Climate Change

"A public relations firm with ties to the automobile industry has launched ads suggesting that a proposed California rule to cut carbon dioxide exhaust could cause more people to die in traffic accidents," the Los Angeles Times reports.

In Alaska, Mayor Edith Vorderstrasse told federal officials, "Our weather pattern is really different. It's not consistent like it used to be." The General Accounting Office found that 184 of 213 Native Alaskan villages face flooding and erosion problems, in what may be the first major sign of U.S. climate change. In London, the British government is hosting a week-long visit by U.S.

Professor Sir David King, the British government's chief scientist, warned that Antarctica could become the world's only habitable place by the year 2100. King said that the last time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were as high as they are now was 60 million years ago, during a period of rapid global warming, when "no ice was left on Earth.

Ivan Rogers, the principal private secretary to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, "tried to muzzle the Government's top scientific adviser after he warned that global warming was a more serious threat than international terrorism," report Steve Connor and Andrew Grice. In a leaked memo, Rogers ordered Sir David King - a scientist at Cambridge University - to decline any interview requests from British and American newspapers and BBC Radio.