If you want to know the prospects for major climate change in the years ahead, ask the Pentagon. They have to figure out how to fight and win, wherever the president sends them. And they always ask the same question first: What's the weather like out there? If the forecasters say, "Weather uncertain," smart soldiers plan for every eventuality.

As Thom Hartmann told commondreams.org readers the other day, weather forecasters are giving us the biggest "Uncertain" in history. They say that there might, just might, be a catastrophic climate change in the next few decades. Global warming might suddenly trigger a massive global cooling.

They've heard this forecast in the Pentagon, too. So they are drawing up contingencies plans for the worst case scenario: a long era of deep freeze, raging storms, and massive drought that leaves billions of people struggling for the necessities of life.

This is no secret. Fortune magazine just published a summary of the report. What you can read there may seem perfectly sensible or perfectly insane. It all depends on your basic assumptions. [...]

UK scientists claim they now know how Earth recovered on its own from a sudden episode of severe global warming at the time of the dinosaurs.

Understanding what happened could help experts plan for the future impact of man-made global warming, experts say.

Rock erosion may have leached chemicals into the sea, where they combined with carbon dioxide, causing levels of the greenhouse gas to fall worldwide.

Comment: Lest Mr Bush, or anyone else, take this study as justification for continuing policies on the environment, the study also notes that:

Plants and animals were affected by the sudden rise in atmospheric CO2. Scientists have found evidence of a marine mass extinction during this period that killed off 84% of bivalve shellfish.

Over a period of about 150,000 years, the Earth returned to normal and life continued flourishing.

Tropical storm Elita hit the Indian Ocean island state of Madagascar early on Tuesday -- returning to the country for the second time in a week -- but there were no initial reports of casualties, weather officials said.

Elita, which left two people dead and 5,000 homeless when it hit the island a first time on January 28, hit the west coast early on Tuesday and was reported to be moving inland.

The cyclone, or tropical storm, brought with it winds of up to 180 kilometres (110 miles) per hour, said Alain Razafimahazo, head of the local weather office. [...]

Freeze: Coast Guard cutters are working overtime this winter to keep open the shipping channels of the Chesapeake Bay, and with the forecast, reinforcements are on the way. [...]

"There's ice as far as you can see," said Merrill, whose rank is chief warrant officer. "It's hard to tell if we're in Baltimore or Antarctica." [...]

Families were rescued from their homes yesterday as the torrential rain caused floodwaters to rise in Wales and parts of England.

North Wales was again hit by the worst of the weather, with houses swamped and drivers left stranded.

The Environment Agency issued eight severe flood warnings for the area on Tuesday - a step only taken when lives are considered in danger. At one point yesterday there were 126 standard flood warnings for England and Wales, mainly covering North Wales, the Midlands and the North West. [...]

Undersea eruptions of noxious hydrogen sulphide are having a major impact on one of the world's richest fisheries. Satellite images show that toxic eruptions off the coast of Namibia are more frequent and widespread than anyone realised.

The world's most productive fisheries are found in upwelling regions of ocean, where wind-driven currents fertilise surface waters with nutrients from the deep. The Benguela upwelling along Namibia's coast has the strongest such currents in the world. The area supports a fishery that was worth around $400 million in 1998, providing Namibia with its second largest source of revenue after mining. [...]

The researchers found that there were nine major hydrogen sulphide eruptions in 2001. The largest one smothered 22,000 square kilometres of ocean. "These events are not new - they are known from the turn of the last century," says Weeks, "but they were always understood to be very small, localised effects." [...]

The team hopes that monitoring gas eruptions and understanding what triggers them will help authorities take sulphide events into account when setting annual catch quotas. So far, the eruptions appear to be unique to the Benguela upwelling, but Weeks is worried that climate change might make similar regions elsewhere susceptible.

Comment: Don't miss yesterday's research on the Signs page regarding ocean outgassing that ties in a lot of interesting, and often deadly, phenomena that has occurred recently and in the past.

The report of 10,000 birds mysteriously dropping dead from the sky in Beijing encouraged us to post some of our research into this phenomena that deserves for further investigation. We uncovered a few other historical and rather spectacular incidents regarding mysterious bird falls to add to the more recent ones from yesterday. We will present some of them a little further below.

So far, no new information from Beijing, except to mention there is an ongoing investigation and that the Chinese government may have a few concerns about superstition.

The above New Scientist article presents this theory for the poisonous gases which has caused the death of billions of fish:

Microscopic algae called diatoms grow where upwelling is most intense. These are grazed by plankton, but any that are not eaten sink when they die, forming beds of sediment on the seafloor.

Bacteria in the sediments break down the diatoms and produce hydrogen sulphide in the process. The sulphide builds up in gas pockets that eventually erupt into the ocean, poisoning marine life and stripping oxygen from the water.

But the below article, also carried by New Scientist, appears to contradict this theory:

Lake methane could power entire nation

09:45 03 March 03

A giant pipe tapping gas from a huge lake could provide electric power for much of Rwanda, help revive its devastated forests and quell the danger of a bizarre natural disaster.

The deep waters of Lake Kivu, on Rwanda's north-western border, are brimming with vast quantities of three dissolved gases: carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphide and methane. The carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide come mainly from volcanic activity, while the methane comes from lake bed bacteria. Engineers are now planning to suck out the methane and burn it to produce electricity.

The gas reserve should be enough to supply the country's electricity needs for 400 years. Using it will mean far less logging since Rwanda currently gets 90 per cent of its energy from wood burning. And tapping the gas will reduce the risk of a massive gas explosion killing people who live near the lake.

There is a precedent. In 1986, Lake Nyos in Cameroon released a vast cloud of carbon dioxide that had slowly been building up in the water - suffocating more than a thousand people. For safety, an elaborate system of pipework is draining away the lake's carbon dioxide output. [...]

Notice that one of the mass bird deaths described below occurs over a sea side city, and that Baton Rogue is not too far away form the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Maurepas and the Mississippi River:

Disasters for the Birds

In mid-October of the year 1846, some sections of France were subjected to the phenomenon of red rain, mixed with birds, dead or half-dead. Comptes Rendus, Volumes 23 and 24 contains the details of this unique celestial broth. Just what the red coloring consisted of is not clear from the deliberations of the scientists who were forced to deal with this event. There was no such problem regarding the birds which came tumbling down with the thick red rain, however. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of battered and bedraggled quail, larks, robins, ducks and water hens came tumbling down. Most of them were presumed to have been dead when they struck; a few were able to effect glancing approaches which prolonged their lives for a few hours. It was, as the scientists of Lyons and Grenoble concluded after surveying the evidence, a most unusual occurrence.

Nor was it without parallel. In July of 1896 the sky over Baton Rouge, Louisiana, divested itself of a sizable collection of defunct birds. On a clear day the startled citizens of Baton Rouge were pelted with dead woodpeckers, catbirds, thrushes, blackbirds, and a few wild ducks; and interested parties noted among the hundreds of specimens numerous birds that were unknown to them and some that were quite rare, which appeared to be canaries.

Against this background, let us now consider the experience which befell a city policeman in Capitola, California, on warm night in August of 1960.

Something flashed in the headlights of the car. Whatever it was, it fell into the street about a hundred feet ahead of him, and bounced a few inches. [A] second object - a third - a fourth came tumbling down. Then the officer saw that the things were birds - dead birds, and sizable ones at that. He started to get out of his car to investigate this remarkable deluge - and then changed his mind.

Said Officer Cunningham: "by the time I had stopped the car they were raining down all around me. they were big birds and they were falling so fast and hard they would have knocked me senseless. I thought I had better stay in the car and that's just what I did!"

[...] Next morning the citizens of the affected communities were treated to the strange spectacle of power lines festooned with birds. Others were impaled on television antennas, fence posts, and jammed into shrubbery by the force of their falls. The birds were identified as Sooty Shearings, a kind of petrel that achieves a wing spread of more than thirty inches and a body length of as mush as a foot and a half. They roam the Pacific, making the swing from their nesting grounds in the Australian area around the coastlines of Japan, the Aleutians , and down the west coast of the Americas.

Authorities estimated that about four thousand of the big birds were killed outright around Capitolan and another two thousand survived the plunge but could not get off the ground. When kindhearted citizens lugged the ailing birds back to the sea, however, the gulls generally managed to recover sufficiently to fly away.[...] [Strange World, Frank Edwards, New York, 1964, pp. 61-63]

The climate could change radically, and fast. That would be the mother of all national security issues.

Global warming may be bad news for future generations, but let's face it, most of us spend as little time worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda before 9/11. Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk may hit home sooner and harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the prospect has become so real that the Pentagon's strategic planners are grappling with it.

The threat that has riveted their attention is this: Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decade—like a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies—thereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power.

Though triggered by warming, such change would probably cause cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, leading to longer, harsher winters in much of the U.S. and Europe. Worse, it would cause massive droughts, turning farmland to dust bowls and forests to ashes. Picture last fall's California wildfires as a regular thing. Or imagine similar disasters destabilizing nuclear powers such as Pakistan or Russia—it's easy to see why the Pentagon has become interested in abrupt climate change.

Climate researchers began getting seriously concerned about it a decade ago, after studying temperature indicators embedded in ancient layers of Arctic ice. The data show that a number of dramatic shifts in average temperature took place in the past with shocking speed—in some cases, just a few years.

The case for angst was buttressed by a theory regarded as the most likely explanation for the abrupt changes. The eastern U.S. and northern Europe, it seems, are warmed by a huge Atlantic Ocean current that flows north from the tropics—that's why Britain, at Labrador's latitude, is relatively temperate. Pumping out warm, moist air, this "great conveyor" current gets cooler and denser as it moves north. That causes the current to sink in the North Atlantic, where it heads south again in the ocean depths. The sinking process draws more water from the south, keeping the roughly circular current on the go.

But when the climate warms, according to the theory, fresh water from melting Arctic glaciers flows into the North Atlantic, lowering the current's salinity—and its density and tendency to sink. A warmer climate also increases rainfall and runoff into the current, further lowering its saltiness. As a result, the conveyor loses its main motive force and can rapidly collapse, turning off the huge heat pump and altering the climate over much of the Northern Hemisphere. [...]

SHANGHAI (AFP) - Alarm over rising sea levels and subsidence in China's largest city Shanghai has prompted officials to consider building a dam on its main river, the Huangpu, state press reported. [...]

Over the years the rising water levels of the Huangpu, blamed on rising sea levels due to global warming, and subsidence has resulted in the building of hundreds of kilometres (miles) of flood walls.

Since 2000, 20 millimetres (almost one inch) of the city's coastline has disappeared, with the rise totaling 60 millimetres (2.4 inches) since the 1970s. [...]

The new century may bring hundreds or even thousands of plant and animal extinctions to the Andes Mountains of Peru according to new research by Florida Institute of Technology Paleo-Ecologist Mark Bush.

Bush's findings, chronicled in the Feb. 6 issue of the prestigious journal Science, result from the study of the first continuous record of Andean climate change during the past 48,000 years. The Andes region of Peru is one of the most biologically diverse areas on the planet. [...]

Pressures are mounting on one of the Earth's rarest and most distinctive types of forest, scientists have found.

The alert comes from the UK-based World Conservation Monitoring Centre, now a part of the UN Environment Programme.

It says the threats to the world's cloud forests, which shelter thousands of rare species and provide water for millions of people, are increasing.

The centre says the extent of the cloud forests is about one-fifth smaller than scientists had previously believed. [...]

REGINA   - Police and transportation officials are advising people to avoid travel as a winter storm blows across southern Saskatchewan.

In the Saskatoon area, rain was followed by strong winds and heavy snow Tuesday morning. Transportation officials report that several highways around Saskatoon have been close [...]

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Blizzards cut off thousands of Turkish villages, blocked roads and kept air and sea routes closed on Friday, while rescue workers battled high seas in the search for 20 men lost when their ship sank off Istanbul.

Neighboring Greece and Bulgaria were also battered by storms that disrupted air, sea and road transport.

Athens ground to a halt amid one of its worst snow storms in decades. Planes were grounded, ports and highways closed and thousands were stranded at bus stops and train stations as up to 50 Cm of snow blanketed the capital.

Guards turned away tourists at the Acropolis, symbol of the city, saying it was too dangerous to climb the slippery marble stairway to the temple site.

Strong winds forced Bulgaria to close down its largest and second largest Black Sea ports of Varna and Bourgas, port authorities said. Bourgas airport was also closed.

In the western Turkish city of Bursa, where 17 inches of snow fell, five people died after breathing fumes from faulty stoves as they tried to keep warm.

Since blizzards began on Thursday, two ships have sunk and two have grounded in storms near Istanbul, Turkey's sprawling commercial center. Flights at the city's airport were suspended.

Maritime officials said rescue workers were searching for 20 people missing after their Cambodian-flagged ship "Hera," loaded with coal, sank in the Black Sea 7.5 miles from the Bosphorus strait around midday. [...]

As the tropical oceans continue to heat up, following a 20-year trend, warm rains in the tropics are likely to become more frequent, according to NASA scientists.

In a study by William Lau and Huey-Tzu Jenny Wu, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., the authors offer early proof of a long-held theory that patterns of evaporation and precipitation, known as the water cycle, may accelerate in some areas due to warming temperatures. The research appears in the current issue of Geophysical Research Letters. [...]

Nissan demonstrated its new device designed to protect its parking lot from a hailstorm for WLBT News on Tuesday. It is a cannon that sends sonic waves up to 50,000 feet in the air to keep hailstones from forming.

There are more than 400 such machines in operation in the world, and this is the ninth one installed in the United States. They are made in Canada and are used primarily to protect crops. It works by using its own radar to detect the conditions that are favorable for hail to form.

It automatically activates when its own weather radar system detects conditions favorable for the formation of hail. It fires every 5.5 seconds, making a sound we know can be heard at least five miles away from the Nissan plant near Canton. It then starts sending sound waves into the cloud every five-and-a-half seconds.

The sound at ground zero is about 120 decibels, or about the same as a tornado warning siren. Workers are installing fences around two of the machines in the 140-acre parking lot at Nissan and filling the fences with hay in an effort to reduce the sound level. [...]

BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - The death toll from devastating rains that have drenched Brazil for weeks has risen to 161 people, while 230,000 have been forced to leave their homes, the government said on Friday.

At the beginning of this week the death toll stood at 119.

The growing damage from the rains prompted the government to release 339 million reais ($116 million) in disaster relief on Friday. National Integration Minister Ciro Gomes said the funds would be used to rebuild roads and houses.

Gomes said rain levels are likely to remain heavy.

Since early January, Brazil has been hit by the heaviest rains in more than a decade, causing wide-scale damage in the poor north as well as the cities of the south. Gomes said 17 of Brazil's 26 states have been hit to one degree or another.

Towns have had mudslides, been cut off when bridges and roads collapsed or flooded by rivers that ran over their banks.

The government has also said the rains could bring epidemics and has moved to resupply medicine stocks.

AMMAN (AFP) - Snowstorms shuttered schools and businesses in the Middle East and left one man dead in Lebanon, while many Jordanians called the weather a blessing for their water-starved country.

Strong winds buffeted Jordan overnight and snow fell heavily on northern and central regions of the country, including the capital Amman, trapping motorists, causing flight delays and closing schools and banks. [...]

Meteorologists said that up to 15 centimeters (six inches) of snow fell on western Amman, which is built on seven hills with the highest point at 1,100 meters (3,630 feet).

The snowfall, meanwhile, was welcomed by most Jordanians as a "blessing from God" because it meant more water for a country which ranks among the world's 10 poorest in water resources.

In Israel, the first major snowfall of the year upset the roadmap for peace with the Palestinians and forced the closure of schools in Jerusalem and parts of the north.

A planned meeting between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's bureau chief and Palestinian premier Ahmed Qorei's top aide in Jerusalem to set up a long-awaited summit between the two leaders was postponed indefinitely due to the inclement weather.

Around nine centimeters of snow were recorded in the centre of Jerusalem after a steady fall that began on Saturday afternoon and resumed Sunday.

The weight of the snow caused a wall to collapse near the Maghreb Gate, which overlooks a section of Jerusalem's Wailing Wall where women go to pray. [...]

In Lebanon, hundreds of villages remained cut off by snow-choked roads and an elderly resident of Chtaura, east of Beirut, was electrocuted by a fallen high-voltage wire, police said.

Major roads were blocked, including the route between Beirut and Damascus, and maritime traffic in the ports of Sidon and Tyre in the south was halted.

Snowfall that began Friday across Syria closed most of the mountain roads around Damascus, weather services reported.

In the central-western region of Homs, heavy rains forced road closures, while the newspaper Al-Baas said they heralded "an excellent farm season".

In Cyprus, snow fell on the north coast of the island and even dusted Nicosia, delighting residents unused to the rare sight.

The icy weather, coming from the north, also caused havoc in Greece and Turkey, closing Athens international airport and sinking ships in the Black Sea.

Flood waters rose and hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes after storms lashed central New Zealand today. Rescuers found no trace of two men missing at sea and presumed drowned, police said.

Winds gusting up to 100 mph felled hundreds of trees, tore roofs from houses, and blocked roads in southern North Island. Weather forecasters said the winds were easing, but more heavy rain was expected.

Helicopters were used to pluck at least seven families from rooftops in the Manawatu farm region north of the capital, Wellington, as floodwaters surged through their homes.

On the west coast, rising rivers and a looming high tide at the seaside settlement of Tangimoana caused civil defence staff and army troops to evacuate more than 250 people.

At Lower Hutt city, nine miles north of Wellington, more than 150 people were evacuated from a campground as floodwaters flowed through parked cars. [...]

AUCKLAND - Weather authorities in Tuvalu warned Monday their small South Pacific nation is likely to be inundated by unusual tides later this week.

Tuvalu, home to 11,500 people living on nine scattered atolls all less than 4.5 metres (15 feet) above sea level, will be hit Thursday and Friday by "king tides" associated with the new moon, Hilia Vavae of the Tuvalu Meteorological Office told AFP.

"We are not quite sure what will happen but we expect most of the areas will be flooded by the sea for an hour or so," she said.

On Thursday at 4.40pm (0440 GMT) the tide will peak at 3.07 metres and on Friday at 5.19pm (0519 GMT) will reach 3.1 metres (10.2 feet). [...]

Over the last decade, successive Tuvalu leaders have claimed their state will be the first victim of sea level rise associated with global warming. [...]

Europe's weather could flip from droughts to floods every year as climate change kicks in, according to scientists who have modelled the mechanisms behind the continent's most recent bouts of extreme weather.

In the summer of 2003, an intense heatwave across Europe was responsible for the deaths of up to 35,000 people and dried up many rivers. Yet in 2002, central Europe was awash with water after a massive river burst its banks.

Both events have been attributed to a peculiar phenomenon in which a "planetary wave" pins a particular weather system in one place. The drought in 2003 was triggered by trapped high pressure, while the flood of 2002 happened after a region of low pressure became pinned.

Planetary waves are gentle pressure oscillations in the atmosphere, set up by the rotation of the Earth. They usually roll gently around the planet, carrying weather systems with them.

But when the wavelength of the planetary wave fits an exact number of times around the circumference of the Earth, the peaks and troughs of the pressure oscillation overlap on each revolution, so they are fixed in place and grow in strength.

This "resonance" will become more frequent if the wavelength of the planetary waves shortens, as is expected to happen as the planet warms, warns Vladimir Petoukhov, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

He fed predictions of the Earth's future temperature into a computer model of the waves. While resonance now is rare, he calculates that within two decades, it could happen as often as every year.

"Europe could flip between flood and drought conditions in alternate years," says John Schellnhuber, research director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich, UK, and a former colleague of Petoukhov.

Although the results are preliminary, Petoukhov says that the effect might occur in other continents too. [...]

Trouble in wonderland . . . a new report warns that coral bleaching will devastate the Great Barrier Reef's tourism industry. Photo courtesy of GBRMPA

The Great Barrier Reef will lose most of its coral cover by 2050, inflicting billions of dollars in damage on Australia's tourism and fishing industries, a study on coral bleaching has warned.

The authors, the head of Queensland University's Centre for Marine Studies, and his father, an economist, predict, at best, reefs will have about 5 per cent living coral cover by the middle of the century, a predicament that would take the reef 50-100 years to recover from.

They blame rising water temperatures for the problem and warn it could end up costing the economy $8 billion and more than 12,000 jobs by 2020. Even under favourable conditions, they said, tourists would only be able to experience real corals in reef "theme parks" in places as far off as the Whitsunday Shire [...]

HALIFAX - Cleanup began early Friday after a "classic nor'easter" dumped record amounts of snow on Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island the day before, causing both provinces to declare states of emergency.

Officials estimated it could take days to clear roads and runways of the more than 90 centimetres of snow that had fallen since late Wednesday.

[...] Halifax residents trudged through snow-covered streets as more than 90 centimetres of snow fell by Thursday night, breaking the 1944 one-day snowfall record of 50.8 centimetres. Thousands of people were without power.

[...] "Conditions are the worst I have seen in 22 years," said Staff Sgt. Scott Burbridge with Halifax RCMP.

New Zealanders trying to mop up the flood-ravaged North Island face another battle against mother nature this weekend, with more severe weather on its way.

Wellington was again isolated from the rest of the north island overnight, with the two main roads into the capital closed for some time due to flooding. [...]

About 2400 North Island residents were evacuated earlier this week after the most damaging floods in 100 years, with many still unable to return to their homes.

Helicopters have been used to drop food parcels to isolated residents, and many communities are still without power. [...]

Thousands of Jakarta residents have been forced to flee their homes by flood waters as deep as two metres (6.6 feet), officials in the Indonesian capital said.

Wagiman of the Jakarta flood control centre said at least 10 neighbourhoods had been inundated, forcing at least 10,000 to seek temporary refuge in mosques or civic offices. [...]

US citizens choking on African dust may have themselves to blame.

In Miami, traffic fumes aren't the only thing choking the air. Several times each summer, health standards are breached because of dust blowing across the ocean from Africa.

Local politicians might be tempted to point the finger of blame at African land-use practices. But they should perhaps look closer to home, atmospheric scientist Joseph Prospero of the University of Miami told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle.

Since 1965, air gusting across the Atlantic on trade winds has been sampled at stations in Miami, Bermuda and Barbados. In the summer, the air at these sites can contain so much dust that it exceeds health standards for particulates - which can be dangerous for those with respiratory or heart disease. [...]

The discovery suggests that Africa's dust bowl may be a consequence of greenhouse gas emissions, which come largely from the United States and other developed countries. [...]

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.

Senior climatologists, however, believe that their verdicts could prove the catalyst in forcing Bush to accept climate change as a real and happening phenomenon. They also hope it will convince the United States to sign up to global treaties to reduce the rate of climatic change.

A group of eminent UK scientists recently visited the White House to voice their fears over global warming, part of an intensifying drive to get the US to treat the issue seriously. Sources have told The Observer that American officials appeared extremely sensitive about the issue when faced with complaints that America's public stance appeared increasingly out of touch.

One even alleged that the White House had written to complain about some of the comments attributed to Professor Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, after he branded the President's position on the issue as indefensible.

Among those scientists present at the White House talks were Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief environmental adviser to the German government and head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He said that the Pentagon's internal fears should prove the 'tipping point' in persuading Bush to accept climatic change.

Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office - and the first senior figure to liken the threat of climate change to that of terrorism - said: 'If the Pentagon is sending out that sort of message, then this is an important document indeed.'

Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored.

'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.

'You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac river you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue,' said Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace.

Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated.

Randall told The Observer that the potential ramifications of rapid climate change would create global chaos. 'This is depressing stuff,' he said. 'It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat.'

Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. 'We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years,' he said.

'The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable. It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be worthwhile.'

So dramatic are the report's scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign.

The fact that Marshall is behind its scathing findings will aid Kerry's cause. Marshall, 82, is a Pentagon legend who heads a secretive think-tank dedicated to weighing risks to national security called the Office of Net Assessment. Dubbed 'Yoda' by Pentagon insiders who respect his vast experience, he is credited with being behind the Department of Defence's push on ballistic-missile defence.

Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House trying to bury evidence of climate change. 'It is yet another example of why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this issue.'

Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was received sceptically in the Oval Office. 'This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies,' he added.

· Future wars will be fought over the issue of survival rather than religion, ideology or national honour.

· By 2007 violent storms smash coastal barriers rendering large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable. Cities like The Hague are abandoned. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento river area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from north to south.

· Between 2010 and 2020 Europe is hardest hit by climatic change with an average annual temperature drop of 6F. Climate in Britain becomes colder and drier as weather patterns begin to resemble Siberia.

· Deaths from war and famine run into the millions until the planet's population is reduced by such an extent the Earth can cope.

· Riots and internal conflict tear apart India, South Africa and Indonesia.

· Access to water becomes a major battleground. The Nile, Danube and Amazon are all mentioned as being high risk.

· A 'significant drop' in the planet's ability to sustain its present population will become apparent over the next 20 years.

· Rich areas like the US and Europe would become 'virtual fortresses' to prevent millions of migrants from entering after being forced from land drowned by sea-level rise or no longer able to grow crops. Waves of boatpeople pose significant problems.

· Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Japan, South Korea, and Germany develop nuclear-weapons capabilities, as do Iran, Egypt and North Korea. Israel, China, India and Pakistan also are poised to use the bomb.

· By 2010 the US and Europe will experience a third more days with peak temperatures above 90F. Climate becomes an 'economic nuisance' as storms, droughts and hot spells create havoc for farmers.

· More than 400m people in subtropical regions at grave risk.

· Europe will face huge internal struggles as it copes with massive numbers of migrants washing up on its shores. Immigrants from Scandinavia seek warmer climes to the south. Southern Europe is beleaguered by refugees from hard-hit countries in Africa.

· Mega-droughts affect the world's major breadbaskets, including America's Midwest, where strong winds bring soil loss.

· China's huge population and food demand make it particularly vulnerable. Bangladesh becomes nearly uninhabitable because of a rising sea level, which contaminates the inland water supplies.

Human activity is making the planet darker as well as warmer, scientists say. They believe levels of sunlight reaching Earth's surface have declined by up to 20% in recent years because air pollution is reflecting it back into space and helping to make bigger, longer-lasting clouds.

The "global dimming" effect could have implications for everything from the effectiveness of solar power to the growth of plants and trees. "Over the past couple of years it's become clear that the solar irradiance at the Earth's surface has decreased," said Jim Hansen, a climate scientist with Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Science in New York.

Experts say global dimming is probably down to tiny particles such as soot, and chemical compounds such as sulphates accumulating in the atmosphere. "Data from 100 stations around the world show that the amount of black carbon in the atmosphere is twice as big as we assumed," said Dr Hansen.

Climate change is a more serious threat to the world than terrorism, David King, the government's chief scientist, writes in an article in today's Science magazine, attacking governments for doing too little to combat global warming.

He singles out the United States for "refusing to countenance any remedial action now or in the future" to curb its own greenhouse gases, which are 20% of the world's total, even though it has only 4% of the population.

Disclosing that he had commissioned a team of scientists and engineers to find ways of reducing the severe damage the UK faces from climate change, he says the potential damage to property runs into "tens of billions of pounds per annum".

Britain is doing its bit to reduce emissions, but acting alone is not enough, he says. "We and the rest of the world are now looking to the USA to play its leading part."

As an example of what his team is discussing, he says Britain's coastal defences will be subject to attack from both increased sea-level rises and greater storm surges.

"These combined efforts have the potential to increase risk of floods in 2080 by up to 30 times present levels. In the highest emission scenario, by 2080 flood levels that are now expected once in 100 years could be recur ring every three years. People at high risk of flooding in Britain will double to nearly 3.5 million."

If no work is done coastal erosion in Britain will increase nine-fold, he adds.

Urging action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at once Sir David comments: "Delaying action for decades, or even just years, is not a serious option. I am firmly convinced that if we do not stop now, more substantial, m ore disruptive, and more expensive change will be needed later on." [...]

Yesterday a major study published in Nature magazine showed that climate change over the next 50 years is expected to drive a quarter of land animals and plants into extinction.

Chris Thomas, professor of conservation biology at Leeds University, who was lead author of the research from four continents into the effect of higher temperatures, called the results "terrifying", estimating that more than 1 million species will be lost by 2050.

Much of that loss - more than one in 10 of all plants and animals - is irreversible because of the extra global warming gases already discharged into the atmosphere. However the scientists who conducted the research believe action to curb greenhouse gases now could save others from the same fate.

One of the most shocking scientific realizations of all time has slowly been dawning on us: the earth's climate does great flip-flops every few thousand years, and with breathtaking speed. We could go back to ice-age temperatures within a decade -- and judging from recent discoveries, an abrupt cooling could be triggered by our current global-warming trend. Europe's climate could become more like Siberia's. Because such a cooling would occur too quickly for us to make readjustments in agricultural productivity and supply, it would be a potentially civilization-shattering affair, likely to cause an unprecedented population crash. What paleoclimate and oceanography researchers know of the mechanisms underlying such a climate flip suggests that global warming could start one in several different ways.

For a quarter century global-warming theorists have predicted that climate creep is going to occur and that we need to prevent greenhouse gases from warming things up, thereby raising the sea level, destroying habitats, intensifying storms, and forcing agricultural rearrangements. Now we know -- and from an entirely different group of scientists exploring separate lines of reasoning and data -- that the most catastrophic result of global warming could be an abrupt cooling. [...]

There seems to be no way of escaping the conclusion that global climate flips occur frequently and abruptly. An abrupt cooling could happen now, and the world might not warm up again for a long time: it looks as if the last warm period, having lasted 13,000 years, came to an end with an abrupt, prolonged cooling. That's how our warm period might end too. [...]

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 — The largest ice shelf in the Arctic, a solid feature for 3,000 years, has broken up, scientists in the United States and Canada said Monday. They said the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, on the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada’s Nunavut territory, broke into two main parts, themselves cut through with fissures. A freshwater lake drained into the sea, the researchers reported.

LARGE ICE ISLANDS also calved off from the shelf and some are large enough to be dangerous to shipping and to drilling platforms in the Beaufort Sea. [...]

Only 100 years ago the whole northern coast of Ellesmere Island, which is the northernmost land mass of North America, was edged by a continuous ice shelf. About 90 percent of it is now gone, Vincent’s team wrote. [...]

• Global warming to kill off 1m species
• Scientists shocked by results of research
• 1 in 10 animals and plants extinct by 2050

Climate change over the next 50 years is expected to drive a quarter of land animals and plants into extinction, according to the first comprehensive study into the effect of higher temperatures on the natural world.

The sheer scale of the disaster facing the planet shocked those involved in the research. They estimate that more than 1 million species will be lost by 2050.

The results are described as "terrifying" by Chris Thomas, professor of conservation biology at Leeds University, who is lead author of the research from four continents published today in the magazine Nature.

Much of that loss - more than one in 10 of all plants and animals - is already irreversible because of the extra global warming gases already discharged into the atmosphere. But the scientists say that action to curb greenhouse gases now could save many more from the same fate.

[...] "The risk of extinction increases as global warming interacts with other factors - such as landscape modification, species invasions and build-up of carbon dioxide - to disrupt communities and ecological interactions."

So many species are already destined for extinction because it takes at least 25 years for the greenhouse effect - or the trapping of the sun's rays by the carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide already added to the air - to have its full effect on the planet. Deserts, grasslands and forests are already changing to make survival impossible.

The continuous discharging of more greenhouse gases, particularly by the USA, is making matters considerably worse. The research says if mankind continues to burn oil, coal and gas at the current rate, up to one third of all life forms will be doomed by 2050.

Over at the Global Climate Coalition, a powerful alliance of carmakers, oil drillers and electricity generators emerged with a consensus about the environment over the years and a quiet confidence that the White House shared their view: global warming is a hoax.

During the past three years, environmentalists have regularly accused the White House of serving big business at the expense of the environment. President Bush received $1.9m (£1m) from the oil and gas industry in 2000, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics.

"The truth is that in the presence of his large financial contributors, he is a moral coward - so weak that he seldom, if ever, says no to them on anything," said Al Gore in a fiery speech last month.

A sweltering weekend is believed to have claimed several lives in Brisbane.

Queensland state's Ambulance Service commissioner Jim Higgins reported emergency call outs on Sunday, when temperatures soared to 41.7 C (107 F) - Brisbane's hottest ever February day - 53% higher than normal for the time of year.

From Friday afternoon to Sunday night, police were called to 29 sudden deaths. The weekend earlier, there were seven such deaths in the city of 900,000 people. [...]

Ambulance crews were so stretched that in about 20 cases, fire officers were sent to provide first aid until paramedics could get there.

Sydney could be heading for tougher water restrictions aimed at pool owners in particular as the city's water supply shrinks towards 45 per cent of capacity.

Home owners could soon be required to apply for permission to fill or re-fill their pools if the Utilities Minister, Frank Sartor, considers further restrictions are warranted.

Restrictions were imposed across Sydney, the Illawarra and the Blue Mountains on October 1. While 30 billion litres of water have already been saved, a Sartor spokesman says the minister is looking at what more can be done.

On Friday Sydney's water supply was only 52.7 per cent of capacity.

LOS ANGELES - Heavy rain throughout Southern California delayed airline flights and flooded roads and highways across the region, contributing to hundreds of car crashes.

"There's lots and lots of crashes," said Phil Konstantin, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol's San Diego area. He said the downpour Sunday washed mud and rocks onto roads near areas denuded by last year's wildfires.

The bad weather also caused flight delays and cancellations at Los Angeles International Airport, Las Vegas' McCarron International Airport and several small airports around Southern California. [...]

At least five people were killed and 180 injured as gale force winds of up to 150 kilometres (95 miles) an hour and snow showers swept through the Syrian capital, newspapers reported on Monday.

Sunday's gusts uprooted trees, knocked down electricity pylons and blew away television antennae, as well as causing power cuts and heavy damage to properties in Damascus.

The government daily Tishrin said five people were killed, while Syria Times gave an injured toll of 180.

The Arctic snap is continuing across the UK, with icy temperatures, sleet and snow showers heading south.

Temperatures were forecast between 6C (43F) and 8C (46F) across the country, but falling to a few degrees above zero in the Scottish Highlands.

John Hutchinson, weather expert, said: "There'll be some rain, sleet and snow moving southwards. Quite a lot of it's going to be rain but, in the northern edge, there's going to be a risk of some sleet and snow.

"Because the cold air is already in Scotland, it will be colder there than it will be across England and Wales with some snow showers pushing in from the north.

"There will be some snow on the hills in northern England and Wales, and the tops of hills in the Midlands and southern England. It may descend to lower ground."

[...] "At the end of the week and over the weekend, it looks like staying cold with snow showers in the north and east," added Mr Hutchinson.

Thick, reddish-brown dust swirled over parts of West Texas, contributing to a series of traffic accidents that killed two people and injured dozens of others.

As many as 30 vehicles crashed Thursday on U.S. Highway 84 between Southland and Post, about 20 miles southeast of Lubbock, said Cpl. John Gonzalez with the Department of Public Safety.

A New Mexico truck driver and his wife were killed in a crash that injured at least 11 others, authorities said.

[...] "All I see is dirt right now," said Marla Mason, who was working at a Lubbock truck stop. "It's kind of cleared up a little. The closer you get to the cotton fields, you can't see at all. ... It's just been blowing all day."

More than 120 schools in Aberdeenshire have been closed, as the wintry weather takes its toll on the area

All schools in Orkney and Shetland were also shut on Wednesday, while there were 18 closures in the Highlands.

Grampian Police said a night of low temperatures and blizzards had left roads badly affected by snow and ice.[...]

The US Defense Department downplayed a report on climate change that it had commissioned, saying it was speculative and shrugging off its call to make the issue a top political priority.

"The Schwartz and Randall study reflects the limits of scientific models and information when it comes to predicting the effects of abrupt global warming," said Andrew Marshall, an influential Pentagon adviser who ordered the study carried out.

"Although there is significant scientific evidence on this issue, much of what this study predicts is still speculation," he argued.

[...] The Pentagon report predicts that "abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies," The Observer reported.

The report, quoted in the paper, concluded: "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.... Once again, warfare would define human life."

Its authors -- Peter Schwartz, a CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of Global Business Network based in California -- said climate change should be considered "immediately" as a top political and military issue.

It "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern", they were quoted as saying.

The steep decline of the Pacific Ocean leatherback turtle has gone so far the species could be extinct within no more than a decade, conservationists fear.

A report by the US group Conservation International says leatherback numbers there have fallen by 97% in 22 years.

Five of the six other species of sea turtle are also at risk of extinction, though not necessarily as acutely.

[...] Roderic Mast, vice-president of CI and president of the International Sea Turtle Society, said: "On land, the canary in the coal mine warns humans of impending environmental danger.

"Sea turtles act as our warning mechanism for the health of the ocean, and what they're telling us is quite alarming. Their plummeting numbers are symptomatic of the ocean as a whole."

Schools across Wales were forced to close for a second day on Friday as snow and ice brought more disruption overnight.

Police were again warning motorists to stay home unless their journeys were absolutely necessary.

The coldest place in Wales was Sennybridge, where temperatures fell to minus eleven Celsius.

On Thursday more than 350 schools throughout Wales were closed by mid afternoon, while homes and businesses lost power and telephone connections.

There were heavy snowfalls on Friday - particularly in parts of Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Powys.

CHARLOTTETOWN - High winds and blowing snow whipped through parts of P.E.I., Nova Scotia and Newfoundland Thursday, closing schools and businesses, causing accidents and shutting down roadways.

A school bus driver was sent to hospital in the morning as slush from a plow blew out the windshield of the bus as it travelled along the Trans-Canada Highway near Stratford, P.E.I. No children were hurt.

New records were being set for snowfall and lost school days as the Eastern School District of Prince Edward Island shut its doors for the 13th day this season.

Documenting a paradox: Smoke decreases rainfall but ultimately increases its intensity Air pollution and smoke suppress rainfall, but cause the remaining rain amounts to fall in greater intensities, with lightning and hail, says a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The researcher, Prof. Daniel Rosenfeld, was one of a group of scientists that included also participants from Germany, Sweden and Brazil who conducted measurements of smoke from forest fires and its impact on the development of clouds and precipitation in the Amazon tropical rainforests of Brazil. The results of their research appear in the Feb. 27 issue of the journal Science.

They showed that smoke from these fires delays the release of water from clouds in the form of rain, thus preventing depletion of the water in the clouds as they grow. As these water-laden clouds reach great heights, they produce thunderstorms and hail instead of relatively moderate rain.

The research group, funded by the European Union and headed by Prof. Meinrat O. Andreae from the Max Planck Institute of Atmospheric Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, measured the capability of the smoke particles to produce cloud droplets. Prof. Rosenfeld, of the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University, penetrated the smoky clouds with a research aircraft and measured the way the smoke affected their composition and precipitation -forming processes.

Today's question: What do you get when more than 60 of the world's top scientists, 20 Nobel Laureates among them, get together and write one of the most scathing, damning reports in the history of modern science, aimed squarely at BushCo's thoroughly atrocious record of cover-ups and obfuscations and outright lies regarding the health of the planet?

What do you get when those very scientists, a highly respected, nonpartisan group called the Union of Concerned Scientists, go on to claim that no other president in modern history has so openly misled the public or been so flagrantly disrespectful of scientific fact and mountains of irrefutable research, deliberately and systematically mutilating scientific data in the service of its rather brutal, pro-corporate, antienvironment agenda?

If you answered, "Why, you get even more painful polyps of sadness and disgust on your soul due to the BushCo onslaught," consider yourself among the millions who are right now rather horrified and appalled and who are wondering just what sort of human -- not what sort of politician, mind you, not what sort of power broker, not what sort of failed Texas oilman corporate lackey -- but what sort of human being you have to be to enact such insidious ongoing planet-gouging legislation, smirking and shrugging all the way.

It is not an easy one to answer, as you can only wonder what has gone so horribly wrong, what sort of line has been crossed so that not even the basic dignity of the planet, not even a modicum of respect for it, is the slightest factor anymore in modern American right-wing politics. What, too extreme? Hardly.

The story about the scientist's report is > here. It was broadcast over many major media channels, somewhat loud and mostly clear, though most media was far more eager to bury it under all those more hotly controversial pics of happy gay people smooching on the steps of S.F.'s city hall than they were to trumpet the dire claims of a bunch of boring genius scientists.

Such is the national priority. After all, no one wants to hear how badly we've been duped by this administration, again. Given the nonexistent WMDs and the complete lack of Iraqi nukes and the bogus wars and manufactured fear and a galling budget deficit and nearly 3 million lost jobs and a raft of BushCo lies so thick you need a jackhammer to see some light, no one wants to know that even the world's top scientists are disgusted with our nation's leadership.

We can, after all, take only so much abuse, can be only so karmically and ideologically hammered, before we become so utterly exhausted that we just stop caring.

And, in fact, BushCo would love nothing more than to cripple our outrage and deflect attention away from all the dead U.S. soldiers in Iraq and his overall atrocious record on the war, jobs, the environment and foreign policy, and center it all on divisive issues of God-centric moral righteousness, like all those sicko gay people trying to dignify their sinful love.

This is a president, after all, who truly believes he is doing God's will by turning this country into the most lawless, internationally loathed aggressor on the planet, something I'm sure is very reassuring to those countless thousands of dead Iraqi civilians.

Does it really matter anymore? After all, as any child can tell you, politics has always been a wildly corrupt and slimy profession, valued somewhere between professional wrestler and professional baby-seal clubber on the moral and spiritual scale o' delicious karmic significance.

And, yes, it must be noted that there isn't a U.S. president on record who hasn't somehow deliberately mangled scientific data and covered up important reports during his term in order to further favored policies. Goes almost without saying.

But, as the Union of Concerned Scientists point out, never has the oppression of fact been so systematic, so widespread, so repulsive as that which Bush has wrought. Never has the abuse been so flagrant, the border marking what's morally acceptable so shamelessly crossed.

Maybe you don't believe the hippie environmentalists who are always spouting off about saving the whales and protecting the forests. Maybe you like to hiss at and dismiss, say, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s outstanding, powerfully researched articles in the recent issue of Rolling Stone and the latest issue of The Nation that carefully delineate just how Bush's enviro record is the worst in history, and call Kennedy just another typical left-wing liberal. You wish to be that small and boorish? Fine.

Not so easy, however, to dismiss a small army of nonpartisan, internationally respected scientists as just more agenda-thick political BS, as BushCo has done. To do so reeks of something far beyond mere name calling and dumb party maneuvering. It reeks of sheer heartlessness regarding the planet. It reeks of abuse. It reeks of hate.

This, then, is the gist of the BushCo attack on the planet: a hate crime. An intentional, ferocious dismantling of protections and guidelines, a view that Mother Nature is nothing but a cheap resource to be exploited, a giant oil can to be suckled, a hunk of toilet paper for Dick Cheney to -- well, let's not imagine.

Look at it this way. It's like music videos. Over and over again, endless droning shots of gyrating sweating booty-pumping faux-sexy bodies pretending to writhe in bogus orgasmic bliss, video after video and hour after hour where you watch and watch and go slowly numb and say, Jesus with a skimpy thong and a spray bottle of baby oil, how much further can they go?

How much more naked and sexist and overblown and abusive can they get before they say oh screw it and just strip down and have sex with a live chicken as 50 Cent downs a bottle of Crystal and grins maniacally?

This is like the saturation level of BushCo. Something's gotta give, you say. Surely some sort of ugly orgiastic critical mass has been reached wherein Bush and his planet-reaming policies simply cannot go any further without some sort of meltdown, some sort of massive international cosmic recoil whereby we finally see the Bush admin for what it is, quite possibly the most self-serving, egomaniacal cluster of enviro thugs in modern history.

But with the Union of Concerned Scientists report, this sentiment goes one step further -- this is not just hate for the planet, not merely a blatant right-wing revulsion for those much-loathed intangible New Age-y touchstones like earthly vibration, energy, true spiritual connection and a deep veneration and sense of profound awe for the raw divinity of nature.

This is more sinister, and more disturbing. BushCo's ugly rejection of not merely the "liberal" environmental politicking but also of the factual science of the natural world is, ultimately, a form of self-loathing.

It is a snide and self-destructive rejection of the human-nature connection, of the very real and very direct correlation between how we treat our world and how we view ourselves, between what we choose to celebrate/annihilate in nature and what we venerate/devastate in own spirits. After all, the less regard you have for one, the less you care about the other. Simple, really.

Look. We reflect the planet. The planet reflects us. And 60 out of 60 scientists agree: BushCo's time of reflecting nothing but cruel blackness and abuse needs to come to an end, right now.

More than 1,000 trucks were stranded in heavy snow on the Franco-Spanish border Saturday, while heavy weather closed in on the south of France, with snowfall even in the Riviera resort of Nice.

Emergency services reported the trucks were blocked at the border crossing point at Biriatou, with the route into Spain closed off because of snow.

Red Cross and emergency services supplied stranded drivers with food and hot drinks as they waited in a 10-kilometre (six-mile) line.
Local government officials set up a crisis unit and were organising emergency accommodation for the night with the expectation that the holdup would last over the weekend.

Strong winds, hail and heavy snow swept parts of Spain, with snow paralysing road and rail traffic in parts of the north including Cantabria in the Basque Country, Navarra and Castille-Leon.

Hundreds of furious lorry drivers are stranded at the French-Spanish border, trapped by heavy snow. They are waiting to enter the Basque Country but many roads have been closed and they are not happy. One driver said: "We have no food, nothing. They haven't given us anything since we've been stranded."

By law, most lorries are forbidden from travelling in the Basque Country and in France on Sundays, and so the drivers are anxious to move on so they are not stranded until Monday.

There have been similar problems in Italy: the motorway between Bologna and Florence is blocked and lorries are being forced to wait until the roads are cleared. Snow is usually unheard of in this area and even a small amount can cause chaos.

Further north, in Britain, a severe weather warning has been issued in the south-east, as other areas hit by bad conditions start to thaw out.

Heavy rains have killed at least 27 people and destroyed more than a thousand homes in Angola, the Lusa news agency reported on Saturday, citing United Nations aid workers in the African nation.

The rainfall, which is affecting the entire country, has destroyed over 66 000 hectares of farming land in the central province of Huambo alone, the officials said.

Torrential rains have battered much of Angola over the past month, damaging roads and bridges and preventing aid workers from distributing supplies.

The heavy rain has also raised the risk from landmines in the former Portuguese colony as it uncovers the weapons and sometimes shifts them on to roads.

Angola is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, a legacy of its decades-long civil war, which finally ended in 2002.[...]

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Residents in far northwestern Australia were being warned to brace for a severe cyclone gaining strength in the Indian Ocean, Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said on Sunday.

Destructive winds with gusts up to 150 miles an hour may develop near the remote Barrow Island oil fields overnight and on Monday, the bureau said.

Residents of the coastal community of Onslow, 800 miles north of Perth, have been told to expect high tides as category four Cyclone Monty approaches the Australian coast.

Cyclones are rated one-to-five in terms of severity.

Sea levels are likely to rise significantly above the normal high tide mark causing dangerous flooding, damaging waves and strong currents, the bureau said.