Ideology trumps rationality. Most conservatives cannot abide the solution to global warming - strong government regulations and a government-led effort to accelerate clean-energy technologies in the market.

Would PBS go so far as to give air time to an even more extreme kind of disinformer, a Holocaust denier?

If the politics of inaction and delay that have triumphed in this country continues for another decade, then Planetary Purgatory in the likely future facing our country before midcentury - probably in your own lifetime.

Protecting dozens of major coastal cities from future flooding will be challenging enough-rebuilding major coastal cities destroyed by super-hurricanes will be an almost impossible task.

Hurricane seasons with four or more super-hurricanes, those with sustained wind speeds of 131 mph or more will soon become the norm.

The world beyond 450 ppm atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the world that crosses carbon cycle tipping points that quickly take us to 1000 ppm, is a world not merely of endless regional resource wars around the globe. It is a world with dozens of Darfurs. It is a world of a hundred Katrinas, of countless environmental refugees

By the end of the third decade of this century, all of American life - politics, international relations, our homes, our jobs, our industries, the kind of cars we drive - will be forever transformed by the climate and energy challenge.