Congress has always had a soft spot for "experts' who tell members what they want to hear, whether it's supply-side economists declaring that tax cuts increase revenue or climate-change skeptics insisting that global warming is a myth.

John McCain will push on Monday for car makers to build more environmentally friendly vehicles, threatening new legislation if they do not comply and proposing tax breaks to encourage consumers to buy "cleaner" cars. According to excerpts of his speech obtained by Reuters, the Republican presidential candidate will call for auto manufacturers to speed up the process of making engines that can use alcohol-based fuels.

When VeraSun Energy inaugurated a new ethanol processing plant last summer in Charles City, Iowa, some of that industry's most prominent boosters showed up. Leaders of the National Corn Growers Association and the Renewable Fuels Association, for instance, came to help cut the ribbon

Twenty years ago Monday, James E. Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA, shook Washington and the world by telling a sweating crowd at a Senate hearing during a stifling heat wave that he was "99 percent' certain that humans were already warming the climate.

Missouri Army National Guard soldiers fortified a levee with sandbags in Clarksville, Mo. In some towns, residents smiled as they saw the water creep back down the walls of homes and makeshift barricades. Frantic sandbagging efforts stopped in places like Quincy, Ill., and Winfield, Mo. But for many it was a temporary reprieve as they braced for another crest of water.

A handful of Republican senators is blocking action on a bill that would greatly increase American funding to combat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria around the world. If their delaying tactics succeed, the United States will lose considerable leverage in trying to persuade other advanced nations to contribute substantially more money to fight against global disease at the upcoming meeting of the Group of 8 industrial nations.

Alcoa, Royal Dutch Shell and 97 other companies are urging world leaders to devise a plan for fighting global warming by setting greenhouse-gas targets for all nations and creating an international carbon market. A new climate-change treaty is needed with incentives to capture and store carbon dioxide and protect forests, the 99 companies said in a statement prepared by the World Economic Forum, a Geneva-based business coalition. The group presented the proposals on Friday to Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who hosts a meeting of the Group of Eight nations next month in Japan.

The oceans have been growing warmer and sea levels have been rising at a faster rate than previously estimated, researchers reported. A review of millions of measurements over the past four decades revealed a subtle error, they said; after correcting it, they found that sea levels rose two inches from 1961 to 2003

Be afraid, be very afraid. There is no telling what the next disaster will be. Another terrorist attack? A steam pipe explosion like the one that shut down several blocks of Lexington Avenue a year ago? Or perhaps a pandemic flu that would cripple New York City's economy by making people afraid to go to work or ride on subways and buses? That was the message at a daylong workshop conducted on Tuesday by the city's health and emergency management agencies, intended to give businesses tips on how to cope with the potential calamities.