Category: RT Newswire

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 27, 2008
4:01 PM

 CONTACT: World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
Joe Pouliot
joe.pouliot@wwwfus.org
202-778-9730
 
 
US Government Study Finds Climate Change Impacting Water Availability, Agriculture, and Wildlife
WWF Says Report Shows Urgency of Climate Change Vote in Senate Next Week 
 
WASHINGTON, DC – May 27 – Climate change is fueling forest fires, creating water scarcity, harming animal habitats, and causing other significant changes throughout the United States that will only worsen as global temperatures increase, concludes a new federal government assessment of current and future climate change impacts.

The sobering analysis, prepared by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) – an inter-agency structure that coordinates climate research efforts across the federal government, reinforces the urgent need for Congress to take action on climate change, according to officials at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), who called upon the US Senate to pass the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill (S. 2192) which is scheduled for debate next week.

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Climate change may trim corn yields
Wed May 28, 2008 1:29am EDT  NEW YORK

(Reuters) – Warmer temperatures brought on by climate change could trim output of some U.S. crops like corn in coming decades, but increase yields from other crops like soybeans, government scientists said on Tuesday.

U.S. corn output dips and rises from year-to-year but has risen overall as farmers use new seeds and fertilizers to maximize growth.

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Alaska researchers cited some evidence that loss of hugely heavy ice
masses on mountains will be releasing earthquakes that are currently
restrained under great pressure from above.

So earthquakes become not quite off-topic for a climate list.

  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080525132352.htm
(Credit: Aaron Velasco, University of Texas at El Paso)

This map of the world shows seismic stations that detected more than
twice the normal number of small, nearby earthquakes after the
passage of what are known as “surface waves” from major quakes that
were centered hundreds to thousands of miles away and occurred from
1992 through 2006. A new study co-authored by University of Utah
seismologist Kris Pankow found that at least 12 of the 15 major
earthquakes (greater than magnitude-7) during 1992-2006 triggered
small quakes in distant parts of the world. Scientists once believed
big quakes could not trigger distant tremors.

More, much more, at
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080525132352.htm

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“…  profound impacts on the mountains, streams and range …”

  “The trends are in place,” said Fee Busby,  rangeland ecologist …
“The trends are going to continue.”

The report will be posted online this morning at
www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-3/default.php.
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The Salt Lake Tribune
05/27/2008

USDA on global warming
Climate report adds more gloom
Review out today offers clearer picture of how warming will affect
scenery familiar to Utahns
By Judy Fahys

      A landscape plagued with dust storms and drought, rangeland that
won’t support cattle, streams too hot for trout, forests felled by
beetles and fire – it’s all part of the scenario painted in a new
report on climate change by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

     The projections are not exactly new.

     Many of them have been reported by scientists and the media in
the past five years.

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