President Obama directed the EPA to review the Bush administration's denial of a waiver request by California to cut global warming pollution from automobiles. The president also ordered the Transportation Department to enact short-term rules on how automakers can improve the fuel efficiency of their new models.

Politically, what President Obama said was at least as important as what he signed.

The President's powerful statement affirming his commitment to moving aggressively to cut global warming emissions and unleash America's clean energy future laid out clear goals for action in the coming weeks and months.

The President's plan—including the next step of a cap on carbon pollution—means more new jobs, a rebirth for the American auto industry, and less global warming pollution.

If today's announcement is the start of a comprehensive policy like that, I'd say that's pretty darn good for the first week in office.

Ozone Hole Weakens Oceanic Carbon Sink. By Anna Barnett, Nature, December 9, 2008. "The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica may be impairing the Southern Ocean's ability to mop up carbon dioxide from Earth's atmosphere, according to work presented at a meeting in France today. Earth's oceans are the largest sink of carbon dioxide, with the Southern Ocean accounting for more than 40% of the annual oceanic uptake of the greenhouse gas... Recent measurements have... shown that the Southern Ocean's surface waters have higher carbon levels than expected, which also makes them more acidic. As a result, the amount of CO2 that the ocean absorbs each year has also flattened out... The signal from ozone, the researchers found, drove a drop in Southern Ocean surface pH of 0.01 units from 1994 to 2004 -- half the total pH decline in that period, and one-tenth of the change since the pre-industrial era

Check out this interactive global warming globe! Just click and zoom to see what's been happening to our planet.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19463513/?GT1=43001

Go here to read this great article. Green jobs are the way to turn the economy around and Barack and Hillary talked about and know!!!! McCain has changed his tune about Green House Gas Emissions. Vote for Barack!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/van-jones/jumpstart-the-economy-we_b_129229.html

Go to: http://current.com/viewpoints

And read and share webcam viewpoints and many topics

In Greenland, Potatoes Thrive While Seal Hunting Wanes. By Colin Woodard. The Christian Science Monitor, October 1, 2007. "In Qassiarsuk, a village of 56 people in southern Greenland, history has come full circle. It was here, in about 985, that Erik the Red, leader of a medieval Norse colony, built his farm and raised sheep, cattle, and barley. But about 300 years later, the climate changed. The Norse's agrarian lifestyle began to unravel when the Little Ice Age arrived, dooming the colony. Today the hillside overlooking Erik's Fjord is lush and green again. A crop of young potatoes and radishes await harvesting. The plot is surrounded by tall grass -- food for thousands of sheep... In a nearby village, residents have started growing broccoli. 'Spring is coming many weeks earlier now, and the last five winters have been very short and rainy,' says Tommy Maro, mayor of Qaqortaq, the region's principal town... Perhaps nowhere else in the world are the effects of climate change as obvious as in Greenland, where warming temperatures have brought a mixed blessing... As winter sea ice disappears, the traditional means that the indigenous Inuit people have developed to survive in the Arctic -- sled dog mushing, seal hunting, ice-hole fishing -- are rapidly becoming obsolete. Farming, an occupation all but unheard of a century ago, has never looked better... 'If somebody had proposed potatoes for the front page 15 years ago, everyone would have thought it was a hilarious joke,' says Nuuk native Minik Rosing, one of Greenland's most renowned scientists."

Melting Ice Cap Brings Diamond Hunters and Hopes of Independence to Greenland. By Paul Brown, The Guardian Unlimited, October 5, 2007. "Helicopters have been hard to hire in Greenland this summer. In most countries that would not be a big problem, but for the locals on the world's biggest island - where there are no road networks and sparse settlements are often 100 miles apart - it can make life tricky. The scarcity has been caused by a diamond rush with prospectors, mostly from North America, believing they can strike it rich. As the ice cap recedes due to rising temperatures, rock covered for centuries could produce spectacular finds. The interest in the Greenland tundra was sparked partly by the announcement this year of the discovery of a 2.4-carat diamond at Garnet lake in west Greenland, the largest of 236 diamonds found in a trial dig in the area by Hudson Resources of Vancouver... Greenland has other potential riches too. Gold has been discovered and is already being mined, although so far at a loss, and there are deposits of other minerals such as zinc, that could be exploited. Oil giants are negotiating licences to explore blocks of the coastline covering thousands of square miles. The dash for minerals is fuelling another debate in Greenland: whether the country should go for independence from Denmark. With its 56,000 population scattered over an area almost the size of Europe, Greenland is heavily dependent on a subsidy from Denmark for survival. The island has internal self-government but Denmark is responsible for foreign policy. Aleqa Hammond, the foreign minister in Greenland's home-rule government, hopes that the oil and mineral companies moving in will create sufficient wealth for her country to break from colonial rule."