Climate Change

It was a long hot summer. The United States experienced the warmest July in its history, with more than 3,000 heat records broken across the country. Overall, the summer was the nation's third warmest on record and comes in a year that is turning out to be the hottest ever. High temperatures along with low precipitation generated drought conditions across 60% of the Lower 48 states, which affected 70% of the corn and soybean crop and rendered part of the Mississippi River nonnavigable.

Re "Warning on greenhouse gases," June 11 The International Energy Agency, "an independent research group established by the world's most-industrialized nations," has sounded a warning on the perils of climate change if greenhouse gas emissions remain unchecked. The lying, greedy conspiracy of climate scientists has obviously gotten to them. Congress remains uninterested, but a miraculous reversal in interest would suddenly manifest if only the scientific community could outmatch the fossil fuel industry's kickbacks to lawmakers loyally blocking any action.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday launched an international organization to tackle climate change with leaders from regional governments in Europe, South America, Africa, Asia and the United States. The failure to achieve an international climate pact in Copenhagen last year left many people discouraged, Schwarzenegger said, addressing several hundred delegates to a "climate summit" at UC Davis. But now, he added, "The sub-nationals should do their work.... The green revolution is moving forward full speed ahead without the international agreement.

China will almost certainly pass the United States in the total size of its economy within a decade or so. But if one looks also at military and "soft power" resources, the U.S. is likely to remain more powerful than China for at least the next few decades. Does it matter? When nations worry too much about power transitions, their leaders may overreact or follow strategies that are dangerous. As Thucydides described it, the Peloponnesian War - in which the Greek city-state system tore itself apart - was caused by the rise in the power of Athens and the fear that created in Sparta.

Having given his film a title like "Greedy Lying Bastards," director Craig Rosebraugh is clearly out to take no prisoners in his timely documentary tracking the politics, inconvenient truths and alternative "realities" of the endless global warming debate. Yet, despite his cogent finger-pointing, nifty graphs and succinct highlighting of recent climate change history, longtime followers of the hyper-partisan topic may not find much terribly new or revealing here. Rosebraugh, doing his Michael Moore thing both in front of and behind the camera (though he's hardly as commanding a presence)

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, seeking to make monkeys of the legions of scientists who have suggested that climate change is a significant problem, wants to put them on trial. Specifically, it wants the Environmental Protection Agency to stage a "Scopes monkey trial" for the 21st century, appointing a judge to hear evidence on the question of whether global warming endangers Americans' health. It's an intriguing idea. Congress is considering legislation aimed at fighting climate change that would force the country to reinvent its entire energy infrastructure.

India remains flexible and its national climate-change plans are not the window dressing some critics charge, the nation's lead negotiator said Friday. But any agreement that might emerge from future global negotiations must give the South Asian powerhouse with the world's second-largest population ample room to grow and develop economically, said Shyam Saran, the prime minister's special envoy on climate change. "Climate change shouldn't become a mechanism for the perpetuation of poverty," Saran said in a meeting with reporters.

Climate-change researchers at a British university failed to respond to critics in an open manner but hewed to high standards in their science and did not manipulate their data, according to findings released Wednesday of an independent review of hundreds of hacked e-mails. The e-mails were taken from the server of the University of East Anglia late last year and caused an international stir just before a global environment summit in Copenhagen. Skeptics of human-caused climate change alleged that the e-mails showed scientists deliberately trying to suppress certain data about global warming or slanting it to support their conclusions.

Storms of My Grandchildren The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity James Hansen Bloomsbury: 304 pp., $25 Most scientists rarely experience the luxury of certainty. But we expect them to speak with authority. We expect them to make impossible predictions and judge them on their accuracy. Even more, we expect them to stay above or at least outside public debates. In "Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity," James Hansen gives us the opportunity to watch a scientist who is sick of silence and compromise; a scientist at the breaking point -- the point at which he is willing to sacrifice his credibility to make a stand to avert disaster, to offer up the fruits of four-plus decades of inquiry and ingenuity just in case he might change the course of history.

WASHINGTON - Climate change may increase the risk of extreme rainfall in the tropics and drought in the world's temperate zones, according to a new study led by NASA. "These results in many ways are the worst of all possible worlds," said Peter Gleick, a climatologist and water expert who is president of the Pacific Institute, an Oakland research organization. "Wet areas will get wetter and dry areas will get drier. " The regions that could get the heaviest rainfall are along the equator, mainly over the Pacific Ocean and the Asian tropics.

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. - President Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, wrapped up a summit at this sweltering California desert resort Saturday after nearly eight hours of talks over two days and a candle-lit dinner aimed at shaping what both leaders called a "new model" of future relations. The meetings grew contentious Saturday morning when Obama pushed Xi to do more to curb Chinese cyber attacks on U.S. businesses and infrastructure. Obama argued the alleged hacking was "inconsistent with the kind of relationship we want to have with China," according to Tom Donilon, the president's national security advisor.

A friend recently returned from a camping trip in the Sierra Nevada. His eyes shone as he described the opalescent sky, the vitality of wildlife in spring and the fun he'd had playing with his two young daughters during the mellow evenings. It had been a really good trip, an experience to treasure, he said. I casually asked how long it took to get there. "Oh, it wasn't too bad," he said, and then caught himself, as if he'd said something wrong. "But we took the minivan this time, which I suppose means we weren't so in tune with nature after all. " I felt slightly hurt.

Re "Oklahoma twister 'was a monster,'" May 21 It is heartbreaking to read of homes destroyed, lives upended, children killed and hundreds left homeless. We know that, without effective action to combat climate change, these events will become more frequent. And yet the political leaders of Oklahoma are right-wing ideologues who either reject the idea of global warming or question its effects on weather catastrophes. What will it take to get them to realize that their inaction will lead to more disasters?

When Josh Hamilton left after six innings of the Angels' 11-4 loss to the Kansas City Royals on Monday, it was not because of the lopsided score. Instead, Angels Manager Mike Scioscia said, Hamilton was "a little lightheaded. " Said Hamilton: "I was not lightheaded. I was just sick. " Hamilton said he has tried to play through an illness for 10 days to two weeks. He said he started taking antibiotics Saturday for what he suspects is a respiratory infection. "The equilibrium wasn't quite where it needed to be," he said.

A warming climate is melting the glaciers of Mount Everest, shrinking the frozen cloak of Earth's highest peak by 13% in the last 50 years, researchers have found. Rocks and natural debris previously covered by snow are appearing now as the snow line has retreated 590 feet, according to Sudeep Thakuri, a University of Milan scientist who led the research. The pessimistic view of Earth's tallest peak was presented during a meeting Tuesday of the American Geophysical Union in Cancun, Mexico.

Don't count on sulfur dioxide to bridle climate change. The ability of that pollutant to reflect the sun is not quite what it was assumed to be, according to new research. Sulfur dioxide -- a common pollutant from burning fossil fuels, contributes to the formation of aerosol particles in the atmosphere, which reflect sunlight. Figuring out just how much this can counteract greenhouse effects of carbon dioxide and other gases has remained one of the bigger uncertainties in climate modeling.

China will almost certainly pass the United States in the total size of its economy within a decade or so. But if one looks also at military and "soft power" resources, the U.S. is likely to remain more powerful than China for at least the next few decades. Does it matter? When nations worry too much about power transitions, their leaders may overreact or follow strategies that are dangerous. As Thucydides described it, the Peloponnesian War - in which the Greek city-state system tore itself apart - was caused by the rise in the power of Athens and the fear that created in Sparta.

Citizen scientists, environmentalists and anyone who lives near a power plant -- your services are requested. Climate change scientist Kevin Robert Gurney needs your help in a grand undertaking: the mapping of all the power plants in the world. It's a big job, and he and the people in his lab cannot do it alone. Gurney, an associate professor at Arizona State University, builds carbon dioxide emission data models that help him and others better understand how carbon moves around the planet and how it effects climate change.

News flash: Global warming hits California! That's right -- the Golden State has become the Golden Baking State, with temperatures soaring into the triple digits . For example, in Johnny Carson's “beautiful downtown Burbank” on Sunday, the thermometer hit 103 -- hot enough to melt Ed McMahon's smile. And on Mother's Day no less! Apparently it really isn't nice to fool with Mother Nature. You may think this is just a “heat wave.” But you're wrong. This is Al Gore Vindication Day. This is climate Armageddon.