Arctic Leaders Urge EU To Do Something - Anything - On Global Warming

"Arctic community leaders sounded the alarm Tuesday over the threat posed by global warming to their way of life, but also that of people in warmer climes. The Arctic leaders were in Brussels on a visit aimed at keeping the pressure on European Union countries to fight climate change by cutting greenhouse cases and raising awareness about global warming.

"There is some tough sledding ahead to make the rest of the cuts in greenhouse gases that will be needed", said Gary Harrison, a tradition chief for Chickaloon Village in Alaska. "That's why we came, to let people know that climate change is already having an effect in the Arctic, and it will soon be affecting them here," he added.

Harrison, who also chairs an organization representing the Athabaskan people of Alaska and Canada, said he had personally witnessed the effects of climate change in receding glaciers and the early melting of snow in the spring. Global warming has also led to the arrival of mosquitoes bearing infectious diseases in the far north. In Russia and Canada, authorities are growing increasingly concerned about forest-fires while people reindeer herders are finding their livelihood increasingly under threat. In Scandinavia, more frequent rains in the winter causing sheets of ice to develop top of snow, causing animals to die of hunger because they can not reach the grass underneath."

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/2005/050524161927.ngluocs2.html

touch this issue--it is off the radar screen for him and his cabal--except spending time and resources conjuring up their own junk science!!

Bush and the neocon GOP faction are a non-starter for any serious policy regarding climate change or any other environmental issues. Or economics, or foreign policy for that matter.

Bush's last year will mark the 20th anniversay of James Hansen arriving on Capitol Hill to tell Congress that the signal of anthropogenic warming had clearly emerged from the statistical noise.

Seventeen years afterwards, through Republican and Democratic administrations, what have the "authorities" done? Not much. There's Kyoto, signed but never ratified - and none of the countries bound by the treaty are going to meet their targets, by the way.

There's a raft of little initiatives both private and public, and there's no shortage of PR and greenwash.

And of course, there's no shortage of "sound science" from ChimpCo.

So long as Americans demand pleasant illusions instead of inconvenient facts, and as long as politicians gain office by fulfilling those demands, the best we can expect under any administation is that they not actively fuck things up a la Bush.