Earth Changes
The spring snowfall began Friday morning and hit Calgary with more than 10 centimetres by evening. Another 10 to 15 cm were forecast for the city and the Foothill Regions by Sunday morning.
"Why is the news on global warming always bad? Perhaps because there's little incentive to look at things the other way. If you do, you're liable to be pilloried by your colleagues. If global warming isn't such a threat, who needs all that funding? Who needs the army of policy wonks crawling around the world with bold plans to stop climate change?
But as we face the threat of massive energy taxes - raised by perceptions of increasing rates of warming and the sudden loss of Greenland's ice - we should be talking about reality."
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©Getty Images |
Disko Bay, Greenland: Temperatures on the island are no warmer than they were in the mid-20th century. |
It began lashing Wenchang late on Friday night with winds of up to 108km/h (67 mph), and reports say it caused a black-out in the city. Neoguri has since been downgraded to a tropical storm.
The series of avalanches hit at 4 a.m. Wednesday, taking out 1.5 miles of power transmission line and destroying or severely damaging five support towers along a steep mountainside outside the Snettisham Hydroelectric Facility, about 40 miles from downtown Juneau.
The Hainan flood control authorities said that as of mid-day on Friday, 42,000 residents had been displaced in Wenchang, Qionghai, Wanning, Lingshui and Sanya. The evacuation of 5,500 others was still under way.
The island's fishing authorities have removed 80,000 fishermen from boats or fish farms.
The origins of the pygmy elephants, found in a range extending from the north-east of the island into the Heart of Borneo, have long been shrouded in mystery. Their looks and behaviour differ from other Asian elephants and scientists have questioned why they never dispersed to other parts of the island.
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©Jan Vertefeuille |
Pygmy elephant with radio collar. |
From those observations, scientists have uncovered a plumbing system for the ice sheet, where meltwater can penetrate thick, cold ice and accelerate some of the large-scale summer movements of the ice sheet.
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©Ian Joughin, UW Polar Science Center |
WHOI glaciologist Sarah Das stands in front of a block of ice that was raised up 6 meters by the sudden drainage of a meltwater lake in Greenland. |
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© iStockphoto/Ronnie Wilson |
Pollutant - mercury-laden spiders are eaten by birds, and also fed by parent birds to their nestlings. |