"The new chairwoman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday that she had asked the agency’s staff to look into the likely effects of climate change on nuclear power reactors."
"Firefighters battled wildfires across the U.S. West on Tuesday, including a massive out-of-control blaze that has destroyed 60 homes and burned more than 20,000 acres between two national forests in Washington state."
"In southern Illinois, farmer Jim Unverfehrt steered his pickup beside a corn crop already lost, then hopped out to search for the soybeans he planted six weeks earlier."
"WASHINGTON -- This probably comes as no surprise: Federal scientists say July was the hottest month ever recorded in the lower 48 states, breaking a record set during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s."
"LINCOLN, Neb. -- Thousands of fish are dying in the Midwest as the hot, dry summer dries up rivers and causes water temperatures to climb in some spots to nearly 100 degrees."
"The relentless, weather-gone-crazy type of heat that has blistered the United States and other parts of the world in recent years is so rare that it can't be anything but man-made global warming, says a new statistical analysis from a top government scientist."
"OKLAHOMA CITY -- More than 64 temperature records were broken in Oklahoma during a scorching July, and additional ones fell across the state Wednesday on the first day of August, according to the National Climatic Data Center."
"The earth is performing an enormous disposal service for the human race. About half of the carbon we are dumping into the atmosphere does not stay there and is instead taken up by the oceans and land. Were this not the case, scientists say, the earth would probably be warming far more rapidly. One of the biggest questions in climate science is: How long will that disposal service last?"
A Senate Environment Committee hearing on climate science Wednesday only exemplified the political deadlock that keeps the United States from basing policy on established science.
"A byproduct of the ongoing heat wave, increased smog, may ultimately bring more and longer-lasting annoyance than the heat itself. The heat wave will eventually break, but Wichita’s smog reports probably already have been damaged to the extent of triggering some mandatory -- and potentially costly and inconvenient -- pollution controls like those in other big cities."
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