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Unilateral sanctions against major polluters by countries applying stricter environmental standards would create serious political problems, the chief U.N. climate scientist warned Wednesday.

The embarrassing truth is that the weak correlation between earth's temperatures and human-emitted greenhouse gases is rapidly worsening. The CO2 correlation with earth's thermometer record since 1860 is less than 22 percent. The correlation between earth temperatures and sunspots is 79 percent and strengthening. Singer and Avery have published extensively on the evidence of the moderate, natural 1,500-year climate cycle, which was discovered in the Greenland ice cores in 1984, and a few years later in the Vostok Antarctic glacier core — at the opposite end of the earth.

The disastrous hurricanes of recent years have become the poster children of global warming. But Roger A. Pielke Jr., an environmental policy expert at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wondered whether the billions of dollars of damage was caused by more intense storms or more coastal development. After analyzing decades of hurricane data, Pielke concluded that rising levels of carbon dioxide had little to do with hurricane damage. Rather, it boiled down to a simple equation: Build more, lose more.

In Ottawa, the Liberals appear to be leaning toward a carbon tax plan. As the Liberal economic strategist, M.P. John Mc-Callum would know that Canada is in no position to impose a carbon tax in isolation. It would impose a burden on Canadian industries and hit the country's competitiveness.

ABC’s harmlessly named “profile” segment March 23 was, in essence, an attempt to discredit and bury the individual profiled – not too surprising, however, because he is a scientist who refuses to support wildly hyped global warming predictions.

The bad news is that gasoline prices are at record levels. The worse news is that the pain at the pump will likely increase in the months ahead, thanks in part to our own government.

All was going green last year in the Maryland legislature, with environmentalists winning easy approval of many of their long-awaited priorities. But the story is different this year. A plan to address global warming by slashing carbon emissions has been weakened. Tougher rules governing waterside development have been modified. And a bill to postpone a deadline for requiring lower phosphates in dishwashing detergent is headed toward approval.

Black carbon, a form of particulate air pollution most often produced from biomass burning, cooking with solid fuels and diesel exhaust, has a warming effect in the atmosphere three to four times greater than prevailing estimates, according to scientists in an upcoming review article in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Last year, as United Nations scientists were warning of the perils of man-made climate change, this small country of fjords and factories reacted with an extraordinary pledge: by 2050 Norway would be “carbon neutral,” generating no net greenhouse gases into the air.