Global Warming

Polls show that frustration with Washington has never been higher — and who could argue? Most Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. Most lawmakers openly concede that nothing will get done before the November elections. The leaders of both parties are already trading threats over the possibility of a national debt default next year. Barack Obama got elected by promising to change the tone in Washington, but clearly he's failed, as George W. Bush did before him. That should be a clue that the partisan animosity consuming the political system doesn't originate in the White House.

The regional director of the Environmental Protection Agency is in Maine to get feedback on the Obama administration's proposed first-ever limits on greenhouse emissions from new power plants. Curt Spalding of the EPA is among the participants in a Maine Leaders Roundtable on Climate Change at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland. Other participants include forestry and tourism business leaders, physicians, energy experts, elected officials and scientists. The Obama administration's proposal was unveiled in March.

WASHINGTON - Global warming isn't to blame for the recent jump in hurricanes in the Atlantic, concludes a study by a prominent federal scientist whose position has shifted on the subject. Not only that, warmer temperatures will reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, research meteorologist Tom Knutson reported in a study released yesterday. In the past, Knutson has raised concerns about the effects of climate change on storms. His new paper has the potential to heat up a simmering debate among meteorologists about current and future effects of global warming...

Unlike four years ago, President Barack Obama's campaign speeches focus less on new promises and more on pledges he says he's kept. Here's a look at how his promises have held up: PROMISES KEPT —Sign legislation to remake the nation's health care system and extend coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans. —Kill Osama bin Laden. —End the ban on gays serving openly in the military. —Stop the use of torture on terror suspects —Overhaul rules governing the financial sector and establish a consumer protection bureau —Withdraw U.S....

WASHINGTON -- President Bush invited representatives of major industrialized and developing countries to a fall climate change summit in Washington the same week that the United Nations is holding a similar conclave in New York. "In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it," Bush said in his invitation yesterday, asking other nations to take part in discussing a long-term strategy. Under international pressure to take tough action against global warming, Bush in May had called for a meeting of nations...

MIAMI BEACH - Ultimately, rising seas will most likely swamp the first American settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad that sent the first American into orbit, many climate scientists are predicting. In about a century, some of the places that make America what it is may be slowly erased. Global warming - through a combination of melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets, and warmer waters expanding - is expected to cause oceans to rise by 1 meter, or about 39 inches.

LIMA, Peru - Countries on both sides of the Pacific have reason to be very afraid of climate change. Rising sea levels could swamp coastal farms, higher temperatures wipe out species, and increasingly violent storms exact a widening human and financial toll. But at this week's summit of 21 Pacific Rim nations, global warming is barely on the agenda. In its place: the financial crisis. "The interest and focus on climate change has dissipated somewhat," said Woo Yuen Pau, CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

PUT “RAYMOND Bradley’’ and “hockey stick’’ into a Google search box, and you’ll get an education in what happens when science runs afoul of politics. Bradley, a distinguished and widely respected climatologist who directs the Climate System Research Center at UMass Amherst, is co-author of a graph known as “the hockey stick’’ because it shows relatively flat temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere for most of the last millennium, with a sharp upward turn in the 20th century.

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California announced an agreement yesterday to bypass the Bush administration and work together to explore ways to fight global warming. The two leaders announced the pact as they met with business leaders on clean energy and climate issues against the backdrop of a BP oil tanker at a terminal in the Port of Long Beach. Global warming is "long-term, the single biggest issue we face," Blair said.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate rejected a plan yesterday to curb carbon dioxide emissions from industrial smokestacks as a source of global warming. It was the chamber's first vote in more than six years on the issue of climate change. The 55-43 vote against the measure cosponsored by Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, capped a two-day debate that the two senators described as the opening shot in a lengthy effort to get Congress to address global warming.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration's top environmental official in the South and Southwest region has resigned after Republicans targeted him over remarks made two years ago when he used the word "crucify" to describe how he would go after companies violating environmental laws. In a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson sent Sunday, Al Armendariz said he regrets his words and stresses that they do not reflect his work as administrator of the five-state region of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

Africa, art history, global warming, and gospel music are among the varied course topics on the spring and summer calendar of Opportunities, a lifelong learning program started by the Marshfield Council on Aging in partnership with Ventress Memorial Library and the historic 1699 Winslow House and Cultural Center. Adults of all ages - not just seniors - are welcome. Most courses cost $20 and take place during the daytime. The program has a Facebook page titled "Opportunities - Marshfield Lifelong Learning," with a link to the schedule.

> At Christmas this year my girlfriend sent letters to friends and family requesting no presents (because of holiday mass marketing, imports from China, global warming, and overconsumption). My sister and her family sent us an outfit for our daughter and a card saying they had donated to charity in our name. My girlfriend mailed the gift back to them with a strongly worded note. I think this was rude, but she is angry, refuses to come to family parties, and still brings the subject up several times a week.

WASHINGTON - It has been so warm in the United States this year, especially in March, that national records were not just broken, they were deep-fried. Temperatures in the lower 48 states were 8.6 degrees above normal for March and 6 degrees higher than average for the first three months of the year, according to calculations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That far exceeds the old records. The magnitude of how unusual the year has been in the United States has alarmed some meteorologists who have warned about global warming.

AFTER A winter without winter, the collective response to the nearly unbroken string of abnormally high temperatures is stunning. Broadcasters, radio personalities, meteorologists, and, let's face it, a lot of us react to day after day of a March with temperatures in the 70s and 80s as an unalloyed good. Back before the signs of global warming became obvious, it was always nice to get an early taste of spring, but this is different. At some point year-after-year of way-above-average global temperatures should start to cause some change in policies.

With record high temperatures in Boston this winter, trees are blooming earlier than normal, and that means earlier spring allergies. If you're allergic to certain pollens, your best defense against sneezing, watery eyes, and sinus congestion is a good offense. 1. If you're heading out into the blossoming outdoors, take a nonsedating antihistamine before going out. Don't wait for symptoms to appear since that can render the medication less effective, according to the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology.

ANCHORAGE - In what some scientists see as another alarming consequence of global warming, thousands of Pacific walruses above the Arctic Circle were killed in stampedes earlier this year after the disappearance of sea ice caused them to crowd onto the shoreline in extraordinary numbers. The deaths took place during the late summer and fall on the Russian side of the Bering Strait, which separates Alaska from Russia. "It was a pretty sobering year - tough on walruses," said Joel Garlach-Miller, a walrus specialist for the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

WASHINGTON -- Six former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency -- five Republicans and one Democrat -- accused the Bush administration yesterday of neglecting global warming and other environmental problems. "I don't think there's a commitment in this administration," said Bill Ruckelshaus, who was the EPA's first administrator when the agency opened its doors in 1970 under President Nixon, and headed it again under President Reagan in the 1980s. Russell Train, who succeeded Ruckelshaus in the Nixon and Ford administrations, said slowing the growth of...

ST. PAUL, Alaska -- THE CAUSES and culprits of the earth's rising temperatures are not discussed much in places around the Arctic. It isn't that global warming is doubted. That's silly talk to those who live here. Sadly, the hotter earth, with warmer oceans, is accepted as a fait accompli. From tiny St. Paul Island in the middle of the Bering Sea to the eight nations that constitute the Arctic Council, a group that coordinates interactions among Arctic states, there is no debate that the earth is changing.

Winter is over in Boston, but then you knew that weeks ago. The lion must have had some other commitment; this March came in like a lamb - and then turned into a pink unicorn that conjures up fragrant flowers wherever it frolics. Even spring, which only started Tuesday, feels like it's over: Thursday's projected high is well into the 80s. Longtime New Englanders who've suffered through many a chilly April, May, or June are still waiting for the hammer to fall, in the form of mosquitoes or droughts or the Great Flag Day Blizzard of 2012.