three June 6 articles,
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It's Not Just Eskimos in Bikinis By Chip Ward
Climate Helter Skelter in the Lower 48: Close-to-home global warming effects that we hear little about.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/06/climate_helter_skelter.htmlIntroduction by Tom Engelhardt
It's curious in a way that so much of the reporting on "global warming" is inextricably linked in our minds with ice sheets, snow, and cold. Any month of global-warming articles in the press makes the point: Lakes in a huge expanse of Siberia are beginning to dry up, a harbinger of what's in store for lakes "high in northern latitudes"; glaciers are retreating globally, from Africa to Peru ("If Ernest Hemingway had written a short story called, let's say, ?The Snows of Dinwoody Glacier,' then the controversy about the retreating snows of Kilimanjaro might not be so resonant?"); a recent study of glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula indicates that 87% have "retreated significantly" in the last half century, and faster in the last five years than at any other time in the last five decades; the Alpine ski industry is building its resorts ever higher in the Alpine peaks, while using ever more snow cannons and artificial snow ("Global warming is the specter stalking the industry?"); the leaders of indigenous peoples in the Arctic appeal for the umpteenth time for someone -- in this case the European Union (the Bush administration being hopeless on the subject) -- to pay attention to the damage global warming is causing to their homes; and so on.
Such stories are now a dime a dozen. Even Elizabeth Kolbert's recent remarkable three-part New Yorker series, The Climate of Man, starts with melting Alaska, makes its way through various northern climes and ice stations, and then leaps into the scientific history of global warming.
The reason for this is simple enough. The icy regions of our planet are experiencing global warming twice as fast as (and far more dramatically than) the rest of us, and their peoples, the least responsible for the phenomenon, are being hit the hardest by it. On the other hand, the focus on the Antarctic, the Arctic, and glacial peaks scattered around the planet leaves us with the sense of a phenomenon happening infinitely far from most of us. Worrisome, yes, but not exactly a crisis in our neck of the woods; nothing to worry about today or tomorrow.
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http://news.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=86158&cat=ScienceNews >> Science
New and bleak climate-change study:- PARIS | June 06, 2005 9:11:29 PM IST
A French study finds global warming is proceeding apace, even under a best-case green scenario.
Published jointly by the Pierre-Simon-Laplace Institute and Meteo France, the report looked at 11 climate scenarios with different concentrations of heat-trapping, greenhouse gasses.
The study's findings were reported in the French newspaper Liberation.
In one case, temperatures could rise about 4 degrees on average and between 3-4 degrees in France by 2010.
Even in the best-case green scenario, envisioning a smaller rise in greenhouse gasses, could push temperatures up 2 degrees Celsius, according to the report.
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http://news.ft.com/cms/s/7541376e-d6b0-11d9-b0a4-00000e2511c8,dwp_uuid=d4f2ab60-c98e-11d7-81c6-0820abe49a01.htmlG8 seen as chance for climate change breakBy Ben Hall and James Blitz in London
Published: June 6 2005 21:57 | Last updated: June 6 2005 21:57
Tony Blair is still hoping for a breakthrough on climate change under Britain's presidency of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations and will use his first in-depth discussion on the subject with President George W. Bush on Tuesday to urge further US action.
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