Oil sands: Hummer-Prius claim disappears from Gore's website -- 08/01/2012 -- www.eenews.net

A disputed claim by Al Gore about the carbon emissions generated by filling up two iconic cars with heavy Canadian oil sands crude has been removed from the former vice president and Nobel Prize winner's website.

Gore asserted a year ago this month, as environmentalists were gearing up to protest the Keystone XL pipeline at the White House, that the carbon dioxide generated by burning oil sands crude was significant enough to give a Toyota Prius running on the fuel "the same impact on climate" as a conventional gas-guzzling Hummer. While it remains in a column Gore cross-published at The Huffington Post, the charge is no longer present in the version of the same piece housed on his personal website.

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Antarctica Once Had Subtropical Climate, Study Confirms... | Stuff.co.nz

Apart from recurring ice ages, Dr Raine said, Antarctica had been frozen for just a fraction of its history - the latest freeze starting about 35 million years ago.

Climate change the cause of summer's extreme weather, Congress told | Environment | guardian.co.uk

IPCC scientists tell Senate committee drought, wildfires and hurricanes are becoming normal because of climate change
...
Field, in his testimony, warned that the devastating extremes of the last year could soon become routine.

"The US experienced 14 billion-dollar disasters in 2011, a record that surpasses the previous maximum of 9," he said. "The 2011 disasters included a blizzard, tornadoes, floods, severe weather, a hurricane, a tropical storm, drought and heatwaves, and wildfires. In 2012, we have already experienced horrifying wildfires, a powerful windstorm that hit Washington DC, heat waves in much of the country, and a massive drought."

So how many billion-dollar disasters have we experienced in 2012?