Clinton to attend Rio+20 conference

SAN FRANCISCO, June 13 (Reuters Point Carbon) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead a delegation of officials to the United Nation's sustainability conference in Rio de Janeiro from June 20-22, the State Department said Tuesday, signaling a stronger U.S. commitment to the summit.

The announcement comes after U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in April called on U.S. President Barack Obama to attend the conference and to take a more active role in global efforts to curb climate change.

Environmental NGOs had hoped Obama would participate to lend weight to the conference.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson will serve as alternate head of the U.S. delegation with special envoy on climate change Todd Stern as chief negotiator

Over 130 heads of state and government have confirmed their attendance at the Rio+20 summit, which Ban has said will be one of the biggest conferences in U.N. history.

Ban and others believe the outcome of the conference will serve as the building blocks for a future international climate deal.

Rio+20 will aim to agree non-binding sustainable development goals in areas such as food security, water and energy.

However, expectations to the summit are low as many governments have played down potential outcomes of the meeting and are focusing instead on solving economic difficulties.

(Reporting by Rory Carroll)



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The Fastest-Warming US State Is .

Some U.S. states are feeling the heat of climate change more than others, finds a new analysis of temperature increases over the past 100 years.

The state that saw the highest temperature increase was Rhode Island, followed by Massachusetts, New Jersey, Arizona and Maine.

Scientists from Climate Central, a research and public outreach organization, suggest natural climate variability along with atmospheric aerosols (that block incoming solar radiation) both play roles in the findings.

For each state in the continental U.S., scientists from Climate Central calculated averages of the daily high and low temperatures from National Climatic Data Center's U.S. Historical Climatology Network of weather stations. Then, they determined how much the average daily temperatures changed each decade over the past 100 years.

The top 10 fastest-warming states in descending order:

• Rhode Island
• Massachusetts
• New Jersey
• Arizona
• Maine
• Connecticut
• Michigan
• Utah
• Minnesota
• Colorado

The 10 slowest-warming states:

• Alabama
• Georgia
• Arkansas
• Kentucky
• Mississippi
• Louisiana
• Tennessee
• South Carolina
• Missouri
• West Virginia

[See full list of U.S. states' warming trends]

Overall, the scientists found that the pace of warming increased dramatically starting in the 1970s, with every state showing a rise in overall temperatures over the past 40 years. This bump coincides with the time when the effect of greenhouse gases began to overwhelm the other natural and human influences on climate at the global and continental scales, the researchers said.

So they split up their data into two groupings: from 1912 to the present and from 1970 to the present.

Over the past 100 years, the top 10 fastest warming states warmed 60 times faster than the bottom 10 states, or 0.26 degrees F (0.14 degrees C) per decade vs. 0.004 F (0.002 C) per decade.

Since 1970, the speed of warming across the lower 48 states more than tripled, increasing from 0.127 F (0.071 C) per decade over the 100-year period to 0.435 F (0.242 C) per decade since 1970. The gap between the fastest- and slowest-warming states also shrunk after 1970, with the top 10 states heating up twice as fast as the bottom 10 states.

Regional trends were also found, with states in the Southwest, Northeast, Upper Midwest and Northern Rockies showing the fastest warming, while states in the Southeast and Midwest regions tended to warm much slower.

This region of slow warming has been termed 'the warming hole' by some; past research showed that aerosol pollutants emitted into the atmosphere over the past 60 years from industrial and power plants in the eastern U.S. would create a cooling pattern similar to this warming hole. Natural climate variability may also play a role in this warming hole, the researchers noted.

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Hot, dry weather putting stress on Iowa crops

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - The continued hot and dry weather is taking a toll on Iowa's crops.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says in Monday's weekly report that while most of the corn and soybeans are in good shape, conditions have declined. More than half of the topsoil and subsoil is dry.

Sixty-seven percent of the corn is rated good to excellent. That's down from 75 percent a week ago. Sixty-two percent of the soybeans are in good to excellent condition, a drop from last week's 71 percent.

The USDA says 66 percent of Iowa's topsoil and 59 percent of the subsoil is very short or short.

The statewide average precipitation for the week was 0.07 inch, below the average of nearly 1.2 inches. The report doesn't include thunderstorms that hit Sunday.



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Climate change will boost number of U.S. West's wildfires

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Climate change will make U.S. western wildfires, like those now raging in parts of Colorado and New Mexico, more frequent over the next 30 years, researchers reported on Tuesday.

More broadly, almost all of North America and most of Europe will see wildfires more often by the year 2100, the scientists wrote in the journal Ecosphere, a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

Using satellite-based fire records and 16 different climate change models, the international team of researchers found that while wildfires will increase in many temperate zones due to rising temperatures, fire risk may actually decrease around the Equator, especially in tropical rainforests, because of increased rainfall.

'In the long run, we found what most fear - increasing fire activity across large areas of the planet,' lead author Max Moritz of the University of California-Berkeley.

'But the speed and extent to which some of these changes may happen is surprising. These abrupt changes in fire patterns not only affects people's livelihoods, but also they add stress to native plants and animals that are already struggling to adapt to habitat loss,' Moritz said in a statement.

Co-author Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University said this study gives a unique global perspective on recent fire patterns and their relationship to climate.

Climate scientists, including those affiliated with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have projected that more frequent wildfires would be likely in a warming world. Other effects of global warming include more severe storms, floods and droughts, these scientists have said.

In a separate study, researchers approved of a wildfire-fighting technique that has sometimes raised questions: the intentional setting of controlled fires to manage risk.

Writing in the June issue of the journal BioScience, researchers at the University of California-Berkeley reviewed two decades of research on the ecological impact of cutting forest wildfire risk, especially in the southern Sierra Mountains where precipitation was at half of normal levels.

The idea behind so-called controlled burns is to reduce the amount of fuel that would feed a wildfire. The new study found that these fuel-reducing fires do not cause substantial harm.

'The few effects we did see were usually transient,' Berkeley's Scott Stephens said in a statement. 'Based upon what we've found, forest managers can increase the scale and pace of necessary fuels treatments without worrying about unintended ecological consequences.'

(Reporting By Deborah Zabarenko; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)



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Weather Channel Anchor Who Says She Was Fired for Military Service Speaks Out in New Interview

The former Weather Channel anchor who says she was fired over her status as an Air Force reserve officer gave an extensive interview to radio host Joe "Pags" Pagliarulo on Monday, laying out her lawsuit against the network.

As The Blaze previously reported, Nicole Mitchell is suing the Weather Channel and its parent companies for violating her rights under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994, claiming her contract wasn't renewed because management didn't want to contend with the time she took off military duties.

In one instance, she said she was reprimanded for choosing her weekend Air Force commitment over a hair appointment. In another, she said she was told she had to first clear any military duties with her superiors.

"All they've ever said is business decision, business decision," Mitchell told Pagliarulo, a frequent fill-in host for Glenn Beck. "But when you look at it in the context of being harassed up to that point.it's just like an employer that discriminates over anything else."

She continued, "If you had a minority that was being harassed, harassed, harassed and then all of a sudden was let go, oh we don't have a reason why, it was just a business reason, you know, you would look at that history and say, well if that's the only thing that the employer ever had to complain about, this is what it is."

Mitchell, who holds the rank of captain, said there were never any major issues until the Weather Channel was sold in 2008 to NBC Universal and private equity firms Bain Capital and the Blackstone Group.

"We'd had some scheduling challenges from time to time, but I never felt like my job was in peril or I'd never had statements like, 'This impacts everyone' - basically that my military service was inconvenient to them," she said.

Mitchell said she didn't initially want to go public with the lawsuit.

"If you're the person that files the lawsuit, no matter how justified it is, there's a certain stigma attached to that," she said. But ultimately, "we really wanted to raise awareness of how widespread this problem is. There's a lot of great employers, but the ones that aren't doing the right thing really make it miserable for people who are already sacrificing a lot."

Listen to the full interview below:

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Warm, dry weather puts stress on Neb. crops

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - The recent warm, dry weather is putting stress on Nebraska's crops.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says it lowered crop condition ratings statewide because of the lack of moisture. Farmers are responding by turning on irrigation systems where they're available.

Temperatures across Nebraska were about 4 degrees above normal on average last week.

About 70 percent of Nebraska's corn crop is in good or excellent shape. That's below the average of 78 percent good or excellent.

But the heat has helped the soybean crop develop quickly. About 97 percent of the soybeans have emerged, up from the average of 79 percent. About 64 percent of the soybean crop is in good or excellent shape.

The wheat harvest has begun in southeast Nebraska and should quickly move west across the state.



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New flood warnings in sodden south

Severe weather warnings were issued Monday for waterlogged southern England including London as hundreds of Welsh residents evacuated in weekend flooding began a muddy clean-up.

Issuing an amber alert meaning 'be prepared', the Met Office warned people along the south coast and north as far as the capital to be ready for flooding from surface water and rivers, as well as 'very difficult' driving conditions.

'Rain, heavy at times, will persist well into Monday, before gradually easing away westwards during the afternoon. Further thundery downpours are possible in the southeast later,' the government forecasters said.

The Environment Agency said some parts of the affected area, including Littlehampton in West Sussex, had been drenched in three to five centimetres (1.2 to two inches) of rain overnight.

'The public is strongly advised to stay away from swollen rivers and not to drive through floodwater,' the agency said.

Hundreds of residents were meanwhile returning to homes and caravans in the coastal Welsh county of Ceredigion after they were flooded with up to 1.5 metres of water, facing the prospect of a watery cleanup.

Welsh first minister Carwyn Jones said Sunday he was shocked by the damage after over eight centimetres of rain fell in 24 hours to 7am Saturday.

'Having spent a number of years living and studying in Aberystwyth, I was deeply shocked to see the extent of the damage caused by the flooding in an area I know so well,' he said.

At the peak of the flooding, 1,000 people had been evacuated from their homes, he said.

The village of Pennal, south Wales, was meanwhile returning to normal after hundreds of residents were taken to temporary refuges after breached dam in a derelict quarry. A controlled release of water was able to avert bigger flooding.



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