They cursed God because of the heat
Are we in the end times? Check out theses
verses and read the following news articles and decide for yourself.
Global Warming, Pollution Add to Coastal Threats,
How many will develop skin cancer in years to come?,
Global Warming Could Melt Greenland Ice Sheet-Study,
U.S. keen to rejoin global warming debate,
Coalition Joins Environmental Defense to Undo Global Warming,
Warming Climate Disrupts Alaska Natives' Lives,
a surprising jump in the amount of carbon dioxide, For more information on Global warming goto
world view of global warming
verses
Jeremiah 12
3 Yet you know me, O LORD ;
you see me and test my thoughts about you.
Drag them off like sheep to be butchered!
Set them apart for the day of slaughter!
4 How long will the land lie parched [1]
and the grass in every field be withered?
Because those who live in it are wicked,
the animals and birds have perished.
Moreover, the people are saying,
"He will not see what happens to us."
Joel 1
19 To you, O LORD , I call,
for fire has devoured the open pastures
and flames have burned up all the trees of the field.
20 Even the wild animals pant for you;
the streams of water have dried up
and fire has devoured the open pastures.
Revelation 16
8The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was given power to scorch people with fire. 9They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him.
10The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was plunged into darkness. Men gnawed their tongues in agony
11and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done.
12The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East.
A promise
Joel 2
22 Be not afraid, O wild animals,
for the open pastures are becoming green.
The trees are bearing their fruit;
the fig tree and the vine yield their riches.
Global Warming, Pollution Add to Coastal Threats
By Alister Doyle
OSLO (Reuters) - A creeping rise in sea levels tied to global warming, pollution and damage to coral reefs may make coastlines even more vulnerable to disasters like tsunamis or storms in future, experts said Monday.
Few coastal ecosystems are robust enough to withstand freak waves like the ones that slammed into Asian nations from Sri Lanka to Thailand Sunday, killing more than 22,000 people, after a subsea earthquake off Indonesia.
But global warming, poorly planned coastal development and other threats over which humans have some control are weakening natural defenses ranging from mangrove swamps to coral reefs that help keep the oceans at bay.
"Coasts are under threat in many countries," said Brad Smith at environmental group Greenpeace. "Development of roads, shrimp farms, ribbon development along coasts and tourism are eroding natural defenses in Asia."
Scientists say a build-up of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere from human burning of fossil fuels threatens to trigger more powerful storms and raise sea levels, exposing coasts to more erosion.
Leaders of small island states will meet in Mauritius on Jan. 10-14 to debate threats such as global warming.
World sea levels rose on average by 10-20 cm (4 to 8 inches) during the 20th century and an additional rise of 9-88 cm is expected by the year 2100, according to latest report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001.
RISING SEAS
Island nations like the Maldives, swamped by the tsunami, could literally disappear beneath the waves if seas rise. And in Bangladesh, 17 million people live less than one meter above sea level, as do many in Florida in the United States.
Richard Klein, a senior Researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said vulnerability to natural disasters often went hand in hand with poverty.
"Vulnerability has as much a social dimension as an environmental one," he said. The Netherlands could afford to build higher dykes to defend against the seas, for instance, but developing states could not.
He suggested better early warning systems for everything from cyclones to tsunamis in the Third World.
"And one of the first risks for small islands is not that they will be submerged (by rising sea levels) but there will be no fresh water," he said. Salt water would poison reservoirs of rainwater and purification equipment would be too costly.
Smith at Greenpeace said damage to coral reefs was also making coasts more vulnerable to battering by the sea.
An international report early this month showed that about 70 percent of the world's coral reefs had been ruined or were under threat from human activities, ranging from over-fishing to coastal pollution and global warming.
"Corals form a storm barrier and if they die many islands will be more vulnerable to cyclones," he said.
Ozone 'Hole' Pulls Back, but Danger Lingers
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
PUNTA ARENAS, Chile (AP) - The worst of the ozone hole has pulled back once more to Antarctica this southern spring, leaving behind a shadow of uncertainty for the people living at the bottom of the Americas.
How many will develop skin cancer in years to come? How many more decades must their children live with dangerous ultraviolet rays? Will the global treaty to save the ozone survive until then?
The people of wind-blown Punta Arenas, like the local evergreens forever bent eastward from westerly gusts, are adjusting to the intense radiation that pours each year through the gap in the ozone layer. At least that's what some say.
``People are better informed. They're buying more sun-block and putting it on their children,'' said pharmacist Gerardo Leal. ``They've gotten used to it,'' taxi driver Rene Bahamonde assured a visitor.
But on a ``red alert'' day when UV rays could have damaged eyes, Bahamonde's dark glasses sat unused by his side. And local health chief Dr. Lidia Amarales said many of the 150,000 Punta Arenans take few precautions against a damaging sun as they go about their business on the quiet streets that slope downward to the broad, chill waters of the Strait of Magellan.
The reason is simple: It's cool here.
``When it's 30 degrees somewhere (86 Fahrenheit), people don't go out into the sun. Here, with 13 degrees (55 Fahrenheit), they go outside,'' Amarales explained.
This is a gray, drizzly corner of South America, but clouds are no protection against UV. It rarely exceeds 70 Fahrenheit, and ``without the heat, they don't 'feel' the radiation,'' Amarales said. ``We need to change habits.''
The stratosphere's layer of ozone, a form of oxygen, for countless millennia filtered out almost all the sun's cancer-causing ultraviolet-B rays. But in the 1970s scientists warned that manmade chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used in aerosol sprays and refrigerants, were destroying ozone through chain reactions high in the skies. By the 1980s, satellite images showed the world, an ``ozone hole'' had formed over Antarctica.
Air currents and intense cold in the polar region, combined with chlorine from CFCs, created a vast expanse of ozone-thin atmosphere that briefly reached the tip of South America each southern spring. Measured in Dobson units, ozone here was found in October 1992 to have thinned to 147 units, less than half the normal 333. Ultraviolet radiation, in its most damaging wavelengths, multiplied many times.
The world's nations took action in 1987, signing the Montreal Protocol, phasing out some CFCs and some other ozone-damaging compounds. As a result, chlorine has declined in the lower atmosphere since the mid-1990s, while the rate of growth of bromine, another targeted chemical, has slowed.
It will take decades to purge the atmosphere. Experts watch year by year for positive signs, and in fact this September's maximum ozone hole, at 11 million square miles, was markedly smaller for the second straight year from the huge 17-million-square-mile hole of 2002.
But Dutch climatologist Henk Eskes, a leading ozone analyst, cautioned that climatic changes make it hard to draw conclusions.
``It's still very difficult to say that it's really at a turning point. There's a lot of variability, from one year to the next, because of wind patterns and dynamical situations,'' he said by telephone from De Bilt, Netherlands.
Punta Arenas' own expert, Claudio Casiccia, is equally noncommittal.
``If this trend continues for four, five, six years, then I think that's a sign the ozone is recovering,'' said the Chilean, who monitors the skies via sophisticated instruments on the roof of his Ozone Laboratory at the University of Magallanes.
Computer models suggest ozone should recover globally by 2040-2050, Casiccia pointed out. ``But global ozone is one situation'' - it was depleted by 6 percent over the United States, for example - ``and Antarctica is another situation.''
Casiccia and others worry that unforeseen new compounds might damage the ozone shield. And they are troubled by the granting of exemptions from the Montreal Protocol.
On Nov. 26, at negotiations in Prague, Czech Republic, a dozen nations, including the United States, Canada and some European countries, won continued exemptions for use of methyl bromide, an ozone-depleting agricultural pesticide that was to have been phased out this year.
Chemist Mario Molina, who shared a 1995 Nobel prize for identifying the ozone threat, protests that substitutes are available. ``Any exemptions for further emissions will delay the recovery of the ozone layer,'' he said by telephone from Cambridge, Mass.
Environmentalists at the Prague meeting worried that continued exceptions for rich countries could undermine the Montreal treaty itself, by discouraging poorer countries from meeting their own later deadlines - to end CFC use by 2010, for example.
In Punta Arenas, ozone is a here-and-now concern for Dr. Jaime F. Abarca, the city's lone dermatologist, who with Casiccia's help conducted the only detailed studies of local sunburns, skin cancer and UV-B levels.
Abarca reported in a British dermatology journal that incidence of skin cancer leaped from 65 cases recorded between 1987 to 1993, to 108 in the following seven-year period. He says additional research, with international aid, is urgently needed.
The annual shrinking of the hole - the area where ozone drops below 220 Dobson units - doesn't mean the danger ends for Punta Arenas. Even in December, below-normal ozone levels combine with a higher-angled, more direct sun to produce ``red alert'' days, announced via 131 prominent signs posted at schools, office lobbies and other key points, modeled on a traffic light showing five alert levels ranging from green to violet.
Still, few are seen on the streets in dark glasses or shady hats.
Fernando Carbacho wears his $100 UV-guard sunglasses rain or shine. ``But not everyone can afford good glasses,'' the 64-year-old retired soldier said. Besides, he said, ``people are contrary,'' resisting being told what to do, including his 12-year-old granddaughter, who goes without protection.
``They know what the problem is,'' Amarales said. ``They just haven't changed their habits.''
Global Warming Could Melt Greenland Ice Sheet-Study
Global Warming Could Melt Greenland Ice Sheet-Study
By Patricia Reaney
LONDON (Reuters) - Greenland's huge ice sheet could melt within the next 1,000 years and swamp low-lying areas around the globe if emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and global warming are not reduced, scientists said on Wednesday.
A meltdown of the massive ice sheet, which is more than three km (1.8 miles) thick would raise sea levels by an average seven meters (yards), threatening countries such as Bangladesh, island in the Pacific and parts of Florida.
"Any area that is less than seven meters above sea level would be flooded," said Jonathan Gregory, a climate scientist at the University of Reading in southern England.
Researchers have already calculated that an annual average temperature rise of more than three degrees Celsius would be sufficient to melt the ice sheet in the future.
Gregory and his colleagues have produced new calculations, which are published in the science journal Nature, showing that a temperature rise of that degree is indeed likely to happen.
"We found that the levels of CO2 which we could quite likely reach during this century are sufficient to produce that amount of warming," he said.
Using methods developed for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Gregory and his team did modeling studies of temperature change in response to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases over the next 350 years.
"We estimated what that meant for the temperature of Greenland to see whether it passed the critical level threshold," Gregory added.
It did.
Some of the models forecast a temperature rise that was nearly three times more than the threshold.
"How quickly it would happen would depend on how severe the warming was," Gregory said when asked when the ice sheet would disappear. "It is a great deal of ice."
Under the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union must cut its greenhouse gas output by eight percent of 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. To help reach these targets, the EU has designed an international emissions trading scheme, due to start in 2005.
Plants in each member state will be granted tradeable CO2 certificates which allow them to generate a set amount of the polluting gas.
But it may not be enough.
"Presuming the calculations are right, that it is going to happen, and that we are in the right ball park then you would prevent it (the meltdown) happening by not allowing CO2 to go above the levels we were considering," Gregory said.
The lowest CO2 concentration scenario used in the models was 450 parts per million. Current levels are below that, according to Gregory, but by the middle of this century are likely to exceed it.
"It would not be impossible to remain below that level, if it is the important threshold, but it will mean greater emissions reduction than is currently being considered," he added.
04/07/04 14:01
INTERVIEW-U.S. keen to rejoin global warming debate
PARIS (Reuters) - The United States, the world's largest emitter of "greenhouse" gases, wants to rejoin the global-warming debate but is adamant that its lone approach to environmental issues is a success.
Mike Leavitt, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the Bush administration, is meeting this week with environment ministers at an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) forum in Paris.
"(I will) make clear that the United States continues to have an interest in success of the OECD and that we want to be full participants in matters relating to the environment," Leavitt told Reuters on Monday ahead of the OECD meeting.
Relations between the U.S. and most other industrialized countries on environmental issues have deteriorated since President Bush's administration withdrew in 2001 from the Kyoto treaty limiting emissions of greenhouse gases thought to cause global warming.
Bush said the treaty was too expensive and unfairly excluded developing nations.
Leavitt said the Bush administration was maintaining its stance against mandatory rules to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases represented by the 1997 U.N. protocol.
"Given the president's and the country's position on Kyoto, I don't have more to add. But we are moving on what I would deem to be an aggressive and deliberate strategy and we are seeing substantial impact and progress and I am optimistic we will see more," Leavitt said.
He reiterated President Bush's goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions as a share of the economy by 18 percent by 2012 from 2002 levels. This means in practice that if the economy would grow by more than 18 percent over those 10 years there would be an actual increase in emissions.
The Kyoto commitment by the U.S., which leads the world in greenhouse-gas emissions, would have been to reduce its emissions by seven percent from 1990 levels by 2012. Emissions have steadily increased over the last decade.
But Leavitt said the U.S. has boosted investment in the emissions reduction for this year to $4.3 billion, compared to over $20 billion over the past 13 years.
The EPA is also implementing five rules that will reduce ozone, haze or fine particles, mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants and diesel pollution from construction, farming and industrial engines.
Leavitt said he will be the first EPA administrator to tackle mercury pollution from the largest unregulated source, coal-fired power plants, which emit mercury through their smokestacks.
He defended the EPA, which has been bitterly criticized for relaxing pollution rules to benefit various industries with the attorney-generals of 10 states and 45 U.S. senators asking it to write stronger rules.
"It's important to clarify some fictions that have crept in ... those critics who say that we don't see mercury as a toxin. The fact is we do and we regulate it as such," Leavitt said.
Coalition Joins Environmental Defense to Undo Global Warming
Six Major Brands Join Environmental Defense's Effort to Halt Global Climate
Change
NEW YORK, April 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Environmental Defense today announced six consumer product brands are joining the organization's undo global warming campaign, www.undoit.org. The companies will help build public support for national legislation to cap U.S. greenhouse gas pollution. They will, through advertising on products and elsewhere, direct individuals to www.undoit.org, where they can sign on as citizen co-sponsors of the Climate Stewardship Act, due for a U.S. Senate vote in May, and can contribute to the Undoit! Campaign.
The six new allies are Clif Bar, Stonyfield Farm, Organic Valley, Odwalla, White Wave/Silk and Trinity Springs. Clif Bar will distribute information about global warming on their package, at sporting events, green festivals and on its web site. All companies will help drive individuals to www.undoit.org through consumer packaging, field marketing events and web site links.
"People know that global warming is a problem, but they don't know what they can do to help solve it," said Environmental Defense president Fred Krupp. "These companies will be strong allies in spreading the word that there are simple and effective steps we all can take to help undo the problem."
"Global warming is a huge issue that can seem paralyzing," said Gary Erickson, owner and CEO of Clif Bar Inc. and Global Green USA award recipient for Corporate Environmental Leadership. "We want to educate people about the ways everyone one of us can contribute to solving the global warming crisis."
Global Warming: Undo It! (www.undoit.org) is Environmental Defense's campaign to build grassroots support for the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act. Senators McCain and Lieberman have pledged to secure a Senate vote on their bill by spring of 2004. This comes after the act secured 43 votes in October of 2003, a tally that surprised most pundits and built momentum for further votes on global warming.
The campaign is now taking its message beyond the Internet to retail stores with calls to action showing up on consumer products like energy bars, spring water or organic juice. To date, Undoit! has secured more than 250, 000 citizen co-sponsors for the Climate Stewardship Act.
Environmental Defense, a leading national nonprofit organization, represents more than 400,000 members. Since 1967, Environmental Defense has linked science, economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships to create breakthrough solutions to the most serious environmental problems. www.environmentaldefense.org
Mary Jo Viederman 603 228-2836
Benjamin Smith 212 505-2100
SOURCE Environmental Defense
CO: Environmental Defense; Clif Bar; Stonyfield Farm; Organic Valley; Odwalla; White Wave/Silk; Trinity Springs
ST: New York
SU: NPT
Web site: http://www.environmentaldefense.org
http://www.prnewswire.com
Warming Climate Disrupts Alaska Natives' Lives
By Yereth Rosen
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Anyone who doubts the gravity of global warming should ask Alaska's Eskimo, Indian and Aleut elders about the dramatic changes to their land and the animals on which they depend.
Native leaders say that salmon are increasingly susceptible to warm-water parasites and suffer from lesions and strange behavior. Salmon and moose meat have developed odd tastes and the marrow in moose bones is weirdly runny, they say.
Arctic pack ice is disappearing, making food scarce for sea animals and causing difficulties for the Natives who hunt them. It is feared that polar bears, to name one species, may disappear from the Northern hemisphere by mid-century.
As trees and bushes march north over what was once tundra, so do beavers, and they are damming new rivers and lakes to the detriment of water quality and possibly salmon eggs.
Still, to the frustration of Alaska Natives, many politicians in the lower 48 U.S. states deny that global warming is occurring or that a warmer climate could cause problems.
"They obviously don't live in the Arctic," said Patricia Cochran, executive director of the Alaska Native Science Commission. The Anchorage-based commission, funded by the National Science Foundation, has been gathering information for years on Alaska's thawing conditions.
The climate changes are disrupting traditional food gathering and cultures, said Larry Merculieff, an Aleut leader from the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.
Indigenous residents of the far north are finding it increasingly difficult to explain the natural world to younger generations. "As species go down, the levels of connection between older and younger go down along with that," Merculieff said at a recent Anchorage conference.
SAFETY AFFECTED
Climate and weather changes even affect human safety, said Orville Huntington, vice chairman of the Alaska Native Science Commission.
"It looks like winter out there, but if you've really been around a long time like me, it's not winter," said Huntington, an Athabascan Indian from the interior Alaska village of Huslia. "If you travel that ice, it's not the ice that we traveled 40 years ago."
River ice, long used for travel in enterior Alaska, is thinner and less dependable than it used to be.
Global warming is believed to result from pollutants emitted into the atmosphere, which trap the Earth's radiant heat and create a greenhouse effect. The warming is more dramatic in polar latitudes because cold air is dry, allowing greenhouse gases to trap more solar radiation. Even a modest rise in temperature can thaw the glaciers and permafrost that cover much of Alaska.
There is no question that global warming is having pronounced effects in Alaska, said Gunter Weller, director of the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research.
Average temperatures in Alaska are up about 5 degrees Fahrenheit from three decades ago, and about twice that during winter, said Weller, who also heads the Cooperative Institute for Arctic Research established by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the university.
That causes serious problems not only for rural Natives who live off the land but for major industries and for public structures, he said.
Most of Alaska's highways run over permafrost that is now rapidly thawing, meaning maintenance headaches for state officials. The thaw has already caused increased maintenance costs for the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, which uses special vertical supports for suspension over the tundra.
If the plight of Alaska Natives does not get politicians' attention, then the economic toll should, Weller said.
He cited the cost -- estimated at over $100 million -- of moving Shishmaref, an Inupiat Eskimo village on Alaska's northwestern coastline, to more stable ground. The village of 600 is on the verge of tumbling into the Bering Sea because of severe erosion resulting from thawed permafrost and the absence of sea ice to protect the coastline from high storm waves.
Along with Shishmaref, there are about 20 Alaska villages that are candidates for relocation because of severe erosion, with similar costs, Weller said.
Alaska's economy has already suffered from the permafrost thaw, said Robert Corell, chairman of the international Arctic Climate Impact Assessment committee.
The hard-frozen conditions needed to support ice roads around the North Slope oil fields now exist for only about 100 days a year, he pointed out. Thirty years ago, oil companies could use ice roads for about 200 days of the year, he said.
LONDON, England -- A U.S. scientist is reported to have observed a surprising jump in the amount of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.
The Guardian and the Independent newspapers said on Monday the finding was the first time the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere had risen by more than two parts per million over two consecutive years.
The rise cannot be explained by any corresponding increase in CO2 emissions from power stations or motor vehicles because there has been none, the Independent said.
Some scientists believe the abrupt rise may be evidence of the climate change "feedback" mechanism, by which global warming alters the earth's natural systems causing warming to increase even faster than before, according to the report.
Details of the increase came from an observatory 4,000 meters (12,000ft) up a mountain in Hawaii, which has been measuring the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere since 1958.
The average rise in CO2 levels has been about 1.6 parts per million by volume in recent decades, although there have been several peaks associated with El Nino -- a disruptive weather pattern in the tropical Pacific.
However, in the last two years the level has risen by 2.08ppm and 2.54ppm and neither were El Nino years.
Dr. Charles Keeling, the American physicist in charge of the project in Hawaii, told the newspaper the rise might be something to do with a pattern of high and low atmospheric pressure, known as the Southern Oscillation, or it could be something new.
"The rise in the annual rate of CO2 increase to above two parts per million for two consecutive years is a real phenomenon," he said.
"It is possible this is merely a reflection of the Southern Oscillation, like previous peaks in the rate, but it is possible it is the beginning of a natural process unprecedented in records."
Only last month UK Prime Minister Tony Blair delivered an impassioned speech warning of the "catastrophic consequences" climate change could bring.
He insisted timely action must be taken now to avert potential disaster brought about by rising temperatures.
In his speech, Blair said the emission of greenhouse gases was causing global warming "at a rate that began as significant, has become alarming and is simply unsustainable in the long-term."
The Guardian said the figures would be discussed Tuesday at a Greenpeace conference in London attended by Blair's scientific adviser, David King.
