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Global Warming
An Impending Disaster That Is Not Being Taken Seriously Enough By The Governments Of The World, In Spite Of The Overwhelming Urgency That Scientists The World Over Are Expressing

Even at this early state of Global Warming, very damaging effects are being felt. However, the serious damage, the as yet unseen damage, that will happen in the coming decades will probably be of biblical proportion in terms of the consequences to man, animals, and the planet. MAKE NO MISTAKE, Global Warming is a manmade disaster and ONLY man can reverse it, and then, ONLY if action is taken soon by all countries.

We know that you are probably visiting this website to learn how other pro gamblers are making a tonne of money. However, just the fact that you took a few extra minutes to read this page and learn even some of the basics about the potential damage that Global Warming will do means a lot! You will quickly learn why our entire team stands behind supporting The World Humanitarian Fund in its efforts to raise the consciousness of people in every country on earth as to the coming disasters that are imminent if action is not taken swiftly.

None of our players will ever be required to actively get involved in the causes that the team and all Level Four players are supporting as a whole by paying the small percentage of any winnings they make to the World Humanitarian Fund (“The WHF”), for which one of the four main goals is to seek out and effect a solution for Global Warming. In 2007 or early 2008, when the charity goes public, if any of the Level Four players or team members wish to become actively involved, they will be most welcome, but it will never be required. It is enough to have a global team supporting the cause by donating a small percentage of any winnings to the global fund being set up by The WHF.

What’s incredible about the Global Warming phenomena is that so many governments in first world countries have ignored repeated warnings, and current warnings (see below), by thousands of the world’s leading researchers, scientists and medical doctors for at least the last three to four decades. What’s even more astonishing is that the most severe effects of Global Warming might not be felt for another decade to several decades or more. This is just when all of our children, grandchildren, great grand children and great, great grandchildren will begin to pay for our generations’ utter disregard of the situation at hand .

Governments claim to have not taken the appropriate actions to curtail global warming because undertaking the necessary changes to reverse global warming "might" have "some" adverse impacts on their economies and they claim that their would be added costs for some companies to do business. Additionally, it would also mean making some tough decisions, and that’s just not the best thing for a politician’s career. Yeah, let’s tell that to all the future generations, “well, we would have had to crimp our lifestyle a bit or actually elect politicians that gave a damn about the planet if we had wanted to prevent or reverse global warming; and gee, that just wouldn’t have been convenient, so all you guys are just going to have to suffer, lose your land, and/or die as a result of our generations total lackadaisical attitudes and utter disregard for the planet”.

If the above remark sounds a bit cynical, it was intended to, because that is the gist of what we are doing/saying if we allow this non-sense to continue to occur. It is time to take a mega-serious stand and fund a global organization that will get something done about this and other problems that have for a long time now been well within the power of the governments of the world to solve, BUT THEY SIMPLY CHOSE NOT TO!

There are politicians out there who have been stating for decades that the world’s leading researchers, scientists and medical doctors are all a bunch of alarmists because they have been begging the world to listen about the impending disasters that could result from Global Warming. These same foolish politicians claim that ALL these experts are merely trying to use scare tactics when alerting the public to the impending consequences of Global Warming. However, it is not just a few, or a few dozen, or even a few hundred experts ALL making important statements about the potential consequences of Global Warming, but it is THOUSANDS of the smartest minds on this planet who are saying the same thing!

How unbelievable is it that we keep electing these same “take no action” fools to run our governments if they don’t do the right thing when it comes to making a real effort to save the planet for future generations! Well no more, The WHF is not only going to raise the level of awareness so high that everyone in every country is going to demand that their governments can no longer sweep global poverty, hunger and AIDS, and Global Warming under the rug, but they are also going to do something about these problems from a financial standpoint, whether or not the governments of the world choose to take the necessary actions to solve these major problems. Thanks for taking a few moments to educate yourself on some very important topics. We appreciate it!

Summary: The Devastating Impacts Of Global Warming Will Be Felt In Many Ways All Around The World, Whether You Live In North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Asia, or Africa. Every Place On Earth Is Going To Feel The Impacts, Without Exception.

The following summaries are detailed herein for the convenience for those who care to take a glimpse at the many forms of devastation on the way as well as what is causing Global Warming:

1. Damage from Warming Becoming 'Irreversible,' Says New Report

Jim Lobe, OneWorld US; Mon Mar 15, 9:50 AM ET 
 
WASHINGTON, D.C., Mar 15 (OneWorld) -- Ten years after the ratification of a United Nations
(news - web sites) treaty on climate change, greenhouse gas emissions that lead to global warming are still on the rise, signaling a "collective failure" of the industrialized world, according to the   Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI), a leading environmental think-tank.

"We are quickly moving to the point where the damage will be irreversible," warned Dr. Jonathan Pershing, director of WRI's Climate, Energy and Pollution Program. "In fact, the latest scientific reports indicate that global warming is worsening. Unless we act now, the world will be locked into temperatures that would cause irreversible harm."

Studies over the past decade have shown that the warming trend continues. "The five warmest years in recorded weather history have taken place over the last six years," noted WRI's president, Jonathan Lash.

"The ten warmest years in recorded weather history have taken place since 1987. Whether it's the retreat of glaciers, the melting of the permafrost in Alaska, or the increase in severe weather events, the world is experiencing what the global warming models predict," he said.

Europe, the main champion of the Kyoto Protocol, suffered its hottest year on record last year. Some 15,000 people in France alone died due to heat stress in combination with pollution, while European agriculture suffered an estimated $12.5 billion in losses. Britain's most influential scientist, Sir David King, recently excoriated the Bush administration for withdrawing from the Protocol and ignoring the threat posed by climate change. "In my view, climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today," he wrote in Science magazine, "more serious even than the threat of terrorism."

Even the Pentagon (news - web sites) recently issued a warning that global warming, if it takes place abruptly, could result in a catastrophic breakdown in international security. Based on growing evidence that climate shifts in the past have taken place with breathtaking speed, based on the freshening of sea water due to accelerated melting of glaciers and the polar ice caps.

Given enough freshening, the Gulf Stream that currently warms the North Atlantic would be shut off, triggering an abrupt decline in temperatures that would bring about a new "Ice Age" in Europe, eastern Canada, and the northeastern United States and similar disastrous changes in world weather patterns elsewhere--all in a period as short as two to three years.

Wars over access to food, water, and energy would be likely to break out between states, according to the report. "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life," according to the report. "Once again, warfare would define human life."

Even if climate change is more gradual, recent studies have argued that as many as one million plant and animal species could be rendered extinct due to the effects of global warming by 2050. A recent report by the world's largest reinsurance company, Swiss Re, predicted that in 10 years the economic cost of disasters like floods, frosts, and famines caused by global warming could reach $150 billion annually.

"Accelerated development of a portfolio of technologies could stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations, enhance global energy security, and eradicate energy poverty," noted David Jhirad, WRI's vice president for research. "We urgently need the political will and international cooperation to make this happen."

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

2. Global warming a major health risk: scientists

Thu Feb 9, 10:30 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Global warming is already causing death and disease across the world through flooding, environmental destruction, heatwaves and other extreme weather events, scientists said on Thursday.

And it is likely to get worse.

In a review published in The Lancet medical journal, the scientists said there was now a near-unanimous scientific consensus that rising levels of greenhouse gases would cause global warming and other climate changes.

"The resultant risks to health ... are anticipated to compound over time as climate change along with other large scale environmental and social changes continues," they wrote.

The review said climate change would bring changes in temperature, sea levels, rainfall, humidity and winds.

This would lead to an increase in death rates from heatwaves, infectious diseases, allergies, cholera as well as starvation due to failing crops.

They said climate change may already have led to lower production of food in some regions due to changes in temperature, rainfall, soil moisture, pests and diseases.

"In food insecure populations this alteration may already be contributing to malnutrition," it said. The scientists said sea levels had risen in recent decades, and people had already started moving from some low-lying Pacific islands. Such population movements often increased nutritional and physical problems and disease, they said.

The review called for research to identify groups vulnerable to climate change and said health concerns should be included in international policy debates about global warming.

"Recognition of widespread health risks should widen these debates beyond the already important considerations of economic disruption," they said.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

3. Global warming study: polar ice sheets could start to melt this century.

January 30, 2006
 
British Prime Minister Tony Blair added his voice to the warning on Monday.

"It is clear from the work presented that the risks of climate change may well be greater than we thought," Blair said in the study's foreword.

"It is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialization and economic growth from a world population that has increased six-fold in 200 years, is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable."

The consensus view among scientists, the document warned, is of large-scale and irreversible disruption to the planet's climate system if temperatures rise by more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) above current levels.

Such a rise is well within the range of climate change projections for the century, it said, warning: "In many cases the risks are more serious than previously thought."

There is a serious risk of large-scale, irreversible system disruption, including the possible destabilisation of the Antarctic ice sheets if the warming goes beyond 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) above current levels, the report warned.

A regional increase of 2.7 Celsius (4.9 Fahrenheit) above present levels could trigger melting of the Greenland ice cap, it said.

It said increasing acidity in the ocean would be likely to reduce the capacity to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and affect the entire marine food chain.

Even a more modest rise in global temperatures of about 1 Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) would probably lead to extensive coral bleaching, the report said.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

4. Gov't: Effect of Greenhouse Gases Rising

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID,
Associated Press Writer Tue Sep 27, 2005 4:15 PM ET

WASHINGTON - The effect of greenhouse gases on the Earth's atmosphere has increased 20 percent since 1990, a new government index says. The Annual Greenhouse Gas Index was released Tuesday by the Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.

The Earth's average temperature increased about 1 degree Fahrenheit during the 20th century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that continuing increases could have serious effects on crops, glaciers, the spread of disease, rising sea levels and other changes.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

5. Report says global warming could spark conflict

REUTERS Thu Sep 22, 2005 3:59 AM ET

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Rising world temperatures could cause a significant increase in disease across Asia and Pacific Island nations, leading to conflict and leaving hundreds of millions of people displaced, a new report said on Thursday.

Global warming by the year 2100 could also lead to more droughts, floods and typhoons, and increase the incidence of malaria, dengue fever and cholera, the report into the health impact of rising temperatures found.

"Climate change will damage our health. People will get sick as a direct result. People will die in larger numbers as our earth, our world, our home, heats up."

Internationally, higher world temperatures would increase the incidence of violent storms and droughts, and could lead to crop failures which could cause political and social upheaval.

"As stresses increase there is likely to be a shift toward authoritarian governments," the report said.

"At the worst case, large scale state failure and major conflict may generate hundreds of millions of displaced people in the Asia-Pacific region, a widespread collapse of law, and numerous abuses of human rights."

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

6. Scientists find errors in global warming data

 USATODAY.com: By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY Fri Aug 12, 7:32 AM ET

Satellite and weather-balloon research released Friday removes a last bastion of scientific doubt about global warming, researchers say.

Climate expert Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, lead author of one of the papers, says that those fairly steady measurements in the tropics have been a key argument "among people asking, 'Why should I believe this global warming hocus-pocus?' "

After examining the satellite data, collected since 1979 by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellites, Carl Mears and Frank Wentz of Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, Calif., found that the satellites had drifted in orbit, throwing off the timing of temperature measures. Essentially, the satellites were increasingly reporting night-time temperatures as daytime ones, leading to a false cooling trend. The team also found a math error in the calculations.

Once corrected, the satellite and balloon temperatures align with other surface and upper-atmosphere measures, as well as climate change models, Santer says.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

7. US faces 'extreme' temperature changes: study

AFP: Mon Oct 17, 3:21 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The continental United States will face more extreme temperatures during the next century and worse rainfall along its Gulf Coast which has been ravaged by hurricanes this year, according to a climate study released.

The study, published on the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, warned that greenhouse gases will likely swell to twice their current levels by the century's end.

"Imagine the weather during the hottest two weeks of the year," lead researcher Noah Diffenbaugh said, referring to northeast United States.

"The area could experience temperatures in that range lasting for periods of up to two months by century's end," he said.

Researchers claimed the study, run on supercomputers at Purdue University in Indiana state, is the most comprehensive climate model to date.

It predicts the southwest United States could endure as much as a 500 percent increase in hot events, leaving less water for the growing population, that the Gulf Coast region would receive more rainfall in shorter time spans and that summers in the northeast would be shorter and hotter.

Overall, the United States would experience a warming trend, the study predicts.

"The changes our model predicts are large enough to substantially disrupt our economy and infrastructure," said Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University.

The model considered circumstances not fully included in previous models, such as snow which reflects energy from the sun back into space, and mountain peaks, which can stand in the way of travelling weather fronts.

Scientists also checked the model's efficacy by analyzing the period 1961 to 1985.

"The model performed admirably," Diffenbaugh said, adding it's "the most detailed projection of climate change that we have for the US."

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

8. Study Warns of Global Warming Extinctions   

By RICK CALLAHAN, Associated Press Writer

Depending on the temperature increase, the researchers found that 15 percent to 37 percent of the studied species will go extinct or be on the road to extinction by 2050. A mid-range forecast of three possible global warming scenarios would claim about a quarter of the species, they found.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

9. Brace for more Katrinas, say experts

AFP: August 30, 2005 9:08 a.m.

PARIS (AFP) - For all its numbing ferocity, Hurricane Katrina will not be a unique event, say scientists, who say that global warming appears to be pumping up the power of big Atlantic storms.

This increase has also coincided with a big rise in Earth's surface temperature in recent years, driven by greenhouse gases that cause the Sun's heat to be stored in the sea, land and air rather than radiate back out to space.

On the other hand, more and more scientists estimate that global warming, while not necessarily making hurricanes more frequent or likelier to make landfall, is making them more vicious.

Just a tiny increase in surface temperature can have an extraordinary effect, says researcher Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Another factor in destructiveness is flooding. Kevin Trenberth of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research suggests that hurricanes are dumping more rainfall as warmer seas suck more moisture into the air, swelling the storm clouds.

The indirect evidence for this is that water vapour over oceans worldwide has increased by about two percent since 1988. But data is sketchy for precipitation dropped by recent hurricanes.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

10. Warming Climate Disrupts Alaska Natives' Lives

Reuters: By Yereth Rosen; Fri Apr 16,10:10 AM ET      

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 (news - web sites), 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 interior Alaska, is thinner and less dependable than it used to be.

Global warming (news - web sites) 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.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

11. Global warming conference opens in Greenland

AFP: August 16th, 2005 12:05 p.m.

A recent study, the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, showed that the Arctic has been heating up twice as fast as the rest of the Earth over the past decade due to the so-called greenhouse effect.

Less than a century from now, Arctic ice could melt completely during the summer, threatening many species and the lifestyle of the indigenous Inuit population, the study warned.

"Climate change is not a theoretical threat. We can already feel it in Greenland's fragile nature," Hedegaard said before the conference kicked off.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

12. Future climate could be hotter than thought - study

REUTERS: By Patricia Reaney, Wed Jun 29, 1:23 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Global temperatures in the future could be much hotter than scientists have predicted if new computer models on climate change are correct, researchers said on Wednesday.

Improvements in air quality will lead to a decrease in aerosols, small particles in the atmosphere that act as a brake on the impact of greenhouse gases. As the effect of aerosols lessen, searing temperatures could follow.

"This new way of integrating the aerosol, greenhouse gas and biosphere effects changes the picture from one where climate change most likely is a fairly tolerable thing to one where there is a fairly high risk of change sooner, and to a higher degree," said Professor Meinrat Andreae.

Scientists have warned that severe climate change could lead to a rise in sea levels, flooding, severe droughts and the loss of crop and animals species.

He admitted it was a situation of high scientific uncertainty. But if his calculations are correct, climate change in the 21 century could reach the upper extremes or exceed the IPCC estimates.

"Such a degree of climate change is so far outside the range covered by experience and scientific understanding that we cannot with any confidence predict the consequences for the Earth system," Andreae said in the journal.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

13. Soot Could Hasten Melting of Arctic Ice

By Bjorn Carey: LiveScience Staff Writer 28 March, 2005 8:45 am ET

Of the atmospheric soot found above the Arctic, about one-third comes from South Asia, which is estimated to have the largest industrial soot emissions in the world. Russia, Europe, and North America are also significant industrial producers of soot. About a third of all soot comes from worldwide burning of trees and other biomass.

However, the warming effect of soot may not be limited to just the Arctic. The Arctic ecosystem has an immediate risk for drastic change, says Koch, but there are likewise "potentially long-term implications on climate patterns for much of the globe."

Increased polar ice temperatures can contribute to a variety of problems. Icebergs can break off, threatening wildlife and clogging shipping channels. In Greenland, where black carbon soot is also accumulating, extra heat could quicken the thinning of an already rapidly shrinking glacier.

Some animals, such as polar bears and seals, live on the sheets of ice that are melting. Their habitats may be endangered, and the indigenous peoples that hunt them could face a major food shortage.

The ultimate possibilities are not well understood. Beyond rising sea levels, history suggests rapid melting of polar ice can actually fuel a global cooling event by altering ocean circulation patterns.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

14. World needs more than sea walls to stop floods
    
    REUTERS: By Anna Mudeva; Wed May 25,12:09 PM ET

NIJMEGEN, Netherlands (Reuters) - Building higher and stronger dykes will not be enough to protect the world's low-lying areas against rising sea levels and global warming, a conference heard on Wednesday.

Many scientists fear rising temperatures, blamed mainly on heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels, will melt ice caps, raise sea levels by almost a meter (three feet) by the end of this century and bring more floods, droughts and storms.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

15. Report: Human Damage to Earth Worsening Fast

REUTERS: Wed Mar 30, 9:17 AM ET   Science - Reuters

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - Humans are damaging the planet at an unprecedented rate and raising risks of abrupt collapses in nature that could spur disease, deforestation or "dead zones" in the seas, an international report said on Wednesday.

The study, by 1,360 experts in 95 nations, said a rising human population had polluted or over-exploited two thirds of the ecological systems on which life depends, ranging from clean air to fresh water, in the past 50 years.

The report said that in 100 years, global warming widely blamed on burning of fossil fuels in cars, factories and power plants, might take over as the main source of damage. The report mainly looks at other, shorter-term risks.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

16. Climate Warming Spells Species Wipeout -- Experts

EXETER, England (Reuters): By Jeremy Lovell; Wed Feb 2, 6:21 AM ET

Whole species of animals from frogs to leopards, living in vulnerable areas and with nowhere else to go, face extinction due to global warming, scientists said on Wednesday.

And the faster the temperature rises the worse it gets.

Steve Schneider from Stanford University, California, said there was clear proof that species were reacting to the 0.7 degrees centigrade warming of the atmosphere that had already taken place over the past century.

"This is a harbinger -- nature is already responding," he told reporters at a meeting on climate change. "There is a direct threat to the viability of many species on the planet."

The complication with rapid change was not only the need to speed up the rate of adaptation, mostly through moving territory, but that at the margins, like at the poles or high up in mountains, there was nowhere to go and human settlements may lie in the way.

"The only way rapid climate change can affect species is through extinctions," Schneider said.

Bill Hare from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said that as the climate changed, fragile ecosystems would collapse, taking with them their inhabitants.

Much beyond that, the species wipe-out became wholesale.

Scientists say climate warming is caused by so-called greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and most accept that much of this is from human activities like car exhausts or electricity generation and urgently needs to be curbed.

Almost alone in the developed world, the United States disputes the human element to climate change.

The UN International Panel on Climate Change predicted in 2001 that the world could warm up by between 1.5 and nearly six degrees by the end of the century -- with clear proof that people were to blame for most of the rise.

On Tuesday, IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri said new evidence suggested that the upper limit range might have to be raised.

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17. World's Glaciers Slowly Disappearing

Science – AP: By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent Sun Jan 30, 9:33 AM ET   

CHACALTAYA GLACIER, Bolivia - Up and down the icy spine of South America, the glaciers are melting, the white mantle of the Andes Mountains washing away at an ever faster rate. "Look. You can see. Chacaltaya has split in two," scientist Edson Ramirez said as he led a visitor up toward a once-grand ice flow high in the thin air of the Bolivian cordillera.

Chacaltaya, a frozen storehouse of such water, will be gone in seven to eight years, said Ramirez, a Bolivian glaciologist, or ice specialist.

"Some small glaciers like this have already disappeared," he said as melting icicles dripped on nearby rock, exposed for the first time in millennia. "In the next 10 years, many more will."

They'll disappear far beyond Bolivia. From Alaska in the north, to Montana's Glacier National Park, to the great ice fields of wild Patagonia at this continent's southern tip, the "rivers of ice" that have marked landscapes from prehistory are liquefying, shrinking, retreating.

In east Africa, the storied snows of Mount Kilimanjaro are vanishing. In the icebound Alps and Himalayas of Europe and Asia, the change has been stunning. From South America to south Asia, new glacial lakes threaten to overflow and drown villages below.

In the past few years, space satellites have helped measure the global trend, but scientists such as Rajendra K. Pachauri, a native of north India, have long seen what was happening on the ground.

"I know from observation," Pachauri told a reporter at an international climate conference in Argentina. "If you go to the Himalayan peaks, the rate at which the glaciers are retreating is alarming. And this is not an isolated example. I've seen photographs of Mount Kilimanjaro 50 years ago and now. The evidence is visible."

"Ample" evidence indicates that global warming is causing glaciers to retreat worldwide, reports the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N.-sponsored network of climate scientists led by Pachauri.

The Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites), an international agreement, mandates cutbacks in such emissions, but the reductions are small and the United States, the biggest emitter, is not a party, arguing that the mandates will set back the U.S. economy.

As that pact takes effect Feb. 16, the impact of climate change is already apparent.

An international study concluded in November that winter temperatures have risen as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit over 50 years in the Arctic, where permafrost is thawing and sea ice is shrinking. Pacific islands are losing land to encroaching seas, oceans expanding as they warm and as they receive runoff from the Greenland ice cap and other sources. Those sources include at least one gushing new river of meltwater in western China, where thousands of Himalayan and other glaciers are shrinking. In the Italian Alps, 10 percent of the ice melted away in the European heat wave of 2003 and experts fear all will be gone in 20 to 30 years.

Such rapid runoff would do more than feed rising seas. It would end centuries of reliable flows through populated lands, jeopardizing water supplies for human consumption, agriculture and electricity.

It covers an area of less than 15 acres, with ice less than 26 feet thick. Ramirez said it lost two-thirds of its mass in the 1990s alone, and is now probably a mere 2 percent the size it once was.

Chacaltaya and other Andean glaciers had been retreating since the 18th century, when the "Little Ice Age" ended locally, but the rate has picked up dramatically in recent decades, melting three times faster since the 1980s than in the mid-20th century.

"It's a very compelling story," he said. The glaciers — "water towers of the world" — are the most visible indicators that we are now in the first phase of global warming, Thompson said.

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18. Bird Extinctions May Impact Environment

Health – AP: Mon Dec 13, 5:12 PM ET

WASHINGTON - About 10 percent of all bird species face extinction by the end of the century and 15 percent more are on the brink, according to researchers who say such extinctions would have a widespread impact on the environment, agriculture and human society.

 "Important ecosystem processes, particularly decomposition, pollination and seed dispersal, will likely decline as a result" of the loss of bird species, said Cagan H. Sekercioglu of the Stanford University Center for Conservation Biology.

"Given the momentum of climate change, widespread habitat loss and increasing numbers of invasive species, avian declines and extinctions are predicted to continue unabated in the near future," Sekercioglu said.

Such losses, the team said, could have a significant impact in many aspects of society.

For example birds pollinate many plant species and carry the seeds of others to new locations.

"Declines in pollination and seed dispersal as a result of bird extinctions may lead to extinctions of dependent plant species," they concluded. This is particularly important in Australia, New Zealand and oceanic areas where pollination and seed dispersal by birds is more common, they said.

Another problem could occur with the loss of scavenging birds that help dispose of the bodies of large animals by consuming the flesh and leading other scavengers to the bodies, a process that helps limit the spread of disease from decomposing carcasses.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

19. Amazon Burning Makes Brazil a Leading Polluter

Reuters: Science – Reuters: By Axel Bugge

BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - Burning of the Amazon and other forests accounts for three quarters of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions and has made the country one of the world's leading polluters, a long-delayed government report showed on Wednesday.

The report is the first official recognition by Brazil of the vast scale of burning of the Amazon, the world's largest tropical forest and home to up to 30 percent of the planet's animal and plant species.

Environmentalists said the report would probably make Brazil the world's sixth largest polluter. They said it could give impetus to rich countries' calls for leading developing nations to share in the burden of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, which cause global warming.

Brazil was obliged to produce the inventory as a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites) to curb greenhouse gas emissions, but as a developing country it does not need to cut emissions under the treaty.

GREAT TRACTS UP IN SMOKEStill, environmentalists have criticized the government for doing little to enact a promised plan to fight deforestation.

"This is the most serious ever," said David Cleary, head of the Amazon program of the Nature Conservancy in Brazil.

The United States has not signed the Kyoto Protocol, saying that big, developing countries like China, India and Brazil need to assume commitments to cut pollution as well.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

20. Study: Arctic To Melt in Summer

AFP: Nov. 3, 2004 — The Arctic ice cover will completely disappear in summer by the end of this century unless carbon dioxide emissions are significantly reduced, according to a scientific study to be released next week.

"The big melt has begun," said Jennifer Morgan, director of the Climate Change Campaign for the environmental organization WWF, which published excerpts of the upcoming Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) report.

The Arctic ice melt will cause sea levels to rise and could lead to the extinction of some species, such as polar bears, it said.

Commissioned by the Arctic Council and compiled by more than 250 scientists, the report concludes that "climate change is happening in the Arctic and that it will get worse unless emissions of carbon dioxide are cut."

"Industrial countries are carrying out an uncontrolled experiment to study the effects of climate change and the Arctic is their first guinea pig. This is unethical and wrong. They must cut emissions of CO2 now," Morgan said.

The report presents several potential scenarios which would occur if the Arctic ice were to disappear in summertime by the end of the 21st century.

It said sea levels could rise by one meter (3.3 feet), noting that there are currently 17 million people living less than one meter above sea level in Bangladesh. It said places like Florida and Louisiana in the United States, and the Asian cities of Bangkok, Calcutta, Dhaka and Manila were also at risk.

"Polar bears could become extinct by the end of this century. They are unlikely to survive as a species if there is an almost complete loss of summer sea ice cover," the WWF said.

The WWF welcomed the report, but stressed the "hypocrisy" of the eight members of the Arctic Council — the United States, Canada, Russia, Japan, Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Norway — which sponsored it, noting that they emit more than 30 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.

While Russia decided last month to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which commits industrialized countries to trim output of six greenhouse gases, the United States, the world's largest polluter, still refuses to do so.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

21. European Winters Could Disappear by 2080 - Report

Reuters: By Anna Mudeva: Wed Aug 18,11:45 AM ET  

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) - Europe is warming up more quickly than the rest of the world, and cold winters could disappear almost entirely by 2080 as a result of global warming, researchers predicted Wednesday.

Heat waves and floods are likely to become more frequent, threatening the elderly and infirm, and three quarters of the Swiss Alps' glaciers might melt down by 2050, the study prepared by the European Environment Agency (EEA) said.

"This report pulls together a wealth of evidence that climate change is already happening and having widespread impacts, many of them with substantial economic costs, on people and ecosystems in Europe," EEA executive director Jacqueline McGlade said in a statement.

The average number of climate-related disasters per year doubled over the 1990s compared to the previous decade, costing economies around $11 billion a year, said the report, the first by the European Union (news - web sites) body on the impact of global warming on Europe.

"Projections show that by 2080 cold winters could disappear almost entirely and hot summers, droughts and incidents of heavy rain or hail could become much more frequent," the report said.

Climate changes are likely to increase the frequency of floods and droughts like those that hit Europe in the past years, damaging agriculture and making plant species extinct, the Copenhagen-based EEA concluded.

The floods that swept through 11 European countries in 2001 killed about 80 people, while last year's heat wave in western and southern Europe claimed the lives of more than 20,000.

GREENHOUSE GASES

The EEA findings echo those published last week by U.S. climate researchers who predicted that heat waves might become more common as global warming heats the earth and said regions already prone to heat, such as the U.S. Midwest and Europe's Mediterranean area, could suffer even more.

The researchers said glaciers in eight of Europe's nine glacial regions were at their lowest levels in terms of area and mass in 5,000 years.

They forecast that sea levels in Europe would rise at a pace more than two-to-four times faster than the rise seen in the last century -- a threat to low-lying countries such as the Netherlands, where half the population lives below sea level.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

22. Climate Change Rises on Global Agenda

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent

FUNAFUTI, Tuvalu - The rising sea is eating at the shores of low-slung Funafuti, a spit of coral and coconut palms in the remote Pacific. Unseen fingers of ocean even reach beneath the sands, surfacing inland in startling places, among nervous islanders.

"It used to be puddles. Now it's like lakes," said Hilia Vavae, local meteorologist.

Far to the north in the Marshall Islands, 1,250 miles away, trees are toppling before aquamarine waves. Watching, perplexed, from the edge of a lagoon, teenager Ankit Stephen asked a visitor, "Why is this happening?"

Six hundred miles west, on tiny Kosrae, Alokoa Talley pondered the same question. Neighbors are moving their homes up the lush slopes, away from the encroaching Pacific. "I don't know," the government worker said, "but I think it's because of `green' something."

The "greenhouse effect," climate change, has languished on the world's agenda since the 1970s, a seemingly distant threat. But year by year, inch by inch, it is rising to the top — as ocean islets flood, glaciers retreat, Arctic permafrost melts, and leading voices raise new alarms.

"We may already be seeing — in the increased incidence of drought, floods and extreme weather events that many regions are experiencing — some of the devastation that lies ahead," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) said in March, when he urged all governments to ratify the Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites) to reduce the world's "greenhouse gas" emissions.

That long-stalled 1997 accord is opposed in Washington, where U.S. government and industry object that emission controls would handicap the U.S. economy. Now only ratification by Russia can revive it, making this a critical year on the political front in a long, difficult debate over what to do about climate change.

On the scientific front, meanwhile, signs of global warming mount.

Pacific islanders aren't alone. Rising seas are a growing threat from Alaska, where Eskimos are relocating an Arctic island village, to New Orleans and to Shanghai, China — near-coastal cities already below sea level, sinking on their own, and further endangered by expanding oceans.

"In 50 or 100 years, the islands are expected to go under water. What can we do?" Tuvalu's leader asked, on a day when a tropical morning downpour soon gave way to a rainbow in a blue, very warm sky.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

23. Indian Ocean Could Lose Coral Islands in 50 Years

Reuters: By George Thande

VICTORIA, Seychelles (Reuters) - The Indian Ocean could lose most of its coral islands in the next 50 years if sea temperatures continue to rise and reefs badly damaged by global warming do not recover, a marine scientist said Monday.

Global warming (news - web sites) triggered the death of between 50 and 98 percent of coral reefs in a region stretching from northern Mozambique to Eritrea to Indonesia in 1998 and although there has been some recovery, scientists remain concerned. "We have reason to believe that if climate changes continue due to the carbon dioxide that is being pumped into the atmosphere, the temperatures at ground level and in the oceans will go up," Dr. Carl Lundin, head of the marine program of the Swiss-based World Conservation Union (IUCN), said.  "So virtually all the coralline islands have a decent chance of disappearing in 50 years," Lundin told Reuters in Victoria, the capital of the Seychelles.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

24. Carbon Dioxide Is Key Suspect in Rainforest Change  

Reuters: Wed Mar 10, 2:01 PM 

LONDON (Reuters) - Strange things are happening in lush Amazonian rainforests and scientists said Wednesday rising levels of carbon dioxide could be the cause.  

Even in pristine rainforests unaffected by human activities such as logging or burning, researchers have noticed dramatic differences in the growth patterns of trees over the past 20 years.

That could distort the forest's fragile balance, affecting rare plant and animal species.

"The changes in Amazonian forests really jump out at you," said William Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. "It's a little scary to realize seemingly pristine forests can change so quickly and dramatically."

Laurance and his team, whose research was published in the journal Nature, noticed that the growth of large trees in the Amazonian rainforests have accelerated over the past two decades while the growth of smaller ones has slowed.

Levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) have risen by 30 percent in the past 200 years because of emissions from automobiles and industry and rapid forest burning, particularly in the tropics.

Much of the increase in CO2, which plants use from the air for photosynthesis, has occurred since 1960.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

25. Pacific islanders move to escape global warming

Reuters: By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent Mon Dec 5, 4:36 PM ET

MONTREAL (Reuters) - Rising seas have forced 100 people on a Pacific island to move to higher ground in what may be the first example of a village formally displaced because of modern global warming, a U.N. report said on Monday.

The U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a statement that the Lateu settlement "has become one of, if not the first, to be formally moved out of harm's way as a result of climate change."

The scientific panel that advises the United Nations projects that seas could rise by almost 3 feet (a meter) by 2100 because of melting icecaps and warming linked to a build-up of heat-trapping gases emitted by burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and autos.

Many other coastal communities are vulnerable to rising seas, such as the U.S. city of New Orleans, the Italian city of Venice or settlements in the Arctic where a thawing of sea ice has exposed coasts to erosion by the waves.

CORAL ATOLLS

Pacific Islanders, many living on coral atolls, are among those most at risk. Off Papua New Guinea, about 2,000 people on the Cantaret Islands are planning to move to nearby Bougainville island, four hours' boat ride to the southwest.

Two uninhabited Kiribati islands, Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea, disappeared underwater in 1999.

"The peoples of the Arctic and the small islands of this world face many of the same threats," Klaus Toepfer, UNEP's executive director, said in a statement.

"The melting and receding of sea ice and the rising of sea levels, storms surges and the like are the first manifestations of big changes underway which eventually will touch everyone on the planet," he said.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

26. Climate change linked to cruise ship illness outbreaks

Reuters: By Gene Emery Wed Oct 5, 6:24 PM ET  

BOSTON (Reuters) - Warming ocean waters may have tainted Alaskan oysters with a bacteria that triggered four outbreaks of illness on a cruise ship among people who ate the shellfish raw, researchers reported on Wednesday.

"The rising temperatures of ocean water seem to have contributed to one of the largest known outbreaks of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in the United States," said Joseph McLaughlin of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, referring to the bacterium responsible for outbreak.

Based on the study in the New England Journal of Medicine, "we can't say why ocean temperatures are rising," McLaughlin told Reuters.

But many climate experts have warned that warmer ocean waters are a likely consequence of carbon dioxide pollution, which traps heat that would normally radiate back into space.

Scientists predict that warmer temperatures will generate stronger storms and shift local climate conditions, spreading various illnesses to new regions.

"This is probably some of the best evidence to date that rising temperatures in ocean waters might contribute to the incidence of disease," said McLaughlin, "so we're definitely very concerned."

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming..

 

27. How Global Warming Can Chill the Planet

By Sarah Davidson: LiveScience Staff Writer; 17 December, 2004, 7:00 a.m. ET

Scientists hope new evidence of an ancient rise in sea level from a fresh water flood will tell them how global warming can lead to global cooling.

A global cooling event was caused by global warming? Sounds strange. But that is exactly what scientists say happened.

With warm waters unable to move as far north the world became cooler. The amount of water Lake Agassiz dumped into the ocean is equivalent to how much the seas rose. Knowing these amounts will tell scientists how much fresh water could create this type of climate change nowadays, were a bunch of it to suddenly find its way into the ocean.

The oceans were able to find their balance relatively quickly in that ancient event, and the effects wore off in about a century, but a century of that kind of change today would create widespread havoc.

"Climatologists urgently need this type of information to run their climate models in order to understand the conditions that can produce such an abrupt climate change," Tornqvist said.

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

28. AN END TO GLOBAL WARMING WITH ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

by Laurence O. Williams

In An End to Global Warming, published in 2002, Williams explains why we must stop using fossil fuels as our primary energy source.  It describes a path to a new energy system that will not harm the earth.  As a by-product of the system, large amounts of oxygen will be available.  The oxygen can be used in the disposal of trash and for the purification of water in lakes, rivers, and for domestic water supplies through the world.

Now retired, Laurence Williams was a research scientist for Lockheed Martin for 30 years.  He played a key role the Viking Mars Lander program.  He has had nine US and three foreign patents granted.  For many years Williams was a member of The American Institute of Astronautics and Aeronautics, in retirement he remains a member of American Chemical Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has authored 31 technical articles and another book, Hydrogen Power, Pergamon Press 1980, ISBN 0-08 024783 0.
In An End to Global Warming, Williams demonstrates that global warming and climate change are real and present a serious threat to future generations.  Several maps are included to show the severity of the threat to the United States and to other places in the world.  How our generation deals with these problems will determine how much of a burden energy dependence and climate change will be for our descendants. 
 
Click here to see the map that shows the East Coast of the North America some time in the future when global warming and climate change melts all the ice.  If you are viewing this page in Microsoft Internet Explorer, once the map opens, click on it to see the arrows in the lower right corner that will enlarge it for better viewing.  The blue inside the current boundaries of the US show the land lost to the sea.  Much desirable farmland will be lost.  Across the world, billions of people will need to be relocated.Many of the major cities will be flooded to destruction.  The time for all the ice to melt is very uncertain.  If our generation takes no action and continues to use fossil fuels with abandon the changes in the seacoast could become a reality in less then 200 years.  If we adopt the plan in An End to Global Warming the map result may never happen, but at a minimum, it will be put off for thousands of years.  Yes, Lake Ontario becomes a salt-water sea. 

Click here to read the full version of this report/article on the impacts of global warming.

 

THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE TIME TO READ THIS FAR!

Because you took the time to read this far, you have begun to get an idea as to just how diverse and far reaching the impacts of global warming are. However, here is what’s most shocking--all of the above information reflects but a very small percentage of the damage that is going to occur if something radical isn’t done to curtail global warming.

WHAT YOU HAVE JUST READ IS NOT ‘SCIENCE FICTION’—IT IS REAL ‘SCIENCE’ AND IT’S VERY MUCH ‘NON-FICTION’… and that’s why Level Four, L.L.C. and it system users and all its pro teams are all rallying behind funding a new type of super global fund and charity to get very serious about doing something to reverse global warming!

After the initial years of funding (2006), in 2007/2008, The World Humanitarian Fund will go public and unveil a monumental campaign in all countries of the world to begin pushing for “real changes” that have a “real chance” at reversing global warming and The WHF will be putting “serious money” behind this effort in a way that to date has never been done.

By paying a small percentage of any monies you win using Level Four’s Advanced Level One Craps System, you are doing your part to help The WHF not only with the war it is waging on Global Warming but also you will be contributing to and committing to the goal of eradicating global poverty, hunger and AIDS.

Thank you for being concerned enough to read this page and educate yourself as to the severity of the current and future impacts of Global Warming.

If you would like to learn more about The World Humanitarian Fund as it goes public in 2007 or early 2008, you are welcome to add your name to our future email list and The WHF will keep you posted with updates. Adding your name and email to the list does not commit you to any obligations; however, in the future as you learn about the work The WHF will be performing, you will certainly be welcome to express your interest to get more involved on any number of levels.    

 

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