      Denver - Drought, a fixture in much of the West for nearly a decade, now covers more than one-third of the contiguous U.S., and it is spreading.
• 6/17/2007 Gulf Stream studies show European ice age unlikely by AP.
      Torshavn, Faeroe Islands - On a ship in the North Atlantic Islands scientists use sonar to ping the Gulf Stream, that has kept this subpolar archipelago unfrozen for centuries.    This study contradicts predictions that global warming and melting of the Arctic will strangle the Gulf Stream, thrusting Europe into a new Ice Age.    This study even suggested that it may help offset the effects of global warming in northern Europe.
• 7/3/2007 Lake's disappearance, global warming linked by AP.
      Santiago, Chile - Scientists blamed global warming for the disappearance of a glacial lake in remote southern Chile's Bernardo O'Higgins National Park that vanished in just two months, leaving only a 130-foot-deep crater behind.
• 7/17/2007 Japanese earthquake kills 9 by AP.
      Kashiwazaki, Japan - A strong 6.8 earthquake shook Japan's northwest coast, starting a fire at the world's most powerful nuclear power plant and causing 315 gallons of radioactive water to spill into the sea.    The tremor killed at least nine people and injured more than 900, toppling homes, and tore fissures in the ground.    Highways and bridges buckled, and buildings swayed as far away as 160 miles, with tsunami warnings announced.
• 8/17/2007 Quake toll reaches 510 - Southern Peru is devastated by AP.
      Pisco, Peru - The death toll rose to 510 and over 1,500 injured in the magnitude-8 earthquake that lasted for two minutes and struck Peru's southern desert.
• 8/17/2007 Japan has hottest day on record; 13 people die by AP.
      Tokyo - Japan sizzled through its hottest day on record 105.6 degrees as a heat wave claimed at least 13 lives and threatened power supplies strained by a recent earthquake.
• 8/17/2007 2 missing after volcano erupts in remote desert by AP.
      Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - A volcano erupted in the remote desert of northeast Ethiopia, the barren Afar region and spewed for two hours, leaving at least two people missing.
• 8/18/2007 Arctic sea ice at 30-year low, group says by AP.
      Washington - The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported the Arctic has less sea ice now than at any time since 1970s, and the melting is continuing according to satellite images.
• 9/1/2007 Basic agreement reached on limiting gases by AP.
      Vienna, Austria - Negotiators of a U.N. climate conference from 158 nations reached a basic agreement on rough targets aimed at getting some of the world's biggest polluters to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.    The industralized nations should strive to cut emissions by 25 to 40 percent of their 1990 levels by 2020.    Another summit is planned in December in Bali, Indonesia.
• 9/1/2007 Pope will lead youth event with environmental theme by AP.
      Vatican City - Pope Benedict XVI is getting involved in the Vatican's environmental campaign, leading a youth festival of 300,000 to use recycled prayer books, biodegradable plates and backpacks made from reused nylon.    Hydrogen cars will be on display and trees will be planted in southern Italy.    The Vatican began using photovoltaic cells on the roof of some of its buildings to convert sunlight into electricity.
• 9/8/2007 Big drop forecast in polar bear numbers - Scientists blame thinning sea ice by AP.
      Washington - Two-thirds of the world's polar bears will be killed off by 2050, the entire population would be gone in Alaska, because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic, government scientists forecast.    Those in the northern Canadian Arctic islands and the west coast of Greenland are expected to survive through the end of the century.
• 9/13/2007 2nd strong quake in 2 days hits Indonesia by AP.
      Padang, Indonesia - The second earthquake in two days shook western Indonesia, collapsing buildings and triggering tsunami alerts.    The 8.4 quake was felt in Malaysia and in Singapore.
• 9/16/2007 Arctic ice retreats to record low; Northwest Passage open by AP.
      Paris - Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage (along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland) that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane, thus bypassing the Panama Canal.    A U.N. panel on climate has predicted that polar regions could be virtually free of ice by the summer of 2070.    Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the U.S. are all in a race to secure rights to the Arctic, where as much as 25 percent of the undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden.
• 9/16/2007 U.N. warns of disease risk in Africa due to flooding by AP.
      Kampala, Uganda - Torrential downpours and flash floods across Africa have submerged towns and washed away bridges, farms and schools.    The rains have killed at least 150 people, displaced hundreds of thousands and prompted the U.N. to warn of a rising risk of disease.    More than a million people in 17 countries are affected.
• 9/18/2007 1.8 million evacuated as typhoon nears by AP.
      Shanghai, China - A typhoon to be among the most powerful storms to hit China in years churned toward its coast with 165-mph wind gusts, forcing the evacuation of 1.8 million people.    The typhoon had waves up to 36 feet, moving toward the Chinese mainland.
• 9/18/2007 Experts: Warming will harm wildlife by The Courier-Journal.
      Global warming will add to the problems of fish and wildlife already trying to cope with habitat loss to human encroachment, which may lead to extinction.    Beetles have moved into British Columbia, wiping out large pine forests, thus changing the ecosystem there.    If lakes and ponds of the northern Great Plains dry up, mallards, pintails and migrating ducks who breed there could face steep decline.    Brook trout in the southern Appalachians would not be able to swim north, as will many amphibians and reptiles able to move.
• 9/20/2007 Floods plague Africa, kill 200 by AP.
      Soroti, Uganda - Across Africa, torrential downpours and flash floods have submerged whole towns and washed away bridges, farms and schools.    More than a million people have been affected by the rains since the summer, according to the U.N.    At least 200 people have died and hundreds of thousands displaced in 17 countries.
      Uganda was the hardest hit areas with floods like this not seen in 35 years
• 9/23/2007 Global warming's rising seas projected to overtake U.S. coastal spots by AP.
      Rising seas from melting glaciers and ice sheets likely will swamp the American settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad.    It is expected to cause the oceans to rise by 1 meter regardless of any future actions to curb greenhouse gases, leading scientists say, and will reshape the nation.    Storm surges worsened by sea level rise will flood many of the beaches of Texas and Florida.    Some disagree that it will not happen soon, maybe 50 years, 100 or 150.    Along with it will be storm surges, from hurricanes, winter storms.    Lousiana, Florida, North Carolina, Texas and South Carolina would lose the most land, with Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia also at risk.
• 9/23/2007 Nations agree to accelerate plan to phase out gases by AP.
      Toronto - Governments of almost 200 countries agreed to speed the elimination of a major greenhouse gas hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) that depletes ozone and used in home appliances, some refrigerators, hair sprays and air conditioners by 2013.    The Montreal protocol was established in 1987.    Developed countries have agreed to reduce production and consumption by 75 percent by 2010 and by 90 percent by 2015 with final phase out in 2020.    Developing countries have agreed to cut production and consumption by 10 percent by 2015 and by 35 percent by 2020 and by 67.5 percent by 2025 with a final phase out in 2030.    Investments in technology has spurred this pursuit.
• 9/24/2007 Global warming topic of summit by AP.
      United Nations - Arnold Schwarzenegger, Al Gore and the leaders of about 80 nations will converge on the U.N. for a summit meeting on the warming of the Earth and what to do about it.    President Bush will not participate in the meetings, but decided to conduct his own two-day climate meeting in Washington, limited to 16 "major emitter" countries trying to undercut the global U.N. negotiating process.
      The purpose of today was to build mementum for December's annual climate treaty conference in Bali, Indonesia.
      President Emanuel Mori of the Federated States of Micronesia told the group that the sea is already destroying crops, contaminating wells and eating away at his Pacific islands' beaches.
• 9/27/2007 Another quake hits western Indonesia by AP.
      Jakarta, Indonesia - A powerful 6.4 undersea earthquake rattled western Indonesia, but no injuries or damage occurred.
• 9/28/2007 Forums focus on climate change - Bush, Clinton push for commitments by AP.
      Washington - President Bush's climate meeting opened with its main problem on full display: 80 percent of the biggest polluters, industrialized and developing nations alike - say their economies are more important than global warming.    Their big push was for clean technologies with no need of tariffs or non-tariff barriers on environmental goods or services.    The emphasis is on sharing of green technology.
• 10/1/2007 Greenhouse-gas monitor planned atop volcano by AP.
      An international group, Climate Institute and others have raised $1.9 million, has announced plans to erect by mid-2008 what will be the highest-altitude center so far for monitoring greenhouse gases - atop the Sierra Negra volcano in central Mexico.    It will join a worldwide web of similar labs at lower altitudes measuring air particles, radiation and gases such as carbon dioxide.    The new one will be able to get the global picture, instead of just local conditions.    A couple of others above or close to 12,000 feet, and presently they have one on Mount Waliguan in China and Niwot Ridge in Colorado.
• 10/11/2007 Global warming a sticky problem by AP.
      Washington - With global warming comes more humidity, and people are to blame for heat stress, according to computer models.    The amount of mositure in the air near Earth's surface rose 2.2 percent in less than three decades.    Warmer air can hold more moisture, and can be attributed to gas emissions from burning fossil fuels.
• 10/13/2007 Gore's Nobel caps award-winning year by AP.
      Former Vice President Al Gore, who wrapped up a year of honors by sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace prize with a U.N. scientific panel, said he will use the award to heighten awareness of "a true planetary emergency" from global warming and press the world to combat its threats.    For Gore, the award was a measure of vindication for his passionate commitment to the issue of climate change in the face of occasional ridicule and pointed political criticism dating back two decades and a bitter defeat in his bid to win the White House.
• 10/17/2007 Drought spreads into Mid-Atlantic by AP.
      Washington - The drought parching much of the West and Southeast spread into the Mid-Atlantic in September, the government reported in its monthly climate summary.    About 43 percent of the United States was in moderate to extreme drought.
• 10/20/2007 Weather shrinks ozone hole by AP.
      The Antarctic ozone hole is back to an average size, shrinking about 16 percent from last year's record high, NASA said, but it still is the size of North America.    The ozone hole reached a maxumum size of 9.7 million square miles, down from its peak of 11.5 million last year.    Human-produced gases containing chlorine and bromine damage the Earth's protective ozone layer, forming a hole over the South Pole and into the Southern hemisphere.    The ozone layer protects life on Earth by blocking ultraviolet rays, countries across the world 20 years ago agreed to ban many compounds such as spray-can propellants.    NASA said the reason the hole is slightly smaller this year is because of warmer weather and more storms.
• 10/21/2007 Study: Rising seas will threaten 21 'mega-cities' by AP.
      Bangkok, Thailand - Cities around the world are facing the danger of rising seas and other disasters related to climate change.    Of the 33 cities predicted to have at least 8 million people by 2015, at least 21 are highly vulnerable, says the Worldwatch Institute.
      They include Dhaka, Bangladesh; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Shanghai and Tianjin in China; Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt; Mumbai and Kolkata in India; Jakarta, Indonesia; Tokyo and Osaka-Kobe in Japan; Lagos, Nigeria; Karachi, Pakistan; Bangkok, Thailand, and New York and Los Angeles in the U.S., according to studies by the U.N. and others.
• 10/28/2007 Nation's freshwater supplies dwindling by AP.
      West Palm Beach, Fla. - An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions.    Florida doesn't have nearly enough water for its expected population boom.    The Great Lakes are shrinking.    Upstate New York's reservoirs have dropped to record lows.    And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year.
      Across America, the picture is critically clear - the nation's fresh-water supplies can no longer quench its thirst.    The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.    Florida, California and Texas use a quarter of U.S. water.    The U.S. used more than 148 trillon gallons of water in 2000, almost 500,000 gallons per person.
• 11/12/2007 More acidic seas can affect anxious sea snails by AP.
      Climate change is not the only global phenomenon linked to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.    Another is the gradual acidification of the oceans, as more CO₂ dissolves in seawater, creating carbonic acid and lowering the pH.    Scientists claim that the acidity disrupts the defense mechanism of the common periwinkle, Littorina littorea, sea snails.    They respond to the presence of crab predators by thickening their shells or crawling out of sight.
• 11/18/2007 Toll in Bangladesh hits 1,723; thousands stranded by AP.
      Dhaka, Bangladesh - Hundreds of thousands of survivors were stuck behind roads blocked by fallen trees, iron roofs and thick sludge as rescue workers fought to reach towns along Bangladesh's coast that were ravaged by a powerful cyclone that killed at least 1,723 people.    More than a million villagers were forced to evacuate to shelters.    The death toll reached 3,100 in the next few days and could reach 10,000 once they can get to the areas.
• 11/18/2007 U.N. panel warns of warming danger by AP.
      Valencia, Spain - The world's top climate experts warned that sea levels could rise an average of up to 4.6 feet, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, called on the U.S. and China to do more to slow global climate change before 2015.    The U.N. panel claims that enough carbon dioxide has already built up to imperil islands, coastlines and a fifth to two-thirds of the the world's species.    As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages.    Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water.
• 11/30/2007 Big business urges action on climate by AP.
      Washington - The world's top business leaders, more than 150, are demanding that international diplomats meet and come up with drastic measures to cut greenhouse gas pollution at least in half by 2050.    Their petition is aimed at the U.N. conference in Bali, which is to draft a treaty to replace the Kyoto accord.
• 12/3/2007 Tropical belt seemingly expands, increasing arid areas, study finds by AP.
      Washington - Earth's tropical belt seems to have expanded a couple of hundred miles in the past quarter century, which could mean more arid weather for some already dry subtropical regions.    The tropical region normally stretches from the Tropic of Cancer, just south of Miami, to the Tropic of Capricorn, which cuts Australia almost in half.    The tropical atmospheric belt has grown between 2 and 4.8 degrees latitude since 1979, equalling a 140 to 330 miles expansion.    This is larger than predicted in the global warming models.
• 12/6/2007 Climate-change meeting adds to environmental ills by AP.
      Bali, Indonesia - Never before have so many people converged to try to save the planet from global warming, with more than 10,000 jetting to a resort island, which will be a lot of emissions.    The U.N. estimates 47,000 tons of carbon dioxide and other pollutants will be pumped into the atmosphere during the 12-day conference in Bali, mostly from plane flights, also air conditioners at hotels.
      Host Indonesia, which has one of the fastest rates of deforestation in the world, averaging 300 football fields an hour, said it had planted 79 million trees in the last few weeks.    They offered 200 mountain bikes for those who would like to pedal around, and recycled paper is being used for the reams of documents being handed out.    In all, 190 countries are represented, in hope that a two-year process of intensified negotiation on a deal to replace the Kyoto protocol and reduce emissions by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels will occur by the end of 2009.
• 12/7/2007 U.S. digs in on climate change by AP.
      Bali, Indonesia - Australia abandoned the U.S. and signed a global warming pact, the U.S. Senate voted for deep cuts in emissions 70 percent by 2050, so the Bush administration has taken a beating this week at the conference.    The U.S. is the only major industrialized country to reject the Kyoto pact left.
• 12/8/2007 China rejects mandatory emissions cuts by AP.
      Bali, Indonesia - China insisted that the U.S. and other wealthy nations should bear the burden of curbing global warming, saying the problem was created by their lavish way of life.    China claims that even though its population is far bigger, the U.S. emissions per person are six times higher than in China.    China rejected mandatory emission cuts for its own developing industries, even though it is home to 20 of the world's 30 most polluted cities..
• 12/9/2007 U.S. 'not ready' to commit to emission cuts at meeting by AP.
      Bali, Indonesia - The U.S. will come up with its own plan to cut global-warming gases by mid-2008 but will not commit to mandatory caps.
• 12/9/2007 Malaria's spread on island blamed on global warming by AP.
      Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea - Long free of the disease-bearing mosquitoes that plague the hot and humid nights of its lowlands, the threat of collapsing ice sheets and super-hurricanes, and warmer weather, they are now seeing more malaria at higher altitudes.    In 2005 the WHO reported malaria cases in Papua New Guinea's Western Highlands province rose to 4,986 in 2003 from 638 in 2000.    So it is possible now that 2 million people may be at risk, since the parasite needs temperatures above 64 degrees to develop.
• 12/12/2007 Melting of Arctic ice worries scientists by AP.
      Washington - The steady melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, prompting some scientists to suggest that global warming has passed an ominous tipping point.    One even speculated that summer sea ice will be gone in five years.    Nearly 19 billion tons more of Greenland's ice sheet melted than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data.
      Last year, two top scientists said that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040, after reviewing the new data they have changed it to the end of summer by 2012.
      The result of this would be in the U.S., a weakened Arctic blast moving south to collide with moist air from the Gulf of Mexico can mean less rain and snow in some areas especially the Southeast, and regions like Colorado would get extra rain or snow.
      The dwindling sea ice caused 6,000 walruses to come ashore in northwest Alaska in October for the first time in recorded history.
• 12/12/2007 Climate conferees to get 2nd U.S. view by AP.
      Bali, Indonesia - A second wave of Americans has landed on Bali, envoys of state and local governments who have come to tell the U.N. climate conference's delegates that not all U.S. leaders oppose mandatory cuts in global-warming.    California and New York, along with Al Gore were the main leaders and referred to expected changes in U.S. policy after the January 2009 end of the Bush administration.
• 12/13/2007 Auto industry's lawsuit against California rejected by AP.
      The auto industry's lawsuit challenging California's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions to produce 30 percent fewer by 2016 from vehicles was rejected by a U.S. District federal judge.
• 12/13/2007 U.S. taking heat for perceived hypocrisy on emission reductions by AP.
      Bali, Indonesia - The U.S. insisted that it was taking steps to tackle rising temperatures and promote energy efficiency and cleaner technologies.    The U.S. has spent $37 billion since 2001 to combat climate change and will promote negotiation by the end of 2009, and did not want to agree with reductions of 25-40 percent, which has not been done in the U.S. as yet.
• 12/14/2007 2007 is on target to be 8th-warmest year since 1895 by AP.
      Washington - A vast swath of the U.S. was warmer than usual this year, leading to severe drought and wildfires in the West and Southeast.    Texas was the only state with below-average temperatures, but had much rain and flooding which was a record.    The annual average temperature for 2007 was 54.3 degrees Fahrenheit, making it the eigth-warmest since records were first kept in 1895.
      Globally, seven of the eighth warmest years on record have occurred since 2001, and 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1997.    Global warming is screaming out at us.
• 12/14/2007 7 Western states sign Colorado River pact by AP.
      Las Vegas - Seven Western states signed an agreement to conserve and share scarce Colorado River water, ending a divisive battle among thirsty rivals.    More than 30 million people in California, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico are affected by the historic 20-year agreement.    California, Nevada and Arizona use the vast Lake Mead reservoir behind Hoover Dam to store water for later that they conserve or don't need now.
• 12/14/2007 EU may skip U.S. climate talks by AP.
      Bali, Indonesia - The EU threatened to boycott U.S.-sponsored climate talks next month in Honolulu unless the Bush administration agrees to a "road map" for reducing the greenhouse gases.    The U.S., Japan, Russia and several other governments refused to accept wording suggesting that rich nations consider cutting emissions 25 to 40 percent by 2020.
• 12/15/2007 Bali climate talks showing signs of compromise by The New York Times.
      Bali, Indonesia - Nations at the U.N. conference seemed to be heading for an agreement on a deadline.
• 12/15/2007 Stampedes kill thousands of walruses in Russia by AP.
      Anchorage, Alaska - In what some scientists see as another alarming consequence of global warming, thousands of Pacific walruses above the Arctic Circle were killed in stampedes on the Russian side of the Bering Strait earlier this year after the disappearance of sea ice caused them to crowd onto the shoreline in extraordinary numbers.
• 12/19/2007 Congress raises fuel-economy standard by AP.
      Washington - Congress approved the first required increase in automobile fuel economy (mileage by 40 percent to 35 mpg) in 32 years, and President Bush plans to sign the legislation.
• 12/20/2007 EPA denies California's bid to cut emissions by AP.
      Washington - The EPA has rejected California's request to have first-in-the-nation greenhouse-gas limits on cars, trucks and SUVs.    The Bush administration is trying to avoid a confusing patchwork of state rules.    Arnold Schwarzenegger said "He will be back."
  
  
  The year 2008.
  
• 1/23/2008 Worst cold front since '64 brings snow to Mideast by AP.
      Amman, Jordan - The lone de-icing machine at Jordan's busy international airport worked frantically to clear planes for takeoff after a freak snowstorm blanketed the desert country.    Meteorologists are calling it the worst cold front since 1964.    Lows dropped into the 30s in Amman and in Damascus, Syria.    In Cairo, Egypt, the mercury dipped to 46.    Temperatures in Baghdad were even lower, dipping below freezing.
• 1/27/2008 U.S., China, India urged to cut carbon emissions by AP.
      Davos, Switzerland - The U.S., China and India must be part of the follow-up treaty to the Kyoto Protocol and agree to cut carbon emissions, Denmark's prime minister said.    Climate change returned to the fore at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, where Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukada proposed a 2020 deadline for countries to increase their efficiency by 30 percent.    Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose country will play host to a key climate meeting in December 2009, and said that the goal of the meeting was clear: getting the U.S., China and India to participate in the follow-up treaty to Kyoto, which expires in 2012.
• 2/1/2008 Human-caused warming threatens West's water by Alan Zarembo, Los Angeles Times.
      Human-caused global warming has been shrinking the snowpack across the mountain ranges of the West for five decades, suggesting the region's long battle for water will only worsen, according to a computer analysis.    As temperatures have increased, more winter precipitation has fallen as rain instead of snow, and the snow is melting sooner.    The result is that rivers are flowing faster in the spring, raising the risk of flooding, and slower in the summer, increasing the risk of drought.    Colorado will not be affected by the above.
• 2/3/2008 Global tree-felling imperils climate by AP.
      Abo Ebam, Nigeria - In the gloomy shade of Africa's rain forest, the silence was pierced by the whine of a far-off chain saw, the sound of destruction.    In Brazil, in central Africa and in the once-lush islands in Asia's archipelagos, human encroachment is shrinking the world's rain forests.    The alarm was sounded decades ago by environmentalists and was not heeded.    The U.N. estimates that worldwide, 60 acres of tropical forest are felled every minute.    The longterm affect is extinction of animal and plant life, soil erosion, forest jobs, but most of all global warming.    If we lose the forests, we lose the fight against climate change, declared by 300 scientists, conservation groups, religious leaders in appeal for a December climate conference in Bali, Indonesia.
      Deforestation sends more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than all the worlds vehicles.
• 2/7/2008 Heat, storms show little is 'average' by Larry Wheeler, Gannett News Service.
      A deadly tornado outbreak across the South is the latest example of the extreme turn the weather appears to have taken this year.    The twisters followed a rough-and-tumble January that featured tornadoes in the Midwest and more than 1,000 daily high-temperature records.    When looking at the indicators, meteorologists are seeing a steady increase from the early 1970s to present.    2007 was the warmest year on record, with deadly wildfires causing evacuations in California, spring storms that unleashed 600 tornadoes across the Great Plains and South, severe flooding in Texas and Oklahoma, and extreme drought across much of the southeast.
      John All, a climate change expert at Western Kentucky University, said models show Kentucky will experience more precipitation, storms and severe weather in winter months as a result of warming.    Temperature rise and fall extremes have been noticed also, but it is undecided on whether these extremes are evidence of global warming.
• 2/11/2008 Nature may account for much of Arctic warming by Seth Borenstein, AP.
      Washington - There's more to the recent dramatic and alarming thawing of the Arctic region than can be explained by man-made global warming alone, a new study has found.    Nature is pushing the Arctic to the edge too.    The new research points a finger at a natural and cyclical increase in the amount of energy in the atmosphere that moves from south to north around the Arctic Circle.    That energy transfer, which comes with storms that head north because of ocean currents, is not acting alone, giving a one-two punch along with global warming that is pushing the Arctic over the edge.
      Scientists are trying to figure out why the Arctic is warming and melting faster than computer models predict.    The summer of 2007, like the summer of 2005, smashed all records for loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and ice sheets in Greenland.    In September, the Arctic Ocean had 23 percent less sea ice than the previous record low, as did Greenland 19 billion tons more than its previous record.    They claim the air a couple miles above the ground is warming more than calculated by the climate models, which makes it more than just global warming.    The experts are all on it, but with diverse opinions on the cause.
• 2/25/2008 Study of ice in New Guinea may provide clues to climate by Charles J. Hanley, AP.
      Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea - For 5,000 years, great tongues of ice have spread over the 3-mile-high slopes of Puncak Jaya, in the remotest reaches of this distant tropical island.    Now those glaciers are melting, a vanishing archive of the story of El Nino, the equatorial phenomenon driving much of the world's climate.    They came to get deep-drilling of ice cores to chronicle the history of climate and to bear witness to global warming.    The hope is that the history may help them determine what may come in the decades to come as the world warms.
• 3/5/2008 Warm winter spurs climate concerns - Northern Europe sees records fall by Sara Sundelius, AP.
      Stockholm, Sweden - Winter ended before it started in northern Europe, where record -high temperatures have people wondering whether it's a fluke or an ominous sign of a warming world.    In December through February, the average temperature in Stockholm was 36 degrees, the highest since 1756.    Latvia and Finland also reported the warmest winter since 1925 at an average 33 degrees.    Snow fell in Southern Finland on only 20 days, compared with 70 normally.    In Norway, the average temperature in February was the second-highest on record, 8 degrees above normal.
      Meteorologists say the mild winter is from strong southernly and westerly air currents caused by warm surface of the the Atlantic Ocean.    A mild winter does not mean that they will not have a cold next winter.    Migratory birds have returned from southern latitudes prematurely, and never left in southern Sweden.    In Lithuania some dirt roads were impassable because of thick mud instead of frozen, affecting the logging business.    For winter-sports enthusiast the green winter has been a nightmare.
• 3/5/2008 EPA action on greenhouse gases is delayed by AP.
      Washington - Nearly a year after the Supreme Court told the EPA to detemine whether greenhouse gases from vehicles should be regulated, the head of the EPA said he did not yet know when it would do that, or how many employees he had working on that subject.    EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said a law that Congress passed in December requiring automakers to achieve a fleetwide average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020 has complicated the EPA's response to the Supreme Court.
• 3/9/2008 Climate change propels West's push for big dams by Nicholas K. Geranios, AP.
      Spokane, Wash. - The Western states' era of widespread dam construction -- which tamed rivers, swallowed towns, and created irrigated agriculture, cheap hydropower and environmental problems - effectively ended in 1966 with the Glen Canyon Dam.    But the region's booming population and growing fears about climate change have governments once again studying construction of dams to capture more winter rain and spring snowmelt for use in summer.    The population of Western states grew nearly 20 percent in the 1990s, to more than 64 million, posing threats to water supply.    New dams would cost billions, and they had already built more than 472 dams, and has much backlash from environmentalists movements.    Researchers say climate change and growing demand could drain them within 13 years.
• 3/31/2008 Warming imperils king penguins by AP.
      The king penquin, which has rebounded from near extinction, could be wiped out because of global warming researchers reported.    If the Southern Ocean's surface temperature rises 0.26 degrees Celsius - an increase well below forecasts of 0.4 degrees over the next 20 years - declining food availability would lead to a population collapse, scientists estimated.    The study followed 456 adult birds with implanted radio transponders and correlated their survival rate over an eight-year period with changes in sea surface temperatures.    King penguins, which can live up to 30 years, were nearly hunted to extinction in the 19^th century by sailors who used their fat as stove oil.    There are 2 million today, where most live in colonies on the Crozet Archipelago, French islands more than 1,000 miles north of Antarctica..    Researchers found that during the warm years, their young were less likely to survive becaquse their was not enough local fish for their parents to fatten them for their winter fast, or the adults fail to return to finish rearing them.    Chick mortality rose by as much as 50 percent.
• 4/3/2008 18 states press EPA to act on emissions by AP.
      Boston - Officials of 18 states are taking the EPA back to court to try to force it to comply with a Supreme Court ruling that rebuked the Bush administration for inaction on global warming.    They want the EPA to decide whether to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions, including carbon dioxide, from motor vehicles and act within 60 days.
• 4/16/2008 Bush to announce global-warming goal by AP.
      Washington - President Bush plans to announce a national goal today for stopping the growth of greenhouse-gas emissions during the next few decades.    No details were given, but the president wants every major economy to establish a national goal for cutting the emissions believed to be responsible for global warming.
• 4/17/2008 Bush discusses greenhouse gases by Los Angeles Times.
      Washington - President Bush said that the U.S. should halt the rise in its greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025, as he tried to set boundaries for global-warming initiatives under consideration by Congress and major industralized nations.    Bush said the U.S. would need to slow the growth in emissions from power plants in the next 10 to 15 years and then begin to reverse that growth, using technological advances.    The 17 major industralized nations, which give off 85 percent of greenhouse gases are meeting in Paris to develop a new international attack on global warming.
• 4/19/2008 Negotiators fail to agree on greenhouse gas cuts by AP.
      Paris - Negotiators from the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases wrapped up another round of climate talks by clashing over how deeply to cut the heat-trapping gases they put into the atmosphere.    More talks are scheduled next month to try and produce a new climate accord.
• 4/23/2008 Scientists study Arctic haze for clues to melting of ice by Dan Joling, AP.
      Fairbanks, Alaska - Scientists in planes are taking samples of the Arctic haze in hopes of solving a mystery: Are the floating particles accelerating the unprecedented warming in the far north?    Some scientists suspect that airborne particles known as aerosols are also contributing to the Arctic meltdown, and trying to prove this.    Analyzing the haze to identify what is in it, where it came from and how it interacts with the clouds, the sunlight and the snow cover.
• 5/3/2008 Scientists expect change as pole' climate studied by Randolph Schmid, AP.
      Washington - The Arctic will remain on thinning ice and climate warming is expected to begin affecting the Antarctic also, scientists said.    They are not sure whether the ozone hole in the Antarctic is masking conditions there.
• 5/5/2008 Jet stream heads north by AP.
      New research shows the jet stream is creeping north and weakening, meaning less rain in the already dry South and Southwest and more storms in the North.    From 1979 to 2001, the Northern Hemisphere's jet stream moved north on average at a rate of about 1.25 miles a year, with suspsions that global warming is the cause.
• 5/6/2008 Global warming's threat great to tropical species by AP.
      Washington - While global warming is expected to be strongest at the poles, it may be an even greater threat to species in the tropics.    Tropical species are accustomed to living in a small temperature range and may be unable to cope with changes of even a few degrees.
• 5/26/2008 Global warming not worsening hurricances by AP.
      Global warming isn't to blame for the recent jump in Atlantic hurricanes, says a study by a federal scientist.    Warmer temperatures will actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, which counters climate change experts who have tied the rise of hurricanes in recent years to global warming.    The new study attribute the increase to a natural multi-decade cycle, and predicts by the end of the century the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic will fall by 18 percent, and reach landfall will drop 30 percent.    They also said the hurricanes we do have will be wetter and fiercer.
• 5/26/2008 Researchers warn of nitrogen hazard by AP.
      Scientists warn that reactive forms of nitrogen are building up in the environment at alarming rates, which may be as serious as carbon dioxide.    Reactive nitrogen compounds such as ammonia have been released by its use in nitrogen-based fertilizers and the large-scale burning of fossil fuels.    University of Virginia environmental sciences professor James Galloway concluded that various forms of nitrogen contribute to greenhouse warming, smog, haze, acid rain dead zones with little or no life along the coasts, and depletion of the ozone layer in the stratosphere.
• 6/1/2008 Germany black with coal by Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times.
      Holz, Germany - Much of Europe may be moving towarde renewable energy, but here in Rhine Valley, where coal has always been king, this small town has become more roadkill on the fossil fuels autobahn.    Three power plants here belch more than 64 million tons of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere, the highest concentration in Europe.    It will be dwarfed by a massive power plant under construction that will be the biggest, a 31-square-mile hole, in the world burning lignite, expected to open in 2010.
      But as oil and gas prices rise and Europe becomes nervous about Russia's domination of natural gas supplies, old world coal is making a comeback, and considering to build 40 major coal-fired power stations across Europe in the next five years, and Germany 27 by 2020, fueled by lignite, the soft brown coal that can emit a ton of carbon dioxide for every ton of fuel burned.    Over the next decade, Europe could add 700 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year, a 39 percent increase.    The new facilities are expected to burn less coal for more power.
• 6/2/2008 Can we afford to fix global warming by H. Josef Hebert, AP.
      Washington - The possible economic costs of tackling global warming - higher electric bills and rising gasoline prices among them - are driving the debate as climate change takes center stage in Congress.    The debate would require a reduction in carbon dioxide and other gases by two-thirds by 2050 from power plants, refineries, factories and transportation.    With energy costs soaring, it is getting harder to sell a bill that would transform the country's energy industries and cause energy prices to rise even more.    The bill offers billions of dollars in tax breaks to offset higher energy bills, and it is slim that it will pass this year, when hardly anyone disputes the reality of global warming.    The petroleum industry present studies showing huge cost and the environmental groups show their slant of only modest cost increases.    So its all about costs, and the cost of inaction would be much higher than the cost of emission reduction.
• 7/7/2008 North Korea, climate change, oil top G-8 agenda this week by Deb Riechmann, AP.
      Toyako, Japan - Global challenges like soaring oil prices and climate change await President Bush at a summit of top industrialized nations, but first he dealt with the nuclear standoff with North Korea, a sensitive issue in Japan for his final Group of Eight summit and first meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.    Fukuda has made climate change the centerpiece of the meetings and would like to emerge with an agreement on 50 percent overall reductions by 2050.
• 7/8/2008 Nations disagree on climate change by Tom Raum, AP.
      Tayako, Japan - President Bush encountered resistance to his climate change policy as he and other world leaders sought to strike a balance between framing a deal on global warming while coping with economic problems.    Bush is insisting that major emerging economies like China and India be included in any plan, but his days in office are numbered, and will await his successor for a strong commitment.    Tommorow, the leaders of the G-8 nations - the U.S., Japan, Russia, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Canada - will be joined by eight other big-polluting major economy nations that are not members, including China and India, to see if a wider agreement is possible.
• 7/9/2008 U.S. joins G-8 plan to reduce emissions by Michael Abramowitz, The Washington Post.
      Rusutsu, Japan - The U.S. joined the seven other major industralized countries in committing to try to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and will be negotiated in Copenhagen at the end of 2009.    This was a sign of Bush's shift to combating global warming.    Meeting with the other countries leaders to join in on the cuts, but no specific targets were set.    The environmental groups see the meeting as weak and failed to address speed and method, while the Arctic is melting, they are postponing action, with flowery words.
• 7/9/2008 Testimony on climate censored by Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post.
      Washington - Members of Vice President's Dick Cheney's staff censored congressional testimony by a top federal official on the health threats posed by global warming, a former EPA official Jason Burnett said.    They edited out six pages from the testimony of Julie Gerberding, director of the CDC, which may have forced the administration to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, which opposes mandatory limits.
• 7/10/2008 Developing nations reject climate plan by AP.
      Toyako - Japan - China, India and other energy-guzzling developing nations rejected key elements of a global warming strategy embraced by President Bush and leaders of wealthy nations.    And the U.N.'s top climate official dismissed the G-8 goals as insignificant.    The issue was how to address climate change and have sideline talks on the topic, which only widened the rift over the best approach of the 16 nations, which account for 80 percent of the world's air pollution.    Only Indonesia, Australia and South Korea agreed to the 50 percent by 2050.    China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, who represent 42 percent of the pollution, stated they should not share in the 50 percent target, since it is wealthier countries who have created most of the damage up to now.
• 7/12/2008 Greenhouse-gas regulation delayed by The Washington Post.
      Washington - The Bush administration, dismissing the recommendations of its top experts, rejected regulating the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, saying it would cripple the U.S. economy.    The EPA found nothing on whether global warming poses a threat to people's health or welfare, reversing an early conclusion, thus passing the issue to the next president and Congress.    They claim the 1970 Clean Air Act is ill-suited and not workable and effective for addressing global climate change.
• 7/12/2008 Court rejects Bush's signature air pollution control by Matt Apuzzo, AP.
      Washington - A federal appeals court unanimously struck down a signature component of President Bush's clean air policies, dealing a blow to environmental groups and likely delaying further action until the next administration.    The regulation, known as the Clean Air Interstate Rule, required 28 mostly Eastern states to reduce smog-forming and soot-producing emissions that can travel long distances in the wind.    The EPA predicted it would prevent about 17,000 premature deaths a year.    So now they are working on a new law or replacement regulation.
• 7/14/2008 Greenhouse gases will wait next year by AP.
      Washington - The Bush administration has rejected its own experts' conclusion that global warming poses a threat to the public welfare, and will delay action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the next president.    The EPA published a 588-page examination of the issues, but refused to adopt its staff's finding that such gases could cause disaatrous flooding and drought and affect food and water supplies.    They claim it would cripple our economy without reducing the gases widely held responsible for the warming climate.    I hate to tell them but they will cripple our economy without global warming.
• 7/16/2008 EPA proposes first carbon storage rules by James Bruggers, The Courier-Journal.
      The Bush administration proposed the nation's first rules to prevent carbon dioxide injected deep into the ground from getting into drinking water or escaping into the air.    A step toward widespread, long-term storage of heat-trapping gas that many scientists blame for the warming of the climate.    The technology is promising yet unproven technically, which is a big issue in Kentucky where it is 90 percent dependent on coal for its electricity and the nation's third-largest producer of coal.    In process is a $7.8 million research project to test storing carbon dioxide 8,000 feet under Hancock County.    The environmental groups claim that when carbon dioxide reacts with water its forms a mild acid, and may breakdown certain types of rock, which could allow it to contaminate a drinking water source, and also the long-term liability for gas that will need to stay in the ground for thousands of years.
• 7/18/2008 Carbon-free electric power possible by 2018, Gore says by Dina Cappielo, AP.
      Washington - Former VP Al Gore called for an effort to switch all of the nation's electricity production to wind, solar and other carbon-free sources within 10 years, a goal that he said would solve global warming as well as economic and natural security crises caused by dependence on fossil fuels.    Gore compared the challenge to establishing Social Security and the interstate highway system, as well as landing a man on the moon, which took more than a single presidency to accomplish.    His Alliance for Climate Protection put the 30-year cost from government and private at $1.5 trillion to 43 trillion.
      At present coal provides half the nation's electricity, nuclear 21 percent, natural gas 15 percent and renewable sources about 8.6 percent.    Unless they can make coal not release carbon dioxide it will continue to increase by 2030.
• 7/18/2008 Report: Warming to affect health by Seth Borenstein, AP.
      Washington - Global warming will affect the health and welfare of every American, but the poor, elderly, and children will suffer the most, according to a new White House EPA 284-page science report released.    The report said every region of the country will be hit by worse health from heat waves and drought, with increase in diseases spread by tainted food, bad water and bugs.    The report concludes that climate change poses real risk to human health and human system that supports our way of life in the U.S.
• 7/21/2008 Potent greenhouse gas escapes measurement and regulation by Margot Roosevelt, Los Angeles Times.
      A synthetic chemical, nitrogen trifluride (NF₃), widely used to make computers and flatscreen TVs is a potent greenhouse gas, with 17,000 times the global warming effect of carbon dioxide, but has never been measured in the atmosphere or regulated by international treaty.    Some scientists believe this chemical is the missing greenhouse gas, which once emitted into the atmosphere, has a life of 550 years.    The computer chip makers at one time used perfluorocarbons for cleaning circuits, but due to environmental concerns substituted NF₃, and due to demand is likely to reach 8,000 tons a year by 2010, which is equal to 130 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
• 7/30/2008 7-mile ice sheet breaks free in Arctic by AP.
      Edmonton, Alberta - A chunk of ice spreading across 7 square miles has broken off a Canadian ice shelf in the Arctic.
• 8/15/2008 Algae could help cut coal plants' carbon emissions by Bill Wolfe, The Courier-Journal.
      At the coal industry's Coal-Gen 2008 conference in Louisville it was announced that engineers are experimenting with chemical processes that could remove carbon dioxide from the flue stacks of coal-fired electric plants and store it underground.    The fast-growing algae, the slimy green stuff that coats ponds and swimming pools, soaks up carbon dioxide naturally and can thrive on coal-plant fumes.    The algae crop can be used as a by-product from its oils for use as biodisel fuel, and the leftover material converted to animal feed, negating the cost of underground storage.    It's too early to know if this is practical yet and would only remove a portion of the total carbon emissions.
• 8/28/2008 Scientists: Sea ice loss an ominous indication by AP.
      Washington - More ominous signs have scientists saying that a global warming "tipping point" in the Arctic seems to be happening before their eyes: sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is at its second lowest level in about 30 years.    The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that sea ice in the Arctic now covers about 2.03 million square miles and may break the 1979 record of 1.65 million in the next three weeks.    They are predicting that within five to less than 10 years the Arctic could be free of sea ice in the summer, bringing warming larger and faster than the models are predicting.
• 9/4/2008 Huge sheet of Arctic ice breaks loose in Canada by Charmaine Noronha, AP.
      Toronto - A chunk of ice, the 4,500-year-old Markham Ice Shelf,nearly the size of Manhattan has broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada's northern Arctic, another indication of how higher temperatures are changing the polar frontier, scientists said.    The 19-square-mile shelf separated in early August and is now adrift in the Arctic Ocean.    Also two large sections from the Serson Ice Shelf and the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf broke off.
• 9/15/2008 A storm has been brewing by Dan Fitzpatrick and Robert Lee Hotz, The Wall street Journal.
      The scientific community is debating over whether hurricanes are becoming more destructive, and if so what is to blame.    One theory holds that global warming is producing windier and wetter hurricanes by raising ocean temperatures and creating more water vapor, which strengthen the storms.    Others say the increase may be part of a normal weather cycle.    Tropical storms start to form when sea surface temperatures reach 80 degrees, but heat, humidity, water conditions and wind speed affect a storm's strength and the likelihood it will make landfall.    Worldwide the number of storms continue to hold steady, but during the last five years, 45 percent have reached Category 4 or 5 levels.    Between 1975 and 1990 the figure was 17 percent, promoting that man-made factors are partly to blame for the increase.    In 2005, most scientists did not believe that global warming has caused more hurricanes, but today it is pretty widespread that it will increase the intensity of hurricanes and wind speed, with fewer hurricanes that will be more powerful.
• 9/26/2008 Global warming pollution on rise by Seth Borenstein, AP.
      Washington - The world pumped up its release last year of carbon dioxide by 3 percent from 2006 to 2007, even with an economic slump.    The pollution leader was China more than half the increase, followed by the U.S., who added 2 percent.    China and India had large increases and other developing countries to a record high of 9.34 billion tons of carbon.    It is noted that jobs are going offshore as with the emissions.    China is making fertilizer, cement and steel, all are heavy, energy-intensive industries.    The developing countries now account for 53 percent of carbon dioxide pollution.
• 9/30/2008 Deforestation of Amazon is up sharply by AP.
      Rio De Janeiro, Brazil - The Amazon is being deforested more than twice as fast as last year, Brazilian officials said.    Some blame the global spike in food prices for encouraging soy farmers and cattle ranchers to clear land for crops and grazing.    Some 292 square miles was destroyed last month, compared to 89 in August 2007.
• 10/17/2008 EU pledges to stick to greenhouse goals by AP.
      Brussels, Belgium - Leaders of the 27-nation EU pledge to stick to a pricey plan for deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions despite the recent meltdown of financial markets.    French President Nicolas Sarkozy after a EU summit said "climate change is so important that we cannot use financial and economic crisis as a pretext for dropping it."
• 11/5/2008 NASA: Antarctic ozone hole fifth largest on record by AP.
      New York - This year's ozone hole over Antarctica was the fifth biggest on record, reaching a maximum area of 10.5 million square miles in September, NASA says.    NASA has tracked this for 30 years, and last year is was 9.7 million square miles, about the size of North America.
• 11/14/2008 U.N. calls Asian haze a threat by Tini Tran, AP.
      Beijing - Thick brown clouds of soot, particles and chemicals stretching from the Persian Gulf to Asia threaten health and food supplies in the world, the U.N. reported, citing what it called the newest threat to the global environment.    The regional haze, known as atmospheric brown clouds, contributes to glacial melting, reduces sunlight and helps create extreme weather conditions that affect agricultural production.    The huge plumes have darkened 13 megacities in Asia - including Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, Cairo, Mumbai and New Delhi, dimming the amount of light by as much as 25 percent in some places.    Because the pollution cloud absorbs sunlight and heat the air, this has led to a steady melting of the Himalayan glaciers, which are the source of most of the major rivers on the continent.    The clouds have also helped reduce the monsoon season in India, reducing production of key crops such as rice, wheat and soybeans.    At the same time, the brown clouds have helped mask the full impact of global warming by helping to cool the earth's surface and tamp down rising temperatures by between 20 percent and 80 percent, because some of the particles reflect sunlight and cool the air.
• 12/2/2008 Climate treaty work begins amid turmoil by AP.
      Poznan, Poland - Negotiators pushed for a new climate change treaty, but the U.S. government in transition, the EU in disarray and a worldwide economic crisis, chances for a quick agreement was slim.    The 190 countries at the conference will wait for a treaty after the new U.S. president comes in.
• 12/12/2008 Reports: Greenhouse gases warming N. America unevenly by Randolph E. Schmid, AP.
      Washington - Climate change caused by greenhouse gases is warming the U.S. unevenly, because the NOAA found a warming hole where no change occurs roughly between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians.    They claim the average surface temperature over the U.S. has increased 1.6 degrees since 1951, all in the last 30 years.
• 12/13/2008 EU hails climate deal as model by Robert Wielaard and Arthur Max, AP.
      Brussels, Belgium - The 27 European nations urged the U.S., Russia and China to follow their lead on global warming after agreeing on a plan to meet targets for reducing emissions by 20 percent and ensuring that 20 percent of energy comes from renewable sources by 2020.    Activists said the plan was fatally weakened by concessions to eastern Europe and heavy industry.    The treaty will replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol.
• 12/15/2008 Goal for greenhouse gas cuts is 5% to 15% by AP.
      Canberra, Australia - Australia announced a plan to reduce emissions by 5 percent by 2020.
  
  The year 2009.
  
  
• 1/5/2009 Faster Climate Change by Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post.
      The U.S. faces the possibility of much more rapid climate change by the end of the century than previous studies have suggested, according to a report led by the U.S. Geological Survey, commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.    Looking at factors such as rapid sea ice loss in the Arctic and prolonged drought in the Southwest, the new assessment suggests that earlier projections may have underestimated the climatic shifts that could take place by 2100.    However, they also suggests that some other feared effects of global warming are not likely to occur by the end of the century, such as an abrupt release of methane from the seabed and permafrost or a shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean circulation system that brings warm water north and colder water south.
      The report projects rising sea levels along with a shift to a more arid climate pattern in the Southwest by mid-century, all unlikely to happen in our lifetimes.    In light of recent ice sheet melting, global sea levels could rise as much as 4 feet by 2100, compared to the U.N.'s panel of no more than 1.5 feet by that time.    The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are losing an average of 48 cubic miles of ice a year, equivalent to twice the amount of ice in the Alps.
• 1/31/2009 Gore: Environmental efforts must continue by Angela Charlton, AP.
      Davos, Switzerland - Al Gore gave his message not to put off action on global warming to the world environmental leaders and U.S. executives and President Barack Obama, even with mounting economic troubles for clean eneergy and cutting carbon emissions.    Gore said the oceans are being choked off of oxygen and dying, and we are seeing before our eyes the melting of the polar ice cap at the world Economic Forum.
• 2/11/2009 Global warming cited in birds' northward shift by Dina Cappiello, AP.
      Washington - When it comes to global warming, the canary in the coal mine is a purple finch.    As the temperature across the U.S. has risen, the purple finch has been spending its winters more than 400 miles farther north than it used to, and it's not alone.    An Audubon Society 40 year study found that more than half of 305 bird species in North America, including robins, gulls, chickadees and owls, are spending the winter about 35 miles farther north than they did 40 years ago.    The purple finch is now along the latitude of Milwaukee, instead of Springfield, Mo.    Of course bird ranges can expand due to urban sprawl, deforestation and food provided by backyard feeders, but that does not explain why so many birds over such a broad area are wintering in more northern locales other than global warming.    The average January temperature climbed by about 5 degrees Fahrendeit.
• 2/15/2009 Scientists: Release of warming gases on rise by Randolph E. Schmid, AP.
      Chicago - Despite widespread concern over global warming, humans are adding carbon to the atmosphere even faster than in the 1990's, based on wider use of coal as a major reason.    Carbon emissions have been growing 3.5 percent per year since 2000, up sharply from 0.9 percent per year in the 1990s, the Carnegie Institution for Science said.    Sea levels are rising faster than expected, posing a threat to low-level areas such as South Florida, New York and other coastal areas since as the ocean warms and expands and as water is added from melting ice sheets.    Demand for biologically based fuels has led to more corn production in the U.S., but that means fields were switched from soybeans to corn, and other countries increased their soy crops to make up for the deficit, and resulted in destruction of tropical forests, which tend to soak up carbon dioxide, and forests burning released more gases into the air.
• 2/21/2009 Congress may act on climate by H. Josef Hebert, AP.
      Washington - Democratic leaders in the Senate and House want to take action this year to stem global warming, but the economy will make that difficult.    Their agenda to address climate change in a growing sense of urgency based on scientific evidence of the Earth's warming.    President Obama increased pressure on Congress to reverse a Bush administration policy and allow California and 13 other states to proceed with their own greenhouse gas regulations.
• 2/22/2009 Clinton stresses economy, climate change in China visit by Matthew Lee, AP.
      Beijing - In the last full day of talks in Asia, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressed American and Chinese cooperation on the economy and climate change, with few nods to human-rights concerns.
• 2/24/2009 Polar explorers meet global policymakers by AP.
      Troll Station, Antarctica - Policymakers and environmental ministers met polar explorers in Antarctica as a U.S.-Norwegian scientific expedition came in from the cold to report on the continent's ice sheets, a potential source for a catastrophic "big melt" from global warming, and their finding is a slight warming in East Antarctica.
• 2/24/2009 Panel: Global warming risks have been underestimated by AP.
      washington - The Earth won't have to warm as much as had been thought to cause serious effects of global warming, including extreme weather and rising threats to plants and animals, said an international team of climate experts.    The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated the risk of rising severe weather would rise with a global average temperature increase of between 1.8 degrees and 3.6 degrees above 1990 levels.    The National Climatic Data Center reports global temperatures have risen 0.22 degrees since 1990.
• 2/25/2009 NASA global warming satellite crashes by AP.
      Los Angeles - A NASA mission to monitor global warming from space ended when a $280 million satellite plunged into the ocean near Antarctica minutes after launch, due to equipment malfunction.
• 2/26/2009 Antarctic glaciers melting faster than thought, report says by Eliane Engeler, AP.
      Geneva - Glaciers in Antarctica are melting faster and across a much wider area than previously thought, a development that threatens to raise sea levels worldwide and force millions of people to flee low-lying areas, scientists said.    They said the melting extends all the way down to what is called west Antarctica, and claimed by the end of the century, the accelerated melting could cause sea levels to climb by 3 to 5 feet, levels higher than what others predicted.    Making matters worse, the ice shelves that hold the glaciers back from the sea are also weakening.    The Earth has about six more years at current rates of carbon dioxide pollution before it is locked into a future of severe global warming.
• 3/13/2009 Changing winds altering Antarctica's food chain by AP.
      Washington - Changing wind patterns linked to global warming are altering the food chain in Antarctica and may lead to further increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.    The most basic food, plankton, is declining in the northern portions of the Antarctic peninsula reaching toward South America, researchers reported.    At the same time, populations of Adelie penguins, who require colder climate, have dropped sharply in that region, while warmer-weather chin-strap penguins have increased.    So belief is the new wind patterns may result in the release of stored carbon dioxide and could increase global warming.
• 3/16/2009 Study: Northeast to suffer most from future sea rise by AP.
      Washington - The northeastern U.S. coast is likely to see the world's biggest sea level rise from man-made global warming a new study predicts.    This was based on changes in ocean currents from computer models of an extra 8 inches or so for New York along the coast to New England by the end of the century.    An extra 8 inches - on top of a possible 2 or 3 feet of sea rise globally by 2100 is a big deal, when nor'easters and hurricanes hit.
• 3/20/2009 North faces bad floods in spring by AP.
      Washington - Spring flooding threatens the upper Midwest, parts of the Great Lakes area and the Northeast, the federal Climate Prediction Center warned based on sudden snowpack melts due to warm temperatures or a heavy rain.
• 3/24/2009 EPA states global warming risk by Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post.
      Washington - The EPA has sent a proposal to the White House finding that global warming is endangering the public's health and welfare, which would have far reaching implications for the nation's economy and environment.    This occurred becaue of a 2007 Supreme Court decision ordering the EPA to consider whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases should be regulated under the Clean Air Act, that could lay the groundwork for nationwide measures to limit such emissions.    This is another reversal of the Bush administration's landmark environmental decisions.
• 3/29/2009 Climate talks on front burner by Dina Cappiello, AP.
      Washington - At its first negotiations on climate change, the Obama administration is trying to convince other countries that the U.S. does care about global warming and wants to shape an international accord.    A U.S. delegation went to Bonn, Germany for the first of a series of technical meetings in hope to lay groundwork for an agreement to be signed in December in Denmark.    On the 30th the U.S. got applause by other countries for their effort.
• 4/3/2009 'Fervent' doubts about global warming initiatives by George F. Will, The Washington Post.
      Reducing carbon emissions supposedly will reverse warming, which started 11 years ago.    Tariffs can be lowered to grant special preference to climate-friendly goods, or high-levels to discourage trade in greenhouse gas-intensive goods and services.    Using border carbon adjustment a nation might impose cost on imports equivalent to that faced by domestic producers operating under a carbon tax.    Or a nation with a cap-and-trade regime regulating carbon emissions by domestic manufacturers might require manufacturers to buy offsets at the border equal to that which the producer would have been forced to purchase had the good been produced domestically.
      The U.S. would have a problem with the new light bulbs, compact fluorescents, that almost all Americans would have to use after the phase-out of today's bulbs in 2014.    The push to be green and save electricity turned out to be a mess, since cutting cost on them prompted manufacturers to use inferior components.    The new bulbs do not do well in hot places with little airflow, and some do not work with dimmers or three-way sockets, and can take one to three minutes to reach full brightness.    The compact fluorecents contain mercury, a toxic metal, a never should be put in the trash.    So what will happen when a lazy or careless, say, 10 percent of 300 million Americans put their worn-out bulbs in the trash.
• 4/7/2009 Researchers: Arctic sea ice most vulnerable in 30 years by AP.
      Washington - More than 90 percent of the sea ice in the Arctic is only 1 or 2 years old, making it thinner and more vulnerable that at any time in the past three decades, according to researchers with NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.    In normal winters, thick sea ice often about 10 feet thick or more extends from the northern boundaries oif Greenland and Canada almost to Russia.    This year, the thick ice cap barely penetrates the bull's-eye of the Arctic Circle.
• 4/9/2009 Climate tinkering being discussed by Seth Borenstein, AP.
      Washington - The president's new science advisor said that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air.    John Holdren told the AP in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed.    One such extreme and last resort option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays.    Holdren outlined several global warming tipping points that could be fast approaching.    Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases the chances of really intolerable consequences.    Another geoengineering option was the use of so-called artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide out of the air and store it.
• 4/18/2009 EPA moves toward climate rules by H. Josef Hebert, AP.
      Washington - Cars, power plants and factories could soon face much tougher pollution limits as the EPA took a major step in that direction, concluding that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.    Of course the EPA wants Congress to address the climate issue through a broader cap-and-trade program that would limit heat-trapping pollution.
• 4/26/2009 Pence: Cap-and-trade is war on Midwest by AP.
      Muncie, Ind. - U.S. Rep. Mike Pence says a proposal by congressional Democrats to regulate gases could cost the average American household more than $3,000 a year in higher energy costs.    He called the cap-and-trade legislation an economic declaration of war on the Midwest by liberals in Washington.
• 4/30/2009 Massive chunk of Antarctic ice crumbling by AP.
      Berlin - Massive ice chunks are crumbling away from the Wilkins Ice Shelf in the western Antarctic Peninsula, researchers said, warning that 1,300 square miles of ice -- an area larger than Rhode Island -- was in danger of breaking off in coming weeks.
• 5/9/2009 Bush-era climate rule to stay by H. Josef Hebert, AP.
      Washington - The Obama administation is expanding protection for climate-threatened polar bears and ruled out a broad new attack on greenhouse gases to the dismay of environmentalist by continuing a Bush area rule.
• 5/21/2009 Costly gas, downturn lowered carbon dioxide by AP.
      Washington - Thanks in part to the country's economic woes and last summer's $4-per-gallon gasoline, the nation had a record 2.8 percent decline in the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere in 2008.
• 5/26/2009 G8 energy chiefs: Pursue green power by AP.
      Rome - Energy ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized nations urged their governments and the rest of the world to keep investing in new and cleaner energy sources, despite the economic crisis in a two-day summit.    They also asked to keep energy prices stable to avoid hampering the economic recovery.
• 6/15/2009 A study suggests that global warming may be affecting wind speeds in the U.S. by Seth Borenstein, AP.
      Washington - The wind, a favorite power source of the green energy movement, seems to be dying down across the U.S. since 1973 in the East and Midwest.    And the cause, ironically may be global warming, the very problem wind power seeks to address.
• 6/17/2009 Climate change damage seen by Seth Borenstein, AP.
      Washington - Harmful effects from global warming are already here and worsening, warns the first climate report from Barack Obama's presidency and science advisor.    It has caused more heavy downpours, the rise of temperatures and sea levels, rapidly retreating glaciers and altered river flows already now, not 50 years from now.    They project the average U.S. temperature could rise by as much as 11 degrees by the end of the century.    In the past few decades, winters in parts of the Midwest have warmed by several degrees and the time without frost has grown by a week.
• 6/17/2009 South will rise again - by 2.5 degrees by James Bruggers, The Courier-Journal.
      Even with dramatic cuts in GHG emissions, the average temperature of the Southeast will increase by another 2.5 degrees by the 2080s, a federal study concludes.    This would result in increased illness and death from summer heat, a decline in forest growth, increased buckling of pavement and railways, less oxygen in streams for aquatic life and a decline in cattle and other rangeland production.
• 6/27/2009 House OKs energy-climate bill by AP.
      Washington - In a triumph for Obama, the Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed sweeping legislation that calls for the nation's first limits on pollution linked to global warming, with Republicans against the measure, which could destroy jobs in a recession and add a new tax to consumers.    Obama claims it would create jobs, and put America on a path toward creating a 21st-century global economy.    It will require the U.S. to reduce emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and by about 80 percent by 2050.
• 6/30/2009 Dust in the air is changing life cycle in mountains by AP.
      Washington - Dust in the wind is rewriting the cycle of life in the mountains, in that the timing is being thrown off by the desert dust stirred as global warming dries larger areas and human activity increases in those regions.    The dust darkens the surface of winter snows, warming it by absorbing sunlight that the white surface would have reflected.    That causes the snow to melt earlier, running off before the air has warmed enough to spur plant growth.
• 7/5/2009 Utilities cut climate bill's rate impact by James Bruggers, The Courier-Journal.
      Kentucky Utilities electricity rates would increase by about $10.50 per month (14%) for a typical home in three years, and $28 a month (24%) by 2020, under the new climate bill.    Commercial and industrial rates would rise as much as 39 percent in 2020.    The new legislation now has to go to the Senate.
• 7/9/2009 G-8 leaders vow to seek global warming reductions by AP.
      L'aquila, Italy - Obama and other leaders from the G-8 pledged to seek dramatic cuts in GHG emissions by 2050 to not rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F), but their goals are non-binding and unsure if they will be met.    Environmentalists said the groups effort fell far short in its bid to cut emissions since nothing was mentioned about reductions for 2020.    On the 10th the emerging nations do not accept goals to cut emissions.
• 7/26/2009 Drought is deep in heart of Texas by John McFarland, AP.
      Dallas - Off-duty police officers are patrolling streets, looking for people illegally watering their lawns.    One Texas lake has dipped so low that stolen cars dumped years ago are peeking up through the waterline.    The nation's drought-stricken state is deep-frying under relentless 100-degree days and waterways are drying up, 350 miles across south-central Texas.    There are 230 Texas public water systems under mandatory water restrictions, including those in and near San Antonio, Dallas, Houston and Austin.    77 of Texas' 254 counties are in extreme drought.
• 8/21/2009 World sets ocean temperatue record by AP.
      Washington - In Maine the water temperature was 72 degrees more like it would be in Maryland at this time of the year, which is at 88 degrees, more like Miami would be.    This is the hottest the world's oceans have been in almost 130 years of record keeping.    The average water temperature worldwide was 62.6 degrees.    Meteorologists say a combination of a natural El Nino system and worsening global warming and a dash of random weather variations may be making the oceans heat, which is already harming threatened coral reefs.    It could also hasten the melting of Arctic sea ice and help hurricanes strengthen.    The Gulf of Mexico, where warm water fuels hurricanes, has temperatures dancing around 90, and most water in the Northern Hemisphere has been considered warmer than normal.    The Mediterranean is about three degrees warmer than normal, and higher also in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
      The heat is most noticeable near the Arctic, where temperatures are as much as 10 degrees above average.    All of this affects weather on land.
• 9/4/2009 Report: Emissions reversing Arctic cooling by The Washington Post.
      Washington - Human GHG emissions have helped reverse a 2,000-year trend of cooling in the Arctic, prompting warmer average temperatures in the past decade that rank higher than at any time since 1 B.C., according to a new study.    The analysis, based on more than a dozen lake sediment cores as well as glacier ice and tree ring records from the Arctic, giving us a picture of how industrial emissions have shifted the Arctic's long-standing natural climate patterns, and possibly climate conditions across the globe.    Some skeptics have argued that the Earth wobbles in its axis of rotation which has helped determine recent warming rather than human activities.    But the new study shows this wobble actually accounts for a long-term cooling trend in the Arctic, which has only been reversed in the past 50 years.
• 9/7/2009 Nitrous oxide may be top threat by Des Moines Register.
      Nitrous oxide, a gas emitted by the application of nitrogen fertilizer to fields, already has been blamed for making the Earth hotter by contributing to GHG emissions.    Now, government scientists claim it is the biggest threat to the Earth's ozone layer, and it surpasses chlorofluocarbons, know as CFCs, as the leading cause.
      They claim that N₂O becomes more potent in destroying the ozone as CFC levels decrease, so it has become an issue to decrease it too.    So which is more important fixing the ozone layer or feeding 6.5 billion people.
• 9/13/2009 Greenland's melt mystery unfolds at a glacial pace by Karl Ritter, AP.
      Helheim Glacier, Greenland - Suddenly and without warning, the gigantic river of ice sped up, causing it to spit icebergs ever faster into the ocean off southeastern Greenland.    The Helheim Glacier nearly doubled its speed in just a few years, flowing through a rift in the barren coastal mountains at a stunning 100 feet per day.    Alarm bells rang as the pattern was repeated by glaciers across Greenland: Was the island's vast ice sheet, a frozen water reservoir that could raise the sea level 20 feet if disgorged, in danger of collapse?    After five years none have returned to the normal flow speeds yet.    The ice sheet is 2 miles thick and covers an area the size of Mexico, is losing about 7 billion cubic feet of ice a year -- the equivalent of 80,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.    Snowfall is not replacing the ice which is falling into oceans and displacing water much like an ice cube dropped into a drink.    They think a warmer ocean was the cause of this but still uncertain, as melting water seeps down lubricating the base of the glacier.
• 9/18/2009 EU presses Obama on bonuses, emission cuts by Aoife White, AP.
      Brussels - All 27 EU nations and leaders issued a joint plea to Obama to back their call for rich and developing nations to cap bankers' pay and to impose deeper cuts on emissions for a new global climate change pact.    There will be a Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Sept. 24 and 25, and they want other rich countries to match its pledge to cut emissions by 20 percent by 2020, whereas the U.S. is considering a cut of 17 percent from 2005 levels or about 3.5 percent from 1990.    The U.N. wants developed countries to make cuts between 25 and 40 percent by 2020.
• 9/21/2009 Tip of the iceberg by Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times.
      Long-term climate records from the Arctic provide strong new evidence that human-caused global warming can override Earth's natural heating and cooling cycles, U.S. researchers reported.    For more than 2,000 years, a natural wobble in Earth's axis has caused the Arctic region to move farther away from the sun during the region's summer, reducing the amount of solar radiation it recieves.    The Arctic is now 600,000 miles farther from the sun than it was in A.D. 1, and temperatures there should have fallen a little more than 1 degree Fahrenheit since then.
      Instead, the region has warmed 2.2 degrees since 1990 alone, and the decade from 1998 to 2008 was the warmest in two millenniums, according to climatologist Darrell S. Kaufman of Northern Arizona University.    The Arctic region has actually warmed about three times as much as the rest of Earth through an effect called arctic amplification.
• 9/23/2009 9 confirmed dead as floodwaters linger by AP.
      Austell, Ga, - Neighborhoods, schools and even roller coasters at Six Flags over Georgia were awash in several feet of murky, brown water and officials found a ninth storm victim who had been swept away from her car a day earlier.    Torrential Southeast rains have soaked the region for days, knocking motorist from cars and splitting at least one mobile home, washed-out roads, flooded freeways around metro Atlanta as residents sought refuge in shelters.    About 12,000 customers were without power, with scattered outages reported in other states even.
• 9/23/2009 Obama, China call for urgent action on climate change by John Heilprin, AP.
      United Nations - President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao each vowed urgent action to cool an overheating planet, even as prospects dimmed for a full treaty by the end of the year.    The world's two biggest GHG polluting nations were the focus at the U.N.'s day-long climate change summit, which drew more than 50 presidents and 35 prime ministers.    U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the gathering with an appeal to leaders to set aside national interests and think about the future of the globe -- and a rebuke for their foot-dragging thus far.
• 9/24/2009 Dust storm shrouds Sydney by Rohan Sullivan, AP.
      Sydney, Australia - Red Outback grit shrouded Australia's largest city, blotting out such landmarks as the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge and coating subway stations.    The country's worst dust storm in 70 years diverted planes and produced an eerie orange sky.    The haze was visible from space, as a huge brown smudge.    The storm moved on to the Queensland state capital of Brisbane, no one was hurt, just calls from people with breathing difficulties.    The dust clouds formed in Australia's interior -- parched by the worst drought on record - when gale-force winds snatched up tons of topsoil and threw it high into the sky before carring it hundreds of miles east.
• 9/25/2009 Experts: Warming's faster by Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post.
      Washington - Climate change is happening faster and on a broader scale than the world's scientist projected in 2007, according to a new report by the United Nations Environment Program, aimed at marshalling political support for a new international climate pact by the end of the year in Copenhagen.    The report declared evidence of human-generated warming in the last half-century was "unequivocal," and would change the planet dramatically by 2100 unless GHG emissions drop sharply by 2050.    UNEP'S director claimed that since 2000 alone, the average rate of melting at 30 glaciers in nine separate mountain ranges has doubled compared to the rate of the previous two decades.    These are actually physically measurable.    The ocean's sea level may rise by as much as 6 feet by 2100, and the Arctic may experience a sea-ice summer by 2030, rather than by the end of the century.    Also stated that even if they account all pledges made by nations to cut their GHG emissions, global temperature would likely rise by 8 degrees Fahrenheit, which is twice what had been predicted.
• 9/27/2009 At least 40 dead as tropical storm hits by AP.
      Manila, Philippines - More than a month's worth of rain fell in just 12 hours as Tropical Storm Ketsana slammed ashore, killing at least 40 people and stranding thousands on rooftops in the capital's worst flooding in more than 42 years.    On the 30th the death toll rose to 246 as water inundated the homes of nearly 2 million people.    The storm strengthened and crashed into central Vietnam the day before, killing at least 23 people, forcing evacuation of about 170,000 people.
• 9/30/2009 Tsunamis kill at least 34 on islands by Fili Sagapolutele, AP.
      Pago Pago, American Samoa - Four 15 to 20 foot high, towering tsunamis spawned by a powerful earthquake swept ashore on Samoa, flattening villages, killing at least 34 people and dozens missing, as cars and people were swept out to sea as survivors fled to high ground.    The quake, with a magnitude between 8.0 and 8.3 struck around dawn for two to three minutes about 20 miles below the ocean floor, 120 miles from American Samoa, home of 65,000 people.
• 9/30/2009 Senate's draft climate bill tougher by AP.
      Washington - A Senate climate bill will require a 20 percent cut in GHG by 2020, deeper than the reductions mandated by the House, but also include measures to try to avoid energy price spikes.    The draft includes a cap and trade system that would require power plants, industrial facilities and refineries to cut carbon dioxide and other climate changing pollution.    While there would be an overall emission cap, polluters would be able to purchase emission allowances to limit reductions.    The bill is widely viewed as an early focus of Senate negotiations over climate in the coming months.
• 10/1/2009 EPA moves to regulate industries' gas emissions by Dina Cappiello, AP.
      Washington - The EPA took steps to control the emissions blamed for global warming from power plants, factories and refineries, by limiting six greenhouse gases by installing the best available technology.    The rule applies to any industrial plant that emits at least 25,000 tons of GHG a year, which is 70 percent or 7,500 facilities.
• 10/20/2009 UK's Brown urges action on global warming pact by AP.
      London - The world has less than two months to agree on how to avoid catastrophic global warming whose impact would be felt for generations, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, a stark warning that puts pressure on the U.S. to finalize its position before the December conference in Denmark.
• 10/23/2009 Poll: Global warming losing steam by Dina Cappielo, AP.
      Washington - Just 57 percent of Americans think there is solid evidence the world is getting warmer, down 20 points in just three years in a poll of 1500 adults probably because of the economy.
• 11/6/2009 Scaled-back climate treaty considered by AP.
      Barcelona, Spain - Negotiators and diplomats were working on a scaled-back version of a global climate change treaty that could be agreed on by next month's deadline.    The idea of forging a political agreement, instead of a legally binding treaty, was becoming a more accepted possibility since some nations would not be ready in time for the conference in Copenhagen.    On the 7th negotiators said a new global agreement now rides on industrial nations pledging profound emissions cuts.
• 11/21/2009 Record rain hits England, Ireland by AP.
      Great Britain - Raging floods engulfed northern England's Lake District, following the heaviest rainfall (12.3 inches in 24 hours) ever recorded in Britain, killing a police officer and trapping dozens in their homes.    Floods caused transport chaos along Ireland's western coast as it suffered their most intense and sustained rainfall in 30 years.
• 11/26/2009 Alaska fights against polar bear protections by Dan Joling, AP.
      Anchorage, Alaska - Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell says he has the best interest of polar bears at heart, but he doesn't intend to let the federal government's expanded threatened species protection for bears get in the way of the state's continued prosperity.    He is suing the feds because he believes it could threaten Alaska's lifeblood: petroleum development.    Oil or polar bears?
• 11/26/2009 Obama to promise cleaner air by H. Josef Hebert, AP.
      Washington - President Obama will personally commit the U.S. to a goal of cutting GHG emissions by 17 percent in the next decade at next month's Copenhagen climate summit despite resistance in Congress.    It is estimated to increase for a family of four in energy cost by $173 per year.
• 11/27/2009 China's planned carbon cuts dismay some by Julie Eilperin, AP.
      Washington - China announced it will cut its economy's carbon intensity by up to 45 percent by 2020, which is a measure that captures the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of gross domestic product.    China announcement will cut its carbon output relative to economic growth, using 2005 as a baseline, fell short of the 50 or 55 perecent cut many world leaders had hoped Beijing would make.
• 12/1/2009 U.S. climate goal may not change daily lives much by AP.
      Washington - American's day-to-day lives won't change noticeably if Obama achieves his newly announced goal of slashing pollution by one-sixth in the next decade, except for rising energy bills, estimated at $173 a year, but is based on increased nuclear power use.    Other studies pegged the cost at $900 to $1539 a year by 2020.    Also another source claims electricity bills could increase by more than 50 percent and a gallon of gas could jump by 26 cents by 2020.    Supposedly the cap-and-trade system for pollution credits involves auctioning off the right to pollute, with proceeds being returned to consumers, which would encourage them to use less energy.
• 12/2/2009 India to offer firm plan to cut carbon emissions by Rama Lakshmi, The Washington Post.
      New Delphi - India is making its own commitment for a new carbon intensity target later this week changing view that wealthier nations should bear the brunt of carbon cuts.    India's has population of more than 1 billion people, and will import 1.4 billion tons of coal by 2031 on its present course.    On the 4th they announced plans to reduce the ratio of pollution by 20 to 25 percent compared with 2005 levels, without a legally binding target.
• 12/9/2009 Decade is likely to be warmest on record by Charles J. Hanley, AP.
      Copenhagen - This decade is on track to become the warmest since records began in 1850, and 2009 could rank among the top five warmest years, reported on the second day of a pivotal 192-nation climate conference.    Only the U.S. and Canada experienced cooler conditions than average, but Alaska had the second warmest July on record.    In central Africa and southern Asia it was the warmest year.    India had an extreme heat wave in May and northern China one in June, and Australia had its third-warmest year, as did southern South America.
• 12/12/2009 Draft deal requires rich nations to make big cuts in emissions by AP.
      Copenhagen - The draft accord said all countries should reduce emissions by 50 percent to 95 percent by 2050, and rich countries should cut emission 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020, using 1990 as the baseline year.    On the 13th industrialized countries criticized a draft global warming pact for not making stronger demands on major development.    On the 14th a proposal aimed at saving the world's tropical forests suffered a setback because rich countries aren't willing to finance it, to stop burning or cutting down trees, which is about 20 percent of GHG emissions.
      On the 15th a tense atmosphere clouds the climate talks as developing nations had deep distrust of promises by industrial countries to cut GHG emissions, basically from an African-led suspension, by Djemouai Kamel of Algeria, the head of the 50-nation Africa group.    One issue is whether China will be asked to make sacrifices similar to those demanded of the U.S. and other rich nations and open its carbon books to outside inspection, and every country counts its carbon emissions the same way, and how to raise money for poor countries to combat rising seas, drought and floods.    This occurred just days before Obama and Chinese PM and more than 110 world leaders were scheduled to arrive to the negotiations.    Al Gore also said that new data suggest a 75 percent chance the entire Arctic polar ice cap may disappear in the summertime as soon as five to seven years from now.
      On the 16th U.S.-China tension still loomed at climate-change discussion, as China accused the U.S. and other rich nations of backsliding on fighting global warming.    The U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon tried to stop the finger pointing and get them all to increase their pledges to save a faltering talk on a climate pact.    The 27-nation EU has promised to reduce its emissions by 20 percent of 1990 levels by 2020 and go to 30 percent if others also will.    Japan and Russia have already promised 25 percent cuts.
      On the 18th U.S. and China inch toward each other as the U.S. pledged to raise $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poorer nations cope, giving the talks asome political movement.    Of course the poorer countries are looking for $600 billion a year.
      On the 19th 5 nations agree to climate accord, the U.S., China, India, South Africa, and Brazil and a mechanism to verify compliance, and Obama exits.
      On the 20th the climate conference ended with only a nonbinding "Copenhagen Accord" to show for two weeks of debate, with no concrete steps against global warming, only a new start for rich-poor cooperation, with a $10 billion-a-year, three year program.
      On the 22nd the climate deal has left Europe feeling out in the cold, as the one taking the lead in advocating climate action is now taking the lead as climate complaining.
  
  The year 2010 - The year of Volcanoes, Tsunamis, Earthquakes, Wildfires, Sea Ice Loss, Massive Winter Storms aand Floods.
  
  
• 1/11/2010 Heavy snow halts planes, trains and cars in Europe by Kirsten Grieshaber, Associated Press.
      Berlin - Europeans were struggling to get roads and railways back to nornmal after heavy snow caused hundreds of traffic accidents, halted flights from Germany to France, downed power lines in Poland and trapped more than 160 people overnight on a German highway.    Snowplows and excavators had to push through 6 and half foot drifts to free them from their cars.    Ferry service across the Baltic to Scandinavia was canceled, and rough sea swells flooded several streets in the cities of Flensburg and Luebeck while threatening to break levees in the village of Dahmeshoeved.    Rescue teams were busy repairing damage.    About 800 people at the airport in Lyon, France spent the night huddled on waiting room armchairs or camping cots as flights were halted.    In Britain the number of weather related deaths was 26.
  
• 1/12/2010 Pope denounces failure to forge new climate treaty in Copenhagen by Nicole Winfield, AP.
      Vatican City - Pope Benedict XVI denounced the failure of world leaders to agree to a new climate change treaty in Copenhagen last month, saying the world peace depends on safeguarding God's creation.    Benedict has been dubbed the "green pope" for his vocal concern about protecting the environment, an issue he has reflected on in encyclicals, during his foreign trips and most recently in his annual peace message.    The pontiff criticized the "economic and political resistance" to fighting environmental degradation that was exemplified in the negotiations to draft a new climate treaty at last month's summit.
  EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI
  
• 1/13/2010 'Killer' quake shatters Haiti; many deaths anticipated by Johnathan M. Katz, AP.
      Port-Au-Prince, Haiti - As California just had an earthquake at 6.5 a few days before this, the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the area rocked Haiti, collapsing a hospital where people screamed for help and damaging other buildings.    It was total disaster and chaos, communications were widely disrupted, making it impossible to get a clear picture of damage as powerful aftershocks shook a desperately poor country.    Some estimates that thousands of people dead were heard, and clouds of dust surrounding Port-au-Prince.    The quake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 and was centered about 10 miles west of Port-au-Prince with a depth of 5 miles.    This was the first major quake there since a magnitude-6.7 tremblor in 1984.    This quake is said to have caused widespread damage.
  
• 1/14/2010 The Devastation - Piles of bodies, rubble line Port-Au-Prince by Johnathan M. Katz, AP.
      Port-Au-Prince, Haiti - The tiny bodies of children lay in piles next to the ruins of their collapsed school.    People with faces covered by white dust and blood from open wounds roamed the streets.    Frantic doctors wrapped heads and stitched up sliced limbs in a hotel parking lot.    The quake left a landscape of collapsed buildings, hospitals, schools, churches, ramshackle homes, even the gleaming national palace, the rubble sending aloft a white cloud that shrouded the entire capital.    Ambulances weaved in and out of crowds, swerving to miss bodies lying in streets and men lugging stretchers bearing some of the injured.    Shocked survivors wandered about in a daze, wailing the names of loved ones, praying or calling for help.    Search-and-rescue helicopters buzzed overhead.
      Some leaders suggest the death figures could be more than 100,000, and several thousand Haitian police and international peacekeepers poured into the streets to clear debris, direct traffic and maintain security.    The main prison in the capital fell, and there were reports of escaped inmates.    The immediate need is to rescue people trapped in the rubble, then get people food and water.
  
• 1/16/2010 Aid agencies press efforts amid 'chaos' by AP.
      A planeloads of medical supplies trying to land at an airport choked with humanitarian and military planes made it difficult to land in Port-au-Prince.    Little separates life and death across the country, as bodies are being burned or buried in mass graves.    No room in the morgues and not enough trucks to collect all the dead.    The Red Cross has run out of body bags.    Haitian President Rene Preval said this week that 7,000 of the 45,000 to 50,000 earthquake victims were buried in mass graves in recent days, and also bodies are being taken by truckload to be burned up to 3,000 at a garbage dump next to the ocean.
      More than 240 U.S. citizens who were in Haiti for tourism, business or charity when the devatation came arrived back on American soil delivered to New Jersey by military aircraft from McQuire Air Force Base.
  
• 1/19/2010 Aid pours into Haiti; toll may hit 200,000 by AP.
      Port-Au-Prince, Haiti - Troops, doctors and aid workers flowed into Haiti and officials said billions of dollars more will be needed for a quake that killed an estimated 200,000 people and left many still struggling to find a cup of water or a handful of food.    European nations pledged more than $500 million in emergency and longterm aid, on top of at least $100 million promised early by the U.S.    Many victims were not getting help choked by transportation bottlenecks, bureaucratic confusion, fear of attacks on aid convoys, the collapse of local authority and the sheer scale of the need.    Looting has spread.
  
• 1/21/2010 Haitians flee in fear as big aftershock hits by AP.
      Port-Au-Prince, Haiti - A powerful aftershock sent Haitians screaming into the streets, collapsing buildings, cracking roads and adding to the trauma of a nation stunned by an apocalyptic quake eight days ago.    The magnitude 5.9 jolt matched the strongest of the aftershocks with no loss of life because most are sleeping outside.    Hundreds of thousands remain homeless, hungry and in mourning - most waiting for the benefits of a nearly $1 billion global aid campaign which will bring food aid for six months, and 550 medical staff to treat the injured, and the Pentagon is sending 2,000 U.S. Marines.
  
• 1/24/2010 Glacier warning off by hundreds of years by AP.
      New Delhi - The head of a panel of United Nations climate scientists said he would not resign despite a recent admission that a panel report warning Himalayan glaciers could be gone by 2035 was off by hundreds of years because of a typo-graphical mistake.
      The claim, made in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report, came in a paragraph with several errors.    Actually, data indicate the ice could melt by 2350.    Rajendra Pachauri, who heads the panel, said no action would be taken against the authors of the report and he would not resign.    In an upcoming meeting in the Indian capital the environment ministers from Brazil, South Africa, India and China are to dsicuss how they will fight global warming.
  
• 1/25/2010 Scientists create scenario for monster California 'Frankenstorm' by Alicia Chang, AP.
      Los Angeles - Think the recent wild weather that hammered California was bad?    Experts are imagining far worse.    As torrential rains pelted wildfire-stripped hillsides and flooded highways, a team of scientists hunkered down at the California Institute of Technology to work on a "Frankenstorm" scenario - a mother-lode wintry blast that could potentially sock the Golden State.    The hypothetical but plausible storm would be similar to the 1861-1862 extreme floods that led to the temporary movement of the state captial from Sacramento to San Francisco and forced then-governor to attend his inauguration by rowboat.
      The scenario "is much larger than anything in living memory," said project manager Dale Cox with the U.S. Geological Survey.    The storm system forms in the Pacific and slams into the West Coast with hurricane-force winds, hitting Southern California the hardest.    After more than a week of ferocious weather, the system stalls for a few days.    Another storm brews offshore and this time pummels Northern California.    Such a monster storm could unleash as much as 8 feet of rain over three weeks in some areas.    Weather experts say West Coast storms could become more frequent and severe with climate change.    What happened to it never rains in sunny California.
  
• 1/29/2010 Cold snap deals lethal blow to Fla. Keys coral by McClatchy Newspapers.
      Miami - Bitter cold this month may have wiped out many of the shallow water corals in the Keys.    Scientific dive teams are looking for "bleaching" that is a telltale indicator of temperature stress in sensitive corals, but initial reports are bleak.    The impact could extend from Key Largo through the Dry Tortugas west of Key West, a vast expanse that covers some of the prettiest and healthiest reefs in North America.    They have found star and brain corals, large species that can take hundreds of years to grow were as white and lifeless as bones, frozen to death.    There were also dead sea turtles, eels and parrotfish littering the bottom.    The corals didn't even have a chance to bleach, since they just went straight to dead.    The record cold that gripped south Florida for two weeks has taken a heavy toll on wildlife - particualrly marine life.    Also 77 endangered mantees had already succumbed to the cold this year, and massive fish (snook and tarpon) kills have been reported across the state.
  
• 2/2/2010 U.N. decries greenhouse gas pledges - Disaster still looms climate adviser says by John Heilprin, AP.
      United Nations - Goals on reducing greenhouse gases announced by major industrialized nations are a step forward but not enough to forestall the disastrous effects of climate change by mid-century.    Janos Pasztor, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's top climate adviser, said the goals, submitted to the U.N., as part of a voluntary plan to roll back emissions, make it highly unlikely the world can prevent temperatures from rising above the target set at the Copenhagen climate conference in December.    He claims all the committments from the 55 nations who attended will not even come close to reaching the target of keeping the Earth's average temperature from rising two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).    The only positive thing is we now have a goal.
  
• 2/5/2010 Second quake in month shakes California coast by AP.
      Petrolia, Calif. - Residents of Northern California's Humboldt County were rocked by a magnitude-6.0 earthquake, but officials said there were no reports of major damage from the second large tremblor to hit the area within a month.    The shaking was felt within a 150-mile radius, but not as severe as the 6.5 that struck Jan. 9 and caused more than $40 million in damage.
  
• 2/11/2010 Snow does a double whammy on East Coast, setting records by Nafeesa Syeed, AP.
      Washington - Worst winter ever?    The second blizzard in less than a week buried the most populous stretch of the East Coast under nearly a foot of snow, after everyone trying to dig out from the previous storm.    Even plows were advised ot get off the roads, as forecasters were watching a third storm that could be brewing for next week.    Some places had as much as 54.9 inches to 72.3 inches of snow.
  
• 2/14/2010 Magnitude 4.1 quake rattles Southern california by AP.
      Redlands, Calif. - A magnitude 4.1 earthquake rattled San Bernardino County but there were no reports of damage or injury, and was followed by two small aftershocks.    Earlier a magnitude 3.4 shook a desert area about 170 miles to the south in San Diego County.
  
• 2/20/2010 House OKs CO₂ pipeline bill by The Courier-Journal.
      The Kentucky House approved a measure that would give transmission pipeline companies the right to condemn land for carbon dioxide pipelines.    House Bill 213, passed 91-5, now goes to the Senate.    It is necessary if Kentucky power plants are one day to capture carbon dioxide and move it to places where it can be injected in the ground for permanent storage and in some places to increase oil and natural gas production.    This is to be prepared if the federal government decides to regulate carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and legal issues debated its constitutionality.
      On the 24th the state House passed a resolution that calls on Congress to block the U.S. EPA from regulating heat-trapping gases.
  
• 2/22/2010 Study: Expect stronger hurricanes - Researchers blame warming by Seth Borenstein, AP.
      Washington - Top researchers say that the world is likely to get stronger but fewer hurricanes in the future because of global warming.    It is unknown whether that effect has already begun.    The study offers projections for tropical cyclones worldwide by the end of this century.    Overall strength of storms as measured in wind speed would rise by 2 to 11 percent, but there would be between 6 to 34 percent fewer storms, thus more of the big damaging ones, carrying more rain.    That study suggest category 4 and 5 Atlantic hurricanes - those with winds more than 130 mph - would double by the end of the century.
• 2/27/2010 Huge ice chunk breaks off Antarctica - Change was in unexpected place by Seth Borenstein, AP.
      Washington - With the dramatic crash of an iceberg against a glacier that dislodged a massive new chunk of ice, the mysterious continent of Antarctica once again did the unexpected.    A big chunk of ice, slightly smaller than Oahu, broke off from a place it wasn't supposed to and in a way that wasn't quite anticipated, scientists reported.
      The new iceberg broke off from the cooler eastern end of Antarctica, the result of tidal forces that caused a longer but thinner iceberg that stretches for 60 miles to hammer it free.    The new chunk broke off a long tongue of ice that had been building for decades.
  
• 2/28/2010 Why all the weird weather? by AP.
      The main culprit behind this winter's snow and cold is a natural change in an arctic wind pattern.    Some years it blows strong and tight around the top of the Earth, holding in much of the cold air.    This year, the pattern has been looser, and more of that cold air has slipped free and ridden a jet stream directly into the Louisville area and deeper south.    Meanwhile, barreling in from the west below us was the jet stream form El Nino and the moisture it picked up in the Pacific.    When the upper edge of that warm, moist air from the west met the frigid arctic air, snow fell from the sky.    While El Nino took much of its moisture south of Louisville, the air was cold enough to make more snow than normal.
  
• 2/28/2010 Monster tremblor among strongest ever, hundreds dead. by Roberto Candia and Eva Vergara, AP.
      Talca, Chile - The death toll was in the hundreds (214 confirmed) and expected to rise after one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded tore apart houses, bridges and highways in central Chile.    The magnitude-8.8 quake was felt as far away as Sao Paulo in Brazil - 1,800 miles to the east.    The quake sent a tsunami racing halfway around the world, prompting warnings in Hawaii and most of the Pacific Rim.    The full extent of damage remained unclear as dozens of aftershocks - one nearly as powerful as Haiti's devastating Jan. 12 earthquake - struck the disaster-prone Andean nation.
      President Michelle Bachelet declared a "state of catastrophe" in central Chile.    Newly built apartment buildings slumped and fell, flames devoured a prison as millions of people fled into darkened streets, and the collapse of bridges tossed and crushed cars and trucks and about 1.5 million homes sustained at least some damage.
      On 3/1/2010 in Concepcion, Chile heroism and banditry mingled on Chiles' shattered streets as rescuers braved aftershocks to dig for survivors and ordered a nighttime curfew to quell looting.    The death toll climbed to 708 as firefighters pulled survivors from a toppled apartment block as tear gas was fired to stop looters, who were wheeling off everything from microwave ovens to canned milk at a damaged supermarket across the street.    Officials said 500,000 houses were destroyed or badly damaged and many people are missing.
      On 3/7/2010 Huge piles of wreakage and tons of rotting fish and other debris could turn the towns into nest of infection, doctors warned from diarrhea and drinking unclean water.    The U.N. is discussing how best to mobilize aid to Chile at its next General Assembly.
  
• 3/1/2010 Storm batters western Europe - Flooding, high winds kill scores by AP.
      Paris - A violent late-winter storm with fierce rain and hurricane-force winds ripped across western Europe, pounding France and four other countries and leaving at least 51 people dead mostly from drowning, others hit by building or tree parts.    The storm, named Xynthia, was the worst in France since 1999, when 90 people died.    Three died in Spain, one in Germany and a child was crushed to death in Portugal, and one death in Belgium.    Britain was not hit.    Nearly 900,000 people in France were without electricity.    Rivers overflowed their banks in Brittany, while high tides and enormous waves swamped Atlantic Ocean communities.    Winds reached about 130 mph on the summits of the Pyrenees and up to nearly 100 mph along the Atlantic Coast.
  
• 3/6/2010 Earthquake rattles parts of Sumatra by AP.
      Jakarta, Indonesia - An Indonesian official said a magnitude-6.5 quake shook the western shore of Sumatra with no reports of casualties or damage from the undersea quake 74 miles southeast of Pagai Selatan, an island off the western coast of Sumatra.
  
• 3/9/2010 Quake kills 51, destroys homes in eastern villages by AP.
      Okcular, Turkey - Hundreds of earthquake survivors huddled in aid tents and around bonfires in eastern Turkey, seeking relief from the winter cold after a strong tremblor knocked down stone and mud-brick houses in five villages, killing 51 people.    The damage appeared worst in the Kurdish village of Okcular, which was almost razed.    At least 15 of the village's 900 residents were killed.
  
• 3/11/2010 Weather watchers predict a busy hurricane season by Charlotte Porter, Bloomberg News.
      New York - The 2010 Atlantic hurricane season will be more active than last year's and poses an above-normal threat to the Gulf and East coasts, AccuWeather Inc. forecasters said.    They foresee 16 to 18 named storms forming in the Atlantic Ocean, with five becoming hurricanes and two or three going ashore in the U.S. as major systems.    In 2009 was the first time since 2006 that no hurricanes hit the U.S. mainland.    In 2008 we had 16 named storms and 8 were hurricanes.    A tropical storm gets a name when its sustained winds reach 39 mph, and it becomes a hurricane when sustained winds reach 74 mph, and major status at least 111 mph.    Because of a weakening of El Nino, the Pacific warming phenomenon will not suppress Atlantic storm development.
  
• 3/21/2010 Sandstorm turns capital's sky orange by AP.
      Beijing - Tons of sand turned Beijing's sky orange as the strongest sandstorm this year hit northern China.    The Sky glowed and a thin dusting of sand covered Beijing, causing workers and tourists to muffle their faces in vast Tiananmen Square.    China's expanding deserts now cover one-third of the country because of overgrazing, deforestation, urban sprawl and drought.
  
• 3/22/2010 Eruption is volcano's first in almost 200 years by AP.
      Reykjavik, Iceland - A volcano in southern Iceland has erupted for the first time in almost 200 years, raising concerns that it could trigger a potentially more dangerous eruption at a volatile volcano nearby.    The eruption at the Eyjafjallajokull volcano shot ash and molten lava into the air, but scientist called it mostly peaceful.    It occurred at a fissure on a slope.
      On the 23rd lava and ash shout out of the volcano and small tremors rocked the ground, a surge in activity that raised fears of a larger explosion at the nearby Katla volcano.-- the question is how soon will the Katla, located under the massive Myrdalsjokull icecap, threatens disastrous flooding and explosive blast when it blows.    At least 500 people were forced to evacuate.
  
• 3/24/2010 France backs off from carbon tax by AP.
      Paris - France backed down from a plan to tax carbon dioxide emissions that had been a central plank of President Nicolas Sarkozy.    The plan, launched by Sarkozy with much fanfare last September, has been on the back burner since being ruled unconstitutional in December.
  
• 3/25/2010 Disputed island slips beneath the waves by Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times.
      New Delhi - Global warming appears to have resolved a dispute that gunboats never could:
      An island midway between India and Bangladesh that became a flashpoint for military threats in the 1980s is now submerged under the rising seas.    The Bay of Bengal island, which India called New Moore Island and Bangladesh referred to as South Talpatti, has ceased to exist, the Jadavpur University's School of Oceanic Studies said.    Satellite imagery confirmed that and local fisherman said the island had gone sometime back.
      The island no bigger than a little over a mile wide was first noticed after a severe cyclone in the early 1970s, which both countries laid claim to amid speculation there might be oil or natural gas beneath its sandy shores.
      As for climate change and the future, a U.N. panel predicted that 17 percent of Bangladesh could disappear by 2050.
  
• 3/31/2010 R.I. gov. warns of 100-year flood by Eric Tucker, AP.
      Cranston, R. I. - The second major rainstorm of the month pounded the Northeast, pushing rivers over their banks, closing roads and schools, prompting evacuations and shattering at least one rainfall record.    Rhode Island Gov. Don Carcieri asked residents to get home by dinnertime to avoid traveling in what officials expect to be the worst flooding to hit the state in more than 100 years.    National guard troops were activated in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, where neighborhoods still recovering from earlier flooding were again swamped after two days of unrelenting rain.    A storm two weeks ago dropped as much as 10 inches of rain on the same region.
      Providence had recordered more than 15 inches of rain for the month, as well as Boston, New York City were also breaking records.
  
• 4/5/2010 Magnitude 7.2 quake strikes California, Mexico by AP.
      Los Angeles - A strong earthquake south of U.S. - Mexico border swayed high-rises in downtown Los Angeles and San Diego and was felt across Southern california and Arizona, but no reports of major damage.    The 7.2 magnitude quake was in Baja California, after having magnitude-3.0 quakes all week.    The quake was felt as far north as Santa Barbara.
  
• 4/7/2010 Quake jolts Sumatra; no immediate deaths by AP.
      Jakarta, Indonesia - A 7.7 earthquake shook Indonesia's northwest island of Sumatra propmting a brief tsunami warning and sending residents rushing for higher ground.    There were no immediate reports of casualities or widespread damage.    At least five strong aftershocks measuring up to 5.2 were recorded.
  
• 4/7/2010 Torrential rains kill at 81 by AP.
      Rio De Janeiro - The heaviest rains in Rio de Janeiro's history triggered landslides that killed at least 81 people as rising water turned roads into rivers and paralyzed Brazil's second-largest city.    Eleven inches of rain fell in less than 24 hours, and more rain was expected.    Potential mudslides threatened at least 2,000 homes in the city of 6 million people.
  
• 4/15/2010 Quake in China kills hundreds, injures 10,000 by Anita Chang, AP.
      Xining, China - Soldiers and civilians used shovels and their bare hands to dig through collapsed buildings in search of survivors after strong earthquakes hit a mountainous Tibetan region of China, killing at least 589 people and injuring more than 10,000.
      The initial quake, measured at magnitude-6.9 hit Yushu county.    Tens of thousands of the town's 70,000 people were without shelter, and rescue efforts were on the way.
• 4/17/2010 Volcanic could empties Europe's skies by Jill Lawless,AP.
      London - Thick drifts of ash from this week's volcanic eruption blanketed parts of rural Iceland as a vast, invisible plume of grit drifted over Europe, emptying the skies of planes and sending hundreds of thousands in search of hotel rooms, train tickets or rental cars.    Polish officials feared that the ash cloud, moving south and east, could threaten the arrival of world leaders for a funeral.    The air traffic agency Eurocontrol said almost two-thirds of Europe's flights were canceled as air space remained largely closed in Britain and across large chunks of north and central Europe.    The International Air Transport Association said the volcano was costing the industry at least $200 million a day.
      The volcano, by southern Iceland;s Eyjafjallajokull glacier, began erupting for the second time in a month, sending ash several miles into the air.    Winds pushed the plume across Britain, Ireland, Sacndinavia and into the heart of Europe.    Gray ash settled in drifts near the glacier, swirling in the air and turning day into night.    Scientists are saying the volcano could continue erupting for months, with each big belch of basalt powder and gas causing more chaos.
      On the 18th the volcano is far from finished spitting out its grit and offered new mini eruptions that raised concerns about longer-term damage to world air travel and trade.    Modern Europe has never seen such a disruption across Britain to Ukraine.
      The ash is toxic, the fluoride causes long-term bone damage that makes teeth fall out and bones break.
      On the 20th the volcano was said to be strengthening and sending more ash toward Britain.
      On the 21st Europe's busiest airport reopened as air traffic across the continent lurched back to life, but everything is gridlocked and will take weeks to get it all back on track.
      On the 22nd Europeans were treated to a rare spectacle of nature: pristine, blue skies brighter than any in recent memory.    It was caused by the mass flight groundings which prevented busy airspace from being crisscrossed with plumes of jet exhaust that create a semipermanent haze - and other effects beyond the white contrails themselves.    Modern aviation has dulled us to what the noontime sky can really look like just as city lights make us have to go to the desert to appreciate the true glitter of stars.    The volcano offered a reminder.
  
• 5/3/2010 10 killed in storms in Tenn., Miss. by Erik Schelzig, AP.
      Memphis, Tenn. - Seven people were killed in Tennessee and three in northern Mississippi by a line of storms that brought heavy flooding and tornadoes to the region over the weekend.    More storms loomed as emergency officials in Tennessee sought help from the state's Army National Guard and urged people ot stay off roads and interstate highways turned into raging rivers.    A line of thunderstorms dumped at least 10 inches of rain on Memphis and produced tornadoes and hail in Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky and northward.    As much as 13 inches of rain hit some areas and flash flooding.
      One the 4th Nashville braced for more deaths as the flooded Cumberland River continued to swell, sending muddy water rushing through neighborhoods and into parts of the historic heart of Music City after a destructive line of weekend storms killed 26 people mostly from drowning in Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky.    The flash flood caught the city off guard and people fled homes and hotels as the river rapidly spilled over its banks.    The downtown riverfront and restaurants and bars, and The Grand Ole Opry House was flooded with several feet of water, as well as LP Field where the Titans play, and I have walked these streets before.
      On the 6th Nashville reported progress in restoring delectrical and water systems and pumping water out, as the death toll reached 29 in three states.    Nashville received more than 13 inches of pounding rain over the weekend and the river crested at 12 feet above flood stage.
  
• 5/8/2010 Ash cloud forcing plane detours - Flights last up to 2 hours longer by AP.
      Dublin - A mammoth cloud of volcanic ash stretching 1,250 miles across the North Atlantic is forcing most flights between North America and Europe to divert into a sky-high traffic jam, Irish and European air authorites said.    The cloud of ash was projected to reach southern Greenland and the northwest tip of Spain soon.    The airlines were forced to carry extra fuel, becaue the diversions were lengthening flights by up to two hours.    Each extra hour in Atlantic air means burning more than $5,000 worth of aviation fuel, or about 2,250 gallons per plane.
      On the 9th the volcano coughed out a spreading cloud of ash that delayed or canceled hundreds of flights between Europe and North America.
      On the 10th the large plume of ash spewed by the volcano stretched from Greenland to Portugal, measuring 2,100 miles long and 1,400 miles wide.
  
• 5/12/2010 Death toll is 5; hail was big as softballs by AP.
      Seminole, Okla. - Families picked through broken furniture and dented appliances outside their smashed homes as garbage trucks scooped up mattresses and other debris left from storms that tore through the southern Plains, killing five people and injuring dozens.    Several tornadoes were reported in Oklahoma and Kansas as storms moved through the area, dumping hail as big as softballs, splintering homes and downing hundreds of powerlines.    The storm leveled houses and flipped cars, a storm that forecaster predicted last week.
  
• 5/14/2010 New EPA rule targets greenhouse gases - Begins Jan. 1 for heaviest polluters by Matthew Daly, AP.
      The EPA moved to more tightly control air pollution from large power plants, factories and oil refineries, a step to limit emissions widely blamed for global warming.    The EPA is completing a rule requiring large polluters to reduce the amounts of carbon dioxide and other greehouse gases that they release into the air.    The companies must install better technology and improve energy efficiency whenever they build ro modify a plant.    At first the rule will apply only to large polluters such as power plants, refineries and cement-production facilities that collectively are responsible for 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
  
• 5/14/2010 Extinct lizards blamed on higher temperatures by Randolph E. Schmid, AP.
      Washington - Sometimes it can be too hot even for a lizard.    Lizards are going extinct in many places, and scientists who have studied them say it's because of rising temperatures due to global warming.    The heat affects reproduction, and is they have to retreat to the shade then they can't hunt for food, which are a major consumer of insects and in turn are eaten by birds, snakes and other animals.    The scientists claim we have entered a new age, the age of climate forced extinctions.
  
• 5/17/2010 Ash cloud closes airports in Britain by AP.
      London - Europe's busiest airports, (London's Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and London City) was set to close as a dense cloud of volcanic ash drifts across England from Iceland.
  
• 5/20/2010 Scientists: U.S. must curb use of oil, coal by seth borenstein, AP.
      Washington - Top scientists urged the government to take drastic action to raise the cost of using coal and oil to slow global warming.    The called for a cap-and-trade system for curbing greenhouse gas emissions and try to cut pollution by about 57 percent to 83 percent by 2050, close to President Barack Obama's goal.
  
• 5/31/2010 At least 83 dead from tropical storm by AP.
      Guatemala City - Central American authorities said at least 83 people have been killed in flooding and landslides associated with the region's first tropical storm of the year.    Guatemala's disaster along with Salvador and Honduras has killed 83 as torrential rains brought by Agatha slammed into the region.
      On June 1st flooding and landslides have killed at least 142 people and left thousands homeless in Central America.    Two dams overflowed into a nearby river resulting in floods.
      On the 2nd rural villagers used hoes and pickaxes to hunt for victims of landslides that have killed at least 179 people, and a vast sinkhole swallowed a clothing factory.
  
• 6/7/2010 Ohio twister kills 7, wrecks EMS site and graduation by AP.
      Millbury, Ohio - A tornado unleashed a "war zone" of destruction 100-yard wide, 7 mile-long strip in northwest Ohio, destroying dozens of homes and an emergency services building as storms killed at least seven people, and left more than 30 injured.    The storm continued into Illinois, Michigan and Indiana.
  
• 6/11/2010 Emissions rules survive Senate - Challenge rejected on greenhouse gas by Jim Abrams, AP.
      Washington - In a boost for the president on global warming, the Democrat controlled Senate has rejected a challenge to Obama administration rules aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other big polluters.    Obama still needs 60 votes to advance his energy agenda, and the Democrats don't have them yet.    Republicans are aginst the measures since it will drive up energy costs and kill jobs.
  
• 6/13/2010 More than 1 million flee floods; at least 155 dead by AP.
      Beijing - Unusually heavy seasonal flooding in China has killed at least 155 people and forced more than 1 million to flee as water levels in some areas reached at their highest in more than a decade, the government reported.    Direct economic losses total $6.5 billion, with large swaths of the nation's southeast hit especially hard.    Virtually all of China's major rivers were swollen, while water levels in lakes along the mighty Yangtze River were higher than in 1998, when catastrophic flooding killed about 4,000 people.
      About 140,000 houses had collapsed and more than 1.3 million people had moved to temporary shelter.    Heavy rain has been falling since April, with 13 torrential storms already this season.
      On the 19th floods have killed 46 people, and 50 more were missing as heavy rain continued as 2.6 million people affected with more than 200,000 evacuated from homes in Sichuan, Guandong, Jiangxi, Hunan, Fujian and Guangxi provinces.
  
• 6/13/2010 Campers had only moments to escape - Survivors recount awakening to terror by Justin Juozapavicious, AP.
      Ouachita National Forest - Some people awoke to roaring floodwaters.    Others were roused by panicked banging on their cabin doors.    At least a few got out of bed and plunged almost immediately into deep, churning water.
      Vacationing families camped in a remote Arkansas valley had only moments in the darkness to escape from the worst flood to hit the area in nearly 30 years.    For at least 18 people, it wasn't enough.
      The deadly wall of water that rushed through a region southwest of Little Rock hit with such force that witnesses could hear trees being ripped apart.
      On the 15th in Langley, Arkansas crews found the body of a young girl, the 20th victim of the flash flood.
  
• 6/13/2010 Food supply threatened by melting glaciers - Himalayas face major impact by Michael Casey, AP.
      Dubai, United Arab Emirates - Nearly 60 million people living around the Himalayas will suffer food shortages in the coming decades as glaciers shrink and the water sources for crops dry up, a study by Dutch scientists from Utrecht University.    Those that do count heavily on glaciers - like the Indus, Ganges and Brahamaputra basins in South Asia - could see their water supplies decline by as much as 19.6 percent by 2050.    China's Yellow River basin, in contrast, would see a 9.5 percent increase in precipitation as monsoon patterns change due to the changing climate.    So countries affected by this is India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and China.
      They also claim that 90 percent of glaciers worldwide are in retreat, with major losses already seen across much of Alaska, the Alps, the Andes and numerous other ranges.
• 6/15/2010 Flash flooding strands many in Oklahoma City by Sean Murphy, AP.
      Oklahoma City - Flash flooding across the Oklahoma City area stranded commuters on washed-out roads and propmpted crews to send boats into inundated neighborhoods, rescuing dozens of residents and motorists who had sought safety in trees and on rooftops.    One to 3 inches of rain an hour fell on the city area, and a few spots saw nearly 10 inches.    Lightning knocked out electricity to some areas.
  
• 6/17/2010 Flash floods kill 19 near French Riviera by Lionel Cironneau, AP.
      Draguignan, France - At least 19 people died in flash floods that hit the black hills of the French Riviera and turned streets into rivers of surging, muddy water, authorities said.
      At least 12 people were unaccounted for in the flooding, and the death toll could climb, as the floods swept away cars, trees and parts of houses.    Rescue service poured into the region as flood waters reached about 6 1/2 feet deep in some areas.    On Feb. 28, at least 52 people were killed when the storm named Xynthia swept the French coastal communities on the Atlantic.    This storm has 1,200 people in shelters and tens of thousands without electricity or phone service.
  
• 6/23/2010 At least 41 reportedly killed in flooding by AP.
      Rio De Janeiro - Officials scrambled to get food and medical aid to two flood-hit Brazilian states where torrents of water ripped through towns, killing at least 41 people and driving 120,000 from their homes.    Floodwaters toppled bridges and cut roads to dozen of cities, and 600 people are reported misiing.
      On the 24th as the waters flattened a small town the death toll was expected to surpass 44 as rescuers searched for hundreds of missing people.    The entire town of Branquinha of 12,000 residents will have to be rebuilt in a different location.    A months worth of rain was dumped on parts of Alagoas and Pernambuco state.
  
• 6/27/2010 U.S. hasn't acted to save polar bear's shrinking habitat by Dan Joling, AP.
      Anchorage, Alaska - Polar bear policy in America can be summed up succinctly: The bears are threatened with extinction, and so far nothing much is being done.    Two years after they were listed in the Endangered Species Act, no action has been taken to the loss of sea ice habitat due to climate change.    Federal officials have declared that the Endangered Species Act will not be used in the attempt to regulate greenhouse gases, leaving few tools to protect the bears of the Arctic.    Oil wins over bears.
  
• 7/6/2010 Climate report mistake admitted - But agency calls key finding valid by Arthur Max, AP.
      The Hague, Netherlands - A leading Dutch environmental agency, taking the blame for one of the glaring errors that undermined the credibility of a report on climate change by a U.N. panel of scientists, said that it has discovered more small mistakes and urged the scientists to be more careful.
      But the review by the Netherlands Environmental Agency said none of the errors affected the fundamental conclusion: Global warming caused by humans already is occurring and is threatening the lives and well-being of millions of people.    Mistakes discovered in the 3,000-page report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fed into an atmosphere of skepticism over the reliability of climate scientists who have been warning for many years that human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases could have catastrophic consequences, including rising sea levels, drought and the extinction of nearly one-third of the Earth's species.
  
• 7/9/2010 Rising Rio Grande forces evacuations by AP.
      Laredo, Texas - The Rio Grande bulged into a mighty river as a tropical depression dumped tain on the border region already struggling with flooded homes and evacuations after last week's hurricane.
  
• 7/16/2010 World temperatures set record as Europe wilts in heat by David Nowak, AP.
      As Europe baked in a heat wave, climate researchers said the first half of this year broke high-temperature records.    Last month was the warmest June on record worldwide, and the global land and ocean surface temperature for the January-June period was the highest on record, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said.
      Worldwide June's average temperature was 61.1. degrees Fahrenheit - 1.22 degrees warmer than average.    The average temperature for the January-June period was 57.5 F - 1.93 degrees above average.
      Moscow were sunbathing in bikinis, while crops withered, forest fires broke out and roads melted.
  
• 7/22/2010 One person missing after storms, flooding in Carter - Team sent to E. Kentucky by AP.
      One person is missing in Eastern Kentucky in Carter County and Lewis County and nearly 100 homes have been damaged after torrential rains moved through the state, officials said, after last week heavy rains in Pike County had 2 deaths and hundreds of homes and vehicles damaged.
      On the 23rd damage estimates from flooding in Pike County could exceed $10 million making them eligible for federal assistance.
  
• 7/22/2010 China flooding worst in more than a decade by Lily Kuo, AP.
      Beijing - Floods from torrential summer rains which have killed at least 700 people and displaced millions, are the worst China has suffered in more than a decade.    The rains, which began in May after a severed drought in southern China, are inundating cities and villages throughout the country.    More than half of China's provinces are enduring monsoon-like downpours, flooding and landslides.
      In 1998 flooding killed about 4,150 people, but this flood is concentrated in areas and falls in a short period of time as in 14 inches.    A tropical storm is expected to hit the southern provinces of Hainan and Guangdong within the next day.    One professor blamed the heavy rains on lower sea temperatures.
  
• 7/25/2010 Town threatened, highway damaged; neighbors already had evacuated by AP.
      Pounding rain helped punch a hole in an earthen dam in eastern Iowa, but neighbors had already been ordered to evacuate.    The Lake Delhi dam, in Eastern Iowa, failed as rising floodwater from the Maquoketa River ate a 30-foot-wide hole in the earthen dam, causing water to drop 45 feet to the river below and threatening the small town of Hopkinton.
      More than 7 inches of rain fell in Chicago, inundating the sewer systems and overwhelming waterways.    Chicago was shutdown over that rain.
  
• 7/31/2010 Russia calls in its army to fight fatal wildfires by AP.
      Moscow - Vast swaths of Russia were under a state of emergency as more than 10,000 firefighters fought to save villages and forests from being reduced to ash during the country's hottest summer on record.    At least 25 deaths were reported in the last two days as fires raged over 214,136 acres of woodland and peat bog.    More than 1,000 homes have been destroyed and thousands of people force to flee in a smog filled air and ash.
      On Aug. 2nd hundreds of new fires broke out in Russian forests and fields as homeowners helped put them out.
      On the 3rd the death toll from wildfires, rose to 40 as millions of Muscovites coughed through a haze of smoke from burning peat bogs and firefighters scrambled to put out hundreds of blazes.    About 1,500 homes have been wiped out by fires and $20 million in damages.    The severe drought has destroyed one-fifth of the wheat crop in Russia, the world's third-largest exporter, and the wildfires are threatening to finish off some of the fields that remain.    Russia will slash exports by at least 30 percent have sent wheat prices soaring, which is good news for farmers in the U.S.
      On the 6th Russia banned grain exports for the rest of the year since 20 percent of its wheat crop was destroyed.    The price of wheat, which has already jumped 70 percent on world markets this summer, rallied further on the news.    The Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia will feel the bigger burden from this because commodity prices make up a larger part of their food bills.
  
• 7/31/2010 5.7 quake hits northeast Iran; at least 110 hurt by AP.
      Tehran, Iran - A 5.7-magnitude earthquake rattled the northeast Iranian city of Torbat-e Heydariyeh, injuring at least 110 people.
  
• 8/1/2010 Pakistan flood toll passes 800 by AP.
      Nowshera, Pakistan - The death toll in the massive flooding in Pakistan surged past 800 as floodwaters receded and the risk of disease loomed as some entered aid camps with fever, diarrhea and skin problems.    Monsoons come every year, but rarely with such fury, as rivers swelled in Pakistan's northwest, people sought ever-shrinking high ground, clutched fences or trees to avoid being swept away.    Buildings just crumbled into a raging river in Kalam.    The U.N. estimated 1 million people nationwide were affected by the disaster.
      On the 2nd the death toll in Pakistan rose to 1,100 as rescue workers struggled to save more than 27.000 people still trapped by the raging water.    Whole villages have washed away, animals have drowned and grain storages have washed away, the U.S. anounced that it would provide $10 million in humanitarian assistance to compete with militants.
      On the 3rd the death toll rose to 1,200 as survivors complained about government inaction, with 2 million requiring assistance.
  
• 8/7/2010 Floods may strain aid efforts in Asia - Destruction covers India to N. Korea by Bloomberg News.
      Mumbai, India - Floods sweeping through a swath of Asia from India to North Korea have killed thousands, left millions homeless and may stretch aid efforts as crops are destroyed at a time of soaring wheat prices.    At least 1.8 million people urgently need food in Pakistan after the deadliest floods in 80 years in the northwest, according to the U.N. World Food Program.    Storms still are preventing aid to get supplies into the areas.
      In India, at least 103 people were killed and at least 370 injured by flash floods recently after a massive downpour inundated steep mountain ravines near Kashmir.
      In North Korea, rain triggered landslides that blocked railways, destroyed homes and buried crops, piling on hardship for a country that already needs help feeding its 24 million people.
      Floods in China have killed at least 1,072 people this year, affecting almost 24 million acres of farmland.
      Mother nature is playing a very evil hand, or is getting revenge for other reasons.
      More than 1,500 people have died in Pakinstan's northwest and four million people are stranded after floods that struck July 22.    Water demolished homes and bridges and swept away major roads and crops were damaged across the nation.    Five percent of the nation's rice crop has been damaged.
      In Asia, Afghanistan and North Korea are the most susceptible to shortages of food, and about 62 percent of the hungry people in the world are in the Asai Pacific and about a fourth are in sub-Saharan Africa.
  
• 8/8/2010 Flooding kills at least 8 in central Europe by AP.
      Warsaw, Poland - Flooding caused by heavy rains has killed at least 8 people in Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic, officials said.    At least 1,000 people had to be evacuated from areas below two dams threatened by rising waters.
      On the 9th the death toll rose to 11.
  
• 8/9/2010 Floods overwhelm Asia by AP.
      Beijing - Floods and landslides across Asia plunged millions into misery as waters killed at least 127 in northwestern China, while North Korea's media said high waters had destroyed thousands of homes and damaged crops.
      In Indian-controlled Kashmir, rescuers raced to find 500 people still missing in flash floods that have already killed 132.
      In Pakistan, 53 people died in landslides and prices for fruit and vegatables skyrocketed, reflecting the damage to crops and four million people facing food shortages.
  
• 8/10/2010 337 die, 1,100-plus missing after landslides in China - Pakistani floods top other crises by AP.
      Zhouqu, China - Rescuers lifted muddy bodies into trucks as the death toll reached 337, and aid convoys choked the road into the remote Chinese town where hundreds died and more than 1,100 were missing from landslides caused by heavy rain.
      In Pakistan, the U.N. said 13.8 million people affected by the worst-ever floods exceede records.
      India raced to rescue dozens of stranded, and a death toll of 165.
      On the 11th the death toll in China more than doubled to 702 as rescuers failed to reach survivors fast enough.
  
• 8/12/2010 Iowa floods kill 1, swamp areas by AP.
      Des Moines, Iowa - A teenage girl was killed when raging floodwaters swept three cars off a road near Des Moines as rising rivers forced hundreds of people from their homes in several communities.    In Ames, Iowa State University's basketball arena had 4 to 5 feet water in it while the football stadium was ringed by sandbags stacked by players.    Thunderstorms have hit Iowa for three consectutive nights sending rivers and creeks over their banks.
  
• 8/13/2010 Rough weather ahead - Calamities reflect climate changes, scientists say by Charles J. Hanley, AP.
      New York - Floods, fires, melting ice and feverish heat: From smoke-choked Moscow to water-soaked Iowa and the High Arctic, the planet seems to be having a midsummer breakdown.    It's not just a portent of things to come, scientists say, but a sign of troubling climate change already under way.    Experts now see an urgent need for better ways to forecast extreme events.
      The U.N.'s network of climate scientists - IPCC, has long predicted that rising global temperatures would produce more frequent and intense heat waves, and more intense rainfalls.
  
• 8/13/2010 Marines land to aid Pakistan flood rescue - U.S. helicopters ferry in supplies by AP.
      Sohbatpur, Pakistan -     A shipload of U.S. Marines and helicopters arrived to boost relief efforts in flooded Pakistan.    The U.N. warned that the crisis was far from over, saying dams in Sindh province could burst in coming days, as the monsoon season is forecast to last several more weeks.    The U.S. pledged $71 million in emergency aid.
  
• 8/13/2010 More rain, more slides plague northwest China by AP.
      Zhouqu, China - Rain caused new landslides and swelled rivers in the remote northwestern China region where hundreds have died, and more rain forecasted.
  
• 8/13/2010 10-minute earthquake results in little damage by AP.
      Quito, Ecuador - A powerful earthquake shook the South American nation Ecuador, but there were only scattered reports of damage or injury.    The magnitude-7.1 quake was 131 miles below the surface, which could have blunted its damage, since it shook for 10 minutes.
  
• 8/14/2010 Aid response slower for Pakistan floods by AP.
      Islamabad - The global aid response to Pakistan's floods has so far been much less generous than to other recent natural disasters.    Reasons include the relatively low death toll of 1,500, the slow onset of the flooding compared with more dramatic earthquakes or tsunamis, and donor fatigue.    The floods destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes and an estimated 1.7 million acres of farmland, and disrupted the lives of 14 million people - 8 percent of the population.
      [Comment] Maybe the other 92 percent of Pakistan's population should donate to relief if they could or their militant leaders.
      As floods wipe out rice paddies and villages and animals.    Pakistanis have lived through a deeply corrupt political establishment, a long history of military coups, a bloody Islamist insurgency and widespread poverty.    Up to one-third of its 170 million people live in poverty.    There own government has done nothing for them, but now the government is complaining that someone else is not doing enough for them.    Someone needs an attitude adjustment.
  
• 8/14/2010 Rain refreshes capital, but wildfires still burn by AP.
      Moscow - Heavy rains cooled the Russian capital after weeks of drought and unprecedented heat, but dozens of wildfires still raged around Moscow.
  
• 8/19/2010 Flooded Tennessee region braces for another deluge by AP.
      Nashville, Tenn. - Heavy rainfall has soaked some of the same parts of Middle Tennessee that were severely flooded in May, and more rain is expected with two days of 3 to 7 inches of rain.    A train was washed off its tracks and rescuers saved people from flooded vehicles and residents trapped in their apartment complex.    In Putnam County, a home floated off its foundation, and a train derailed when the tracks were washed away.
  
• 8/31/2010 Thousands flee after volcano's 2nd eruption by AP.
      Tanah Karo, Indonesia - Tens of thousands of people packed emergency shelters after a long dormant volcano in western Indonesia spewed clouds of hot ash and smoke more than a mile into the air - an eruption that caught scientists off-guard.    Eruption of Mount Sinabung put the region on the highest alert level, and some domestic flights were diverted because of poor visibility.    After an explosion on Sunday and then followed by a much more powerful blast Monday, when homes were blanketed in gray ash and air was thick with the smell of sulfur.
  
• 8/31/2010 Major changes urged for climate-change panel by AP.
      Washington - Scientists reviewing the beleaguered international climate change panel called for a major overhaul in the way it's run but stopped short of calling for the ouster of its leader.
  
• 9/4/2010 Magnitude 7.4 quake hits New Zealand by Ray Lilley, AP.
      Wellington, New Zealand - A 7.4-magnitude earthquake hit much of New Zealand's South Island early and damaged buildings, but only two people were seriously injured.    Buildings collapsed and power was severed, roads were damaged with a series of sharp aftershocks rocking the area, and looting was reported.
  
• 9/9/2010 Utah professor awarded grant for carbon-capture research by Paul Foy, AP.
      Salt Lake City - Taking carbon-dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants and dumping them underground is easy and probably safe.    It just cost a bundle, a leading researcher said.
      "It could double the cost of electricity if we implement it right now," said Brian McPherson, a University of Utah geophysicist who has been awarded tens of millions of dollars by the federal government for research to combat climate change.
      Other experts are working to lower the cost of converting carbon-dioxide gas into a liquid state - which takes a lot of energy and pressure - for efficient underground storage, he said.
      The race is on to find a way to get rid of carbon-dioxide emissions, which are produced in abundance by coal burning and take most of the blame for heating the planet.    The U.S. DOE awarded McPherson $5 million to study a promising geologic repository near a power plant in Craig, Colo.
      That brought total DOE funding for his research to more than $70 million - money largely spent on drilling holes in the ground.    They are considering depleted oil and gas fields in southern Utah, underground formations in southern Wyoming, northern New Mexico and western Texas.    The trick is to find a leak-proof repository deeper than 2,500 feet underground, where natural pressures can keep carbon dioxide in a liquid, dense state.
• 9/11/2010 Wildfire's spread believed halted in Colo. foothills by AP.
      Boulder, Colo. - Fire managers are confident they've stopped a wildfire burning in the Colorado foothills from spreading, but people who live in the blaze's path still didn't know when they would be able to return to their homes - or what remains of them.    The fire has destroyed at least 169 houses and was burning in a 10-square-mile area in canyons 5 miles west of Boulder.    It has cost $4.9 million to fight the fire, among the most destructive in the state's history.    The fire may have begun when a vehicle crashed into a propane tank, and has destroyed at least $76.9 million worth of property.
      On the 13th evacuees returned to their homes surrounded by burnt trees, melted mailboxes and uneven patches of blackened ground, and a change that a fire pit sparked the wildfire.
  
• 9/14/2010 Lacking ice, walruses mob Alaska beach - Tens of thousands seek place to rest by Seth Borenstein, AP.
      Washington - Tens of thousands of walruses have come ashore in northwest Alaska because the sea ice they normally rest on has melted.    Federal scientists say this mass migration to shore by walruses is unusual in the U.S.    But it has happened at least twice before, in 2007 and 2009, when Arctic sea ice also was at or near record low levels.    The walruses "stretch out for one mile or more.    This is just packed shoulder-to-shoulder," U.S. Geological survey biologist Anthony Fischbach said.
  
• 9/24/2010 Flooding forces Wisconsin evacuations by AP.
      Arcadia, Wis. - A powerful storm drenched parts of the upper Midwest, flooding creeks and rivers, and forcing more than half the (1,500) residents of a Wisconsin town to evacuate their homes for higher ground.    Gov. Jim Doyle declared a state of emergency and ordered the National Guard to Trempealeau County.    Arcadia was swamped with up to 3 feet of water and highways were closed.    Also heavy rain pounded southern Minnesota overnight, dropping up to 9 inches.
  
• 9/26/2010 China's gas-mask future by William Pesek, Bloomberg News.
      Hong Kong - China is turning more and more American, and not necessarily for the global good.    No, China isn't importing democracy, freeing the Internet or unshackling the yuan.    Its Americanization is accelerating in two other ways: pollution and the desire to create armies of consumers sooner rather than later.
      How will these two phenomena evolve in the years ahead?    No one really knows, which makes many of today's forecasts, predictions and gut feelings about China's economic success and global influence in the long run rather pointless.
      Here's something we can say with certainty: China's dual needs to reduce emissions and boost domestic demand are in direct conflict.    How this standoff plays out will decide the nation's future.    At the moment, there's reason for concern.
      Take emissions, you don't need to visit the mainland to realize China is the biggest polluter.    A few days in Hong Kong close to the factories will have you reaching for the Visine and clearing your throat more than usual.    To clean up 30 years of industrial waste will cost at least 2 to 4 percent of gross domestic product a year.    China plans to increase its minimum wage by at least 20 percent annually in the next five years, more than doubling it by 2015.
      The idea is to increase domestic demand to ease dependence on exports and narrow the gap between rich and poor, and it's a smart one.    Not only do Chinese workers deserve a big raise - they're demanding it to avoid social unrest.
      If you go there don't forget to pack your gas masks.
  
• 9/29/2010 Landslides slams Mexican town by AP.
      Oaxaca, Mexico - A hillside collapsed on hundreds of sleeping residents in a rural Mexican community, adding to the deadly toll that weeks of heavy rains have exacted on parts of Latin America.    Authorities in the town of Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec said seven people were killed in the mudslide and at least 100 were missing.
  
• 10/2/2010 62 mpg?    U.S. eyes higher bar for 2025 by AP.
      Cars and trucks averaging 62 miles per gallon?    The government suggested that automakers could be required to build new lineups by 2025 that make today's high-milage hybirds seem conventional.    It's all included in potential efficiency ranges the government is considering for new cars and trucks starting in 2017, and by 2025 between 47 and 62 mpg, the Transportation Department and the EPA said.    Those mileage gains would be the equivalent of an annual decrease in carbon dioxide emissions per mile of 3 to 6 percent.
      [Comment: And don't forget to buy the snake oil that comes with it, if you can afford one of these cars.]
  
• 10/2/2010 Rain affect travel, power by AP.
      Levittown, N.Y. - Torrential downpours from a faded tropical storm inundated the Northeast, toppling trees, washing out roads, forcing evacuations and cutting power to thousands.    Heavy rains whipped Boston for hours, five deaths in North carolina who got 12 inches of rain and one death in Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia cars were submerged up to their windows from a 10 inch downpour.    More than 50,000 power outages were reported in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and the New York City suburbs.    A meteorologist declared the 22.54 inches to be the rainiest five-day period he could find on record since 1871.
  
• 10/7/2010 Rare swarm of tornadoes sweeps northern Arizona by AP.
      Bellemont, Ariz. - A rare swarm of tornadoes shoved tractor-trailers off highways and destroyed homes in the pre-dawn darkness, leaving startled residents wondering if they were still in Arizona or had awakened in the twister-prone Midwest.    One tornado rumbled through Bellemont around 5:30 a.m. with wind speeds of up to 110 mph, and another tornado struck minutes later east of the small town nestled in the Ponderosa pines just west of Flagstaff.    Weather forecasters confirmed a total of four tornadoes, including one about noon along Interstate 17 south of Flagstaff.
  
• 10/27/2010 Tsunami, volcano kill over 130 in Indonesia by AP.
      Mount Merapi, Indonesia - A volcanic eruption and a tsunami killed scores of people hundreds of miles apart in Indonesia - spasms from the pacific "Ring of Fire." which spawns disasters from deep within the Earth.    The eruption of Mount Merapi killed at least 18 people, forced thousands to flee down its slopes and spewed burning ash and smoke high into the air on the island of Java.
      Meanwhile, off the coast of Sumatra, about 800 miles west of the volcano, rescuers battle rough seas to reach Indonesia's Mentawi islands, where a 10-foot tsunami triggered by an earthquake and swept away hundreds of homes, killing at least 113 villagers, and up to 500 others are missing.
      The twin disasters happened hours apart in one of the most sesmically active regions on the planet.
      Scientists have warned that pressure building beneath Merapi's lava dome could trigger its most powerful explosion in years.    Most hope for a slow, long eruption.
      On the 28th at Mentawai Islands, Indonesia, the death toll from the tsunami and a volcano rose to more than 300.    An official said a warning system installed after a deadly tsunami in 2004 had broken from a lack of maintenance.    Hundreds were still missing after the tsunami struck the remote Mentawi Islands off western Sumatra.    At least 311 people died as the tsunami, triggered by an undersea earthquake 7.7-magnitude, washed away wooden and bamboo homes, displacing more than 20,000.    The volcano killed at least 30 people and injuring 17.
      On the 29th the death toll rose to 370 and hundreds of poeple remained missing.    Along with the 33 people killed by a volcano the dead has topped 400.
• 10/28/2010 Twisters, snow rake sections of the nation by AP.
      Vale, N.C. - A rare, fast moving storm destroyed homes with winds up to 81 mph from rain and tornadoes that started in the Midwest and moved into the southern and eastern U.S.    The National Weather Service confirmed that eight tornadoes touched down in Indiana, but no serious damage or injuries reported.    Ohio saw six twisters, including one with gusts of at least 111 mph that ripped through a village in the northwestern part of the state, destroying several homes and barns.    A cold front meeting warm, moist air was spawning the storms.    A tornado in Chattanooga, Tenn., injured people at the Chickamauga Dam.    Tornadoes whirled through Racine County, Wis. and also in Peotone, Ill..    The storm brought heavy snow (8 inches) and winds up to 60 mph to the Dakotas for a second day.
  
• 10/29/2010 2 Kamchatka volcanoes bellow giant ash clouds by AP.
      Moscow - Two volcanoes erupted on Russia's fareastern Kamchatka Peninsula, tossing massive ash clouds miles into the air, diverting flights and blanketing one town.
      The Klyuchevskaya Sopka, Eurasia's highest active volcano, exploded along with the Shiveluch volcano, 45 miles to the northeast, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said.    Ash billowed up to 33,000 feet high and spread east across the Pacific Ocean, and lava flowed down the slopes of Shiveluch.
      [Comment: Great, We have "DUELING VOLCANOES"]
  
• 11/4/2010 Continuing volcanic blasts spur flight in Indonesia by AP.
      Mount Merapi, Indonesia - A deadly volcano spewing lava and smoke for more than a week erupted with its biggest blast yet, spewing searing ash miles into the air as soldiers evacuated villages and emergency shelters for 70,000 people.    One scientist warned the worst may be yet to come.    38 people have been killed.
      [Comment: Isn't this the part where they sacrifice the virgin to the volcano god?]
      On the 5th the eruptions appeared to be intensifying, as clouds of searing gas and ash cascaded down the mountain, torching slope-side homes and triggering a chaotic midnight evacuation.    Mount Merapi, which means "Fire Mountain," is one of the worlds most active volcanoes, and fears are that the new lava dome forming in the mouth of the crater will collapse, triggering a deadly surge of up to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit ash and gas - pyroclastic flows - at speeds of 60 mph.
      On the 6th searing gas raced down the sides of Mount Merapi, smothering houses, cattle and villagers, making the death toll soar to 122.    The worst-hit village of Bronggang lay nine miles from the fiery crater, on the perimeter of the danger zone, which has now been expanded to 12 miles.
      On the 7th International airlines canceled flights into Indonesia capital, which also delayed supplies to airports near the volcanoes.    The death toll was up to 138.
      On the 21st airports opened near the volcano after two weeks as volcanic activity declined, and the death toll has risen to 292.
  
• 11/8/2010 Climate scientists plan to take on skeptics by Tribune Washington Bureau.
      Washington - Faced with increasing political attacks, hundreds of climate scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and have vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
      They want to butt heads with their critics, some of whom gained new power after the Republicans won control of the House in recent elections, and about 50 percent are climate change skeptics.    The American Geophysical Union, the country's largest association of climate scientists has 700 scientists who will speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution, on talk radio, television shows.    I wonder what kind of funding they will get for doing that.
  
• 11/11/2010 Greenhouse guidelines issues by AP.
      Increasing energy efficiency is the focus of the first federal guidelines for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sources, issued by the EPA.    Suggestions were replace dirty fuels used to power oil refineries with cleaner sources, and requiring more efficient electricity and energy use with existing power plants to reduce emissions - while not requiring expensive technology upgrades.
      The guidelines go into effect Jan. 2, which calls for more stringent emissions standards when air quality regulators issue the permits to industry, which has complained the new rules will stop new construction and chill economic growth.    The guidelines were spurred by a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that greenhouse gases can be regulated under the Clean Air Act, and a 2009 finding by EPA that these pollutants are a danger to human health.    Clean air advocates are not happy with this since it relies solely on energy efficiency improvements instead of requiring installation of new technologies that capoture the pollutants.
  [Comment: More government controlled regulation, less value to the public as in more cost.]
  
• 11/25/2010 Siberian ice may hold climate time bomb - Methane release has increased by Arthur Max, AP.
      Chersky, Russia - The Russian scientist shuffles across the frozen lake, scuffing aside ankle-deep snow until he finds a cluster of bubbles trapped under the ice.    With a cigarette lighter in one hand and a knife in the other, he lances ice like a blister.    Methane whooses out and bursts into a thin blue flame.    Gas locked inisde Siberia's frozen soil and under its lakes has been seeping out since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago.    But in the past few decades, as the Earth has warmed, the icy ground has begun thawing more rapidly, accelerating the release of methane - a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
      Some scientist believe the thawing of permafrost could become the epicenter of climate change.    They say 1.5 trillion tons of carbon, locked inside icebound earth since the age of mammoths, is a climate time bomb waiting to explode if released into the atmosphere.
      But awareness of methane leaks from permafrost is so new that it wasn't even mentioned in the 2007 report by the IPCC on Climate Change, which could be a serious sleeper out there that could pull us over the hump.    U.S. scientists are pushing Washington to deploy satellites to gather more information on methane leaks.    The Arctic is responsible or up to 9 percent of global methane emissions.
  
• 11/25/2010 U.S. sets aside Alaska habitat for polar bears by Matthew Daly, AP.
      Washington - The Obama administration is setting aside 187,000 square miles in Alaska as a "critical habitat" for polar bears, an action that could add restrictions to future offshore drill for oil and gas.    This designation is to help polar bears stave off extinction from melting of Arctic sea ice.    The oil and gas industry is claiming that this could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in lost economic activity and tax revenue and not consulted on the recommendations.
  
• 11/29/2010 Carbon dioxide storage rules set - Gas is injected deep underground by The Courier-Journal.
      The U.S. EPA has announced new rules to track the deep injection and storage of carbon dioxide and protect groundwater.    Both have been seen as key steps toward cleaner coal technologies that would capture and bury a high-volume gas from coal-fired power plants, which have been blamed for warming the climate.
      This technology will become very important to Kentucky, which depends on coal for more than 90 percent of its electricity and the nation's third-largest producer of coal.    However, it has yet to be shown to be feasible on a large scale.
      Carbon dioxide is commonly put in beverages such as sodas and is not toxic in drinking water.    But geologists say it can react with water to form a mild acid, and, over time, the acid can break down certain types of rock, potentially flushing contaminants into a drinking water source.
  
• 12/1/2010 Greenhouse-gas rules face hurdle in House by AP.
      The Republican lawmaker, Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., vying to lead a panel that controls federal spending has warned that he will try to block funding for the Obama administration's greenhouse-gas regulations.    He told the EPA administrator that the House Appropriations Committee what they would do to defund the regulation and would not support federal funding unless Congress passes legislation specifically providing authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
      [Comment: I guess he reminded Obama that we have laws in our constitution.]
  
• 12/2/2010 Experts: Global warming could double food costs by AP.
      Cancun, Mexico - Even if humans stopped spewing global warming gases today, the world would face a steady rise in food prices this century.    On the current path, climate change becomes a "threat multiplier" that may double grain prices by 2050 and leave millions more malnourished, global food experts said.    Beyond 2050, when climate scientists project temperatures might rise to as much as 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit over 20th-century levels.    This study issued at the annual U.N. climate conference in Cancun, said several factors will drive up costs, including slowed productivity because of shifting rain patterns and warming, and increased demand after population and income growth.
      On the 3rd a scorching summer that killed thousands in Russia and exeptionally mild winters in the Arctic are among extreme weather events putting 2010 on track to be one of the three hottest years on record, U.N. experts said.    The World Meteorological Organization said the same extreme weather event that suffocated Russia caused the floods that swept a fifth of Pakistan, killing 1,700 people and displacing 20 million.
      On the 5th the climate talks head into the homestretch with environment ministers flying in from around the world for the final days of the two week conference with no solutions.
  
• 12/3/2010 12 more are dead as heavy snow, flooding slam Europe by AP.
      Berlin - Freezing temperatures and often blinding snowfall killed 12 more people and caused travel chaos across northern Europe, while some of the worst floods in a century devastated parts of the Balkans.    Airports closed, roads coated with a mix of ice and snow, and trains could not even go.    A state of emergency was declared in Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro as heavy rain caused severe flooding along the Drina river, the worst in 104 years.    In Poland, the cold claimed 10 more lives, bringing the death toll to 18.
      On the 4th 40 were dead as the Arctic freeze and floods sweep Europe.
  
• 12/6/2010 Flooding, mudslides spur more evacuations by AP.
      Caracas, Venezuela - Deadly floods and mudslides caused by torrential rains prompted authorities to evacuate hundreds more Venezuelans from high-risk regions.    More rain is forecasted and a dam overflowed in western Zulia state.    The floods and mudslides have killed at least 34 people and left more than 5,000 people homeless.
  
• 12/7/2010 U.N. climate talks nearing decisive end by AP.
      Cancun, Mexico - U.N. climate talks moved into their decisive week with the agenda dominated by future cuts in carbon emissions and keeping countries honest about their actions to control global warming.    Government ministers arrived in force to begin applying political muscle to negotiations that in the past week have narrowed some disputes but which are likely to leave the toughest decisions for the final hours of the 193-nation conference day.
      Delegates were pressured to a modest agreement to restore credibility to the talks from the failed Copenhagen one.    The biggest issue is whether industrial countries would agree to further emissions cuts as spelled out in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.    Under Kyoto, 37 nations and the EU agreed to cut greenhouse gases by a total of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012 and they are on target to do that, but now are balking about accepting more mandatory cuts after 2012.
      On the 8th U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, trying to revive long-stalled climate talks, told world environment ministers that many years of negotiations have proven fruitless.
  
• 12/7/2010 20 bodies recovered, 100 missing in Columbia landslide by AP.
      Bello, Columbia - Rescue workers recovered 20 bodies but said more than 100 people are missing and feared dead after a landslide buried a poor Medellin suburb.    The landslide was triggered by Columbia's worst rain in at least 40 years, which has driven thousands from their homes and damaged coffee and flower crops.
      On the 8th the bodies of 36 victims have been recovered, leaving 90 missing.
      On the 9th the toll has reached 47, with 80 missing and it is believed that there's no chance of finding survivors under the sodden earth - which is up to 26 feet deep.    The record flooding has claimed 223 lives this year.
  
• 12/12/2010 Court denies industry plea to delay EPA emissions rules by The Washington Post.
      Washington - A U.S. appelate court has turned down a request from utilities, oil refiners and the state of Texas to effectively delay the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions by the EPA.    As a result, the EPA and state agencies can begin to insist that companies use the best available control technologies to restrict emissions of carbon dioxide to obtain air permits.
  
• 12/19/2010 California braces for flooding in north and south by AP.
      Los Angeles - A series of winter storms bearing down on California was threatening parts of the state with flooding and mudflow warnings in areas recently affected by wildfires ahead of this weekend's rains.    Southern California was preparing for possible mudslides in Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, an area that I used to live in.    The storms could be the largest system the region has seen in the last decade, the National Weather Service said.    Northern California was expecting 5 inches of rain and San Francisco was distributing sandbags to residents.    Southern California could see 2 to 4 inches along the coast and valleys with triple that in the Sierra Nevada mountains, prompting flooding.
  
• 12/21/2010 Calif. flooding spurs calls for evacuations - Rain records set, with more storms coming by AP.
      Los Angeles - A storm pounding California with record rain forced authorities in the San Joaquin Valley to order 2,000 residents to evacuate the farming community of McFarland because of major flooding.    An estimated 400 to 500 homes were in danger, as sheriff's helicopter crew was trying to located the source of the flooding, which possibly was coming from ditches and canals that supply water to farms.    Other than that, California has experienced minor flooding, mudslides, road closings and power outages.    Forecasters warned of worsening conditions as more stoms bore down on the state and threatened to dump another 5 to 10 inches of rain.
  
• 12/24/2010 EPA will regulate emissions by The Washington Post.
      Washington - The EPA announced that it would regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and oil refineries next year, targeting the nation's two biggest sources of carbon dioxide.    The Obama administration's intent to press ahead with curbs on carbon despite congressional resistance.    Collectively, electric utilities and oil refineries account for almost 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions: Under the agreement, EPA will propose new performance standards for power plants in July 2011 and for refineries in December 2011.
  [Comment: It is not hard to predict this future: Electric Utilities raise prices in August 2011, and oil prices will go up in December 2011.]
  
• 12/28/2010 Storm puts deep freeze on traveling by AP.
      New York - Thousands of travelers sat in airports, stuck buses and subway trains, stranded by a blizzard that slammed the Northeast with more than 2 feet of snow from the Carolinas to Maine with winds up to 80 mph.    Snowfall was foot in Tidwater, Va., and Philadelphia, 29 inches and New Jersey 2 feet.
  
  
  
      Stay tuned for what Mother Nature has in store for the human race.    Return each year for updates for 2011.
  
  

Created on January 31, 2006 and updated on November 30, 2006, December 31, 2006, August 17, 2007, March 15, 2008, March 15, 2009, January 30, 2010, August 30, 2011, and October 12, 2011.