Gillard picks up where Rudd left off | The Australian

Two things among many cemented Rudd's grasp of the prime ministerial dunce's cap. The Emissions Trading Scheme and the $43 billion National Broadband Network. The first constituted a direct and utterly pointless attack on the foundation of not just this nation's prosperity but its very existence. Our vast resources of coal in general and its use for power generation in particular.
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How much worse is it now to persist with the NBN and to go back to an attack on our greatest national asset, this time via a carbon tax, when we know so much more about the context for each?

Rudd's insistence that the ETS be adopted before Copenhagen was bad enough. Now we know Copenhagen turned into Hoppenfloppen. Any move towards a unilateral carbon tax is that much the more irresponsible and stupid.

The pumpkin crop takes a beating this year in Oregon's wet and cold weather | TradingMarkets.com

Mike Claussen took a winding tour of the corn maze at The Pumpkin Patch on Sauvie Island Saturday and then assessed his own garden in Beaverton.

"The pumpkins are tiny," he said. "And the corn isn't half this height. It's been a sad year."

And not just for Claussen. Farmers and gardeners throughout the Willamette Valley have suffered through a cold, wet year that threatens to leave crops rotting in the fields.

Commercial vegetable expert Dan McGrath, of Oregon State University's Linn County extension office, said it's been more than two decades since he's seen a year this bad for farmers.

YouTube - Activists shut down world's biggest coal port - ABC TV News

Annika Dean, spokesperson for the protest organisers, Rising Tide Newcastle, explained the group's motivations: "We are staging an emergency intervention into Australia's number one cause of global warming."

"Around the world, the early impacts of unabated global warming are beginning to emerge. 2010 has been a year of tragic weather disasters."

"Thousands of people have died this year due to flash floods in Pakistan and China, and fires in Siberia. Millions of people are facing starvation due to a devastating drought in west Africa. These are the impacts of global warming that scientists have been warning us about for decades. Global warming is happening now, and it is killing people."

Mountain passes close due to early snow. - swissinfo

Five passes have been closed since Saturday because of early snowfalls.

The Nufenen, Furka, Grimsel, San Bernardino and Susten passes, all above 2,000 metres, were closed during the night from Friday to Saturday or on Saturday morning.