Report Charges Broad White House Efforts to Stifle Climate Research

ABC News

Bush administration officials throughout the government have engaged in White House-directed efforts to stifle, delay or dampen the release of climate change research that casts the White House or its policies in a bad light, says a new report that purports to be the most comprehensive assessment to date of the subject.

Researchers for the non-profit watchdog Government Accountability Project reviewed thousands of e-mails, memos and other documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and from government whistle-blowers and conducted dozens of interviews with public affairs staff, scientists, reporters and others.

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Al Gore testifies in Congress about Global Warming

Watch Gore's excellent video testimony.

World's Warmest Winter Ever

CBS News

(AP) This winter was the warmest on record worldwide, the government said, the government said Thursday in the latest worrisome report focusing on changing climate.

The report comes just over a month after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said global warming is very likely caused by human actions and is so severe it will continue for centuries.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the combined land and ocean temperatures for December through February were 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit above average for the period since record keeping began in 1880.

Preliminary data from the National Climatic Data Center listed the average temperature for the 48 contiguous U.S. states last year as 55 degrees Fahrenheit (12.8 Celsius). That is 2.2 degrees (1.2 Celsius) ) warmer than average and 0.07 (0.04 Celsius) degrees warmer than 1998, the previous warmest year on record. MORE...

Climate scientist 'duped to deny global warming'

The Observer

A leading US climate scientist is considering legal action after he says he was duped into appearing in a Channel 4 documentary that claimed man-made global warming is a myth. Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the film, The Great Global Warming Swindle, was 'grossly distorted' and 'as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two'. MORE...

International Report: Global Warming is Real

CNN

The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won't have enough water. At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press. MORE...

UN chief says climate change as great a threat as war

Associated Press

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday that global warming posed the same threat to humanity as war and warned of an "unconscionable legacy" being left for future generations. In a speech to a UN International School Conference, Ban acknowledged that the "majority" of the UN's work still focuses on the prevention and resolution of conflict.

"But the danger posed by war to all of humanity -- and to our planet -- is at least matched by the climate crisis and global warming," he said. MORE...

Japan has warmest winter ever, no snow in Tokyo

Japan has had the warmest winter ever and central Tokyo has seen no snow so far -- the first time since records began, the official weather forecaster said on Friday. "We have never seen a year without snow in the central Tokyo area. We started taking snow records in 1877," an official with Japan's Meteorological Agency said. "If central Tokyo does not see snow before long, it will be for the first time since then." MORE...