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<p>The snows of Kilimanjaro may soon be gone. The African mountain's white peak — made famous by writer Ernest Hemingway — is rapidly melting, researchers report.</p> <p>Some 85 percent of the ice that made up the mountaintop glaciers in 1912 was gone by 2007, researchers led by paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.</p>

About half (48%) of white mainline Protestants believe the earth is warming as the result of human activity -- roughly the same proportion as among all Americans (47%) -- but only a third of white evangelical Protestants (34%) share that belief. In fact, white evangelical Protestants are the most likely to say there is no solid evidence that global warming is occurring (31%). While only 39% of black Protestants say global warming is a result of human activity, they are, however, the least likely of the religions studied to deny global warming (15%). The unaffiliated (58%) are the most likely...

Here’s the first thing you shouldn’t do in front of Al Gore. Be skeptical about catastrophic, human-caused global warming. He will rip your reputation apart, just as he once did to reputable, honorable scientists in congressional hearings. Here’s the second thing you shouldn’t do in front of Al Gore. Ask him whether he himself might have the kind of conflict of interest that he takes for granted in others. For heaven’s sake, do not get into the question of whether he might make a lot of money with the passage of a global warming cap-and-trade tax that he has been...

Climate change would force Australia's Aborigines off their traditional lands, resulting in "cultural genocide" and environmental degradation, a human rights watchdog warned Monday. Australia's original inhabitants, whose cultures stretch back many thousands of years, Aborigines would be deeply affected by the impact of global warming, the government-funded Human Rights Commission said. Rising sea levels and soaring temperatures would make their homelands uninhabitable, severing spiritual links and laying waste to the environment, according to the commission's annual Native Title Report. "Problems that indigenous Australians will encounter include people being forced to leave their lands, particularly in coastal areas," the report said....

In response to the many redundant, errant letters from Alan Journet, the following facts will be useful to your readers in making a wholly informed opinion on the subject of global warming. Our planet has warmed and cooled in countless cycles over the last four billion years, often at rates faster and more extreme than those recorded since the "explosion" of greenhouse gases. The research of a significant number of renowned climate scientists strongly suggests that our human contribution is of much less significance than Mr. Journet and his ilk would have you believe. Consider this: Mars and Earth are...

The five countries that ring the Arctic on Thursday declared climate change the single greatest threat to polar bears, calling for urgent action to curb global warming. Months ahead of a crucial global climate conference, the five countries -- Canada, Denmark (with Greenland), Norway, Russia and the United States -- expressed their "deep concern" at the end of a three-day meeting in the northern Norwegian town of Tromsoe. "The parties agreed that long-term conservation of polar bears depends upon successful mitigation of climate change," they wrote in a joint statement following discussion on threats to the white bear that have...

For those who have endured this winter's frigid temperatures and today's heavy snowstorm in the Northeast, the concept of global warming may seem, well, almost wishful. But climate is known to be variable -- a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn't mean the planet is cooling. Still, according to a new study, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades. Earth's climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked...

Former Vice President Al Gore is urging Congress not to be sidetracked by the current financial crisis and to take "decisive action" this year to reduce the heat-trapping gases responsible for global warming. Gore, scheduled to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, planned to tell lawmakers that a bill capping greenhouse gas emissions is needed if the U.S. is to play a leading role in negotiations for a new international climate treaty. He also was pressing Congress to pass President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan, saying investments in clean energy and green jobs will help dig the...

The purpose of my letter today is to express my view on global warming, a view that is in opposition to contemporary thought and one many readers will find disagreeable. However, before rendering a judgment on my view, I'd like the reader to stay with me to the end because you may be pleasantly surprised where I land. I don't believe that the human use of carbons to fuel our energy needs is the cause of global warming, if global warming even exists. That's my opinion, straight and simple. The context of this letter makes it unnecessary to explain how...

An US dietician says that has branded Americans food habits an "SUV eating style", which contributes to global warming more than the cars they drive, in her book. Kate Geagan, registered dietitian in Park City, Utah, refers to a University of Iowa study that has found that food on average travels about 1,500 miles to reach people's tables. "When we choose highly processed packaged foods, we contribute to global warming, so food is a new part of the dialogue about the environment. And this is something that everyone can do now and not wait for politicians to enact changes. An...

Global warming is serious problem, not a "hoax," and requires more than a state response, Gov. Mike Beebe said Friday. "I think it's a threat, and I think global warming is occurring," Beebe said in response to a caller to his statewide radio program who said he believed the climate change crisis was a "hoax." Another caller asked if Arkansas was going to promote a national carbon tax, which is being discussed in Washington, D.C., as a way to get companies to reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere, a major cause of global warming. Any initiative designed to tackle the...

As key international talks on climate change drew to a close in Poland with little progress on a global deal and anger against the EU for failing to lead the way on targets, the Nobel Prize winner attempted to get efforts to stop global warming back on track. In a rousing speech to hundreds of delegates at the UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan, the former US Presidential candidate echoed President-elect Barack Obama in calling for change. "It is wrong for this generation to destroy the habitability of the planet and ruin the prospects of every future generation. That realisation...

When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid. Since Clinton's inauguration, summer Arctic sea ice has lost the equivalent of Alaska, California and Texas. The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton's second inauguration. Global warming is accelerating. Time is close to running out, and Obama knows it. "The time for delay is over; the time for denial is over," he said Tuesday after meeting with former Vice President Al Gore, who won a...

Collapsing antarctic ice sheets, which have become potent symbols of global warming, may actually turn out to help in the battle against climate change and soaring carbon emissions. Professor Rob Raiswell, a geologist at the University of Leeds, says that as the sheets break off the ice covering the continent, floating icebergs are produced that gouge minerals from the bedrock as they make their way to the sea. Raiswell believes that the accumulated frozen mud could breathe life into the icy waters around Antarctica, triggering a large, natural removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And as rising temperatures cause...

A conservation group is going to court to force the federal government to consider adding the Pacific walrus to the list of threatened species. The Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on Wednesday for failing to act on a petition seeking protection for walruses under the Endangered Species Act. Walruses are threatened by global warming that melts Arctic sea ice, according to the group, one of the parties that successfully petitioned to list polar bears as threatened. The group also has filed petitions to protect Arctic seals. The walrus petition...

At least 200 narwhal whales in Canada's Arctic, trapped by winter ice that is setting in around them and facing starvation or suffocation, must be culled, officials said Friday. Hunters from the village of Pond Inlet on Baffin Island discovered the animals trapped near Bylot Island, about 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) from Pond Inlet, on November 15, and checked on them periodically. The local hunters are allowed to harvest only 130 whales each year for food, according to standards set by the federal department of Fisheries and Oceans. But department spokesman Keith Pelley told AFP: "It's unlikely the animals are...

It's Nature's way of healing itself. The findings help determine how much carbon that big storms have historically taken from the atmosphere and buried for thousands of years beneath the sea. More carbon could be buried by these storms if global warming increases their intensity and frequency, as some scientists have predicted. Scientists have been looking at ways to store carbon to lower the levels of carbon dioxide building up in Earth's atmosphere. Scientists have long suspected that hurricanes and typhoons (along with cyclones and tropical depressions, these are all versions of storm systems called tropical cyclones) can cleanse the...

Just a sliver of voters say global warming is the most important issue they are weighing in deciding whom to support for president. Nonetheless, the issue appears to be playing a role in how voters make up their minds and could be key for undecided voters, according to a new poll out Monday. The survey, conducted by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities, also found Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain among registered voters by a margin of 9 percentage points, a result consistent with other recent polls. With the economy in turmoil, that global warming even registered...

Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane. ADVERTISEMENT The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images were first taken in 1978. The waters are exposing unexplored resources, and vessels could trim thousands of miles from Europe to Asia by bypassing the Panama Canal. The seasonal ebb and flow of ice levels...

Without exactly being like Mike, Sen. John McCain yesterday join-ed Mayor Bloomberg in calling global warming a reality to be dealt with by weaning the U.S. off Mideast oil. "The world is already feeling the powerful effects of global warming," McCain said in calling for caps on carbon emissions, and "the problem isn't some Hollywood invention." The Arizona Republican did not directly address Bloomberg's environmental plan, which includes $8 tolls on cars south of 86th St. But a McCain spokesman said the mayor and the senator were in sync on facing up to a greenhouse gas effect that many in...

April 10, 2007 — Planting new trees in snow-covered northern regions may actually contribute to global warming as they have the counter-effect of tropical forests, according to a study out Monday. While rainforests help cool the planet by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing clouds that reflect sunlight, the dark canopy of Canadian, Scandinavian and Siberian forests catches sunrays that would be reflected back to space by the snow, the study said. The study, published Monday in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that reforestation projects in the tropics would help mitigate global warming,...

A top hurricane forecaster called Al Gore "a gross alarmist" Friday for making an Oscar-winning documentary about global warming. "He's one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things. I think he's doing a great disservice and he doesn't know what he's talking about," Dr. William Gray said in an interview with The Associated Press at the National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, where he delivered the closing speech. A spokeswoman said Gore was on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Nashville Friday; he did not immediately respond to Gray's comments. Gray, an emeritus professor...

More than two-thirds of the world's large cities are in areas vulnerable to global warming and rising sea levels, and millions of people are at risk of being swamped by flooding and intense storms, according to a new study released Wednesday. In all, 634 million people live in the threatened coastal areas worldwide ? defined as those lying at less than 33 feet above sea level ? and the number is growing, said the study published in the journal Environment and Urbanization. More than 180 countries have populations in low-elevation coastal zones, and about 70 percent of those have urban...

The first stage of Canada's controversial annual harp seal hunt is likely to be scrapped because the ice floes where pups are born have broken up and many animals have drowned, officials and animal rights activists said on Tuesday. ADVERTISEMENT The first part of the hunt, which had been due to start on Wednesday, occurs in the Gulf of St Lawrence to the south of the Magdalen Islands on Canada's East Coast. Hunters move across the ice floes, shooting and clubbing to death young seals. Canada's federal fisheries ministry, which oversees the hunt, said the pups had been born as...

Democrat John Edwards was back on the presidential campaign trail in San Francisco Monday, but while the announced subject was global warming, his wife's newest battle with cancer was never far from his mind. In a news conference Thursday, Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, announced that breast cancer discovered in the final weeks of the 2004 presidential campaign had returned, spread to her bones and is now considered incurable. They both agreed his campaign for president should continue. "I miss her,'' Edwards, a former North Carolina senator and 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate, told reporters Monday at the Palace Hotel....

We are extremely well informed by our news media of nationally important events such as the latest on Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith, but it would be nice to see educational information on the apparently more trivial issue of global warming. E. Thomas McClanahan, who admits to not being a scientist, authored an article in the Feb. 28 The Herald Bulletin ridiculing the idea of global warming. He points out that 60 Canadian “scientists” (a relatively small number) wrote to the Prime Minister to question the credibility of global warming. We hear of other “scientists” who also are doubtful,...

AMONG ITS other negatives, Valentine's Day has now been shown by thoughtful scientific research to cause global warming. I knew it. Environmentalists in Britain are mad that the flowers British women get for Valentine's Day are usually flown in to the country, typically as far as 33,800 miles, before reaching their destination. I have no idea where they got that number, which I admit sounds far-fetched. But I read it on the Drudge Report, which got the story from London's Telegraph newspaper, which proves it's true. The problem is, apparently, that Britain is cold in the winter, which makes it...

The debate over global warming has turned hysterical in the wake of the Democratic takeover of Congress and the most recent United Nations report asserting a 90% likelihood of human-caused climate change. And anybody who disagrees had better be prepared for attacks on their scientific credentials, their honesty, and even their right to speak out. Case in point — the singularly nasty attack by the left-wing Guardian newspaper of England a week or so ago attacking a distinguished American think tank, the American Enterprise Institute of Washington, D.C., for soliciting scholarly papers that might disagree with the so-called global warming...

The melting of Greenland's glaciers can slow as rapidly as it can accelerate, making the ice's effect on rising sea levels tough to forecast, a study says.

The European Commission has sought to step up punishment of environmental crimes, with plans for criminal penalties, including jail sentences, across the European Union. Currently, member states define what is a crime against the environment, but the European Union's executive arm considers that sanctions vary too much and that many are too lax. "The proposed directive is crucial to avoid criminals profiting from the existing discrepancies in member states' criminal law systems which damage the European environment," said EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini on Friday. "We cannot allow safe-havens of environmental crime inside the EU," he added. Under the proposals,...

Ex-US vice president Al Gore's global warming documentary will be shown at public schools across Portugal as part of a campaign to tackle climate change, Prime Minister Jose Socrates said. "I think the duty of a politician is to divulge a political message so that all citizens are more aware of what they can do to solve this global problem," Socrates, a former environment minister, said after meeting with Gore. Gore's Oscar-nominated film, "An Inconvenient Truth," warns that urgent action is needed to reduce carbon emissions soon or else the planet will suffer disastrous consequences from climate change. Last month...

Dire warnings from top scientists that mankind is to blame for global warming set off alarm bells everywhere -- but many of the world's churches have already "gone green" in the race to save the planet. For Christians, Jews and Muslims, the message is the same -- mankind has "stewardship" of the earth which it has a duty to protect for future generations. And environmentalists hailed churches for stepping up to the plate with a real sense of urgency. "Caring for the environment is a key part of many religions. Any contribution which highlights and tackles issues such as climate...

Two private advocacy groups told a congressional hearing Tuesday that climate scientists at seven government agencies say they have been subjected to political pressure aimed at downplaying the threat of global warming. The groups presented a survey that shows two in five of the 279 climate scientists who responded to a questionnaire complained that some of their scientific papers had been edited in a way that changed their meaning. Nearly half of the 279 said in response to another question that at some point they had been told to delete reference to "global warming" or "climate change" from a report....

Later this week in Paris, climate scientists will issue a dire forecast for the planet that warns of slowly rising sea levels and higher temperatures. But that may be the sugarcoated version. Early and changeable drafts of their upcoming authoritative report on climate change foresee smaller sea level rises than were projected in 2001 in the last report. Many top U.S. scientists reject these rosier numbers. Those calculations don't include the recent, and dramatic, melt-off of big ice sheets in two crucial locations: They "don't take into account the gorillas — Greenland and Antarctica," said Ohio State University earth sciences...

President George W. Bush refused to back down on his position on tackling global warming as he unveiled a new energy initiative this week that failed to convince environmentalists. Bush briefly discussed global warming during his annual State of the Union address to Congress Tuesday, proposing a plan to slash America's dependence on foreign oil by using new technologies. The US leader called for reducing US gasoline consumption by 20 percent over 10 years, mainly by raising the supply of alternative fuels like ethanol. "America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives...

FEDERAL WAY, Wash. (AP) - The Federal Way School Board has put the brakes on schools showing former Vice President Al Gore's global warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." In a vote last night, the board decided to require that an opposing view be presented in order for teachers to present the film. The board voted 3 to 0, with two members absent. Board president Ed Barney said he had received about a half-dozen complaints from parents that their child was taking the film as fact after viewing it at school. Barney said the film had been shown at some high...

Our understanding of climate change began with intense debates amongst 19th century scientists about whether northern Europe had been covered by ice thousands of years ago. In the 1820s Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier discovered that "greenhouse gasses" trap heat radiated from the Earth's surface after it has absorbed energy from the sun. In 1859 John Tyndall suggested that ice ages were caused by a decrease in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide. In 1896 Svente Arrhenius showed that doubling the carbon dioxide content of the air would gradually raise global temperatures by 5-6C - a remarkably prescient result that was...

Temperatures in rugged Tibet have hit record highs in recent days, China's state press has reported, as a scientific survey warned of the impact of global warming in the Himalayan region. Friday's temperature in the Qamdo area of eastern Tibet was 21.8 degrees Celsius (71 degrees Fahrenheit), 1.7 degrees higher than the previous record set for the same day in 1996, Xinhua news agency reported. In Dengqen county, also in eastern Tibet, the mercury reached 16.6 degrees Celsius on Thursday, 2.5 degrees higher than the previous record for the same day set in 2001, it said. Eight other places across...

A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists offers the most comprehensive documentation to date of how ExxonMobil has adopted the tobacco industry's disinformation tactics, as well as some of the same organizations and personnel, to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue. According to the report, ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science. "ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused...

National Guard troops headed for snowbound fields in trucks piled high with hay Thursday and prepared their helicopters to resume an emergency haylift that had already dropped more than 900 bales across Colorado's rangeland in an effort to save stranded and starving cattle. Using smaller helicopters, ranchers landed near frozen streams and used sledgehammers to chop ice from the water for the livestock to drink. The situation on the snowbound plains is getting dire. Typically, cattle can survive only five to 10 days without food or water in good conditions, state veterinarian John Maulsby said. For the cattle in eastern...

Whether it's because of global warming, El Nino, or just a really long warm spell, weather in New York City this winter has been awfully strange. With temperatures continually hovering around the 50 degree mark and even occasionally nearing 60, perhaps the most bizarre weather-related incident happened in Brooklyn where cherry blossoms decided to make an early appearance. At the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, it hardly seems like the dead of winter. Most cherry blossoms don't bloom until the beginning of spring when the winter chill finally begins to warm up. But there hasn't been a winter chill for most of...

Australia's crippling drought, which some lawmakers have called the worst for 1,000 years, is a natural occurrence and has no link to global warming, the country's top science organization said on Thursday. Australia had experienced around 30 periods of drought over a period of about 10,000 years, said Barrie Hunt, a researcher at the Melbourne-based Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization (CSIRO) atmospheric research center. "I think it's probably a bit too early yet to say we're having a greenhouse effect on rainfall," Hunt told local radio. Hunt based his research on three sites scattered from the country's mostly arid west,...

The Bush administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the U.S. government on record as saying that global warming could drive one of the world's most recognizable animals out of existence. The administration's proposal -- which was described by an Interior Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity -- stems from the fact that rising temperatures in the Arctic are shrinking the sea ice that polar bears need for hunting. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the department will submit the proposal today for publication in the...

There are signs that key U.S. officials are ready to take on global warming, even as much of the world community failed to show its will to deal with the impending threat at a recent global conference. Despite intense calls for new and radical actions, last week delegates at the UN-sponsored meeting in Kenya agreed on many outstanding issues, but not on further cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental groups widely described the outcome as a failure, but not all were expressing despair. Though equally unhappy with the results, some believe that meaningful global action on climate change is not...

Europeans are overwhelmingly convinced that human activity is contributing to global warming, and a majority would be prepared to accept restrictions on their lifestyle to combat it, according to a poll for the Financial Times. Research carried out this month by Harris Interactive in Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Spain found that 86 per cent of people believed humans were contributing to climate change, and 45 per cent thought it would be a threat to them and their families within their lifetimes. ADVERTISEMENT More than two-thirds – 68 per cent – said they would either strongly or somewhat support...

A rise in the Earth’s temperature could lead to an increase in the number of insects worldwide, with potentially dire consequences for humans, a new study suggests. New research shows that insect species living in warmer areas are more likely to undergo rapid population growth because they have higher metabolic rates and reproduce more frequently. The finding has scientists concerned that global warming could give rise to more fast-growing insect populations and that we could see a spike in the number of six-legged critters. The consequences could be more serious than just a few extra bug bites each summer. “If...

Below is a link to a great article from The NY Times titled “Beyond Fossil Fuels” by Robert B. Semple Jr. The piece acknowledges that while stopping global warming is an overwhelming and daunting task, everyone has the power to make a difference by making simple, conscious decisions in their every day lives. The Streisand Foundation supports the non-profit group Earth Day Network, and they have compiled a list of a few easy ways you can conserve energy and help protect the environment from further deterioration: 1) Change old, incandescent lights to newer energy-saving models (compact fluorescent lights), turn off...

Exotic microbes living around mud volcanoes on the seabed are helping to offset global warming by munching heat-trapping methane seeping from the depths, scientists said on Wednesday. They said the microbes, studied at a mud volcano on the floor of the Arctic Barents Sea between Greenland and Norway, were part of fragile habitats that could also hold industrial clues about how to convert methane into more easily used fuels. "Methane-consuming microbes ... are helping to control climate change," the journal Nature said of the report it published by scientists at German and French institutes. Microbes around the Haakon Mosby Mud...

A Chinese expert on glaciology said Monday that the world's glaciers may help curb the effects of global warming. Not only are the geographical features good sources of freshwater on earth, they are also "monitors" and "adjusters" of global temperatures, said Zhang Wenjing of the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment with the Chinese Academy of Science. Think you know everything about Server Virtualization? What technology did Gartner name as the best potential for server consolidation? What solution enables software and management savings? What had 3 fantastic reviews over the last few months? Discover SWsoft's Virtuozzo, OS Server Virtualization. With...

The increasingly urgent need to combat climate change will probably spawn U.S. policies to impose fossil fuel charges and so dramatically favor nuclear power, Citigroup said in a research note on Wednesday. Burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil is one of the biggest sources of the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists fear are leading to dangerous climate change. In response, a carbon market in Europe already charges heavy industry to emit carbon dioxide (CO2) above a certain limit -- requiring companies to buy tradeable carbon credits -- and some U.S. states are set to adopt similar schemes. This...