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Watchdog: NASA misled on global warming studies. CNN. 6/02/2008.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- NASA's press office "marginalized or mischaracterized" studies on global warming between 2004 and 2006, the agency's own internal watchdog concluded.
'Everyone's starving' in Ethiopia, aid worker says. CNN. 6/09/2008.

SHASHAMANE, Ethiopia (AP) -- Like so many other victims of Ethiopia's hunger crisis, Usheto Beriso weighs just half what he should. He is always cold and swaddled in a blanket. His limbs are stick-thin.
Worries Mount as Farmers Push for Big Harvest . David Streitfeld & Keith Bradsher, NY Times. 6/10/2008.

GRIFFIN, Ind. -- In a year when global harvests need to be excellent to ease the threat of pervasive food shortages, evidence is mounting that they will be average at best. Some farmers are starting to fear disaster.
$40bn shortfall in Africa aid endangers 5 million lives. Tracy McVeigh. Guardian/UK. 6/15/2008.

Watchdog proposes a special tax as the foot-dragging by G8 nations undermines a decade of progress
Turning Los Angeles wastewater to tap water. Rich Connell. LA Times. 6/07/2008.

Politics killed a 1990s plan to recycle, but drought, technology and Orange County's success offer hope.
In Burma (Myanmar), how many cyclone orphans?. Christian Science Monitor. 6/09/08.

Aid groups are trying to curb child labor and reconnect families - without the help of surnames.



Sex trade traffickers get busy among cyclone orphans. Anne-Claire Duffay. The First Post/UK. 5/14/2008.

Sex trade traffickers are preying on child survivors of Burma's devastating Cyclone Nargis, writes Edward Loxton for The First Post. At least two suspected traffickers have been arrested in Rangoon since the cyclone hit, according to UNICEF's child protection officer in Burma, "A broker came to a shelter and tried to recruit children," she told the French news agency AFP. "The police intervened and made arrests."


World's Wildlife and Environment Already Hit by Climate Change, Major Study Shows. Ian Sample. Guardian/UK. 5/15/2008.

Global warming is disrupting wildlife and the environment on every continent, according to an unprecedented study that reveals the extent to which climate change is already affecting the world's ecosystems.


An Epidemic of Extinctions: Decimation of Life on Earth. Independent/UK. 5/16/2008.

The world's species are declining at a rate "unprecedented since the extinction of the dinosaurs", a census of the animal kingdom has revealed. The Living Planet Index out today shows the devastating impact of humanity as biodiversity has plummeted by almost a third in the 35 years to 2005.
By Rowan Wolf. February 2004.

There is an interesting article in the February 9, 2004 edition of Fortune Magazine - CLIMATE COLLAPSE - The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare (UTJ Permalink - by David Stipp. The Pentagon is apparently taking "climate change" seriously even if the White House is not. The Pentagon called in Andrew Marshall, who has been the Defense Department's "sage" for over thirty years, to look at the scenarios.
Is Water Becoming 'The New Oil'?. Marc Clayton. Chrisitan Science Monitor. 5/30/08

Population, pollution, and climate put the squeeze on potable supplies - and private companies smell a profit. Others ask: Should water be a human right?


Guerrilla gardener movement takes root in L.A. area. Joe Robinson. LA TImes. 5/30/2008.

Stealth growers seed or plant on land that doesn't belong to them. The result? Plants that beautify or yield crops in otherwise neglected or vacant spaces.
ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: Controversy Over Indigenous Land and Biofuels. Mario Osava. Inter Press Service. 5/08/2008.

BRASILIA, May 8 (IPS) - The legal status of an indigenous territory in the far north of Brazil, and biofuels, are two hot potatoes at the Third National Conference on the Environment being held in the capital city, which is focusing on climate change.
Tornado might sound death knell for Oklahoma town. Kevin Murphy. KC Star. 5/12/2008.

PICHER, Okla. | A tornado did what the federal government could not.

Ellis Jones had been a holdout in the government's quest to pay everyone to leave Picher, contaminated from its long-closed lead mines.


Where Every Meal Is a Sacrifice. Anthony Faiola. Wa. Post. 4/28/2008.

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania Even before he took a butcher knife to the she-goat's throat, Likbir Ould Mohamed Mahmoud knew it would only make things worse.

Emptying the Breadbasket

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Emptying the Breadbasket. Dan Morgan. Wa. Post. 4/29/2008.

For decades, wheat was king on the Great Plains and prices were low everywhere. Those days are over.


Warming 'affecting poor children'. BBC. 4/29/2008.

Climate change is already affecting the prospects for children in the world's poorer countries, according to Unicef.
Major Arctic sea ice melt is expected this summer. Randolf Schmid. Associated Press. 5/02/2008.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Arctic will remain on thinning ice, and climate warming is expected to begin affecting the Antarctic also, scientists said Friday.
Sinking Without Trace: Australia's Climate Change Victims. Independent/UK. 5/05/2008.

Like Kiribati and Tuvalu, the islands of the Torres Strait are slowly being submerged. But unlike their Pacific neighbours, the plight of their inhabitants is being overlooked.


Bangladesh Faces Climate Change Refugee Nightmare. Masud Karim. Reuters. 4/14/2008.

DHAKA - Abdul Majid has been forced to move 22 times in as many years, a victim of the annual floods that ravage Bangladesh.
DEVELOPMENT: Reinventing Agriculture. Stephen Leahy. International Press Service. 4/15/2008.

The results of a painstaking examination of global agriculture are being formally presented Tuesday with the release of the final report for the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD).

The World Bank's Carbon Deals. Janet Redman. Foreign Policy In Focus. 4/10/2008.

It was the first day in a long week of the consultations, PowerPoint presentations and high-level cocktail parties that accompany the World Bank's Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C. Already tensions were running high in a tightly-packed conference room downtown. Bank staff huddled on one side and non-profit groups on the other. The topic that drew so much attention first thing Monday morning: Climate change and the Bank's plans for plunging its fingers deeper into the expanding multi-billion-dollar carbon-trading pie.
Food Price Rises Threaten Global Security - UN. David Adam. Independent/UK. 4/09/2008.

Rising food prices could spark worldwide unrest and threaten political stability, the UN's top humanitarian official warned yesterday after two days of rioting in Egypt over the doubling of prices of basic foods in a year and protests in other parts of the world.
Polar Cities a Haven in Warming World?. Andrew Revkin. NT Times. 3/30/2008.

Danny Bloom, a freelance writer, translator and editor living in Taiwan, is on a one-man campaign to get people to seriously consider a worst-case prediction of the British chemist and inventor James Lovelock: life in "polar cities" arrayed around the shores of an ice-free Arctic Ocean in a greenhouse-warmed world.
How much will it cost to fix the climate? The numbers vary. Brad Knickerbocker. Christian Science Monitor. 3/27/2008.

One of the biggest questions about climate change is: What will it cost to fix? Figuring that out is a huge challenge.
High Rice Cost Creating Fears of Asia Unrest. Keith Bradsher. NY Times. 3/29/2008.

HANOI -- Rising prices and a growing fear of scarcity have prompted some of the world's largest rice producers to announce drastic limits on the amount of rice they export.
Time runs out for islanders on global warming's front line. Douglass McDougall. Guardian/UK. 3/30/2008.

Rising sea levels threaten to flood many of the islands in the fertile Ganges delta, leading to an environmental disaster and a refugee crisis for India and Bangladesh

Grain prices soar globally

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Grain prices soar globally. Daniel Ten Kate. Christian Science Monitor. 3/25/2008.

Rice farmers here are staying awake in shifts at night to guard their fields from thieves. In Peru, shortages of wheat flour are prompting the military to make bread with potato flour, a native crop. In Egypt, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso food riots have broken out in the past week.
UN food agency issues emergency plea for $500m. Owen Bowcott. Guardian/UK. 3/25/2009

· Malnourished millions at risk of cut in supplies
· 'Perfect storm' of rising prices and biofuel boom

Food rationing will shortly be imposed on millions in desperate need unless donor countries make good a $500m (£250m) shortfall, the United Nations agency that combats starvation warned yesterday.
Urbanization threatens Namibia's traditional Himba culture. Stephanie Hanes. Christian Science Monitor. 2/05/2008.

Where an ancient tribe and modern Africa meet, bare-breasted women in animal-skin skirts and men with spears join the urban flow of traffic, supermarkets, and pool halls.

As the sun drops behind the dusty main street here, the crowd at the informal market behind the OK Grocer gets bigger. Twenty-somethings in Western clothes slap hands in greeting, older men sit in the red dust drinking home-brewed beer out of plastic buckets, women haggle with stall merchants for the last best price on tomatoes and T-shirts

Ban Ki-moon Warns That Water Shortages Are Increasingly Driving Conflicts. UN News Centre. 2/06/2008.

Many of today's conflicts around the world are being fuelled or exacerbated by water shortages and climate change is only making the situation worse, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the General Assembly today.
True scale of C0₂emissions from shipping revealed. John Vidal. Guardian/UK. 2/13/2008.

Leaked UN report says pollution three times higher than previously thought.

The true scale of climate change emissions from shipping is almost three times higher than previously believed, according to a leaked UN study seen by the Guardian.
Cereal prices hit poor countries. BBC. 2/14/2008.

The rising price of cereals such as wheat and maize is a "major global concern", the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says.
Carbon Output Must Near Zero To Avert Danger, New Studies Say. Juliet Eilperin. Washington Post. 3/10/2008.

The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.
Overwhelmingly White, the Green Movement is Reaching For The Rainbow. Paula Bock. 3/10/2008. Seattle Times.

"What's a nice black guy like me doing in a movement like this?"Van Jones strides the stage at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, a charismatic lawyer who grew up in rural Tennessee, graduated from Yale Law, and founded the Ella Baker Center for jobs and justice in Oakland.
The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. Maude Barlow. Foreign Policy in Focus. 2/25/2008.

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt of Chapter 5 in Maude Barlow's latest book, Blue Covenant. She is touring with her book across the country; see Food and Water Watch for her full schedule.

The Future of Water

The three water crises - dwindling freshwater supplies, inequitable access to water and the corporate control of water - pose the greatest threat of our time to the planet and to our survival. Together with impending climate change from fossil fuel emissions, the water crises impose some life-or-death decisions on us all. Unless we collectively change our behavior, we are heading toward a world of deepening conflict and potential wars over the dwindling supplies of freshwater - between nations, between rich and poor, between the public and the private interest, between rural and urban populations, and between the competing needs of the natural world and industrialized humans.


Food Crisis Will Take Hold Before Climate Change, Warns Chief Scientist. James Randerson. Guardian. 3/07/2008.

· Pressures from population growth and affluence
· ‘Profoundly stupid’ to cut down forests for biofuels

Food security and the rapid rise in food prices make up the “elephant in the room” that politicians must face up to quickly, according to the government’s new chief scientific adviser.

"You Can See the Whole Hemisphere Breathing". An Interview with Dr. Ralph Keeling. IPS. 2/08/2008.

Dr. Ralph Keeling is a climate change expert who explores how rises in carbon dioxide influence global oxygen levels.
Ban Ki-moon Warns That Water Shortages Are Increasingly Driving Conflicts. UN News Center. 2/06/2008.

 Many of today's conflicts around the world are being fuelled or exacerbated by water shortages and climate change is only making the situation worse, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the General Assembly today.
Drought Could Force Nuke-Plant Shutdowns. Mitch Weiss. AP. 1/23/2008.

LAKE NORMAN, N.C. (AP) — Nuclear reactors across the Southeast could be forced to throttle back or temporarily shut down later this year because drought is drying up the rivers and lakes that supply power plants with the awesome amounts of cooling water they need to operate.
Prius Designer Says Toyota-Led Industry Must Lose Oil Addiction. John Lippert and Alan Ohnsman. Bloomberg. 1/23/2008.

Bill Reinert, who helped design Toyota Motor Corp.'s Prius hybrid, hovers in a helicopter 1,000 feet over Fort McMurray, Alberta. On this clear November morning, he's craning for a look at one of the world's largest petroleum reserves where there's not an oil well in sight.

Climate change may spark conflict between nations. John Reid. Independent. 2/28/2006.


John Reid warns climate change may spark conflict between nations - and says British armed forces must be ready to tackle the violence

Climate scientists issue dire warning. David Adam. Guardian. 2/28/2006.

The Earth's temperature could rise under the impact of global warming to levels far higher than previously predicted, according to the United Nations' team of climate experts.

Arctic summers ice-free 'by 2013'

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Arctic summers ice-free 'by 2013'. Jonathan Amos. BBC. 12/12/2007.

Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice.

World food stocks dwindling rapidly, UN warns. Elisabeth Rosenthal. International Herald Tribune.

In an "unforeseen and unprecedented" shift, the world food supply is dwindling rapidly and food prices are soaring to historic levels, the top food and agriculture official of the United Nations warned Monday.

Oregon Chosen for Peak Sun Solar Facility. Oregonian. 11/25/07.

Oregon seems to be a viable spot for solar companies to settle in. Is it because Oregon is so much more cheaper than say California? Peak Sun, a silicon photovoltaic manufacturing company, will choose Millersburg with an $18 million dollar investment.
By: S. Rowan Wolf, Ph.D. August 15, 2007

Abstract

The global movement of populations is going through an increasingly tumultuous and conflicted period. While the processes of globalization have in some ways made a smaller world, they have also increased the awareness of global inequality. The push and pull factors of migration have become complex and shifting as global economic streams shift, political conflict increases, and competition over shrinking resources intensifies. These changes raise the question of whether people are "immigrants" or "refugees." As climate chaos expands, so does the number of "climate refugees." This paper explores the economic, political and environmental sources of contemporary migration patterns; the ways immigrants are perceived and received, and poses suggestions for addressing the problems and possibilities.


By: S. Rowan Wolf, Ph.D.

Abstract

The global movement of populations is going through an increasingly tumultuous and conflicted period. While the processes of globalization have in some ways made a smaller world, they have also increased the awareness of global inequality. The push and pull factors of migration have become complex and shifting as global economic streams shift, political conflict increases, and competition over shrinking resources intensifies. These changes raise the question of whether people are "immigrants" or "refugees." As climate chaos expands, so does the number of "climate refugees." This paper explores the economic, political and environmental sources of contemporary migration patterns; the ways immigrants are perceived and received, and poses suggestions for addressing the problems and possibilities.


Greensumption

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The International Forum on Globalization has released a short video on the false solution of going "green" while maintaining or increasing consumption. It does an excellent job of addressing a number of myths.

At YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ft5SSIfmeKU