Green Group Blasts Media for Backing Off

President's miscalculations include scale, momentum

(NEWSER) - Scott Brown’s Senate victory in Massachusetts is the final nail in the coffin of the Obama administration’s first-year political strategy, John F. Harris and Carol E. Lee write for Politico . The miscalculations cover “three major counts":

• Believing 2008 was a game-changer: The Obama team thought the "election represented something seismic." But "the assumption that Obama would be swimming mostly with the current rather than often against it on issues such as health care, financial regulation and global warming was naive in retrospect."

VP pick has denied warming is man-made, focused on adapting, not reversing

(NEWSER) - Sarah Palin disagrees with both John McCain and scientific consensus on the causes of global warming, acknowledging that while Alaska has warmed by 4 degrees during the past 50 years, she’s not among those who “attribute it to being man-made.” McCain, meanwhile, has made a signature issue of capping carbon emissions in an effort to reverse climate change, the Washington Post reports. More»

Science scribes lambaste articles in the Wall Street Journal , Daily Mail

(NEWSER) - Science writers are in a tizzy over two articles this weekend that deny the existence of global warming. One, signed by 16 scientists in the Wall Street Journal , notes "the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now." It argues that a world economy unburdened by carbon controls would enjoy an excellent "benefit-to-cost ratio" and strengthen developing countries. Another, in the Daily Mail , warns readers that solar activity will soon die down and plunge Earth into "cold summers" and "bitter winters." Enter the critics: More»

Try ditching wood cook stoves in developing world

(NEWSER) - Just because the world can't agree on a battle plan against carbon dioxide doesn't mean we can't take big strides against climate change, scientists say. In fact, a dozen or so relatively simple steps could cut global warming by nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit by mid-century, a process that could save countless lives and increase crop production, a study in Science asserts. That's because carbon dioxide isn't the only problem: Methane and soot are big contributors to climate change, too, the Washington Post reports. More»

Carbon dioxide levels creating long 'interglacial' period

(NEWSER) - On the glass-half-full side, our carbon dioxide emissions may fend off the next Ice Age, the BBC reports. Researchers say the Ice Age due in about 1,500 years won't happen because CO2 levels will be too high: "At current levels of CO2, even if emissions stopped now we'd probably have a long interglacial" period, says Luke Skinner of Cambridge University. The Earth's CO2 level must drop by about 150 parts per million to allow for another Ice Age, in case you're counting. More»