Researchers at the State University of New York at Albany have found that early humans developed larger brains as they adapted to colder climates. Most likely, it was the need to find ways to keep warm and manage fluctuating food supplies that drove the evolution of larger brains.

Gallup and Ash suggest that while our understanding of brain evolution remains incomplete, the study provides evidence of the role of climate and migration away from the equator as selective forces in promoting human intelligence, and that the recent trend toward global warming may be reversing a trend that led to brain expansion in humans.

The doors are open to so many remarks here that would get me in hot water. I think I'll just say perhaps my global warming-related headaches are caused by brain shrinkage.

CBS' 60 Minutes went to a Patagonian glacier and to Antarctica to view "the fastest warming place on Earth." The story aired on their broadcast last night. Video and text of the piece are available at the CBSNews site, along with a photo essay, and some added features like Scott Pelley's reporter's notebook and interactives on global warming and Antarctica.

Some interesting facts here on how many people in the world get their drinking water from glacial runoff - 1.5 billion - and how quickly the continued retreat of glaciers could result in water shortages, especially in South America, China and India.

The glacier Pelley and the 60 Minutes crew visited in Patagonia has retreated 9 miles in the past 100 years. When they visited the top of the glacier, they found it was blackened by earth and volcanic ash. The scientist in me wants to know how long it's been blackened. That's going to play a huge role in the speed of melting, as white ice/snow reflect sunlight, while a black surface absorbs sunlight. It seems to me to be obvious there are factors other than human-induced warming at play in the retreat of this glacier. Although I don't have verification of this, it seems clear that drought is playing some role in the glacier's retreat. Fresh snow would cover that black surface and "feed" the glacier, slowing it's retreat. I've got an email in to AccuWeather.com's international expert Jim Andrews - if he has any information to share about the region, I'll include it in the comments here.

It's been so long since the lawyers argued Mass. v. EPA before the Supreme Court that even I had almost forgotten about it. There had been speculation that the court would throw the case out. But now there's a decision, and by a 5-4 vote, the Massachusetts has won - the court says the Clean Air Act gives the EPA the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars.

Jesse Ferrell and I had some sort of strange psychic moment yesterday. Seems we both decided at the same time to watch the British TV documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, which aired in Britain back on March 8. Jesse wrote about it in the AccuWeather.com Community Blog.

Only a trailer for the program is available at the Channel 4 site. The whole thing has popped up here and there - the links appear to be ephemeral, but you can try searching for it on Google Video or YouTube.

So what was my opinion? It was interesting. Some of the information presented was familiar to me, some of it was new. Not surprisingly, it prompted quick and resounding condemnation from the other side - and in one case from one of the scientists who appeared in the program. Carl Wunsch, a professor of physical oceanography at MIT, believes the filmmakers mislead him about their goals and used his words out of context. Dr. Wunsch's response to the film is very thoughtful and worth reading. UK publication The Independent documents some of the questionable evidence used in the film. A couple of the climate modelers who run RealClimate didn't pull any punches with their comments. I'd be interested to know the reactions of any of the other scientists featured in the program to the finished product.

I don't think all the questions regarding climate change have been answered, but I don't think dueling documentaries are going to answer any of those questions and I don't know that they merit much attention. At the end of the day, it comes down to the science, not who makes the most persuasive argument.

Whew....I started my forecasting shift before the sun rose this morning, and it's now mid-afternoon. Y'all have a good day - I'm hitting the highway. I've got some ideas for the blog for tomorrow - hopefully they'll flow more smoothly than this entry.

The European Union's carbon trading scheme hasn't netted very good results so far - greenhouse gas emissions were up by up to 30 million tonnes last year.

Why the failure? Critics and officials alike say too many permits were sold, allowing emitters to buy them cheaply and keep on producing greenhouse gases.

Carbon trading remains one of the most practical solutions for reducing GHG emissions, but this news is proof that planners need to take a lot of care in determining the number of permits available, as the market will then drive the cost of acquiring carbon permits.

It's been interesting to read the comments regarding Mass v. EPA - many people seem to assume that the Supreme Court ruling is the equivalent of regulation by the EPA. This is not the case. The ruling stated that if the EPA doesn't regulate carbon dioxide, it must articulate the reason it is not going to do so. This puts pressure on the EPA, as they can't continue to use the arguments they've used thus far, but it doesn't necessarily force action. The decision is available online, though I have to say I have not managed to get through it all yet, and of course, I am not a lawyer.

Those interested in digging into the decision and discussion of what it will mean can find a lot of good information at the Supreme Court blog. The Volokh Conspiracy has similar content with comments. For another non-legal take on the ruling, you can read Roger Pielke, Jr.'s Prometheus entry. I also found an article from the freep - the Detroit Free Press - interesting, as it comes straight from the home of U.S. automakers. At the end of the article, the author finds a positive spin for automakers:

But one section of Monday's decision could bolster the auto industry's case. In finding that Massachusetts had the right to bring its case, Stevens wrote that "in some circumstances the exercise of its police powers to reduce in-state motor-vehicle emissions might well be preempted" by federal law.

Automakers could argue that, if the EPA has the responsibility to regulate greenhouse gases, states don't.

The second of 4 IPCC reports is due out tomorrow morning, but apparently delegates are struggling with the wording of the 21-page Summary for Policymakers and some are worried they will miss the deadline.

The full report - which was made available to the Associated Press last week, but which us regular people have to wait for, is 1572 pages. The report describes the effects of global warming, including "key vulnerabilities" charts which some have describes as a "highway to extinction."

In news that came as absolutely no surprise to me, shifting the start of Daylight Savings Time forward to March 11th this year appears to have had little impact on power usage.

What a shock! People used lights in the morning while they were getting ready for work and school rather than in the evening when they were home from work and school! Lighting isn't even a major part in residential electric use, with appliances consuming more of the juice. I'm not really among those who had hassles with software patches to make some electronic devices recognize the changed time, but I can imagine the corporations who had to develop those new codes are probably unhappy with the news that their work didn't even result in any energy savings.

This satellite image of Lake Superior was taken in mid-March, 2003, and shows the lake nearly covered in ice, which was up to two feet thick in some areas. Temperatures at Marquette, Michigan averaged almost 7 degrees below normal in February of 2003. For comparison's sake, February of this year in Marquette averaged 4.3 degrees below normal. Lake Superior freezes over completely about once every 20 years. The rest of the time, the lake's size and depth keep some areas ice-free.

A study published by the American Geophysical Union on March 23 reports that the lake is warming even faster than the climate around it due to reduced ice cover. Summer surface temperatures are up by about 4.5 degrees since 1979. Daily lake temperature records have been kept at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan for 102 years.

Wait! If the lake is warming so fast, how come it was almost completely frozen over in 2003? Same reason we may be experiencing global warming even if it's unseasonably cold outside your window this holiday weekend - one is weather, a short-term, chaotic phenomena. The other is climate - stable and non chaotic. As a friend of mine has said, if you go outside and you say, "this is not how it's supposed to be," then you know the difference between weather and climate.

The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is in the midst of issuing it's 4th Assessment report, the first since 2001. The report will be issued in four volumes, three produced by three working groups, and the fourth a "synthesis" report. Working Group I, who released their Summary for Policymakers back in February, assesses the scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change. Working Group II, whose Summary for Policymakers was released today, assesses the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, consequences of climate change and options for adapting to it. Working Group III assesses options for limited greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating climate change; their report is due in May.

So today's report focuses on the impacts of climate change, who and what is vulnerable to climate change and how we can adapt to climate change. I'd encourage people to at least take a look at the summary - it must be yeoman's work to try to cull 1500+ pages of work into a 23 page summary. I'm hesitant to try to summarize it even further here, but I'll hit a few of the highlights.

Warming is already having an impact on agriculture, human health and human activities. Some impacts are positive, some negative. Looking into the future, the negative impacts of warming are expected to outweight the positive impacts, though in the short term there will continue to be some positive impacts from warming. Hardest hit ecologically will be those species with limited options for migration - those in polar regions and in tropical highlands. Coastal wetlands are at risk.

In the short term, warming may have some positive impact, as deaths from cold exposure are reduced, but heat waves, water shortages, malnutrition, disease and higher levels of ground level ozone will produce health problems which outweigh the positive impacts.

The summary then breaks the world down into regions - Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Europe, Latin America, North America, Polar regions and Small Islands - and that surprised me. Global climate models are not particularly good at making regional forecasts, and the climate is the base upon which all of the impact predictions are made.

After a brief look into possible impacts beyond the next century, the report turns to response to climate change. Since Working Group III has responsibility for the topic of reducing greenhouse gases and mitigating climate change, this report sticks to adaptation strategies. Through all of the impacts and adaptation strategies it's clear that some of the hardest hit areas of the world will be the poorest areas.

More reaction to this portion of the IPCC's 4th Assessment Report can be found at CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times, among many other news sources.

Anyone who has followed the issue of global warming for a significant period of time already knows that Dr. William Gray, emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University and most likely the world's most famous hurricane season forecaster, is skeptical of global warming. To say the least. Following this year's National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, Gray was questioned about Al Gore and global warming. Gray responded with what seems to be his typical bluntness.

A few more articles about Gray's skepticism can be found at The Denver Post, Discover Magazine, and The Washington Post.

The past couple of episodes of Headline: Earth have centered around Katie's interview with Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.). This week, Katie brings you part one of her interview with Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) along with some global warming headlines.

Between computer issues and a lot of reader comments, I've had a busy day and I haven't even posted anything new here. Some of the comments that have been interesting to me are those about more efficient buildings, from yesterday's Headline: Earth post. A lot of energy is consumed in the construction of buildings, but in most cases, the energy used in the building over it's lifetime - for heating, cooling, running appliances, etc. - far outweigh the energy consumed in construction. The U.N. Environment Programme has issued a new report today on how Buildings Can Play a Key Role in Combating Climate Change. The full report is also available online.

This is a very complicated issue, since buildings and their requirements vary sharply between the developed and undeveloped world and between climate zones. The report discusses not only ways to build buildings which will use less energy, through things like improved insulation, sunshades in hot and tropical areas, use of energy efficient appliances and use of energy efficient lighting, but also talks about the use of building materials which require less energy to produce - what they call lower "embodied" energy.

According to some estimates, nearly three times the amount of greenhouse gases scheduled to be reduced under the Kyoto Protocol could be reduced by the building sector worldwide. The report focuses mostly on new construction, but also touches on savings possible due to refurbishment of current structures. Any remodeling comes with a price, of course, which is often a stumbling block. The report suggests adding efficiency while making other repairs - adding insulation when repairing a roof, for example.

Longtime readers of this blog may remember a post from mid-December about trees, and the importance of their physical location in terms of whether they slowed global warming or enhanced it. I had a little feeling of deja vu this morning when I opened an article published yesterday at Scientific American.com. This new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found similar results.

Forests in tropical regions serve as carbon sinks, forests in the mid-latitudes are nearly carbon-neutral, and boreal forests, the zone pictured here in dark green in an image from NASA, actually contribute to global warming.

How is that possible? It's mostly due to albedo, that measure of the reflectivity of the Earth's surface. Tropical trees, growing in very wet soil, produce by a process called evotranspiration a layer of clouds which reflect sunlight. That reduction in solar input combined with the carbon storage in the trees has an overall ne