crazy weather:
Sir Richard Branson has pledged three billion dollars (£1.6 billion) towards renewable energy initiatives, saying business had a duty to future generations.and, to show we haven't lost our sense of fun:
He said the money would come from the Virgin empire's airline and train businesses, adding that he hoped the move would encourage others to "do what they can".
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The global sea level rise caused by climate change, severely threatening many of the world's coastal and low-lying areas from Bangladesh to East Anglia, is proceeding faster than UN scientists predicted only five years ago, Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, said yesterday.
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Last week, two American studies showed that the melting of the winter sea ice in the Arctic had accelerated enormously in the past two years, with a section the size of Turkey disappearing in just 12 months.
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Another summer of record-breaking temperatures brought power failures, heat waves, droughts and tropical storms throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. Only one place seemed to remain cool: the air-conditioned offices of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. As New York City wilted beneath them, they sat insouciant and comfortable, hurling editorials of stunning misdirection at their readers, continuing their irresponsible drumbeat that global warming is junk science.
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Global warming might cause an increase in illegal immigration as people "flee storm-ravaged or sun-parched regions" to find refuge in the U.S., according to an expert who addressed a gathering on climate change in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
"Large-scale climatic disruptions in nearby nations, such as Mexico or Caribbean Island nations," may result in "spillover effects on the health system in the U.S.," said Devra Lee Davis, director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, in an abstract on the subject, "Changes in Severe Weather and Climate: Implications for Human Health."
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Some travel agencies touting Arctic tours have been revving up their recent promotions to tourists about the increased likelihood they will spot polar bears in this region where several populations of polar bears live. According to scientists from NASA and the Canadian Wildlife Service, these increased Arctic polar bear sightings are probably related to retreating sea ice triggered by climate warming and not due to population increases as some may believe.
The new research suggests that progressively earlier breakup of the Arctic sea ice, stimulated by climate warming, shortens the spring hunting season for female polar bears in Western Hudson Bay and is likely responsible for the continuing fall in the average weight of these bears.
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The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew has issued a "position paper" saying that man-made global warming is changing the outlook for plants and trees worldwide.
It says four species on its own lands are flowering earlier each year.
Kew's conservation scientists say other human activities such as the expansion of cities are also hurting plants, some which poorer societies depend on.
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Global warming might cause an increase in illegal immigration as people "flee storm-ravaged or sun-parched regions" to find refuge in the U.S., according to an expert who addressed a gathering on climate change in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
