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United States Senate confirms John P. Holdren, Former Director of the Woods Hole Research Center

A glacier moving way too fast reveals how unpredictable the effects of global warming can be.

Have you heard the Tom Friedman podcast: Hot, Flat and Crowded? - Search in Oct 2008 on this page: http://tinyurl.com/23tzpu

The prospect that human-driven warming is poised to push Earth past dangerous tipping points is now a cornerstone of many environmental campaigns. But what tipping points are well established and which ones remain what Stephen W. Pacala of Princeton University has called "the monsters behind the door"? I have a piece in the Week in Review section exploring these concerns. Given the limits on space in print, I thought it worthwhile to add some additional voices here and encourage further discussion. The bottom line? A growing effort to clarify such risks has yielded what amounts to the same message climate experts have been conveying for more than two decades: More emissions of greenhouse gases raise the odds of trouble.

The Supreme Court two years ago directed the EPA to decide whether greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, pose a threat to public health and welfare because they are warming the Earth. If such a finding is made, these emissions should be regulated under the Clean Air Act, the court said.

But the best available estimates suggest that the costs of an emissions-limitation program would be modest, as long as it's implemented gradually. And committing ourselves now might actually help the economy recover from its current slump.

With diminished rice harvests, seawater seeping into aquifers and islands vanishing into rising oceans, Southeast Asia will be among the regions worst affected by global warming, according to a report scheduled for release on Monday by the Asian Development Bank.

"The world is struggling with the consequences of the economic crisis in which we find ourselves (but) any of the difficulties we face today will be as nothing when the full horror of global warming unfolds," Charles said.

Fortunately, there is a better option: to make low-carbon alternatives like solar and wind energy competitive with old carbon sources. This requires much more spending on research and development of low-carbon energy technology. We might have assumed that investment in this research would have increased when the Kyoto Protocol made fossil fuel use more expensive, but it has not.

"So those are our choices, folks - an escalating 'More Tax' forever, premised on immediate gratification and short-term thinking, or a 'Carbon Tax Cut' forever, which is exactly what you'll get from establishing a carbon price signal that shapes the market in favor of American interests and not those of our adversaries and competitors. If you're with me, write your member of Congress and senator today."

"In my 33 years on the Energy and Commerce Committee, I cannot remember a week of hearings quite like this one," said Markey. "With so much at stake and such little time, I am pleased that our country's business, science and environmental leaders are lining up to engage in this historic week of hearings."

The formal "endangerment finding" names carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases as pollutants subject to regulation under the federal Clean Air Act. This in turn sets the stage - after a 60-day comment period - for broad new rules touching major sectors of the American economy and profoundly influencing how Americans use and generate energy.

Earlier this year, the World Bank released yet another in a seemingly endless stream of reports by global institutions and universities chronicling the melting of the world's cryosphere, or ice zone. This latest report concerned the glaciers in the Andes and revealed the following: Bolivia's famed Chacaltaya glacier has lost 80 percent of its surface area since 1982, and Peruvian glaciers have lost more than one-fifth of their mass in the past 35 years, reducing by 12 percent the water flow to the country's coastal region, home to 60 percent of Peru's population.

In a one-hour High-Definition special, NOW on PBS host David Brancaccio travels to the Gangotri Glacier in the Himalayas-the source of the legendary river Ganges-to witness the impact of global warming first hand. Global warming, scientists say, is dangerously melting away glaciers around the world, including Gangotri