Ezra Klein - Wonkbook: 2010 hottest year on record

There is no doubt, at this point, that we are leaving a warming world for the next generation. And this is not merely like leaving health-care reform undone, or infrastructure unbuilt: Those problems might persist, but they are not much harder to solve in 2020 than in 2010, or 1990. Climate change, however, doesn't merely persist. It accelerates. As the Earth warms, it burns through the protections -- like the permafrost covering the Siberian peat bogs and the ice caps cooling the Arctic -- that moderated temperature increases during our lifetimes. And the next generation doesn't get to call for a do-over. They just get a much harder problem to solve, and one that's much further along.

Icy Florida shivers | Tampa Bay, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Sarasota | WTSP.com

Students at Florida State University awoke this morning to find a fountain outside Doak Campbell Stadium glazed over with a thick layer of ice and covered with long, dangling icicles.
...
Much of Florida was shivering. Sixty of 67 counties were under a freeze or hard freeze warning overnight. The statewide low was 20 degrees in Crestview.

Winter brings fiery killer into Afghan homes - Pakistan/Afghanistan

But aside from the threat of burns, the main problem posed by heating and cooking is the smoke, which the World Health Organisation said kills 54,000 Afghans a year. Most of those killed are children under five, it said.

The WHO has also ranked the problem as one of the worst health risks facing the poor. Burning solid fuels inside is also a large problem for other regional countries like Pakistan, China and India.

More than 95% of Afghanistan’s 30mn people burn solid fuels, such as wood and coal, in their homes, said the World Health Organisation, making it one of the top 10 countries worst-affected by indoor pollution.