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RALEIGH, N.C. Mar 27, 2006 (AP)— A woman accused of abducting her two young children from their father, then dressing like a man so she could assume his identity, agreed Monday to return to Arizona where she faces kidnapping charges, authorities said.

Shellie White, 30, was taken into custody Friday in Roanoke Rapids, where police said she and a woman lived together as the children’s father and mother.

The arrest came more than two years after White was charged with custodial interference in the children’s disappearance, the U.S. Marshals Service said. Her ex-husband, Ernest Karnes, had custody of the children at the time and learned Friday that they had been found.

“The first thing that come out of his mouth was, ‘Did they get my kids, too? Are my kids OK?’” Gila County, Ariz., Sheriff’s Detective Johnny Holmes said Monday.

The U.S. Marshals Service, in a news release, said White “radically changed her appearance to that of a man and assumed many aliases,” including her ex-husband’s.

“She even went so far as to tell her children, aged 3 and 5 at the time, that she was their father,” the Marshals Service said. “When she was arrested, the children, now aged 6 and 8, asked why they were arresting their Daddy.”

White, in a telephone interview from Halifax County Jail with the Roanoke Rapids Daily Herald, denied any wrongdoing.

“I did not steal my children,” she said. “I have court papers saying I have custody.

“When I left Arizona in 2003, I told Ernie. He told me no problem.”

Under the terms of the divorce, Ernest Karnes had custody of the children, a boy and a girl, but his wife had visitation rights, Holmes said. He said Karnes’ wife could take the children to Tucson when she lived there, but neither parent could leave the state with them without the other’s permission.

Calls to the U.S. Marshals Service in Raleigh and Phoenix were not immediately returned Monday. A jail spokeswoman said White had no attorney listed.

White signed a waiver of extradition on the fugitive warrant Monday, said Leslie Faithful, the assistant clerk of courts in Halifax County.

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WASHINGTON, March 26, 2006 —  American attitudes about global warming are shifting, according to a new poll by ABC News, Time magazine and Stanford University — but it has taken years for the public perception of the problem to catch up with the warnings.

That lack of concern may have been just what big oil wanted.

It’s not as if the information hasn’t been out there: A new ad by the Environmental Defense Fund warns time is running out to combat climate change, adding, “Our future is up to you.”

But Virginia’s top climatologist doesn’t buy it.

“The American people have just been bludgeoned with climate disaster stories for God knows how long,” said the climatologist, Pat Michaels, “and they’re just, they’ve got disaster fatigue.”

Michaels is one of a handful of skeptics still downplaying the danger. But they are a tiny minority.

The vast majority of scientists has determined global warming to be a real threat. So why has it taken so long to convince Americans?

Misinformation Campaign

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ross Gelbspan blames a 15-year misinformation campaign by the oil and coal industries.

“The point of this campaign was not necessarily to persuade the public that global warming isn’t happening,” Gelbspan said. “It was to persuade the public that there is this state of confusion.”

A 1998 memo by the American Petroleum Institute said, “Victory will be achieved when … average citizens recognize uncertainties in climate science.”

To redefine global warming as theory — not fact — the industry funded research by “friendly” scientists such as Michaels.

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