Results tagged “PRAER” from Program to Relocate and Assist Environmental Refugees

 

Photos from US spy satellites declassified by the Obama White House provide the first graphic images of how the polar ice sheets are retreating in the summer. The effects on the world's weather, environments and wildlife could be devastating

Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months.

The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One particularly striking set of images - selected from the 1,000 photographs released - includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.

Read the rest of this article in the Guardian

(by Suzanne Goldenberg and Damian Carrington)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday ordered preparations for rising sea levels from global warming, a startling prospect for the most populous U.S. state with a Pacific Ocean coastline stretching more than 800 miles (1,290 km). Recorded sea levels rose 7 inches (18 cm) during the 20th century in San Francisco, Schwarzenegger said in the executive order for study of how much more the sea could rise, what other consequences of global warming were coming and how the state should react. California is considered the environmental vanguard of government in the United States, with its own standards for car pollution and a law to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, the main gas contributing to global warming. "The longer that California delays planning and adapting to sea level rise the more expensive and difficult adaptation will be," Schwarzenegger said, ordering a report by the end of 2010. (Reporting by Peter Henderson; Editing by Peter Cooney) http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUKTRE4AE0YC20081115?rpc=401&

By Dev Nadkarni As the jet turns in crisp blue equatorial skies on its approach to Kiribati's capital, Tarawa, the vulnerability of the ribbon of atolls unfolds. It is possible to watch the tide batter the fraying edges of the 30-odd km stretch of little atolls which make up Tarawa - never more than a couple of hundred metres wide. The collapsing state of the remote Pacific nation is clear from a drive along the single road that crosses a string of causeways as it runs through the atoll: crumbling sea walls, coconut trees shorn of fronds and fruit because of encroaching salt water and long droughts, mounds of filth lining the coastline, overcrowding uncharacteristic of Pacific islands and poverty. The alarm bells of climate change, sea level rise and global warming have pitchforked this 33-island nation that straddles the equator on to the front pages of the global media. Experts from all over the world have come in droves in search of answers to its impending submergence. Already two small islets have gone from the map. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10539367