Global Warming

In what could be an encouraging sign of change in the long-standing shortage of Americans preparing for "clean energy" careers, the subject is suddenly hot on college campuses across the nation -- a surge of interest largely stimulated by the specter of global warming.

In mid-spring, when the prospect of a global warming bill passing Congress seemed like an Al Gore pipe dream, President Obama invited Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) down to the Oval Office. "He realized that this was a very tough bill to get through," Waxman remembers.

The drillers have gnawed through a mile of rock here, almost down to a 600-million-year-old layer of sandstone where they hope to bury about 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide -- equal to the annual emissions of 220,000 automobiles. The $84-million project, of which $66.7 million comes from the Energy Department, will help determine whether storing greenhouse gases underground, so-called sequestration, is a viable solution for global warming. The project by Archer Daniels Midland Co.

An oxygen-depleted "dead zone" the size of New Jersey is starving sea life off the coast of Oregon and Washington and likely will appear there each summer as a result of climate change, an Oregon State University researcher said Thursday. The huge area is one of 400 dead zones around the world, most of them caused by fertilizer and sewage dumped into the oceans in river runoff. But the dead zone off the Northwest is one of the few in the world -- and possibly the only one in North America -- that could be impossible to reverse.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke are in Beijing this week to talk about climate change with Chinese leaders. The hope is to open the nation's market to American clean technology products while nudging China toward committing to hard targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They have their work cut out for them.

California's farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of global warming, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said Tuesday.

The nation's largest business lobby wants to put the science of global warming on trial. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to ward off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a rare public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change. Chamber officials say it would be "the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" -- complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect.

Global warming could rob the U.S. economy of $1.4 billion a year in lost corn production alone, a national environmental group estimated in a report released Thursday. The Environment America study, based on government and university data, projects that warming temperatures will reduce yields of the nation's biggest crop by 3% in the Midwest and the South compared with projected yields without further global warming.

The Schwarzenegger administration pushed through new rules Thursday allowing California's biggest timber firms to cash in on the fight against global warming even as they clear-cut parts of their forests. Forest owners stand to reap tens of millions of dollars in the coming decades by selling the capacity of their woods to cleanse the air of carbon dioxide, offsetting greenhouse gases belched by industrial polluters. But the administration's successful effort to allow loggers to sell their carbon credits to industry while also clear-cutting their lands sparked intense opposition from several conservation groups.

The percentage of Californians who believe air pollution is a "big problem" has dropped precipitously in recent years, especially in Los Angeles County and the Central Valley, among the nation's dirtiest regions, according to a new survey.