Dawes Glacier in Tongass National Forest, Alaska.

A long-awaited government science report — the first comprehensive national assessment in a decade of the current and predicted impacts of global climate change — was released by the Obama administration June 16 at a packed White House news briefing. Release of the report follows years of foot-dragging by the Bush administration, which preferred quibbling about the reality of global warming to doing anything about it, and which sat on the report’s scientific findings for years. Read more