Children's books [promote greatest scientific fraud of all time]

Global warming is cogently explored in Mission Planet Earth: Our World and Its Climate - And How Humans Are Changing Them, by Sally Ride and Tam O'Shaughnessy (Roaring Brook; 80 pages; $19.95; ages 9-14). Astronaut Ride establishes a sense of wonder right off with her observations from orbit. "When I looked toward the horizon," she writes, "I could see a thin, fuzzy blue line outlining the planet. ... It was Earth's atmosphere. It looked so thin and so fragile, like a strong gust of interplanetary wind could blow it all away."

Ride and O'Shaughnessy take up how recent disruptions in the Earth's oxygen and carbon cycles threaten that thin and fragile atmosphere and the whole of life on Earth. Human activity is the likely cause. Packed with information and ideas, the science writing is highly readable and mostly clear. (Ditto for the polished visuals.)

Obama wants to make America more like Europe - Times Online

Top of the president’s change list is the way we consume energy. He believes our use of carbon-based fuels is causing the globe to heat up, with all the dire consequences conjured up by Al Gore as he sits in the library of his home, probably the largest single consumer of energy of any private residence in America. By one means or another, the president will make the use of oil, natural gas and especially coal so expensive that consumers will be forced to use less energy, and rely more for the energy we do use on costly wind and solar power, paid for with tax-funded subsidies or higher utility bills.

Also, the day of spacious, safe cars is to end, with the exception of the limousines favoured by congressional leaders and White House appointees. Given the financial dependence of GM and Chrysler on government handouts, and regulations setting fuel-efficiency standards, these companies will be forced to produce and attempt to sell the small, preferably battery-powered vehicles beloved of environmentalists and congressmen from urban areas who rarely take to the open road. This will encourage more Americans to migrate to public transport because fewer will want to endure cramped, no-longer comfortable car rides to and from work.

Twitter / Auke Aukema

climate change due to increased sun activity ; more than CO2 in the atmosphere; but you cannot tax the sun, so ...