Global Warming, Climate | featured news

The relentless, weather-gone-crazy type of heat that has blistered the United States and other parts of the world in recent years is so rare that it can't be anything but man-made global warming, says a new statistical analysis from a top government scientist.

In an opinion piece in Saturday’s New York Times titled “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic,” Muller writes: “Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.”

A U.N. climate conference reached a hard-fought agreement Sunday on a far-reaching program meant to set a new course for the global fight against climate change.

Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by 5.9 percent, upending the notion that the brief decline during the recession might persist.

More hot days? "Virtually certain." Heat waves? "Ninety to 100 percent probability." And as the 21st century unfolds, more heavy precipitation and more intense hurricanes are "likely." The forecast comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a global body of scientists who make periodic pronouncements on global warming and its likely effects.

Despite 20 years of effort, greenhouse gas emissions are going up instead of down, hitting record highs as climate negotiators gather to debate a new global warming accord.

With narrowing differences over a key issue, verification, there is growing hope of modest success at the U.N. conference.

The world's top greenhouse polluter hosts week-long U.N. climate talks from Monday aimed at sealing a broader pact to fight global warming and helping poorer nations with money and clean-energy technology.

EU leaders agreed Friday to commit euro2.4 billion ($3.6 billion) a year until 2012 to help poorer countries combat global warming, as they sought to rescue their image as climate change innovators and bolster the talks in Copenhagen....

The leading sponsor of a U.S. Senate climate bill says action to combat global warming will raise energy prices, but also create ...