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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David Howe who wrote (56773)	11/6/2004 6:47:22 PM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Both statements were taken from a report in the Star Tribune.

To: David Howe who wrote (56773)	11/6/2004 7:05:57 PM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Mr Howe, Here is an article on the global warming in the arctic report which will be issued this monday. The Bushies don't like this report and have been trying to suppress it. Endangered polar bears on thin ice By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor Unless urgent action is taken to slow down global warming polar bears will be extinct by the end of the century. The stark warning is contained in an authoritative report compiled by more than 250 scientists on the effects of climate change in the Arctic. It predicts that the ice on which polar bears live will have melted within 100 years. This will have “devastating consequences” for the bears, the report concludes. “They are unlikely to survive as a species if there is an almost complete loss of summer sea-ice cover.” Their only option would be to adapt to land, where they would face fierce competition from North American brown and grizzly bears and increased threats from human interaction. “The loss of polar bears is likely to have significant and rapid consequences for the ecosystems they currently occupy,” the report adds. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment will be unveiled at a scientific conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, this week. It is the most comprehensive and detailed study ever done on how global warming will affect the Arctic. The study was commissioned by the Arctic Council, which brings together the eight countries that surround the North Pole. They are the US, Canada, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Denmark, which governs Greenland and the Faroes. The report points out that the average temperature in the Arctic has risen almost twice as fast as the rest of the world over the past few decades. Over the next hundred years winter temperatures are expected to rise by up to 10°C over the oceans. In the past 30 years, the annual average area of Arctic sea ice has shrunk by nearly a million square kilometres, an area larger than Norway, Sweden and Denmark put together. By late this century, the report predicts, 50% of summer ice could be gone, with “some models showing near complete disappearance”. Seals that give birth on the ice would also be at risk, as would the several million birds that migrate to the Arctic every summer. These changes would in turn threaten the livelihood of many native peoples that hunt polar bears and seals around the Arctic. The report blames all this on the climate change being caused by carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” emitted by vehicles , factories, farmers and homes around the rest of the world. “Human-induced changes in Arctic climate are among the largest on Earth,” it concludes. “These changes will also reach far beyond the Arctic, affecting global climate, sea level, biodiversity, and many aspects of human social and economic systems. Climate change in the Arctic thus deserves and requires urgent attention by decision-makers and the public worldwide.” Polar bears were “walking on thin ice”, according to the international environmental group, WWF. Their extinction would be the most dramatic demonstration to date of the climate chaos engulfing the globe. “The demise of the polar bears will be a foretaste of the devastation that climate change could bring to all of nature’s top predators, including humans,” warned Dr Richard Dixon, head of policy at WWF Scotland in Aberfeldy. “We have only a few years to curb our polluting ways and save the Arctic, including the polar bears. This is a challenge to the generation of people running the world today – the last generation that can prevent the worst of climate chaos.” Hopes that the world’s biggest polluter, the US, would join international efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions were dashed by the re-election of President George W Bush last week. Many of his advisers deny that human activities are altering the world’s climate. On Thursday, Myron Ebell, a director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, claimed the whole idea of climate change was a myth designed to “hamper American competitiveness”. But according to Greenpeace, the institute has received $1.5 million from the oil giant, Esso, since 1998. “It is terrifying to think that this man is advising the White House on the gravest threat this planet faces,” said the environmental group’s campaigner, Anita Goldsmith. 07 November sundayherald.com