Some climate change links from The Independent

Also from my college listserv, the articles below are from the United Kingdom. I heard the folks on World News waxing indignant (so to speak) the other day about how it's going to cost so much more to go skiing because a tremendous amount of artificial snow is being required due to global warning.

This reminds me of how Gold's brother said it would be so terrible if there were no more water in the world because he wouldn't be able to drink his scotch on the rocks any more.

It's also been pointed out: this past December was the first one without snow in Manhattan for 128 years.

Vast ice shelf collapses in the Arctic

A vast ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic has broken up, a further sign of the astonishing rate at which polar ice is now melting because of global warming.

The Ayles ice shelf, more than 40 square miles in extent - over five times the size of central London - has broken clear from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 500 miles south of the North Pole in the Canadian Arctic, it emerged yesterday.

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Melting glaciers will destroy Alpine resorts within 45 years

The grandchildren of today's skiers are likely to know the white peaks of Switzerland only from the wrappers of chocolate bars. A remarkable report on climate change that will be handed to European governments this week will say that the effect of rising temperatures will mean an end to snow across large areas of the Alps.

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Spring in January: Frogs, trees and bees are deceived by winter's unseasonal warmth

St Hilary's day, New Year's Eve on the Julian calendar and, traditionally, the coldest day of the year, passed yesterday as one of the warmest on record.

Temperatures averaged 12C, above the seasonal average by 9C. More record-breaking warmth is expected this month, confusing plants and animals that should now be dormant. Daffodils, normally in bloom in March, are already out in St Mawes in Cornwall.

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Climate Change vs Mother Nature: Scientists reveal that bears have
stopped hibernating

Bears have stopped hibernating in the mountains of northern Spain, scientists revealed yesterday, in what may be one of the strongest signals yet of how much climate change is affecting the natural world.

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Snowdon will be snow-free in 13 years, scientists warn

Those who originally named the peak spoke as they probably found it, calling it "Snow Dun", from the Saxon for "snow hill". But Snowdon may lose its snow cover within 13 years as a result of climate change, Welsh scientists say.

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Disappearing world: Global warming claims tropical island

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.

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Lapland can only dream of white Christmas

It should be a winter wonderland; instead, it's just piles of slush. British holidaymakers travelling to Lapland for a pre-Christmas holiday got a shock when they arrived in Santa's traditional home this week: no snow.

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Arctic's summer sea ice 'could disappear completely by 2040'

The Arctic could lose virtually all its summer sea ice by the year 2040 - 40 years earlier than previously thought - according to a study by leading climate scientists.

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Meet the world's top destroyer of the environment. It is not the car, or
the plane,or even George Bush: it is the cow.

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