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Gasping Canaries in the Mines - Hay shortage driving up incidence of neglect and voluntary forfeitures

"They eat before I do."

Livestock owners say the situation is now so desperate, many of them are having to get rid of some of their animals, simply because they can't afford to feed them.

The News & Observer reports:

Rescue agencies are taking in record numbers of horses across the state, many emaciated because of the drought-related hay shortage.

In the most recent case, a Randolph County woman was charged Thursday with 11 counts of animal abuse and eight counts of disposing of a dead animal improperly, after county officials investigated separate reports of a large number of dead horses scattered on the ground and of 11 live horses jammed into an undersize corral with no water and little hay.

The U.S. Equine Rescue League normally accepts about 100 neglected or abused horses a year in the three states where it operates, which include North Carolina. This year, the agency has taken in about 170 -- 90 in this state alone -- said Jennifer Malpass, director of the league's Triangle chapter.

Horse rescue groups nationally -- even those in states not stricken with a severe drought -- are being inundated with pleas to take neglected horses.

One group in Florida is fielding daily calls, up from bimonthly requests early this year. A rescue group in south central Kentucky had to turn away 13 horses this month. Kathy Grant, an equine cruelty investigator who runs a rescue group, says the rural roads in her eastern Tennessee community are lined with pastures dotted with emaciated horses.

"A lot of the farmers around here have hay, but they're holding on to it," said Grant. "When they're releasing it, they're charging exorbitant rates. A normal person can't afford it."

A round bale jumped from $12 to $100 since the summer, Grant said. In South Carolina, rescue volunteers noticed the price triple. In Texas, struck by a severe drought last year, hay prices haven't leveled off; horse owners are paying double what they did three years ago.

High prices are leaving owners with tough choices. Some are voluntarily forfeiting their animals. In other cases, horses are seized after county officials determine they have been abused or neglected.

County officials typically don't have holding facilities for large animals and so depend on agencies such as the rescue league to assume responsibility for horses. The league nurses them back to health, then places them in foster homes until someone adopts them, Malpass said.

The flood of rescues this year is a double blow to the volunteers.

Even before the drought, they were struggling to find space for foster horses. Now, they not only have to find shelter for more horses but also feed them when hay is expensive and scarce, Malpass said.

Hay donations drop

Her chapter normally receives about 300 bales of donated hay before winter, mostly from big horse operations clearing spring hay from their storage barns to make room for the fall cutting. But there was so little to spare that hay donations this year were only about a third the normal amount.

That means the volunteer rescuers are having to pull money out of their own pockets -- and a lot of it -- for hay, which has doubled in price in many areas.

The hay crisis also has increased the severity of the cases they are seeing, said Amy Woodard, a volunteer who leads the league's efforts in the northeastern corner of the state.

As the expense of feeding them has risen, the selling prices of horses have dropped. That has made purchase possible for people who might not be able to afford proper food and health care, or who didn't have the knowledge to keep horses healthy, Malpass said.

'Pieces everywhere'

The horse owner in the Randolph County case, Jauvanna Craven, 51, of Groom Road, Sophia, surrendered her horses. That saved time in court and allowed the county to get the surviving horses more quickly into the hands of rescuers.

Randolph County Health Director MiMi Cooper was so shocked at the animals' condition that she went to Craven to issue the charges herself. Craven could have faced more counts of improper disposal, said Cooper, who owns four horses herself.
"There were probably more than eight, but there were pieces [of dead horses] everywhere," she said. "Do you know what I had to do? I had to count heads."

Craven could not be reached for comment.

She had kept the horses on a 22-acre tract but sold it recently, Cooper said. The new owners discovered a number of horse carcasses and called the health department Dec. 21 to report them.

On the same day, the department got what it thought was an unrelated call about the 11 living horses, which were in a different location. They were confined in a pen that was big enough for only one or two horses, Cooper said. The horses were clearly starving, with every rib showing and their hip and shoulder bones jutting. One had an injury and had to be euthanized.

"She said that she was running a rescue operation," Cooper said. "That's not how you rescue horses."

The Equine Rescue League's Triad chapter took four of the horses, and another agency took three. The other three were apparently owned by someone else, who hadn't known about their health problems, and he took them away.

Shortage hits everyone

The hay shortage is so bad, though, that even conscientious owners are getting into trouble, Malpass said.

Marilyn Kille, who is taking care of three foster horses just outside Chapel Hill, said that people who own only one or two horses don't often have the massive dry storage space required for a whole winter supply of hay.

Normally, hay is abundant enough that suppliers keep plenty on hand, and horse owners can drop by every couple of weeks to buy more. Now, horse owners are competing for the scant supply against beef and dairy operations. Often, the only way to get it is to buy full truckloads from as far away as Ohio or New York.

Randolph County has fielded at least half a dozen calls this year from owners who didn't know where to turn, Cooper said, and area veterinarians have been getting similar calls.

Depending on the situation, Cooper said, the county steers them to hay sources like the on-line list kept by the state agriculture department, or links them with a rescue agency. Instead of suggesting that owners give up horses, the rescue agency prefers to teach them how to keep horses healthy, Malpass said.

Usually that approach works, she said. When it doesn't, the county or the rescuers ask the owner to give up the horse, or the county takes the owner to court to force the issue.

Normally rescues taper off in summer, when horses can graze. That's when the rescuers get a breather and start to build up their stores of hay.

This past summer, though, there was no break in rescues and the hay donations didn't come. So now, Malpass' group finds itself starting winter -- when livestock rely more on hay and less on grazing -- with an unusual number of horses to feed, not nearly enough hay and predictions that hay crops next year might be poor, too.

"It's really worrying because it can only get worse from here," she said.

More Than Half of Amazon Will Be Lost By 2030, Report Warns

The Guardian reports:

Climate change could speed up the large-scale destruction of the Amazon rainforest and bring the "point of no return" much closer than previously thought, conservationists warned today.

Almost 60% of the region's forests could be wiped out or severely damaged by 2030, as a result of climate change and deforestation, according to a report published today by WWF.

The damage could release somewhere between 55.5bn-96.9bn tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the Amazon's forests and speed up global warming, according to the report, Amazon's Vicious Cycles: Drought and Fire.

June 1989, Brazil: The forest burns. The Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world and is home to 15% of the world’s known land-based plant species, and nearly 10% of the world’s mammals. It has as many as 300 species of tree in a single hectare. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features

Trends in agriculture and livestock expansion, fire, drought and logging could severely damage 55% of the Amazon rainforest by 2030, the report says. And, in turn, climate change could speed up the process of destruction by reducing rainfall by as much as 10% by 2030, damaging an extra 4% of the forests during that time.

By the end of the century, global warming is likely to reduce rainfall by 20% in eastern Amazonia, pushing up temperatures by more than 2C and causing forest fires, the report said.

September 1988, Rondonia State, Brazil: Newly cleared land. Soya farming is one of the primary drivers of deforestation in the Amazon.
Photograph: Stephen Ferry/Liaison/Getty Images

Destroying almost 60% of tropical rainforest by 2030 would do away with one of the key stabilisers of the global climate system, it warned.

Such damage could have a knock-on effect on rainfall in places such as central America and India, and would also destroy livelihoods for indigenous people and some 80% of habitats for animal species in the region.

The "point of no return", in which extensive degradation of the rainforest occurs and conservation prospects are greatly reduced, is just 15-25 years away - much sooner than some models suggest, the report warns.

Releasing the report at the UN conference in Bali, which aims to begin negotiations on a new international climate change deal, the WWF called for a strategy to reduce emissions from forests and stop deforestation.

Beatrix Richards, the head of forests at WWF-UK, said: "The Amazon is on a knife-edge due to the dual threats of deforestation and climate change.

"Developed countries have a key role to play in throwing a lifeline to forest around the world. At the international negotiations currently underway in Bali governments must agree a process which results in ambitious global emission reduction targets beyond the current phase of Kyoto which ends in 2012.

"Crucially this must include a strategy to reduce emissions from forests and help break the cycle of deforestation."

The report's author, Dan Nepstead, senior scientist at the Woods Hole research centre in Massachusetts, said: "The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe's climate cannot be underplayed.

"It's not only essential for cooling the world's temperature but such a large source of freshwater that it may be enough to influence some of the great ocean currents, and on top of that it's a massive store of carbon."

October 2002, Lower Amazon, Brazil: A raft of logs

September 1988, Rondonia State, Brazil: The rainforest burns as a result of fires started by farmers and ranchers Photograph: Stephen Ferry/Liaison/Getty Images

June 1989, Brazil: Housing owned by a mining company which has been built on rainforest land Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features

November 2003, Para State, Brazil: After the loggers have harvested the trees, huge areas are burnt by cattle ranchers and soya producers who move onto the deforested land. Picture shows deforestation near Porto de Moz, where 80% of all timber produced is illegal Photograph: Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

November 2003, Para State, Brazil: Deforestation near Porto de Moz, where 80% of all timber produced is illegal Photograph: Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

April 2004, Rondonia State, Brazil: Smouldering pastureland cleared for cattle Photograph: Michael Nichols/National Geographic/Getty Images

September 2004, Novo Progreso, Brazil: An aerial view of deforestation caused by soybean farmers Photograph: Alberto Cesar/Greenpeace/AP

December 2004, Coari, Brazil: The Urucu oilfield, of state-owned Petrobras compan. Petrobras announced in 2004, that it will begin the construction of a 383 km long oil pipeline between the cities of Coari and Manaus. It took nearly two years, mainly for the opposition of environmental grups, to obtain the planning permission for the construcion of the stretch that will allow the oil to be taken from Urucu to Manaus, and that will require the deforestation of a 50m-wide strip along the way Photograph: Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images

February 2005, Amapu, Brazil: An aerial picture of piles of wood at a sawmill Photograph: Antonio Scorza/AFP

August 2005, Mato Grosso State, Brazil: A fallen tree inside the word 'Crime' as a Greenpeace protest against deforestation Photograph: Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace/AP

First It's The Polar Bears . . . .

Now, Warming Alters Walrus Behavior

The LA Times reports:

Thousands of walruses have appeared on Alaska's northwestern coast in what conservationists say is a dramatic consequence of global warming melting Arctic Sea ice.

The animals, especially breeding females, are usually found on the Arctic ice pack in summer and fall. But the lowest summer ice cap on record put sea ice far north of the outer continental shelf, the shallow, life-rich area beneath the Bering and Chukchi seas.

Walruses feed on clams, snails and other bottom dwellers. Given the choice between an ice platform above water deeper than their 630-foot diving range or the shore, many walruses chose Alaska's rocky beaches.

Because It's The Right Thing To Do

Brad Pitt & The Global Green Project in New Orleans

Judge: Bush Officials Broke Law By Not Reporting On Warming

From SFGate.com:

The Bush administration has violated a 2004 congressional deadline for presenting the latest scientific research about global warming to lawmakers and the public and must submit its report by next spring, a federal judge ruled today.

Federal officials have "unlawfully withheld action they are required to take,'' preparing a new scientific assessment by November 2004 and a research plan by July 2006, said U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong of Oakland. "Congress has imposed clear-cut, unambiguous deadlines for compliance.''

A 1990 federal law requires the government to produce a scientific report every four years on climate change and its effects on the environment, including land, water, air, plant and animal life and human health.

The Clinton administration issued the first report in October 2000, warning of severe effects on different regions. The Bush administration has not issued a report and, according to environmental groups that filed the lawsuit last November, has tried to bury the Clinton report.

"This administration has denied and suppressed the science of global warming at every turn,'' said Brendan Cummings, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.

Administration officials were unavailable for comment on the ruling. When the suit was filed, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the government had chosen other means of complying with the law: a series of 21 mini-reports on various aspects of climate change, issued over a two-year period.

The first of those documents, in May 2006, discussed temperature trends in the lower atmosphere but did not describe any potential effects on the environment.

Armstrong ordered the administration to publish a summary of its climate research plan by March 1 and to submit the plan to Congress 90 days later after receiving public comments. She ordered Bush officials to publish the scientific assessment of global warming and its effects by May 31.

Armstrong was appointed in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush, who signed the 1990 law requiring the reports.

The ruling was the second legal defeat for the administration on global warming this year. The Supreme Court ruled in April that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted from vehicle tailpipes were pollutants subject to federal regulation -- rejecting the government's position that it lacked such authority -- and said the voluntary measures promoted by the Bush administration were an inadequate substitute for regulation.

President Bush opposes mandatory emissions limits, saying they would damage the U.S. economy. In 2001 he pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol, which requires curbs on greenhouse gases.

Government lawyers sought to dismiss the lawsuit over the scientific reports, arguing that the 1990 law was intended only to provide information to Congress and that private citizens had no right to sue over the deadlines. But Armstrong said the law also entitles the public to take part in the planning process by commenting on the government's disclosures.

If the research plan is delayed indefinitely, the judge said, the public participation intended by Congress "has no real value or substance.''

The law on this couldn't be clearer.

Despite the ruling in favor of the plaintiffs (and one might ask why the Democratically-controlled Congress - specifically Senator Barbara Boxer as the Chair of the Senate's Environment and Public Works committee and Representative Ed Markey as Chair of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming weren't the plaintiffs), it helps the Bush administration (and Republicans) stall and bury the issue beyond the 2008 election cycle by giving them close to a year to comply.

Is there a doubt that the Bush administration will appeal, stonewall, do the minimum of what it needs to do ("my dog ate the report"), as slowly as possible, to keep from the law and the issue at bay. Come May 31, 2008, the Court will be buried in paper, every appeal wrench will be tossed at it, and when asked about it as a campaign issue, Bush and Republicans will say (everybody, say it together in unison), "That matter is in the courts now, so we can't say anything about it until it's been adjudicated."

Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong was appointed to the U.S. District Court in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush.

Democrats Cave To Automakers

The Detroit Free Press reports:

In a victory for Detroit automakers, the main backer in the U.S. House of tougher fuel economy standards said late today that he would not push for his 35 mile-per-gallon standard this week.

Representative Ed Markey, Democrat from Massachusetts

The move by Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., means automakers and the United Auto Workers now have the August recess to prepare for a larger debate in September, when Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., plans to address fuel economy rules as part of his work on global warming. It also sidesteps what would have been a bruising floor flight between Markey and Dingell as the House Democrats speed through bills ahead of the August recess.

Representative John Dingell, Blue Dog Democrat from Michigan

For the past few weeks, Markey has declined to say whether he would try to attach his plan, which would force the industry to meet an average standard of 35 m.p.g. by 2019, to the energy bill the House is scheduled to consider Friday. Markey said in a statement today that while he believed he had enough votes to move his plan, he would instead back the mileage increase that passed the Senate in June.

That measure, part of a broad energy bill, sets standards of 35 m.p.g. by 2020, and was a significant defeat for the auto industry.

Today's move by Markey suggests that some of the obituaries about the automakers' lobbying power on Capitol Hill were premature.

"I am satisfied that our strength in both the House and the Senate is sufficient to ensure that the progress we have made already to update our fuel economy standards will win out in conference," Markey said. "The country cannot afford to accept less than a 35 m.p.g. standard if we are to wean ourselves off our addiction to imported oil."

Markey's retreat came after weeks of intensive lobbying by Detroit automakers, the UAW, Toyota Motor Co. and dozens of other groups against Markey's plan and for an alternative from Reps. Baron Hill, D-Ind., and Lee Terry, R-Neb. That bill would have required new cars and trucks to meet an average of 32 to 35 m.p.g. by 2022.

Representative Lee Terry, Republican from Nebraska

Representative Baron Hill, Democrat from Indiana

The industry has steadily racked up support for the Hill-Terry proposal, adding 141 co-sponsors since it was introduced a few weeks ago. Earlier today, the 47-member Democratic Blue Dog Coalition, a group of conservative Democrats, threw their support behind Hill-Terry.

Automakers maintained the Markey standards are unreachable and would cost thousands of jobs, while environmentalists say the Hill-Terry bill would save far less oil than Markey's plan. Industry executives said they would not push to have the House consider Hill-Terry if Markey's bill didn't make the House floor.

Environmental groups had responded to the automakers' efforts with a lobbying blitz of their own up until the last minute, with 13 state attorneys general weighing in today against the Hill-Terry bill. But those groups had also been preparing for a strategic retreat in recent days.

"If we don't end up with a House provision on Markey, we will have fought the auto industry to a stalemate in the House, and we will win the war in conference," said Daniel Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming program.

Yeah, you keep believing that, Danny boy.

Until there is regime change in Washington, this is just one more battle Americans will lose to Big Corporate.

A Better Argument Than "197 Scientists Can't Be Wrong"

Maha writes:

Global Idiots

Will someone please explain to these scientifically illiterate twits that the phenomenon of global warming doesn’t mean the planet is getting warmer in a uniform way. My understanding is that climate changes are causing shifts in long-established patterns of air circulation around the planet as well as disrupting ocean current patterns like the Gulf Stream. These changes are causing some places to get colder because air is moving more directly from the poles to those places that it used to. But it’s the warming of the oceans, among other things, that is causing the changes in wind and current patterns. Hence, global warming is causing some parts of the planet to be cooler. Some scientists argue that we ought to be talking about “global climate change” rather than “global warming” to avoid confusion.

Every time I see some dimbulb rightie hoot because there’s a cold snap in his neighborhood (hence, global warming is a myth) I feel embarrassed for our species.

We might want to begin by figuring out what it is that we're trying to achieve.

If we're looking for allies to help light a fire under our elected representatives in government, I think we might have better success if, no matter how frustrating, we resist condescending and insulting them, calling them names. It only makes them defensive, they dig in their heels, which makes convincing them of the urgency of taking their heads out of their anuses all the more difficult.

If we really believe that global warming is the single greatest threat to "our way of life" (I do), as well as it being the single greatest threat to civilization continuing on the planet (I do), and that drastic measures are necessary (I do), and that even waiting for Bush-Cheney to leave office is too long if we're to try to mitigate the devastation ahead (I do), then we're going to have to rethink how we've been going about this problem. Shouting didn't make Annie Sullivan any more understandable to Helen Keller.

Are Al Gore and the Global Warming Crisis Inextricably Linked?

Al Gore has been doing all of the heavy lifting. While I admire his efforts, his dedication, and how he teaches, Gore and global warming have become synonymous. This issue is more than Al Gore, the 2000 election, Bush stealing elections, and with him as the poster boy for this climate changing catastrophe, they both become too easy to dismiss.

It's really a tragedy what has been done to that man, but done, he is. He's beyond having 'baggage': He is a lightning rod chained to steamer trunks stuffed with IEDS. If, when you hear some celebrity's name and a punchline pops into your head, even if you cringe and don't think it's funny but you know everyone else in the room is having the same thought, then that celebrity's public life is over.

That's the problem with "An Inconvenient Truth," despite the fact that it's "Global Warming for Dummies" made into a movie. It preaches to the choir, to people who already liked Al Gore, probably voted for him in 2000, and were already on board with understanding the danger that global warming posed to civilization on the planet. The people who need to see it, become convinced, and understand that changing human behavior is the solution won't go see it. They probably wouldn't have gone to see it in any case, but they certainly aren't about to put their entertainment dollars into any project that Gore or activists on the left derive profit from.

The war on global warming needs to be uncoupled with Gore. You shouldn't have to like Gore before you can sign on to believing there is a crisis and committing to doing something about it, but that's the way conservatives are. These are people who have and will cut off their noses to spite their faces. Even if they came to like or respect Gore, they'd sooner die than admit they were might have been wrong.

We need to develop better teaching models, audio-visual aids like those that appear in "An Inconvenient Truth," because explaining it through our blogs, electronic and print media, is one area where we might make the difference. If we, who write for a living (or past-time/passion), become frustrated and can't explain why what's happening isn't "part of a natural cycle," or explain why it's not useless to try to change it (or why 37 inches of rain in one day in Mumbai isn't "typical"), who can? The debate in the blogosphere has been reduced to "Our side has 197 of the world's scientists, while your side has 2."

That's an argument for mob rule, not sound reason.

Perpetual Drought In U.S. Southwest & California Has First Claim To Colorado River Water

Sediment deposits and low water levels in the Colorado River at Hite Overlook near Hite, Utah.

The Pak Tribune reports:

Global warming will permanently change the climate of the American Southwest, making it so much hotter and drier that Dust Bowl-scale droughts will become common, a new climate report concludes.

While much of the nation west of the Mississippi River is likely to get drier because of the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the greatest effect will be felt in the already-arid areas on both sides of the US-Mexico border. By the end of the century, the climate researchers predict, rainfall in that region will have declined by a worrisome 10 percent to 20 percent annually.

A similar drying out of the subtropical belt above and below the equator will hit the Mediterranean region and parts of Africa, South America, and South Asia, the report says, as the overall warming of the oceans and surface air transforms basic wind and precipitation patterns around the earth.

The prediction of a drier Southwest was made by 16 of 19 climate computer models assembled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international scientific effort to assess the impact of global warming, which is releasing a new report today. The drought results were analyzed separately in a paper published on line yesterday by the journal Science, which also predicted that regions outside the drying belt will get more rain.

"It's a situation of the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer when it comes to rainfall," said Yochanan Kushnir of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, one of the paper's authors.

He said the authors of the new paper had a very high level of confidence that the droughts will develop and that they will be the result of increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases created through burning fossil fuels and other human activities.

The researchers said future droughts in the affected regions will be different from those in the past, which were caused by local weather conditions and the effects of El Niqo and La Niqa ocean temperature variations. The Southwest has seen significantly below-average rainfall since 1999, and there is some preliminary information to suggest that global warming is already playing a role .

As the planet warms, the researchers said, basic climate dynamics will change. Currently, hot air from the equatorial tropics rises about 8 to 12 miles until it hits the stratosphere and is blocked, then spreads to the north and south and remains aloft until it passes 10 to 30 degrees latitude before cooling and descending again. The computer models show that with more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases making the planet hotter, the area where the hot air remains aloft -- and suppresses rainfall -- will widen. Dry areas will become drier, and arid areas will expand.

The prospect of a drier Southwest is particularly troublesome because the region has some of the nation's fastest growing cities, including Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Richard Seager, also from Lamont-Doherty and a lead author of the paper, said the region will have to rethink how it uses water. Governments "need to plan for this right now, coming up with new, well-informed, and fair deals for allocation of declining water resources," he said.

The climate models generally assumed a gradually increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere until 2050, at which point they assume that the nations of world will have found ways to replace fossil fuels as the main source of energy. Because climate responds steadily but slowly to the buildup, however, the full effect on precipitation changes would not be felt until 2100.

The changes are already in progress and will not be stopped for decades even by dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the researchers said.

The current drought that has affected much of the Southwest since 1999 may already be the result of global warming as much as regional weather patterns, they said. For example, Kushnir said, the drought continued last year even though there was a significant El Niño effect -- which normally produces increased rainfall in the area.

Scientists have debated whether the increased dryness projected is a function of greater evaporation as a result of hotter temperatures or of decreases in rainfall. The broad consensus from the 19 new climate models blames decreased rainfall, Kushnir said.

A Peek Into Tomorrow, Coming Sooner Than You May Think

These refugees in Chad are escaping violence in Darfur. But the displaced of the future may be running from the climate.

Der Spiegel reports:

The picture painted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is one of blighted nations and millions of desperate immigrants fleeing climate disaster. But experts disagree about whether the bleak vision will ever come true.

These refugees in Chad are escaping violence in Darfur. But the displaced of the future may be running from the climate.

Once upon a time, a warming climate tempted the Romans into northern Europe -- as far as northern Germany and even into Britain. Hundreds of years later cooling weather drove Germanic tribes from Scandinavia into the south. Vikings settled Greenland after it warmed up, only to leave when it froze again.

Climate, in short, has long triggered mass migration. And the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that more may be on the horizon. The second part of its extensive report on global warming, released on Friday, warns that coming climate-related disasters may kick off a worldwide exodus of Biblical proportions. Indeed, according to the International Red Cross, 25 million people have already started to shift from places blighted by environmental problems -- a figure that would top the current number of war refugees across the globe.

Rich industrial nations, after decades of pouring more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than poor countries, can adjust to the changes if they invest enough money; but the poorest parts of Central America, Asia and Africa will suffer harshly from flooding and drought. This conventional wisdom in the climate controversy has opened a human-rights debate: Now it's not just globalization, closed markets, or the consequences of colonialism that have robbed the poor of their opportunities -- it's also greenhouse gases. Will coming decades see millions of "climate refugees" flowing north from the floodplains and deserts of Africa or Latin America?

"Horror-movie scenarios"

This question is still wide open among scientists. Experts can't agree if climate refugees even exist. Oxford-based ecologist Norman Myers argues they do, and says the number could soar to as high as 200 million within 50 years. "These people see no alternative to seeking asylum elsewhere, as hazardous as the attempt (to get there) might be," he says.

His colleague Stephen Castles, at Oxford's International Migration Institute, contradicts these horror-movie scenarios. "Myers and others simply take the climate predictions at face value and look at how many people live in the areas that will be flooded," says the author of "The Age of Migration," a now-standard text. This method, says Castles, leads to exaggerated refugee estimates.

He says it's more accurate to research how people actually respond in a given area to environmental disaster, war, or widespread poverty. "What we see is something else -- immigration is generally not the main strategy." When living conditions do get unbearable, people also tend to move within their own countries -- only rarely do they cross national borders.

Immigration experts in countries like Bangladesh tend to agree. Along with low-lying islands like the Maldives, Bangladesh is an early indicator of climate-change prophecies, and even there, sea levels aren't rising all at once. Parts of the country can be protected with dikes; other parts may have to be abandoned, but the people can be resettled. "Only a few will really flee to India," says Castles.

The crucial issue is how well governments react to disasters. After the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, most of the 300,000 displaced residents returned a few months later. After the Pinatubo volcano erupted in the Philippines, though, a large-scale return took years. But the capacity of a nation to respond isn't just a matter of money, as the US government's desultory response to Hurricane Katrina showed in 2005. "It has more to do with decisiveness and organization, and with the struggle against corruption and mismanagement" within a government, says Castles. Overly dramatic predictions of mass migration, he says, mainly serve to aggravate xenophobia: "Right now a tide of refugees is already lapping against the EU's shores," he points out.

Land reform against the apocalypse?

Thomas Faist, a sociologist at the University of Bielefeld, also resists the shrill language his colleagues have started to use. "I don't want to deny the problem," the professor says. "But we can't lose sight of the fact that there are other far more decisive reasons for people to leave home." Floods and desertification are happening now; at the same time people are going hungry and trying to flee. But Faist argues that their ultimate reasons for leaving boil down to ethnic conflict, or economic as well as political mismanagement. He thinks climate change is just an exacerbating factor. Anyone who wants to stop a stream of immigrants has to address its underlying cause, and he doubts the climate can be cited as a root cause for all conflicts raging through all the poor parts of the world.

Faist therefore believes that pots of emergency-fund or "just in case" money for the countries most affected by climate change will be useless. "What they need from us is technological help, drought-resistant seeds, and political support to help the governments react," he says. "Climate change should not be exploited as a cause, to relieve developing nations of their own responsibilities."

The difference between good and bad political management can be seen in Turkey. In the west, where land reform has been underway for decades, the farming sector has flourished; people can support themselves and export their products. In eastern Turkey, where most farmland still belongs to a handful of huge landlords, productivity is low, poverty is high, and many people are leaving for the cities.

"Western Turkey," says Faist, "is in better shape to deal with climate change."

The Graphic Evidence of Global Warming

"Report confirms climate change is a fact.

This graph shows the increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere over the last 10,000 years (panel inset shows the increase since 1750) based on the study of ice cores. Different colors represent different studies. Radiative forcing indicates the influence a factor has on the amount of energy entering or leaving the earth's atmosphere and is an index of how important the factor is as a climate change mechanism. The higher it is, the more important it is.

Der Spiegel reports:

The United Nations on Friday issued its most dramatic warning yet about the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change on the planet. European political leaders say we must cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a climate change process that is already underway.

Climate change in the coming century may lead to disasters ranging from famine in Africa to the thinning of Himalayan glaciers, according to the long-awaited second part of an extensive United Nations report on global warming. More than 100 countries represented in the UN's panel on climate change spent a tense Thursday night in Brussels trying to agree unanimously on the language of a final draft.

The report, prepared by more than 2,500 scientists for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), provides the first confirmation from the entire international scientific community that the burning of fossil fuels by humans is one of the main culprits of global warming.

Scientists "have finally established at the global level that there is an anthropogenic, there is a man made climate signal coming through on plants, animals, water and ice," said Martin Parry, co-chair of the IPCC working group the assembled report. "This is the first time this signal has been confirmed at the international level."

Desertification and water shortages

The report claims that global warming will lead to desertification, droughts and rising seas and that those living in the tropics will be the worst hit -- from sub-Saharan Africa to the Pacific islands. Billions could face water shortages, and ocean levels might rise for centuries to come. It could lead to a sharp drop in crop yields in Africa and bring heatwaves to Europe and North America. Europe's Alpine glaciers will disappear and much of the coral that comprises Australia's Great Barrier Reef will die from bleaching.

The scientific conclusions -- based on 29,000 sets of data -- also said that up to 30 percent of the Earth's species faced a higher risk of vanishing if global temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average in the 1980s and '90s.

"The urgency of this report prepared by the world's top scientists should be matched by an equally urgent response from governments," said Hans Verolme, director of the global climate change program at the conservation organization WWF. "Doing nothing is not an option."

Merkel to address issue at G-8 summit

The contents of the report, most of which had already been leaked to the media in recent weeks, prompted political leaders to call for action, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "The report confirms that climate change is a fact," Merkel told the Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. "That's why we need quick and determined action to limit the rise in temperatures worldwide and reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. I will also address the issue at the G-8 summit. My aim is, insofar as possible, to involve all states in taking responsibility for climate protection. "

Merkel said she hoped recent European Union actions might help to push China and the United States -- the world's two largest sources of greenhouse gases -- to do more to reduce emissions. In March the EU's 27 member states agreed cut greenhouse gas emission by at least 20 percent from 1990 levels over the next 13 years. In addition, it agreed that at least one-fifth of all of the EU's energy would come from renewable sources by 2020.

Speaking on Friday, EU Commissioner for the Environment, Stavros Dimas warned that the report "further underlines both how urgent it is to reach global agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and how important it is for us all to adapt to the climate change that is already under way."

"Scientific vandalism"

Originally, the report was to be released on Friday morning at 10 a.m., but the presentation was delayed for hours as heated discussions continued as countries like China, Russia and the US continued to lobby for the removal of parts of the report.

US delegates also opposed a passage warning of the prospects of "severe economic damage" to parts of North America. But the main tension in Brussels between some authors of the report and some political representatives was not over the scientific findings, but over a 21-page summary that would be shown to policymakers.

Earlier this week, the summary said scientists had "very high confidence" that natural systems around the world "are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases."

"Very high confidence," in the language used by the report, translates to a 90 percent certainty. Delegates from China and Saudi Arabia lobbied for "high confidence" instead, or 80 percent certainty -- and after a dramatic hours-long protest by three scientists on Thursday night, the milder language went in.

"The authors lost," said one of the scientists. "A lot of authors are not going to engage in the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) process anymore. I have had it with them," he told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Though Washington and Beijing ultimately succeeded in changing very little of the text, the political tug o' war drew sharp criticism in Germany. "We are happy that we were able to prevent this kind of scientific vandalism in the end," Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told Reuters TV. "The people have a right to find out about the consequences that threaten them if we are unable to stop climate change."

Still, the final version is the clearest and most comprehensive scientific statement to date on the impact of global warming. "Certain passages were lost for time or for lack of agreement," Parry said, "But I don't think in any respect that the message was lost."

In the first part of the study -- released in February in Paris -- the IPCC concluded with 90 percent certainty that humans were the main cause of global warming since 1950. That alone was an unprecedented statement by a global body; but this section of the report details how species, water supplies, ice sheets and regional climate conditions were already being affected.

Friday's report was the second of four to be released by the IPCC this year. The findings of those reports are expected to serve as a guide for negotiations over extending the Kyoto Protocol, the main UN plan for capping greenhouse gas emissions beyond 2012.

This graph shows the increase in the concentration of methane in the earth's atmosphere over the last 10,000 years (panel inset shows the increase since 1750) based on the study of ice cores. Different colors represent different studies. Radiative forcing indicates the influence a factor has on the amount of energy entering or leaving the earth's atmosphere and is an index of how important the factor is as a climate change mechanism. The higher it is, the more important it is.

This graph shows the increase in the concentration of nitrous oxide in the earth's atmosphere over the last 10,000 years (panel inset shows the increase since 1750) based on the study of ice cores. Different colors represent different studies. Radiative forcing indicates the influence a factor has on the amount of energy entering or leaving the earth's atmosphere and is an index of how important the factor is as a climate change mechanism. The higher it is, the more important it is.

Changes in a) global average surface temperature; b) global average sea level rise; and c) snow coverage in the Northern Hemisphere from March to April. All changes are relative to corresponding averages for the period 1961 to 1990. Smoothed curves represent decadal averaged values while circles show yearly values.

A comparison of continental and global surface temperature rises. The black lines show decade-by-decade rises relative to the average from 1901 to 1950. The blue lines shows natural forces contributing to global warming. The pink lines show natural forces combined with human activity.

What next? The middle column shows projections for temperature increases based on three separate models. The middle column shows 2020-2029 and the right hand column shows 2090 to 2099. The color-coded scale corresponds to Celsius degree rises. The three scenarios B1, A1B and A2 are based on different assumptions about economic growth, population development and fuel usage.

This graph shows expected relative changes in winter precipitation (in percent) for the period 2090 to 2099 relative to the period 1980 to 1999 using the A1B model. White areas show where less than 66 percent of the models agree on the change. Dotted areas show where more than 90 percent of the models agree.

This graph shows expected relative changes in summer precipitation (in percent) for the period 2090 to 2099 relative to the period 1980 to 1999 using the A1B model. White areas show where less than 66 percent of the models agree on the change. Dotted areas show where more than 90 percent of the models agree.

How hot is it going to get? The black line at the left shows the 20th century. The colored solid lines show where the temperature might go using different models -- shading indicates error ranges. Bars at the right show best estimates (solid lines) with the gray showing the likely range.

New Plan Afoot To Bypass Congress's Ban & Drill Oil In ANWR

If it's not the Bush administration's ceaseless efforts to grab power over the other two co-equal branches of government, it's Republicans in those other branches assisting in their own demise.

Not for nothing, though.

ANWR
Subhankar Banerjee, physicist at Los Alamos

Anchorage Daily News reports:

U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens on Monday tossed out a new approach for opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Make it part of the nation's emergency stockpile of oil.

The idea came up during a nearly hour-long briefing for news reporters in Anchorage. Alaska's senior senator also talked about the war in Iraq, the Alaska gas pipeline and the interim U.S. attorney.

Stevens, wearing a casual brown shirt and no tie, said he was struck by a Sunday column in The Washington Post that analyzed President Bush's call to expand the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The stockpile consists of about 700 million barrels of federal-government-owned crude stored for a national emergency in huge salt caverns in Louisiana and Texas. The president can release it if commercial oil supplies are disrupted, and it also can be drawn down for other nonemergency reasons.

Stevens said his staff and Sen. Lisa Murkowski's have been reviewing the president's proposal, publicized last month in his State of the Union speech, to buy more oil for the reserve.

"We came up with the thought 'Why not ask that they add ANWR to the petroleum reserve?' And now this op-ed piece says the same thing," Stevens said.

The refuge lies in the northeast corner of Alaska. Its coastal plain is considered the nation's best onshore prospect for a major oil discovery. It also is an area prized by environmentalists nationally. Efforts in Congress to open the coastal plain to oil development have failed repeatedly over the past three decades.

In his column, Gal Luft, head of the energy security think tank Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, said "reframing the issue to cast the refuge as an emergency stockpile rather than a source of production might well change the politics."

Congress could compensate Alaskans by leasing the oil for a set amount of time, after which the state could sell it, Luft said in the column, under the headline "An Oil Reserve Right at Hand."

Alaskans who have tried to open ANWR to drilling said they haven't heard of this new twist but noted that execution would be very complex.

"I don't understand the concept," was the immediate reaction of Roger Herrera, an oil and gas consultant in Anchorage who has been working on ANWR nearly 30 years.

After giving the idea some quick thought, he said that additional exploration likely would be required to confirm the amount of oil in ANWR, and that equipment would need to be in place so that it could be extracted when needed.

Stevens told reporters he thinks the reserve idea may solve the ANWR issue.

"It is in the national interest to produce from ANWR and certainly by the time we could get it ready to produce it would be a ready reserve," Stevens said.

At a time when we need to be developing alternative energy resources.

It's the End of The World - Episode 4

It's television as it should be:

If television was like this, I'd probably have longer legs.

It's the End of The World - Episode 3

It's television as it should be:



If television was like this, I'd probably have an English bulldog named Gustav.

It's the End of The World - Episode 2

It's television as it should be:



If television was like this, I'd have no reason to blog.

,

It's the End of The World - Episode 1

It's television as it should be:



If television was like this, I'd grow nails and polish them orange.