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Climate change to claim 600,000 lives a year From correspondents in London Reuters May 29, 2009 09:30am CLIMATE change kills about 315,000 people a year through hunger, sickness and weather disasters, and the annual death toll is expected to rise to half a million by 2030. A study commissioned by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, estimates that climate change seriously affects 325 million people every year, a number that will more than double in 20 years to 10 per cent of the world's population (now about 6.7 billion). Economic losses due to global warming amount to over $125 billion ($160...

CNSNews.com) - A new United Nation's global warming treaty is expected to give some of the world's worst polluters--such as the communist People's Republic of China--and some of the world's wealthiest nations--such as the oil-rich United Arab Emirates--a license to continue freely pumping carbon into the atmosphire while restricting the emissions of the United States. The United States will be joining other countries next month in attending “climate talks” in Bonn, Germany, in preparation for the United Nations' Conference of the Parties 15 (COP15) climate-change summit that will take place in Copenhagen in December.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is widely regarded in the media as the ultimate authority on climate change. Created by two divisions of the United Nations, and recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, its pronouncements are received as if they come down from Mount Olympus or Mount Sinai. The common presumption is that the IPCC has assembled the best scientific knowledge. Let’s take a closer look at this organization to see whether it merits such uncritical deference. The IPCC’s Feb. 2007 report stated: It is “very likely” that human activity is causing global warming. Why then, just...

A person needn't be a buffoon or political hack to be skeptical of global warming. That would be news to The Washington Post's news desk, however. A Post article on May 19 falsely reported that there is a "consensus" among scientists and a growing portion of the American public that human carbon emissions are causing a dangerous, long-term increase in worldwide temperatures. The facts, overwhelmingly, show no such consensus. The Post's David A. Fahrenthold reported that Republican "warming skeptics" are becoming ever bolder on Capitol Hill even as "most" or a "consensus" of "scientists around the globe have rejected their...

The Tuesday headline was clear: "Obama's new rules will transform U.S. auto fleet." The Associated Press picked it up from there: "Some soccer moms will have to give up hulking SUVs. Nearly everybody else will drive smaller cars, and more of them will run on electricity. The higher mileage and emissions standards set by the Obama administration on Tuesday, which begin to take effect in 2012 and are to be achieved by 2016, will transform the American car and truck fleet. "The new rules would bring new cars and trucks sold in the United States to an average of 35.5...

I admit to being confused.

The Obama administration will issue new national requirements for the emissions and mileage of cars and light trucks in an effort to end a long-running conflict among the states, the federal government and auto manufacturers, industry officials said Monday. President Obama will announce as early as Tuesday that he will combine California’s tough new auto-emissions rules with the existing corporate average fuel economy standard to create a single new national standard, the officials said. As a result, cars and light trucks sold in the United States will be roughly 30 percent cleaner and more fuel-efficient by 2016. The White House...