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"Democrats are trying to take control of public anger over the BP spill, and that means moving the debate to energy legislation. Harry Reid is now urging chairmen to pass cap and trade out of committee by July, and to include a strong section regulation offshore drilling and associated liabilities. Remember when the compromise to get the bill passed was going to be moreoffshore drilling? "

"Sea Ice Volume is calculated using the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) developed at APL/PSC by Dr. J. Zhang and collaborators. Anomalies for each day are calculated relative to the average over the 1979 -2009 period for that day to remove the annual cycle. The model mean seasonal cycle of sea ice volume ranges from 28,600 km^3 in April to 14,400 km^3 in September. The blue line represents the trend calculated from January 1 1979 to the most recent date indicated on the figure. Total Arctic Ice Volume for March 2010 is 20,300 km^3, the lowest over the 1979-2010 period and 38% below the 1979 maximum. PIOMAS calculates that the monthly average Arctic Sea Ice Volume for May 2010 was 19,000 km^3, the lowest May volume over the 1979-2010 period, 42% below the 1979 maximum and 32% below the 1979-2009 May average. September Ice Volume was lowest in 2009 at 5,800 km^3 or 67% below its 1979 maximum. Shaded areas represent one and two standard deviations of the anomaly from the trend. Updates will be generated at approximately two-weekly intervals."

NASA's 2010 map of temperature anomalies...

To perhaps avoid the truth that was so inconvenient to President Bush, on Tuesday Barack Obama will meet with Al Gore to discuss energy policy and climate change. The talk, which will take place in Chicago, will also cover how energy and climate can fit into job creation and the economy.

Oregon State University professor Jane Lubchenco has been added to Obama's growing cabinet. Lubchenco, a marine biologist, will head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Along with wanting to curb overfishing, Lubchenco has also been a voice for curbing greenhouse admissions that contribute to global warming, reports the Washington Post. Her appointment will put the NOAA in a rank of prestige, as Lubchenco is a member of the National Academy and the Royal Society, of America and England

Researchers and officials concerned about global warming have focused on oil usage, but scientists on Wednesday said liquefied coal could have a greater affect on global climate change. Global warming scenarios are based on oil reserves, but those reserves will have less impact on global climate than the extent to which liquefied coal replaces oil and gas, scientists said at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is today expected to adopt the most radical global warming plan in the U.S., and possibly the world. If passed, it will force individuals, as well as the state's utilities, refineries and large factories to fundamentally change the way they do business, and slash greenhouse gas emissions. The plan will outline for the first time how people and businesses will be required to meet the state's 2006 'Global Warming Solutions Act' and transform California into a global leader in the fight against climate change. The board will be in session all day to consider approval of the AB 32 Scoping Plan to Reduce GHG Emissions in California. Key aspects of the plan include: * The creation of a carbon-credit 'cap and trade' market designed to give the state's major polluters cheaper ways to cut emissions; * A Low Carbon Fuel standard; * Stringent transport related greenhouse gas targets; * A target of generating 33% of the states's electricity from renewable energy by 2020; * Ambitious vehicle efficiency measures; * Implementation of a high speed rail system; * A radical green building strategy.

SET Energy reports that China's power consumption has slumped dramatically as economic woes cut demand - China power generation falls record amount, keeping climate hope alive. Globalcoal.com reported today that Chinese power generation fell 7% in November from last year! Huge cuts in energy-intensive manufacturing (of aluminum, steel, etc.) and warmer than usual weather resulted in this record contraction in electricity production. The reduction in thermal plant output (mostly coal) fell an even more dramatic 14% from 2007. Thus greenhouse gas emissions in the 4th quarter of 2008 will probably be significantly below the year-ago level. This development brings hope that China, the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter, may be able to slow its greenhouse gas emission growth from the torrid pace of the past several years.

The European Union wants President Obama to act on his promise of introducing a new climate change policy and work out the modalities of a cap-and-trade policy before the Copenhagen Talks in December. Doing so, EU ministers say, would send a clear signal to the world and especially the developing countries about the change in America's environment policy. 1 voteBuzz up! The European Union already has clear renewable energy and carbon emissions reduction policy in place but that has yet to make any difference in the stance of the developing countries like India and China. The Asian neighbors continue to resist any demands to reduce their carbon emissions claiming that their contribution to the overall global carbon emissions is very less as compared to that of the developed nations especially the United States which has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol.

Four years, aka one presidential term, is all the time Obama has to save the Earth according to NASA scientist James Hansen. Hansen testifed to Congress over twenty years ago alerting the world that climate change was under way. Five presidential terms later, Obama is left with a crisis of epic proportion. Hansen warns: We cannot afford to put off change any longer. We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead.

In 1970 James Gustave Speth co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has become one of America's most well-endowed and high-profile environmental organizations. He worked in the White House under President Carter, chairing the Council on Environmental Quality; when Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected in 1992, Speth was a senior adviser to their transition team. He spent the 1990s as the administrator of the United Nations Development Program, where he integrated environmental sustainability into the agency's poverty-fighting mission. Thus, what follows--his call for a radical departure from the movement's current strategy--comes from the ultimate environmental insider. --The Editors I grew up in a small town on the Edisto River in South Carolina in the 1940s and '50s. As a boy, I often swam the Edisto, though at first I could not buck the river's current. But as I grew older and stronger, I was able to make good headway against it. In my environmental work for close to four decades, I've always assumed America's environmental community would do the same--get stronger and prevail against the current. But in the past few years I have come to the conclusion that this assumption is incorrect. The environmental community has grown in strength and sophistication, but the environment has continued to deteriorate. The current has strengthened faster than we have and become more treacherous. It is time to consider what to do besides swimming against it.

How important is it to eat organic? Is it a fad, a craze or is it a warning against chemical fertilizers and GMO crops, which will help protect the next generation? Organic farming is natural farming, that means no chemical fertilisers, no genetic modification for either food crops or feed crops. Commercial farming pushing demand for agricultural produce forced a shift towards chemical fertilisers and farming methods to maximise output, for maximum profit, unaware of the significantly unnatural processes being used can be harmful. At the consumer level organic produce is a relatively new phenomena. On the supermarket shelves we are finding products labelled 'organic', most of us think it means 'natural' or 'cruelty free'. When you buy organic you are buying a green product . That means methods such as green fertilisers, crop rotation and biological pest controls are used instead of toxic chemical fertilisers and genetically modified organisms which are harmful to the land. Organic farming composes about 2% of all farming on the planet.

Following former Vice President (and Nobel Laureate) Al Gore's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, the Union of Concerned Scientists strongly supported Gore's testimony in pushing for a "to address the urgency of the climate crisis." Here is a statement from Alden Meyer, the UCS director of policy and strategy: "Once again, Vice President Gore is speaking the inconvenient truth: It's long past time for the United States to join the rest of the world in the fight against global warming, and it's essential for Congress to pass comprehensive climate legislation this year. The United States has joined other countries in calling for adoption of a new climate change treaty at the Copenhagen climate summit this December. Having a congressionally approved plan in hand would strengthen President Obama's ability to negotiate a strong agreement in Copenhagen

Congress will not act until 2010 on a bill to limit the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming despite President-elect Obama's declaration that he will move quickly to address climate change, the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee predicted Wednesday. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said that while every effort should be made to cap greenhouse gases, the economic crisis, the transition to a new administration and the complexity of setting up a nationwide market for carbon pollution permits preclude acting in 2009.

It's stuff we all know about - compact fluorescent lighting, wind energy, efficiency, green jobs - the kind of stuff we talk about incessantly on TreeHugger. Yet seeing all these solutions in Earth School's 4-minute trailer of the upcoming documentary Carbon Nation makes them feel more real, just like seeing Al Gore do his shtick in An Inconvenient Truth brought the reality of global warming home (whether or not each individual fact he uttered could be 100 percent proven). And that's a good thing. Global warming gets scarier the more you think about it, but Carbon Nation, scheduled to be released late in the year, aims to dwell not on the scary but on the possibilities for solving the problem.

Sarah Palin just helped clarify McCain's double-talk on global warming: He doesn't think the government should do anything to stop it. Voters who care about either global warming or clean energy have only one choice -- and it isn't McCain-Palin. It's time to stop trying to guess whether the latest McCain campaign gaffe revision on global warming means the Arizonan has walked away from his previous support for mandatory government control of greenhouse gases. He has.

California formally moved to spread its can-do global warming gospel around the world, signing a declaration Wednesday with 11 other U.S. states and provinces or states in five other countries to help them slash their greenhouse gas emissions. Fighting climate change shouldn't just go "nation by nation," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told a climate summit in Beverly Hills attended by more than 700 delegates from 19 countries. It must go "province by province. . . . We have got to do something worldwide here," he said.

The SMH reports that Maldivians are sufficiently worried by rising sea levels that they are thinking about buying a backup homeland - Maldives to buy new homeland as sea levels rise. It probably won't be as idyllic as the original though. THE Maldives will begin to divert a portion of the country's billion-dollar annual tourist revenue into buying a new homeland - possibly in Australia - as an insurance policy against climate change that threatens to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees, the country's first democratically elected president has said. Mohamed Nasheed, who takes power officially today in the capital, Male, said the chain of 1200 islands and coral atolls dotted 800 kilometres from the tip of India is likely to disappear under the waves if the current pace of climate change continues to raise sea levels.

Both the beauty and the fragility of the planet were on spectacular display Monday as TODAY reported on climate change and the power of water from the Ends of the Earth. Hosts Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira, Al Roker and Ann Curry signed in simultaneously from the Western Hemisphere's longest coral reef in Belize; drought-stricken Australia, the world's driest inhabited continent; Iceland, where fire meets ice; and 13,000 feet up the flank of Mount Kilimanjaro, the "Roof of Africa," whose famous snows and glaciers are on pace to disappear within the next dozen years. Water covers 71 percent of the Earth's surface, but, as Lauer, Vieira, Roker and Curry reported, 1.1 billion people - a sixth of the planet's human population - do not have access to a clean supply of this most precious and essential resource.