The countries at the Durban climate conference made an agreement to make an agreement. I am skeptical they will make an agreement in 2015, which would not take effect until 2020. For the time being, the world will still operate under the auspices of the Kyoto protocol, which only covered industrialized nations, and to which the United States, one of the world’s biggest emitters, is not a signatory.

Recessions tend to depress economic productivity and reduce demand for electricity generation (a primary source of carbon emissions in the US and China). That results in less greenhouse gas emissions. But that brief reprieve on emissions has ended, according to the latest studies, accelerating the climate crisis.

On Wednesday, Dr. Jeffrey Gleason, currently an avian ecologist for the the Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management, Regulation and Enforcement, was questioned by agents from the the Obama Interior Department Office of Inspector General about aspects of his involvement with Dr. Charles Monnett’s 2006 peer-reviewed scientific paper that linked Polar bear mortality while swimming in the Arctic to climate change. Dr. Monnett has been under investigation since late 2010. Scrutiny of Dr. Gleason’s actions related to the Polar bear findings dates back to his first interview, held on January 26th. His questioning on Wednesday resulted in a request by the investigators for him to undergo a lie detector test regarding a misplaced routing slip:

California’s Air Resources Board has formally approved a cap and trade system to minimize climate change pollution, become the first state in the nation with a cap and trade program. Legislation authorizing a cap and trade system was passed in California back in 2006, but after multiple reviews, the CARB finally approved the program.

It won’t be easy to reunite Labor and the Left to pursue progressive economic policies. There is a lot of bad history between the groups.

One of the world’s leading climate scientists, Michael Mann of Penn State, has been vindicated by the National Science Foundation. Almost no one noticed.

Climate change skeptics have been after Dr. Monnett since Al Gore used information about his research in the movie, An Inconvenient Truth. Judging from the attacks launched since the last week of July on his 2005 paper and how environmentalists used that information to heighten awareness of rapid changes in the polar ice cap, the investigation of the scientist will continue to be misrepresented by the anti-science community, even as he goes back to work.

While the Secessionist was taken to task by the legacy media for his rube-ish views on science, he’s paying no penalty at all within the Republican Party.

Sign up to join Tar Sands Action – and Jane and Scarecrow – stand against the Keystone XL Pipeline and for the planet.

As the U.S. suffers through catastrophic tornadoes, heat waves, and other climate extremes – no doubt just a small taste of what the climate crisis will bring in the future – polluting industries and the politicians that serve them want to convince you that excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is actually a good thing.

Last December, almost like clockwork, Republican legislators in state houses across the nation sounded the alarm about an “out of control” Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). What had the EPA suddenly done to earn such criticism? The EPA had dared to take the first baby steps towards regulating greenhouse gas emissions.