The New Republic

According to NASA, the first six months of 2010 were officially the hottest half-year on record—and we're now on track to witness the hottest year on record (although that will largely depend on La Niña conditions later this year). A few of the usual bullet points on how this relates to global warming: READ MORE >>

Everyone knows that sea otters are adorable (just look at that picture). But now it turns out they can also play a huge role in pulling carbon-dioxide out of the air: Sea otters could lock nearly 10 million tons of carbon from the Earth’s oceans, if their population was restored to healthy, pre-hunting levels, according to an American scientist. READ MORE >>

Over the past few years, large polluters have become pretty adept at blocking climate legislation in Congress. But there are still plenty of individual states out there trying to put limits on carbon emissions. So what's a poor oil or coal company to do? Why, bring the battle to the states, of course. Back in 2006, California passed AB32, a law that would set up a cap-and-trade system and cut the state's emissions 15 percent by 2020. READ MORE >>

Michael Hiltzik has an interesting piece in the Los Angeles Times on the false promise of the Hoover Dam, that great symbol of the New Deal (even though, of course, the dam wasn't actually brought about by the New Deal—FDR had initially campaigned against Hoover's large public-works projects, and only changed his mind once in office). During the postwar era, the reservoir created by the dam helped transform the U.S. READ MORE >>

Lucky for us, the Earth's not going to stop spinning anytime soon. So cross that off the list of apocalypses we need to fret about (though I've got a long list handy if anyone needs a few). But what if it did stop spinning? Witold Fraczek of ESRI decided to model what the planet would look like in the absence of all that centrifugal force. The Earth's gravity would shift and the oceans would rush up to the poles. No more Canada, Europe, or Russia: READ MORE >>

Is global warming going to be very costly? I certainly think so. But the key premise of Jim Manzi's argument against tackling carbon emissions (see his initial post, my reply, and his reply) is that it won't do too much damage. READ MORE >>

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Okay, next stop on the Climategate express: Earlier today, a British panel released the results of its third-party investigation into the scandal and… yup, it basically exonerated the scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. You know, all the folks whose e-mails were hacked and taken out of context and offered up as Exhibit A that climate change is all a massive hoax. Turns out, there's no hoax.  READ MORE >>

This week, two more "Climategate"-related investigations trickled out, and—no surprise—both of them knocked down (yet again) the long-running charge that climate scientists are engaged in some sort of massive fraud. Mainstream climatology is still holding up under scrutiny. READ MORE >>

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