postMigrator

2007 UK Floods ‘No Link to Climate’

By postMigrator March 11, 2008 March 11, 2008 Uncategorized

2007 floods ‘no link to climate’
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Water overwhelmed drainage systems in several regions of Britain
The UK’s summer floods of 2007 were a freak event unrelated to global climate change, according to a report from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH).

The key cause was that extended rains early in summer soaked soils that would normally have been dry at that time.

When heavy storms came later, water could not soak away into the ground.

The report said data does not support the notion that UK summer rainfall is increasing or rivers are showing faster flow rates than in previous years.

That said, 2007 did break a number of records. In particular, rainfall in June and July was about 20% higher than ever seen before in records that go back to 1879.

Environmental Groups Sue Bush Administration to Force Polar Bear Protection

By postMigrator March 11, 2008 March 11, 2008 RT Newswire

Environmental Groups Sue Bush Administration to Force Polar Bear Protection
Faced With Overwhelming Scientific Evidence, Government Continues Delay on Endangered Species Act Listing Due to Global Warming

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – March 10 – Today the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sued the Bush administration for missing its legal deadline for issuing a final decision on whether to list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act due to global warming.
“The Bush administration seems intent on slamming shut the narrow window of opportunity we have to save polar bears,” said Kassie Siegel, climate program director at the Center for Biological Diversity and lead author of the 2005 petition seeking the Endangered Species Act listing. “We simply will not sit back and passively allow the administration to condemn polar bears to extinction.”

Polar bears live only in the Arctic and are totally dependent on the sea ice for all of their essential needs. The rapid warming of the Arctic and melting of the sea ice pose an overwhelming threat to the polar bear, which could become the first mammal to lose 100 percent of its habitat to global warming.

Climate Modelling For Polar Bear Protection

By postMigrator March 11, 2008 March 11, 2008 Uncategorized

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” … polar bears’ numbers have not yet shown significant decline.

“However, escalating habitat losses anticipated due to global
warming and other pressures are expected to severely impact
bear populations …”
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Public release date: 11-Mar-2008
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Contact: Eric DeWeaver
deweaver@aos.wisc.edu
608-265-5438

Arctic climate models playing key role in polar bear decision

MADISON – The pending federal decision about
whether to protect the polar bear as a threatened
species is as much about climate science as it is
about climate change.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is
currently considering a proposal to list the
polar bear as a threatened species under the
Endangered Species Act, a proposal largely based
on anticipated habitat loss in a warming Arctic.

Climate Change, Eco-Refugees, and Human Migration

By postMigrator March 10, 2008 March 10, 2008 RT Newswire

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“… already … engendering a new type of refugee,
the “environmental migrant”.

“The document points out that last year the UN’s
appeals for emergency humanitarian aid were all,
bar one, connected to climate change.”
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The Guardian/UK
March 10, 2008

EU Told To Prepare for Flood of Climate Change Migrants

Global warming threatens to severely destabilise
the planet, rendering a fifth of its population
homeless, top officials say

by Ian Traynor

In its half-century history, the EU has absorbed
wave upon wave of immigrants. There were the
millions of political migrants fleeing
Russian-imposed communism to western Europe
throughout the cold war, the post-colonial and
“guest worker” migrants who poured into western
Europe in the boom years of the 1950s and 60s,
the hundreds of thousands who escaped the Balkan
wars of the 90s and the millions of economic
migrants of the past decade seeking a better life.

Now, according to the EU’s two senior foreign
policy officials, Europe needs to brace itself
for a new wave of migration with a very different
cause – global warming. The ravages already being
inflicted on parts of the developing world by
climate change are engendering a new type of
refugee, the “environmental migrant”.