XinhuaFri, 05 Oct 2007 09:52 UTC
JAKARTA - At least 1,736 separate fire hotspots have been detected in Kalimantan island and South Sumatra province of Indonesia over the past week, officials said.
In Kalimantan, where 1,370 hotspots have been found, haze from the forest fires has begun to disrupt flights at Syamsuddin Noor Airport in Banjar Baru city in South Kalimantan, the Jakarta Post daily Friday quoted head of the South Kalimantan Environmental Impact Management Agency Rahmadi Kurdi as saying.
Indonesian residents living near a rumbling volcano in East Java have begun evacuation drills, officials said Thursday as they warned activity was increasing at the site.
Volcanologists lifted an alert for Mount Kelut to the third of a four-level warning system last Sunday. Hiking the warning to the four level means scientists fear an eruption is imminent.
Typhoon Lekima smashed into central Vietnam overnight, flooding thousands of homes, disrupting air travel and leaving at least three people dead and 58 injured, officials said Thursday.
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Weathermen in Taiwan on Thursday urged ships and residents to take precautions against Typhoon Krosa which is gaining momentum and heading towards the island.
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Vast areas of Brazil and Paraguay and much of Bolivia are choking under thick layers of smoke as fires rage out of control in the Amazon rainforest, forcing the cancellation of flights.
Satellite images yesterday showed huge clouds of smoke and much of the Amazon basin burning as fires, originally set by ranchers to clear land, have raged into the forest itself.
First it was his world history class. Then he saw it in his economics class. And his world issues class. And his environment class. In total, 18-year-old McKenzie, a Northern Ontario high schooler, says he has had the film An Inconvenient Truth shown to him by four different teachers this year.
CNN Meteorologist Rob Marciano clapped his hands and exclaimed, "Finally," in response to a report that a British judge might ban the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" from UK schools because, according to "American Morning," "it is politically biased and contains scientific inaccuracies."
"There are definitely some inaccuracies," Marciano added. "The biggest thing I have a problem with is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming."
Long-range weather forecasts are predicting a warmer than average winter with less precipitation for much of the United States except the Pacific Northwest.
"It will be a lot like last year but the climate models are even more in agreement now than they were last fall," said Mike Halpert, head of forecast operations at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center.
As the world's leaders gather in New York this week to discuss climate change, you're going to hear a lot of well-intentioned talk about how to stop global warming. From the United Nations, Bill Clinton, and even the Bush administration, you'll hear about how certain mechanisms - cap-and-trade systems for greenhouse gas emissions, carbon taxes, and research and development plans for new energy technologies - can fit into some sort of global emissions reduction agreement to stop climate change. Many of these ideas will be innovative and necessary; some of them will be poorly thought out. But one thing binds them together: They all come much too late.
For understandable reasons, environmental advocates don't like to concede this point. Eager to force deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, many of them hype the consequences of climate change - in some cases, well beyond what is supported by the facts - to build political support. Their expensive policy preferences are attractive if they are able to convince voters that if they make economic sacrifices for the environment, they have a reasonable chance of halting, or at least considerably slowing, climate change. But this case is becoming harder, if not impossible, to make.
Comment: The assumption throughout the entire article is that the current climate change is a result of human activities, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Building any solutions on false ground only results in exactly what the PTB intend - to create the illusion that progress is being made to pacify the reader. Another false assumption the author is making is that all we will have to deal with is a "warming world", and not consider the historic ramifications of this - a sudden and catastrophic global ice age.
Comment: The assumption throughout the entire article is that the current climate change is a result of human activities, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Building any solutions on false ground only results in exactly what the PTB intend - to create the illusion that progress is being made to pacify the reader. Another false assumption the author is making is that all we will have to deal with is a "warming world", and not consider the historic ramifications of this - a sudden and catastrophic global ice age.