Is it now possible to blame extreme weather on global warming? | Leo Hickman Wildfires, heatwaves and storms witnessed in the US are 'what global warming looks like', say climate scientists Whenever an episode of extreme weather – heatwave, flood, drought, etc – hits the headlines, someone somewhere is sure to point the finger of blame at human-induced climate change. Such claims are normally slapped down with the much-aired mantra: "You cannot blame a single episode of ... [News Source]

How to bet on climate change Pascal's Wager is more useful for deciding which way to go on climate change than on, say, religion If a trusted expert advised you to do something or else face grave consequences, I imagine you'd probably listen. If that advice was backed up by hard evidence then it should be a done deal. But in the case of global warming, some people just don't want to listen . The anti-science movement ... [News Source]

Poll Shows Waning Interest in Obama's Next Term Climate Change Plans President Barack Obama has said that the most important policy for him to address if given a second term in office is climate change. A new Washington Post/Stanford University poll shows a dramatic drop, though, in concern over global warming. [News Source]

Fears of fires take fireworks out of July 4th celebrations. From Colorado to Indiana, Wyoming to Missouri, dozens of cities and towns have decided to scrap their fireworks displays, driven by parched conditions, vicious wildfires and sometimes a simple hunch that putting on a show this year might leave too much to Mother Nature’s mood. [News Source]

Society not ready for heat waves coming with climate change. U.S. health officials are better prepared for heat waves than they used to be, but they have more to do in the face of climate change, experts say. [News Source]

North Carolina lawmakers reject sea-level rise predictions. Lawmakers in North Carolina, which has a long Atlantic Ocean coastline and vast areas of low-lying land, voted on Tuesday to ignore studies predicting a rapid rise in sea level due to climate change, and postpone planning for the consequences. [News Source]

Nine percent of today’s warming caused by pre-industrial people. Humans started causing climate change long before the Industrial Revolution and the beginning of the fossil fuel era. A new study shows that the echoes of the earliest human-caused carbon emissions are still present in our atmosphere. [News Source]

Sea level rise planning clause dumped. Thousands of coastal property owners have been given relief after their council dumped a controversial clause on planning documents which labelled their homes as in danger of sea level rise. [News Source]

Bavarian glaciers could disappear in 30 years. The high-altitude landscape of the Bavarian Alps is prized by mountain sports lovers around the world, but temperatures in the region are rising at an above-average rate, which will likely melt most of the glaciers there within the next 20 to 30 years, Bavaria's environment minister has warned. [News Source]

GE halts work on the U.S.’s biggest solar factory to return to the lab. Faced with plummeting prices for photovoltaic modules, General Electric has stopped work on what was to be the U.S.'s largest solar factory to return to the lab to retool the cadmium-telluride thin-film technology it aims to sell to developers of solar power plants. [News Source]

Developing world caused more climate change before Industrial Revolution. Mankind was causing climate change long before the combustion engine was even invented, according to a new study that suggests developing countries like China and India have contributed more to global warming than previously thought. [News Source]