Climate Change
Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security
WASHINGTON — The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say. Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change. Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.Are the Deserts Getting Greener?
It has been assumed that global warming would cause an expansion of the world's deserts, but now some scientists are predicting a contrary scenario in which water and life slowly reclaim these arid places. They think vast, dry regions like the Sahara might soon begin shrinking. The evidence is limited and definitive conclusions are impossible to reach but recent satellite pictures of North Africa seem to show areas of the Sahara in retreat.US Lawmakers Demand Probe Into Claims EPA Suppressed CO2 Study
By Ian Talley, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Republican lawmakers are demanding an investigation into claims that the Environmental Protection Agency suppressed a staff-prepared study that argues against the agency's proposal that greenhouse gases are a danger to public health. Besides asking for an Inspector General investigation, lawmakers are also asking the agency to re-open the controversial rulemaking to allow inclusion of the study. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, or CEI, last week released an 85-page scientific study authored by two EPA staff that undercuts the agency's " endangerment" decision, as well as several emails that show the agency rejected inclusion of the report in its rulemaking process.Peruvian Stalagmites Hold Clues to Climate Change
ScienceDaily (May 16, 2009) — How will the Netherlands, dominated by water, be affected by future climate change? Dutch researcher Martin van Breukelen hopes to answer that question by analyzing stalagmites from the South American Amazon tributaries in Peru as a way to reconstruct climate changes in the past. Information that can be used to test climate models is stored in various forms: in ice formations, plant remnants, oceans and caves.Bolivian Glacier Disappears
By James Painter Latin America analyst Scientists in Bolivia say that one of the country's most famous glaciers has almost disappeared as a result of climate change. The Chacaltaya glacier, 5,300m (17,400 ft) up in the Andes, used to be the world's highest ski run. But it has been reduced to just a few small pieces of ice.Inhofe Surprises on Soot
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/05/inhofe-black-carbon-bill He has called global warming a hoax, compared the Environmental Protection Agency with the Gestapo, and over the years dismissed Al Gore as desperate and "full of crap". So it was startling when America's arch climate change denier came out ahead of the green curve in the fight to save the Arctic and other icy regions. Could James Inhofe, a conservative Republican senator from Oklahoma, be the newest recruit to Barack Obama's green revolution?Top Brands
French Connection
Achile
Diane von Furstenberg
// Latest Comments