Climate Change

When it comes to public understanding of climate change - the forecast is hazy with a 90 percent chance of confusion. Is it a threat to life as we know it? Is it a hoax perpetrated by some bicycle-riding, SUV-hating, tofu-eating eggheads? In Copenhagen, President Obama is scheduled to speak on Friday as world leaders continue to work out strategies to curb the world's ever-increasing carbon emissions. Meanwhile, critics are still pointing to a cache of leaked e-mails that hackers stole from climate scientists.

By Denis Hayes How Barack Obama addresses the climate crisis will determine whether he is remembered as a good president, or a great one. More than four years ago, after a long bitter primary campaign, a weary candidate Obama told a St. Paul crowd that "generations would look back" and say "this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal. " As president, his attempts to pass a cap-and-trade law were crushed by almost-unanimous partisan opposition in Congress.

Climate change will lead poor women to opt for "sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage" warns a resolution proposed last week in Congress. Introduced by a group of Democrats, the resolution calls on both the House and Senate to recognize how women will be disproportionately affected by global warming. Women are "the first to feel the immediate and adverse effects of social environmental and economic stress on their families and communities," the document states, adding that 60 to 80 percent of farmers in developing countries are women.

Did global warming and rising sea levels trigger Hurricane Sandy? And does it matter? Gov. Christie says it doesn't. Whether environmental changes caused the storm is an "esoteric question," he said at a news conference at the Shore earlier this month. Victims of the storm don't "give a damn" either - as confirmed by a group of Sandy survivors who applauded Christie's remark. But scientists say they all need to start caring. Because regardless of what caused Sandy, even those skeptical about climate change say a Sandy-like storm will happen again.

THE PAST 12 months have been the hottest on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Throughout the nation, drought, wildfires, floods and other extreme weather have made global warming a visible reality. So it was maddening - and tragic - that both presidential candidates spent significant time during Tuesday's debate trying to one-up each other on how much more fossil fuels they plan to extract, burn and allow into the atmosphere. In three debates so far, climate change hasn't been mentioned once.

Mark Twain once observed, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it. " When it comes to climate change, it's time for Washington to stop talking and do something about it. Climate change is a difficult issue in a town that typically has an attention span measured from one public opinion poll to the next. While continuing primaries haven't decided who will be the next president, they have cleared the way for action on climate change. Of the remaining candidates, U.S. Sens.

THE NEWEST entry in the growing list of global-warming documentaries opens, horror-movie-style, with dramatic footage of lightning storms, floodwaters, wildfires and drought-strangled fields, as though weather itself were something new and terrifying. The statistics come later, suggesting that extremes of climate are, in fact, occurring more widely and frequently, and that they're the result of human activity. But to grab your attention, the film starts with scare tactics. What, you were expecting a calmly reasoned argument from a film called "Greedy Lying Bastards"?

Some people deal with bullies directly before problems escalate. Others duck confrontation and regret it. The United States, unfortunately, is taking the second approach with the world's latest bully: climate change. Nearly 160 countries signed onto the direct method - the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which requires cuts in Earth-warming gases caused by burning fossil fuels. They want to try to slow temperature increases, which are melting ice caps, raising sea levels, and affecting plants and animals in ways scientists predict will increasingly endanger human health.

GLACIERS ARE shrinking so rapidly we might have to change the definition of the word "glacial. " To proceed at a glacial pace nowadays means to move backward at a rapidly accelerating rate - like, say, the Eagles. The process is chronicled in the new documentary "Chasing Ice," which uses time-lapse photography to show just how drastically fast ice sheets up yonder are turning to water, raising sea levels. But wait, you say, not all glaciers are receding. Some are advancing, right?

Forty years ago, throngs of flower children frolicked in Fairmount Park, playing kazoos and tossing streamers. Ira Einhorn, the city's self-styled hippie guru who later gained notoriety for murdering his girlfriend, hogged the stage, and poet Allen Ginsberg chanted, "Merrily, merrily, we welcome, we welcome the end of the earth. " The first Earth Day was a party, a polemic, a protest. This year, Earth Day has no regional signature event. Instead, Earth Day seems to have become such a part of our DNA that it's happening everywhere.