Ex-EPA official says White House pulled rank. A former EPA official contradicted congressional testimony by EPA's administrator on a key global warming decisions, saying the White House ordered the blocking of California's bid to regulate vehicles' tailpipe emissions. [News Source]

Don’t offset your CO2 emissions, retire them. At the age of 25, Dan Lewer is going into retirement -- carbon emissions retirement that is. Lewer is co-founder of a new online carbon offset company called Carbon Retirement, which launched on July 15. [News Source]

State is first to ok green building standards. California became the first state in the nation to approve green building standards for all new construction, a move that officials say will help the state meet its ambitious goals to curb greenhouse gas emissions. [News Source]

Warming world ‘drying wetlands’. Scientists warn that if the decline of the world's wetlands continued, it could result in vast amounts of carbon being released into the atmosphere and "compound the global warming problem significantly". [News Source]

Wetlands save states billions, new study says. Coastal wetlands are self-maintaining "horizontal levees" that provide $23.2 billion worth of protection from hurricane-related flooding in the United States each year, according to a new study. [News Source]

Health report to get ‘low-profile’ release. The Conservative government is planning a quiet release for a major Health Canada report that warns of the harmful impact of climate change on the health of Canadians, particularly the young, elderly and aboriginals. [News Source]

The killer oceans: What really wiped out the dinosaurs? Scientists now think rising sea-levels were to blame for the demise of the dinosaurs – and they could threaten our survival too. [News Source]

Arctic lakes show warming. Global air and water temperatures are inching up, causing seas to warm and expand, and polar ice to melt. Alaska is warming more quickly than lower latitudes, so scientists at Toolik Lake can observe changes from global warming here first. [News Source]

Unique fossil discovery shows Antarctic was once much warmer. A new fossil discovery is the first of its kind from the whole of the Antarctic continent. [News Source]

At Shore, jellyfish seek rivers, bays. Jellyfish are increasingly making their way into bays and rivers on the Jersey Shore, stinging swimmers and chasing some from recreational spots they had used for decades. [News Source]

French firm cashes in under U.N. warming program. A French chemical maker's experience shows that even a major Western industrial company can reap billions of dollars - more than all the clean-air projects in Africa - from a pollution-trading program aimed at helping poorer countries. [News Source]