At the fourth annual Clinton Global Initiative kicked off yesterday in New York City, Al Gore made a perhaps inconvenient call to action: civil disobedience. Gore, surrounded by Queen Raina, Clinton, and Bono painted a grim planetary picture:This is a rout. We are losing badly.
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Now that it's officially Fall, the announcement of this new study seems prudent, timely, and worth a trip to New England. Scientists at the University of Vermont have a three-year, $45,000 grant from the Department of Agriculture to study the effects of climate change on the famous Fall foliage. It's not just a tree-hugging (or leaf-loving) move.
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Seven western US states and four Canadian provinces have agreed to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 15 percent before 2020. Proud of the Western Climate Initiative, Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger asserted:We’re sending a strong message to our federal governments that states and provinces are moving forward in the absence of federal action, and we’re setting the stage for national programs that are just as aggressive.
So how will Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec curb climate change?
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Not only does the ice help regulate the earth's temperature, but it also sustains life by giving access to food to many Arctic creatures. Unfortunately, with the ice shelf melting at an alarming rate (about 10 percent per decade), it's having a deadly effect on the Polar Bears native to the region. Kassie Siegel, staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity explains:
The Arctic sea ice melt is a disaster for the polar bears.
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Scientists working on greenhouse gas emissions have discovered a new source of gas which is potentially 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide: Methane. Now don't start blaming the poor cows, this time it's not their stink. It's worse.
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If you don't get all your news from David Letterman (who lit into the subject last night), a new report by Oxfam International says not recycling or curbing your carbon footprint is effectively violating the human rights of people living in the poorest nations. The report's author says, "Climate change was first seen as a scientific problem, then an economic one. Now it is becoming a matter of international justice."
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Ever thought about becoming a Tuesday-tarian? Going meat-free one day a week is, according to the chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a personal sacrifice that will help fix climate change. The more meat-free days, the better.
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Top scientist Bob Watson says that we need to prepare for a rise in temperature of 39 degrees Fahrenheit. A jump that big would have catastrophic effects — it means between 7 million and 300 million more people would be affected by flooding and that the water availability in Africa would dry up by 50 percent.
In other words, 4 billion people left without water, 5 billion at risk for flooding, and half a billion left hungry.
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The biological community is facing global climate change with a radical plan to create a sort of Darwin-assisted species-triage program: moving threatened species to safer locations. As we heard in Al Gore's big global warming speech yesterday, warming is huge — and one of the effects is that many species are now facing extinction as the weather shifts, leading some to ask if a big move can lead to the salvation of a species.
Ten years ago, this idea was wildly opposed when it was introduced into the scientific community as data on global warming began mounting.
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