Climate Change

"Given that insurers are likely to be among the first companies affected by climate change, you might expect the industry to be better prepared than most."

"Hockey sticks and brawls aren't just for NHL playoff games. Climate scientist Michael Mann has the scars to prove it. But along the way he has picked up some fans as well."

"Sea level rise from global warming is well on the way to doubling the risk of coastal floods 4 feet or more over high tide by 2030 at locations nationwide. In the lower 48 states, nearly 300 energy facilities stand on land below that level, including natural gas infrastructure, electric power plants, and oil and gas refineries. Many more facilities are at risk at higher levels, where flooding will become progressively more likely with time as the sea continues to rise. These results come from a Climate Central combined analysis of datasets from NOAA, USGS and FEMA."

"Scientists may hesitate to link some of the weather extremes of recent years to global warming -- but the public, it seems, is already there."

"The world's ice sheets serve as cold-storage for creatures the Earth hasn't seen in eons. Scientists don't expect another Contagion or Andromeda Strain, but the release of unknown life forms does pose new concerns about effects of global warming."

"SEATTLE -- Polar bears are skating on thin ice in Alaska these days: Warming temperatures have resulted in dramatic shrinkage of sea ice, leaving the bears with fewer ice floes on which to rest and hunt seals. But at least for the moment, the Endangered Species Act won't be used to control the greenhouse gas emissions that conservationists say are contributing to climate change and posing one of the biggest threats to the bears' survival."

"Two billion years ago, around the time atmospheric oxygen levels were rising, one cell engulfed another, and instead of becoming lunch, the ingestee became an Earth-changer and, eventually, a vital part of you: mitochondria."

"After dropping for two years during the recession, emissions of the gases blamed for global warming rose in 2010 as the economy heated up, the Environmental Protection Agency reports. Output of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gasses were up 3.2 percent from 2009 as the nation climbed slowly out of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the E.P.A. said."

"Dramatic warming at the end of the last ice age produced an intense rise in sea level and a massive ice sheet collapse in the Antarctic.

The sea level rise is known as Melt-Water Pulse 1A, and new research indicates it increased sea level by about 45 feet (14 meters) sometime between 14,650 and 14,310 years ago, during the same time as a period of rapid climate change known as the Bølling warming.

Understanding the impacts of earlier warming and sea-level rise is important for predicting the effects of future warming."

"The USA hasn't been this dry in almost five years."

"Still reeling from last year's devastating drought that led to at least $10 billion in agricultural losses across Texas and the South, the nation is enduring another unusually parched year.