Obama administration e-mails: Giving more taxpayer money to Solyndra was risky - The Washington Post

A White House official fretted privately that the Obama administration could suffer serious political damage if it gave additional taxpayer support to the beleaguered solar-panel company Solyndra, according to newly released e-mails.

GE responds to charges of crony capitalism | Campaign 2012

"We are not receiving special treatment"

Arctic ice hits near-record low, threatening wildlife | WBEZ

Mark Serreze, who heads the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado, says this year's low is not far off that 2007 record.

"What it's telling us is that the long-term decline in Arctic sea ice is continuing, and even appears to be accelerating at this point," he says.

University of Minnesota geologist on climate change study: "It's a warning" - Minneapolis News - The Blotter

About 11,500 years ago, at the tail end of the Pleistocene era, the Earth began to warm up. The planet's climate has fluctuated since time immemorial. But this period of climate change came less like a stone warming in the sun, and more like a marshmallow in a microwave.

In Greenland, the average annual temperature shot up 61 degrees Fahrenheit -- in less than 10 years.

Larry Edwards, director of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Minnesota, has studied this and other rapid shifts in Earth's climate
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Research proving that natural climate change has occurred in history seems to support the view of opponents of man-made climate change, who say the current period of warming is just a natural swing. Edwards says that's wrong, and that, against the best records of the last 1,000 years, modern warming is "an anomaly."

"You can say, 'yeah, there's been changes to climate in the past,'" Edwards said. "But when you compare the climate to what it's been in the past 1,000 years -- when the things that effect climate have not changed that much -- what's happening today is different."

Edwards is not an alarmist, and says man-made climate change causing an abrupt shift, one that would almost certainly end human life on Earth, has a "small chance of happening." No one living today will face the "train-wreck," says Edwards, who thinks man-made causes won't add up until the next couple hundred years.