ITOTD

You have to give President Obama credit for his sheer tenacity in attempting to move his proposed goals forward despite ever-surfacing obstacles, and it seems tackling climate change is no exception.

The administration has just announced plans for creating a new federal agency, the Climate Service, to study and report on the changing climate. The new agency will be run by Thomas Karl, director of the current National Climatic Data Center, and will work in conjunction National Weather Service and National Ocean Service, both part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. More

When you picture the Winter Olympics I'm guessing that images of powdery ski slopes, icy luge tracks and speedy curling brooms immediately spring to mind. (Okay, maybe not the brooms.) Now try to imagine all that without the snow and ice part. Doesn't seem nearly as exciting, does it?

The Olympics are set to begin in just over a week, but athletes who arrived yesterday to begin on-site training were greeted by the unwelcome sight of melting snow on Cypress Mountain due to unseasonably warm temperatures. Organizers have been forced to transport snow to the venue from over 90 miles away, which in addition to sounding like a Bill Cosby stand-up routine, doesn't fit too well with the green efforts for this years Olympics. The higher temperatures have been attributed to the warming effects of El Niño, and while the El Niño-climate change connection is still up for debate, I'm sure the organizers are glad that have at least taken steps to reduce the carbon footprint of the games. More

When President Obama urged Senate Democrats to not "play it safe" with pending legislation, I'm guessing he probably didn't mean for fellow party members in the House to take a stand against policies that the administration actually supports. It seems two Democrats from the House were joined by a Republican yesterday in announcing that they are sponsoring a bill to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases.

As concerns grow that the cap-and-trade bill could sputter to a standstill in Congress, there's been hope that the EPA could use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, providing an alternative means of fighting climate change and protecting human health.   More

Maybe it's because I live in Los Angeles, where much of the wetlands have been covered in concrete, but for some reason, I didn't get the memo that today is World Wetlands Day 2010.

Unlike beaches, mountains and forests—popular vacation spots that most often spring to mind at the mention of "wilderness conservation"—marshes probably seem like alien planets to most people and don't receive nearly as much widespread attention for protection. Foreign as they may seem to us, wetlands are considered to be the most biologically diverse ecosystem, providing vital flood control protection, natural water filtration, and a critical transition between other, often starkly different, ecosystems.

They're also incredibly fragile and under serious threat, not only from pollution and short-sighted draining projects, but especially from climate change. Which is why the slogan for this years World Wetlands Day is 'Caring for Wetlands: an Answer to Climate Change': More

The outlook for climate legislation has looked rather dreary lately, especially for the proposed cap-and-trade system. So the NRDC called upon some serious star power to brighten up the picture and help mobilize young people to demand that their senators get serious about the climate bill.

The new PSA video, part of the This Is Our Moment campaign, features Leonardo DiCaprio, Edward Norton, Justin Long, Emmy Rossum, Forest Whitaker, Jason Bateman, Chace Crawford, Felicity Huffman, and Cornell West. I know celebrities get a lot of flack for political endorsements, but I really respect these folks for using their public persona to promote such critical legislation. We can't afford to return to our pre-Obama state of apathy and cynicism, and I'm encouraged by the NRDC's spirit of optimism: More

The latest voice to demand action to combat climate change is not likely to be invited to COP 16 or go on a speaking tour with Al Gore. Nor are they likely to be invited anywhere for that matter, except prison, I suppose.

It seems that Osama Bin Laden has called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for climate change, according to a new audiotape released by Al Jazeera. I'm hesitant to even give a mad man any more air-time, but I will include the one quotation I think is worth considering, barring, of course, the motivations that Bin Laden has in saying them: More

Environmental battles tend to be fought between those wishing to clean up the planet and those who stand to profit from further degradation of natural resources. That's not the case, however, in Chicago, where it seems that efforts to clean up the Chicago River are being thwarted by the very agency assigned to protect the water. They argue that the energy needed for the treatment process would increase their carbon footprint and contribute to climate change. According to MNN: More

This has been a confusing, and perhaps even misleading, week of news for climate change, when seemingly good news distracted us from more foreboding events that lurk down the road. Some glaciers may not be melting as quickly as we thought, but they still are disappearing. Squirrels may be adapting well to a warming planet, but penguins are under serious threat from climate change.  And NASA may have flying suits for us, but they've also told us that this past decade was the warmest on record.

And now, to add to the confusion, two new studies released this week are telling us that while the frequency of Atlantic hurricanes may decrease over the next century, those storms that do strike are very likely to be much stronger and more destructive. More

Some days you've got to take the good news with the bad. So, while we're pretty excited about NASA's announcement of their designs for an electric Personal Flying Suit, we're not pleased to learn that this past decade was the warmest on record, according to new surface temperature figures also released yesterday by NASA. And I'm guessing that the price tag on those suits is going to be pretty hefty, so it's doubtful that most people living in regions where climate change threatens to make conditions unlivable won't be able to order one up.  In which case I'd say we need to get down to business on curbing emissions, shifting to clean energy and preparing for a changing landscape. 

And for those readers who are still confused by thinking that very cold and snowy winter days might mean that the planet is cooling, I want to take a moment to remind you that we're talking about average temperatures (not minor yearly fluctuations), and that the general scientific consensus is that those averages are on the rise.  According to Dr. James E. Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the world's leading climatologists: “When we average temperature over 5 or 10 years to minimize that variability, we find global warming is continuing unabated.” More

There may be some confusion about exactly when certain glaciers are going to melt away, but what remains clear is that they are disappearing as average global temperatures continue to rise. For those people who still wish to debate the melting trend, perhaps they should take a trip to Switzerland,  where they can peer inside of a melting glacier (and perhaps get lost there). Swiss glaciers have lost over 12% of their volume over the past 10 years, which in some places has created new pathways to previously inaccessible ice caves. 

Judging by the video after the jump of the caves in Morteratsch glacier near Pontresina, Switzerland, these glacier grottos are surely a sight to behold. But they won't likely be around for much longer if we fail to combat the climate crisis—I'm guessing that the possibility of a collapsing roof is probably something they don't want to mention in the travel brochures.  Perhaps we should add the Swiss glaciers to the list of places to visit before they vanish due to climate change. Watch the video below and use the action link to find out what you can do to help solve the climate crisis. More