Dozens of the world's top climate scientists have gathered in Japan this week with representatives from around 100 countries to work on the latest United Nations report about climate change. According to leaked drafts, the report is all but calling the climate situation an emergency: Far from causing future problems for a few species bearing white fur or feathers, hotter temperatures are already changing local conditions for humans, and a lot faster than most climate researchers once believed possible.

Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana eight years ago today, killing at least 1,836 people. Now, a group of activists wants to know: Why place that morbid association on the people of the world named Katrina? A new petition argues that we should name storms after the people whose climate change-denying positions are exacerbating the problem. Look out for Hurricane Michele Bachmann.

What debate? A recent draft of an international consensus report offers stronger-than-ever evidence that global warming is driven by human activity. The report also adjusts its expectations for important climate change effects such as how much sea levels will rise, while admitting the difficulty in estimating what will happen to individual cities in the age of climate change.