Twelve of America’s national parks, among the most spectacular landscapes in the US, are under threat from climate change symptoms such as forest fires and melting glaciers. Global warming is threatening to ruin many of America’s most treasured national parks, including Yosemite, Yellowstone and Death Valley, environmental groups have warned. The risks include more forest fires, retreating snow lines, disappearing glaciers and the displacing of rare animal species. ‘Rising temperatures, drought, wildfires and diminished snowfalls endanger wildlife and threaten hiking, fishing and other recreational activities,’ said Theo Spencer of the National Resources Defence Council. ‘Imagine Glacier Park without glaciers or Yellowstone without any grizzly bears.’ The report, published jointly by the Defence Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organisation, lists 12 parks considered to be in greatest jeopardy from rising temperatures. All are in the western United States where average temperatures have risen twice as fast as elsewhere in the country. By focusing on the dangers for the parks, the authors are hoping to recruit more members of the public into putting pressure on the US government to act on global warming. Most of the US is in the grip of an intense heat wave just […]
WASHINGTON – House Republican leaders, giving in to political reality, plan a vote to raise the $5.15 minimum wage before leaving Washington this weekend for a five-week recess. ‘Whether people like it or not, we need to go ahead with it,’ said Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., who supports the idea. ‘There’s a general agreement among Republicans (opposing the raise) that ‘maybe we don’t like it much, but we need to move forward with it just for political reasons.’ The No. 3 House GOP leader, Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri, said the plan was to have a vote before week’s end. But Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Republicans leaders were working to pass the increase but that ‘no decisions have been made.’ It was a decade ago, during the hotly contested campaign year of 1996, that Congress last passed an increase in the minimum wage. A person working 40 hours per week at minimum wage makes $10,700, which is below the poverty line for workers with families. Democrats have made increasing the wage a pillar of their campaign platform and are pushing to raise the wage to $7.25 per hour over two years. In June, […]
Many patients cannot get hospitals tests carried out on them because they are too fat to fit into scanners, according to a new study, More and more patients are missing out on necessary medical treatment due to their obesity, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital found. Tests cannot be carried out properly on many obese patients because either they cannot fit into the equipment or the x-rays or ultrasound waves cannot penetrate all their body fat. The researchers looked at all radiology records from tests done at the hospital between 1989 and 2003 to single out tests which were hindered due to patient size. They found that the percentage of these hindered tests nearly doubled between 1989 and 2003. When x-rays or scans cannot be delivered due to the amount of body fat on the patient, there is the option of increasing the dose of radiation but this carries obvious health risks. The study found that abdominal ultrasounds were the most difficult to perform on obese patients. It was also reported that 83% hospital technologists who had to move obese patients on and off imaging tables suffered some pain while moving those being tested. […]
NEW YORK — A Colorado electricity cooperative is urging other power groups to support global warming skeptics and has donated $100,000 to a climatologist who has labeled some of his colleagues ‘alarmists.’ The Intermountain Rural Electric Association’s general manager wrote in a letter to other energy cooperatives that it also helped raise contributions from others for Dr. Patrick Michaels, a climatologist at the University of Virginia and a fellow at the CATO Institute in Washington D.C. Many scientists believe that global warming will lead to catastrophic consequences such as the flooding of low-lying nations and stronger hurricanes. Power plants emit 40 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide, the main gas that most scientists believe causes global warming. Coal emits more CO2 than another other fuel. Many power companies are watching the federal government’s every step on global warming. Any future national plan in the United States, the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases, to regulate such gases could force many companies to shut coal-fired generation or add expensive carbon-capturing devises to their equipment. IREA General Manager Stanley Lewandowski, in a letter obtained by Reuters, wrote to electric groups through the United States trumpeting Michaels, author […]
LONDON — A British company reported Wednesday it had achieved the best results ever seen on an experimental human vaccine for bird flu and said mass production might be possible by 2007. A global health official called GlaxoSmithKline’s early results ‘an exciting piece of science.’ If future tests are as promising, it would be a major step in the frustrating campaign to protect people from a possible deadly flu pandemic. The U.S. government’s chief infectious disease scientist also was very optimistic. ‘The data are really very impressive,’ said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. ‘It changes the whole complexion of the issue that we have to face of getting enough vaccine for people who might need it in a pandemic.’ Glaxo’s results came from tests on 400 people in Belgium, most of whom developed strong immune responses from very low doses of the prototype vaccine. Success from wider tests of the vaccine could intensify competition with Sanofi-Aventis SA, whose vaccine unit, Sanofi Pasteur, reported disappointing results in March on its experimental product. It protected only about half of those who got two shots with a very high dose […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
