The responsibility of the scientist or journalist is to convey the context. If you're talking about the Arctic Sea ice, you have to embrace the reality that there's a huge number of other things that influence that on a year-to-year basis.

Every time someone reads a story about the politics poisoning the global warming stuff it makes it feel like a political story, meaning it's Us and Them, instead of what it is: this profound challenge we face given our energy norms right now, the fuels of convenience toward something new. No matter what the politics are, it's still an enormous transformation that has to take place.

You never know you're in a bubble until it pops.

The responsibility of the scientist or journalist is to convey the context. If you're talking about the Arctic Sea ice, you have to embrace the reality that there's a huge number of other things that influence that on a year-to-year basis.

Scientists are also unnerved by the summer's implications for the future...proof that human activities are propelling a slide toward climate calamity...humans may have tipped the balance...a particularly harsh jolt to polar bears.

The survey of more than 100 waterways downstream from treatment plants and animal feedlots in 30 states found minute amounts of dozens of antibiotics, hormones, pain relievers, cough suppressants, disinfectants and other products. It is not known whether they are harmful to plants, animals or people. The findings were released yesterday on the Web site of the United States Geological Survey, which conducted the research, and in an online journal, Environmental Science and Technology.

Probably the single-most concrete and substantive thing an American, young American, could do to lower our carbon footprint is not turning off the lights or driving a Prius, it's having fewer kids...we'll soon see a market in baby-avoidance carbon credits similar to efforts to sell CO2 credits for avoiding deforestation.