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British butterfly numbers bounce back following warm summer | Environment | theguardian.com

World's largest butterfly count records four times as many butterflies in 2013 compared to the wet weather of 2012

Sir David King appointed UK climate change envoy

King added: “Since we have just passed 400 parts per million [of carbon dioxide] and most climate scientists believe 450 will leave to potential calamities, this is a good moment to give an extra push to the development of solar energy.”

Flashback: David King: Hot Girls and Cold Continents « Climate Audit

“Antarctica is likely to be the world’s only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the government’s chief scientist, Professor Sir David King said last week. He said the Earth was entering the ‘first hot period’ for 60 million years when there was no ice on the plane and “the rest of the globe could not sustain human life”.
(The Independent on Sunday, 2 May 2004)

Cost of climate deal delay comparable to the financial crisis, researchers say | Carbon Brief

The costs of delaying climate action could be equivalent to the financial crisis, a new paper warns.

Roger’s Rules » Obama Then and Now: the Rashomon Effect (first in a series)

...“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes [at] 72 degrees at all times and then just expect that every other country’s going say OK.”

How does that sound today? We can’t drive our cars, eat what we want, and heat our houses because other countries may not like it. That’s what the president of the United States said. “Other countries” tell Americans whether and what they can drive, eat, and to how warm or cool they can keep their houses.

It was meant to be a “Green” speech, a “leading-from-behind” speech, a speech that would reinforce the idea that America was not special, not “exceptional” (just as Obama, and now Vladimir Putin, said!), not in charge of its own destiny because, whatever advantages we enjoyed, “You didn’t build that.”

There is a species of the anti-American left, consisting of about 95 percent of the professoriate and miscellaneous other elements, who find such rhetoric inspiring. The rest of us find it irritating, alarming, and irresponsible in varying degrees. What I find interesting, though, is the extent to which such statements — and they are legion — have suddenly mutated in their significance. There were plenty of critics of Obama’s hectoring statement in 2010 — I probably wrote something about it myself — but the reaction to it today is far different, and far less generous, because the atmosphere, the background of affective assumption, is so different now than then.