Weather.com - Nick Wiltgen, 4/03/13

Roughly three of every eight registered voters in the U.S. believes that "global warming is a hoax," according to a national poll released Tuesday by the firm Public Policy Polling.

The automated telephone poll asked 1,247 American registered voters their beliefs on a wide range of topics broadly categorized as "conspiracy theories" in the firm's press release.

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Weather.com - 4/02/13, AP

NEW ORLEANS — Continuing deaths of dolphins and sea turtles are a sign that the Gulf of Mexico is still feeling effects from the 2010 spill that spewed 200 million gallons of oil from a well a mile below the surface, a prominent environmental group said Tuesday.

The deaths — especially in dolphins, which are at the top of the food chain — are "a strong indication that there is something amiss with the Gulf ecosystem," said National Wildlife Federation senior scientist Doug Inkley.

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The Extinction Protocol, 1/2/13

Wunderground.com- 3/29/13, Angela Fritz

Satellite image of the large fracture in Arctic sea ice in the Beaufort Sea (north of Alaska). Image from NASA, acquired February 23, 2013.

New images of 2013's Arctic sea ice mega-fracture have been posted on NASA's website. Sea ice fractures are not uncommon, though, according to NASA, the extent of this one is. Two things have combined this year to create the mega-fracture:

1) Arctic sea ice is not what it used to be. It is becoming thin and fragile, whereas thick, multi-year ice (ice that is around for many years and is much more stable) has declined. Arctic sea ice extent has plummeted since 1979, and reached an all-time low in September 2012. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, through 2013, February sea ice extent has declined at a rate of 2.9% per decade compared to the long-term average. This represents an overall reduction of more than 606,000 square miles from 1979 to 2013, which is equivalent to more than twice the area of the state of Texas. Scientific consensus points to global warming from fossil fuel emissions as the culprit of the Arctic's decline.

Huffington Post - 3/26/13

From Mother Nature Network's John Platt:

Spring has sprung, and allergy season won't be far behind. But if you think last year's allergies were bad, just wait until a few years from now when climate change will cause pollen counts to rise dramatically. According to research by allergist Leonard Bielory, pollen counts will average 21,735 grains of pollen per cubic meter in the year 2040. The average in the year 2000 was just 8,455.