Word: polarizing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Climate change is happening everywhere, but nowhere faster than in the Arctic, where annual temperatures in the far North are warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe. Sea ice on the polar cap is shrinking and permafrost is melting, putting animals like the polar bear - and the Arctic people who depend on them - in increasing danger...
...Sept. 5 - the first annual International Vulture Awareness Day - zoos and bird societies around the globe will sponsor educational tours and flight demonstrations to get the word out about the plight of the vultures. Unlike blue whales, polar bears and other beloved species in danger of extinction, it may be harder to rally folks to save these prickly feathered birds with bumpy, bald heads, portly physiques and a tendency to be knee-deep in rotting flesh. "People look at vultures and see an ugly bird," Aversa says. "We will try to change attitudes and raise awareness of these scavengers...
...Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places - part history, part biology, part ode to the natural world - chronicles temperatures few people would ever hope to encounter. Streever, an Anchorage-based biologist and chair of the North Slope Science Initiative's Science Technical Advisory Panel, talked to TIME about polar exploration, how cold spurred the invention of the bicycle and what it feels like to freeze to death. (See pictures of the Arctic...
...climate change and carbon aren't in a one-to-one relationship. If they were, climate modeling would be a cinch. How much the globe will warm if we put a certain amount of CO2 into the air depends on the sensitivity of the climate. How vulnerable is the polar sea ice; how rapidly might the Amazon dry up; how fast could the Greenland ice cap disintegrate? That's why models like those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change spit out a range of predictions for future warming, rather than a single neat number...
Cloud cover is only one element of climate sensitivity. Scientists are also concerned about the earth's ice, which reflects sunlight back into space, making it a cooling factor, while seawater absorbs the sun's heat. That means that as polar sea ice melts because of warming, leaving more open water, the warming process could accelerate - which would then melt more ice. There are also concerns that as the permafrost in the Arctic thaws, it could release massive amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that would further accelerate warming...