Since the early 1990s there has been a furious debate about global warming. So-called climate change “sceptics” have spent years disputing almost every aspect of the scientific consensus on the subject. Their arguments have successfully delayed significant political action to deal with greenhouse gas emissions. Recent research reveals how the roots of this argument stretch back to two hugely influential reports written almost 30 years ago.

While China opposed the Iraq war and stood back from post-war rebuilding, Beijing has quietly outflanked its global rivals to grab a large slice of Iraq's oil industry. The pioneers of its overseas quest for fuel are already exploring vast tracts in the Kurdish north of the war-torn nation.

The report, which characterizes liquified natural gas, or LNG, as expensive, dirty and a threat to the nation's energy independence, is meant to jumpstart Clean Ocean Action's effort this fall to lobby state lawmakers and Gov. Jon S. Corzine to stop the LNG terminal projects off the coast of Monmouth and Ocean counties from moving forward. Corzine's final Energy Master Plan is expected this fall, and the group's leaders said they're working to ensure LNG doesn't make it into the report.

Royal Dutch Shell said it would keep staffing at its offshore installations to a minimum as it monitors the storm, which was described as "extremely dangerous" by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Sunday.

Why not use the wind-generated electricity to power cars directly? Natural gas is still a fossil fuel that emits climate-changing gases when burned. Let's cut the natural-gas middleman.

One of the world's best known economic forecasting and market analysis firms is headed by Dr. Horace "Woody" Brock. He recently spoke at a conference in Sydney, Australia (no, I was not there but wish I had been) and offered the best assessment of the oil market I have heard.

But over the past year or so a few amazing things happened in the gas industry. In the middle of a decidedly gloomy stockmarket, natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), coal seam gas - any kind of gas that can be extracted and sold in volume - suddenly emerged as the answer to urgent energy and air-quality problems, especially across Asia.

Mohammad Ali Khatibi, speaking two days before OPEC ministers meet in Vienna, also told the official IRNA news agency that oil prices could not fall below $80 per barrel as this was the production cost cited for some new fields.

They said existing laws governing everything from fish stocks to bio-prospecting by pharmaceutical companies were inadequate for the polar regions, especially the Arctic, where the area of summer sea ice is now close to a 2007 record low.

Considering the extensive lead time and lifespan for Defence capability acquisitions and the poor projections for oil, it is little surprise that there is a growing chorus of concern coming from within Defence ranks.

Azerbaijan, a country of 8 million people on the Caspian Sea, plumped for the western route. After all, America was the strongest country in the world and Russia - back in the 1990s - was weak. So Azerbaijan supported the building of a $4 billion, 1,000-mile-long, million-barrels-a-day oil pipeline from Baku, its capital, via Tbilisi, in Georgia, to Ceyhan, a port on Turkey's southern coast. BTC, as it is known, is the only oil pipeline from the former Soviet Union not controlled by the Kremlin.

Although the fisherman depends on the ocean for his livelihood, he has mixed feelings about the water after rising sea levels drowned his plot of land on Kutubdia Island on Bangladesh's southern coast 22 years ago.

"It looks like it will be a very severe storm," Bob Powers, FEMA deputy assistant administrator for disaster operations, told a telephone news conference on storm preparations.

It makes elemental sense to me to hold some or all of those offshore and ANWR reserves for some future date when our national security, including food supply, is severely at risk. Perhaps a program that would allow us to explore, drill and cap those productive areas for emergency use - and not just an extra trip to Grandma’s house - might be in order. If that were the case, those of you who say "no drilling" would be sorely pressed to win your argument. I’m confident we have the skills to accommodate the caribou.

Responsibility must lie in NAFTA and free trade. For by shipping our life-preserving gas out of the country during an energy crisis — and endangering the lives of her people during the winter — the United States is treating its own citizens no better than the English served the enslaved Irish.