Alun Hubbard, a researcher at Aberystwyth University's Center for Glaciology in Wales, recently returned from Greenland's Petermann Glacier. Polar scientists last photographed the glacier, located in the northwest corner of the country, in the summer of 2009. They went back this summer to see how much ice it has lost in just the last two years, and the results were dramatic. "Although I knew what to expect in terms of ice loss from satellite imagery, I was still completely unprepared for the gob-smacking scale of the breakup, which rendered me speechless," Hubbard said in response to the images. Below, you …

Photo: taberandrewBack in 2008, ExxonMobil pledged to quit funding climate change deniers. But according to new documents released through a Greenpeace Freedom of Information Act request, the oil giant was still forking over cash to climate skeptics as recently as last year, to the tune of $76,000 for one scientist skeptical of humankind's role in global warming. This -- and much more -- came to light in a new report about the funding [PDF] of Wei Hock "Willie" Soon, an astrophysicist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Soon has been a favorite among climate skeptics for years, since coauthoring a …

Looks like the past year hasn't been so bad after all for BP, which today reported a 16 percent increase in profits over the first quarter of 2010. The company reported $7.2 billion in net earnings -- compared to $6.2 billion for the first three months of last year. The company sold off a bunch of assets in order to pay for the Gulf oil disaster, which is how they managed to keep the profits up. BP also hasn't been drilling in the deepwater since that whole giant oil catastrophe it unleashed last year. But to still report an increase …

The Gulf oil disaster largely disappeared from the headlines last August, after the well was finally capped and the federal government declared that most of the oil was "gone." For Gulf coast residents, though, the nightmare was just beginning. A year later, business hasn't come back for many in fishing and tourism, and the compensation check from BP still hasn't arrived. In the areas closest to the shores, people are reporting health problems consistent with exposure to chemicals. Dead turtles, dolphins, and fish are still washing ashore. So are tar balls. So while most of the country has moved on, …

BP is gunning to get back to drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. When the Department of Interior issued its first deepwater permit since the Deepwater Horizon disaster, it was for a well that BP owns half of. Earlier this month, company officials also announced that they are seeking an agreement with the U.S. government to resume drilling at their 10 deepwater wells in the Gulf this July, arguing that they will follow tougher safety rules, The New York Times reported earlier this month. This comes even as the government is said to be considering manslaughter charges against the oil giant for the deaths of 11 workers …

What did we learn?The National Oil Spill Commission on Tuesday released a voluminous report on the causes of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and its implications for the future of offshore drilling in the United States. The report, a doorstop of more than 300 pages, contains a long list of advice for the oil industry and federal regulators about how to avert a future catastrophe. But many of the commission's recommendations require action from Congress -- and given the current political climate, those changes might be hard to make for at least the next two years. "The industry fought measures in …

In the wake of the tragic shootings in Tucson on Saturday, there has been a lot of talk about the influence of heated -- and at times, violent -- political rhetoric, which has seemingly escalated in recent years. Sarah Palin has gotten plenty of attention for her midterms target map (replete with bulls-eyes) of congressional districts, including Arizona's Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D), who was critically injured in the shooting. But it's worth noting some of the other examples of extreme rhetoric -- notably Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) calling on constituents to get "armed and dangerous" over the climate bill. …

It's not perfect, and it's not binding, but international climate negotiators have struck a deal. The final hours in Cancun were a world of difference from the closing night of the Copenhagen climate talks. Last year's summit closed with drama, confusion, and plenty of unhappy delegations, but the Mexico conference came to an end with multiple standing ovations for the host country and widespread concurrence among countries to approve the text of an agreement. It was after 3:00 a.m. when the parties adopted the agreement -- or two agreements, really: one that delays a decision on the future of the …

There are quite a few numbers tossed around at climate negotiations. Should world leaders agree to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F) in the next decade, or 1.5 (2.7 F)? How many gigatons of carbon can the world cut in 10 years? Should they shoot for reducing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, or can the world deal with 450 parts per million? The numbers can be daunting, and discussions of them can get, well, heated. But they often avoid the reality that we're already on the path to …

Photo: Pietro IzzoThe hope -- and hype -- surrounding the climate negotiations in Copenhagen last December was hard to miss. Even though the possibility of securing a new global climate pact was scaled back significantly in the weeks ahead of the summit, the level of engagement was unprecedented. President Obama and more than 60 other heads of state from around the world flew in for the brutal final days of the summit, and in the closing hours a deal of sorts was finally hashed out. But a year later, there's almost no build-up to the sixteenth Conference of the Parties, …