It's two steps forward, one step back, do a do-si-do for liquefied natural gas these days. Last Friday, the Department of Energy announced that it had granted conditional approval for a Texas facility seeking permission to ship LNG around the world. But this week new Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, in his first day on the job, said he would pause the export licensing process until he had a chance to personally review the department's decisionmaking on the issue.

In the last decade, almost 1 million people have been killed and trillions of dollars have been lost in natural disasters worldwide. As climate change threatens to increase the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, the prospect of even bigger disaster-related losses alone would make a case for more disaster-proofing investment.

President George W. Bush is said to have quipped while in office that "I don't do nuance" -- a trait that today's hyperpartisan Washington, D.C., often appears to share. Democrats faced the challenge of communicating scientific nuance head-on this week when a devastating Oklahoma tornado raised the question of how to link climate change to extreme weather events, given the already thorny politics of disaster aid.

Scientists are expecting twice as many hurricanes as normal in a looming storm season that stands to stoke political tensions over the cost of disasters months after Congress opened the vault to pay for Superstorm Sandy.

Memorial Day doesn't just mean parades celebrating the troops and backyard barbecues. It's also when Washington, D.C.'s energy debates begin to focus almost exclusively on gasoline prices that start their rise through the summer driving season.

A Supreme Court ruling this week on government regulation of new cellphone towers could be a boon for U.S. EPA and could shield the agency from lawsuits, environmental law experts say.

NEW YORK -- High gasoline prices in the Midwest are attributable to refinery outages and transportation challenges as energy industries try to adapt to a new glut of oil on the market, but they are likely a maintenance blip and not evidence of a long-term capacity shortage, analysts said.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- A panel of New Jersey infrastructure experts yesterday took issue with Gov. Chris Christie a few days after the Republican expressed doubts about the links between climate change and Superstorm Sandy.