Al's Journal : Let's Just Say It Out Loud

Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institute and Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute have written a scathing attack on dysfunction in Washington. Their conclusion: “Republicans are the problem.”

Argentina Starts Winter Gas Rationing Early On Cold Snap | 4-Traders

For years, the government has rationed gas to industrial companies in the Southern Hemisphere's cold winter months to ensure residential users have enough to heat their homes. But this year, the gas cuts came in late April and early May instead of in June and July as is often the case.

Apple farmers call cold weather "catastrophic" to crop - YNN, Your News Now

There's despair in the eyes of apple farmers after our recent stretch of cold weather. As YNN's Elaina Athans explains, the farmers are expecting to lose everything they have.

Teachers Endure Balancing Act Over Climate Change Curriculum | PBS NewsHour | May 2, 2012 | PBS

 For the first time, new national educational standards for grades K-12 will link global warming trends to manmade emissions. Part of our Coping With Climate Change series, Hari Sreenivasan looks at the challenges teachers face when covering the topic of climate science in their classrooms.

CEI's Ebell: Climate Data Proves Global Warming Alarmists Have Lost the Debate; Fortunately For Them There's the Liberal Media | NewsBusters.org

If the feedbacks from higher carbon dioxide levels are strongly positive, then in past geological eras when CO₂ levels were much higher than today there should have occurred the "runaway climate" that James Hansen fantasizes about. If Hansen and many other alarmists were correct, then logically the Earth’s climate should have become as inhospitable as that of Venus hundreds of millions of years ago. The fact that life is still flourishing on Earth is compelling evidence that the feedbacks from higher levels of CO₂ are weakly positive at most and more likely negative, as Lindzen argues.