Climate Change

"A federal judge has thrown out a key section of an Interior Department rule that declared global warming is threatening the survival of the polar bear."

"Climate change's laundry list of impacts — melting glaciers and rising sea levels, shifts in timing for bird migration and flower budding, a poleward shift of species — just got a new addition: shrinking species."

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"In 2008, both the Democratic and Republican candidates for president, Barack Obama and John McCain, warned about man-made global warming and supported legislation to curb emissions. After he was elected, President Obama promised 'a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change,' and arrived cavalry-like at the 2009 United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen to broker a global pact.

But two years later, now that nearly every other nation accepts climate change as a pressing problem, America has turned agnostic on the issue."

"The conservative nonprofit Americans for Prosperity unleashed a volley of ads aimed at Democrats in last year's midterm elections, but it recently reported to the IRS that it was not active in political campaign activities."

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"Australia's carbon tax is set to become law after the lower house of Parliament passed the government's historic but controversial set of bills to establish the world's most broadly based carbon pricing scheme."

Forests moderate global warming by pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. But scientists can't predict whether warming will cause major forests to die back, causing a vicious cycle that will make global warming worse.

"Climate change is melting parts of the ice-locked Northwest Passage. China is building its first modern icebreaker in hopes of staking claims to Arctic waters. Frigid polar regions are opening up to increased shipping traffic, scientific exploration and tourism. Yet the United States is so short of icebreakers capable of navigating those still unpredictable waters that since 2007, it has made the annual supply run to McMurdo Station, the American research outpost in Antarctica, with a ship leased from Sweden."

"PANAMA CITY — With just weeks to go before UN talks on climate change open in South Africa, negotiators have shifted their goal from striking a historic deal to ensuring that the global system survives."

"Massive floods have ravaged vast swathes of Asia's rice bowl, threatening to further drive up food prices and adding to the burden of farmers who are among the region's poorest, experts say."

"Global subsidies for fossil fuel consumption are set to reach $660 billion in 2020 unless reforms are passed to effectively eliminate this form of state aid, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday."