The scientists claim that when Bush came to power in 2000 his administration selected advice which argued that global warming was not a result of human activities and that the phenomenon could be natural.

WHAT PANORAMA FOUND OUT For five or 10 years the public has not been fully informed. We were not taking the initial steps that need to be taken. If we continue down this path we're going to be past a point at which we can avoid really large climate changes. Jim Hansen US climate scientist If the report had come out it would have been a very strong piece in the presidential election in the US. Bob Corell Author of Arctic Assessment Report If they could suppress it they would. If they couldn't they would ignore it. If they could edit it they would edit it. Former government official

But one of the people who suggested the president adopt that position explains to Panorama how he has changed his point of view: "It's now 2006. I think most people would conclude that there is global warming taking place and that the behaviour of humans is affecting the climate. I am not the administration. What they want to do is their business. it has nothing to do with what I believe."

Panorama's reporter Hilary Andersson visits some of the first refugees of global warming who come from an island in Arctic Alaska which has been inhabited for 4,000 years ago but is now melting into the sea.

In the last six years most industrialised nations have cut greenhouse gas emissions but under Bush America's emissions have increased by an average of one per cent a year.

The administration is now spending money to establish cleaner ways of burning coal and to cut emissions but is still reluctant to risk damaging the American fuel industries.

I told the world I thought the Kyoto deal was a lousy deal for America. It meant that we had to cut emissions below 1990 levels which would have meant I would have presided over massive lay offs and economic destruction. President George W Bush Energy is central to our economy. If you're going to make energy policy you need to talk to the energy industry. James Connaughton Bush's senior adviser on the environment

But some scientists say this will take too long. One of them tells Panorama how he was told NASA would have to approve everything he planned to write and say publicly about the effects of global warming.

Another scientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tells Panorama he had research which established global warming could increase the intensity of hurricanes. He was due to give an interview about his work but claims he was gagged.

Three weeks later in August 2005, Hurricane Katrina killed at least 1,200 people in New Orleans and was recorded as one of the strongest Atlantic storms. But the NOAA website said unusual hurricane activity is not related to global warming.

Panorama learns that some scientists are afraid that what they see as a cover up will leave it too late for the US to have any hope of controlling climate changes brought about by global warming.

"Across the planet, poverty, unsustainable land management and climate change are turning drylands into deserts, and desertification in turn exacerbates and leads to poverty," U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a statement.

"There is also mounting evidence that dryland degradation and competition over increasingly scarce resources can bring communities into conflict."

"Dryland degradation is a serious obstacle to eradicating extreme poverty and hunger," he said, adding that environmental and economic refugees were straining cities in developing nations.

Drylands -- including many of the world's crop growing regions -- cover about 41 percent of the planet's land surface and are home to two billion people.

"It is estimated that between 10 and 20 percent of drylands are already degraded," Annan said. "The problem is particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia."

FARM LOSSES

The United Nations said that land degradation causes an estimated loss of $42 billion a year from agricultural production -- without counting human suffering from famine.

Annan said he was urging governments to "focus on the challenges of life on the desert margins" to slow degradation.

Among pressures on land, the world's population has surged to 6.5 billion from about 2.5 billion in 1950.

And many scientists say that heat-trapping gases released by burning fossil fuels are driving up world temperatures, bringing more heat waves, droughts, floods and rising sea levels.

World Environment Day marks the date of the first U.N. environmental summit held in Stockholm in 1972. In the U.N. calendar, 2006 is also the year of deserts and desertification.

Around the world, tree planting to slow erosion were planned in countries from Bhutan to Algeria, the main host of World Environment Day.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said destruction of natural ecosystems and desertification "aggravate conditions of poverty across the world, deepening the crisis on a global scale."

He urged the adoption of a World Charter on Deserts to help achieve a Millennium Goal of halving poverty by 2015.

In Mauritius, one group planned to plant vegetation on dunes to protect beaches from erosion. In Churchill, Australia, activists would collect computer parts for recycling. A group in Zambia would hold a "Miss Environment" beauty pageant.

And in Vadodara, India, activists were encouraging local schools both to plant trees and build sandcastles to "get a closer connection to the topic of deserts and desertification."

"It looks like there should be a tunnel there, but there's not."

The slide began as a trickle of rocks April 29 and forced sporadic road closures last month. The road reopened last week, but on Monday the intensity of the slide increased.

The slide, which is 600 feet long, 600 feet wide and 300 feet deep, threatened to topple two power line towers carrying 72,000 volts of electricity to the town of El Portal and the park, said Mariposa County Fire Chief Blaine Shultz.

The power lines are the only source of power to the small community and the park, Shultz said.

Motorists were advised to use alternate routes into the park. Two routes from the south and the north were still open.

After sending assessment teams to Central Java and Yogyakarta provinces, the social affairs ministry revised down the quake death toll from 6,234 to 5,782. The number of injured also went down to from 46,000 to 33,000.

But the ministry dramatically raised the number of people displaced in the crisis, saying more than 343,000 had spent a ninth night in the open, many of them under rudimentary tents made of plastic sheeting and bamboo poles.

"Emergency shelter remains one of our priorities," Puji Pujiono, the deputy area humanitarian coordinator for the United Nations, told AFP.

Yogyakarta provincial secretary Bambang Priyohadi said 200,000 tents were needed, while the UN appealed on Sunday for an influx of building materials, saying tents were sometimes difficult to set up amid the rubble.

The Indonesian government has earmarked more than 160 million dollars to rebuild more than 200,000 homes destroyed or badly damaged in the zone.

The United Nations has estimated that 100 million dollars are needed over the next six months to cope with the disaster.

Food aid is flowing more freely throughout the disaster area, Pujiono said, adding that more clean water was being trucked in to avert widespread sanitation problems, cited by UN agencies as a major short-term concern.

"Sanitation is the highest priority because so many houses have been destroyed and most of the toilets have gone as well," said Astrid van Agthoven, water and sanitation project officer for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

"There is definitely a risk of water-borne and sanitation-related diseases, especially in densely populated areas," she added.

Pujiono described the health care situation in the zone as "under control", with the tens of thousands of injured receiving appropriate medical attention, but warned of isolated shortfalls in supplies.

Indonesian Vice President Yusuf Kalla was due in Yogyakarta, the main city in the quake zone, later Monday to oversee ongoing relief efforts, his office said.

Provincial authorities in Yogyakarta will set up bank accounts for each family affected by the disaster to help them protect their aid funds, Priyohadi said, noting: "A tent is not a safe place to save that money."

In hard-hit Bantul district, life seemed to be returning to normal, with morning markets filled with fresh produce and sellers hawking their wares.

Primary school students sat under tents or outside their damaged classrooms to take their end-of-year exams, with sixth-grade girls in the village of Serut clad in red and white uniforms clutching their papers in their laps.

"All my friends are here. I feel happy to be here," said nine-year-old Adip, who played games with other children under a big blue tarpaulin suspended by bamboo poles.

Teachers dispensed with regular lessons for the youngest students in an effort to get them used to the idea of returning to class after the quake trauma.

To the north of the quake zone, the Mount Merapi volcano continued to belch heat clouds and send trails of lava down its slopes, with Indonesia still on red alert for an eruption.

Pujiono said local officials had evacuated several hundred villagers -- the elderly, women and children -- from areas nearest the lava flows, but stressed the rumbling volcano did not pose a "grave concern" to authorities.

The volcano has been spewing lava and hot clouds Saturday.

Also today, a strong aftershock rattled the quake zone. And a British medical aid agency has raised concerns that earthquake survivors could catch bird flu. At least 38 Indonesians have died of bird flu, and some cases have appeared in districts surrounding the quake zone.

"At least 25,000 people were forced to take shelter in makeshift arrangements with floodwaters submerging villages," a government statement said.

No casualties were immediately reported from the flooding in Assam, but 15 deaths were reported in northern Uttar Pradesh state, and 13 more nationwide after summer rains tore into the subcontinent earlier than expected.

At least 41 people have died in the western state of Maharashtra, which has been pounded by heavy rains since mid-week bringing back memories of floods in July 2005 which killed hundreds of people in the state capital Mumbai.

The other deaths -- caused mainly by lightning strikes, drownings and house collapses in heavy storms -- were in Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Gujarat, Jharkhand and West Bengal states, according to official reports.

The monsoon hit India's Andaman archipelago on May 18, about a week earlier than usual.

According to Assam's Central Water Commission, the Brahmaputra was Sunday flowing above the danger level in at least six places with the river maintaining a rising trend.

The area worst hit by the first wave of flooding that began Thursday was Assam's eastern district of Dhemaji.

State officials said at least 22 villages in the district had been submerged and 642 hectares (1,585 acres) of agricultural fields had been "devastated."

Road and rail links in parts of Assam have also been hit by the floods.

"In many places in southern Assam, floodwaters have topped roads and caused breaches disrupting surface transport," government spokesman C. Nath said.

A railway official said a breach in a canal washed away a major section of a rail track between the towns of Rangia and Rangapara in northern Assam.

"Since Thursday rail links have remained snapped between Rangia and Rangapara," the official said.

Eastern Assam's Kaziranga National Park, home to the world's largest concentration of endangered one-horned rhinos, was partially flooded.

"The animals are still safe despite floodwaters submerging a section of the park," said ranger D.D. Boro.

The 2,906-kilometer (1,816-mile) Brahmaputra is one of Asia's longest rivers, traversing China's Tibet region, India and Bangladesh before reaching the Bay of Bengal.

Every year the monsoon causes the river to flood its banks, submerging paddy fields, washing away villages, drowning livestock and killing many in the remote state of 26 million people.

In 2004, at least 200 people died and more than 12 million were displaced in the floods although last year lower-than-usual rains saw a reduced death toll and fewer people displaced.

"Maximum rainfall may reach more than 200 millimeters (eight inches) in a few areas," an unnamed Beijing weather official warned, according to the paper.

The non-stop rain, so far 20 percent worse compared with the same period last year, has forced the evacuation of more than 50,000 people in Guangdong, plus another 50,000 in Fujian, Xinhua said.

In Fujian, about 19,000 homes have been destroyed, while in Guangdong hundreds of buildings are reported to have collapsed, Xinhua said.

The entire town of Chayang in Guangdong was flooded after officials released water from two reservoirs that had been brimming with a month's worth of precipitation, the paper said.

As a result, the streets of Chayang were submerged in four meters (13 feet) of water, forcing 5,000 people to be evacuated.

"It just poured and had lasted for about a month," said Li Zhonghong, a local county government official, explaining why the water from the reservoirs had to be released.

Overall, 59 people have died in floods so far this year in the south of China, the China Daily reported.

Since serious flooding of the Yangtze River in 1998, China has spent billions of dollars on flood mitigation.

Major rivers have been brought under greater control and early warning systems have been put in place, but flash floods and landslides caused by rains continue to cause major damage.

Even prior to the 1998 floods, the Chinese government gave the go-ahead for the giant Three Gorges Dam, built partly to put an end to eternal floods along the Yangtze.

While part of China was being soaked, other parts were experiencing severe droughts, highlighting the nation's basic geographic dilemma -- the imbalance between a dripping wet south and a parched north.

A prolonged drought in the north Chinese provinces has left 9.5 million people short of sufficient drinking water, the China Daily said, citing E Jingping, head of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.

The same dry spell has affected 12.1 million hectares (30 million acres) of farmland and resulted in water shortages for 8.7 million head of livestock, according to the paper.

A flood alert was announced in around 20 townships in the Nowy Sacz and Tarnow regions of southeastern Poland, but by Sunday the situation had eased, the local crisis centre said.

"The waters rose very fast, but they are also going down quickly. Some of the evacuated inhabitants will soon be able to go home," Polish news agency PAP quoted fire service chief Dariusz Hachaj as saying.

Around 50 townships in eastern Slovakia were also affected.

"The situation was most worrying near the towns of Bardejov and Presov," the head of the Presov fire service Viliam Popadic told the media.

Dr Waite said the vortex, shaped like a giant child's spinning top, was created by current movement down the coast and is one of the largest ever found off of WA.

Visible from space, the vortex is acting as a "death trap" by sucking in fish larvae from closer to the shore, she said.

"It's actually acting as a predator, it's actually taking the fish larvae which need to stick around their natural habitat on the coast, and dragging them off to sea," Dr Waite said.

She said the climate above the vortex was noticeably different.

"It feels like you're in the tropics," she said.

"It's warm, soft, moist air, with flying fish, it's a very different environment."

It could also potentially affect climate further afield, she said.

"The vortex is moving a large volume of a very warm current out back into cooler waters, so essentially it's taking that heat and moving it away from the coast.

"So essentially that really changes the heat budget of our regional ocean and it's the ocean that determines climate."

Dr Waite said the vortex was unlikely to pose a danger to people sailing or diving in the area but the change was definitely noticeable.

"We were in a 70-metre boat and you could immediately feel the shift in the ship's tract, so you can certainly tell that there's something unusual going on out there," she said.