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Island Lost to Rising Seas |
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 The United States is giving some thought to adding polar bears to the list of threatened species. The proposal to list polar bears has resulted from a lawsuit settlement the Bush administration reached in February with Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council,[1] and a decision was to be made 12 months after that settlement, based on the Endangered Species Act petition process[2]. READ White House refuses to release climate policy documents The United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing today on the accusation that the Bush Administration had interfered with data regarding climate change in order "to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming." On January 23, 2007, Chairman Henry Waxman (D) and Tom Davis (R) had requested documents from the Council on Environmental Quality, but were denied access. READ
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An inhabited island has been
completely submerged for the first time as a result of
rising sea levels caused by
global warming. The disappearance of the island of
Lohachara, part of
West Bengal's
Sundarbans and once home to over ten thousand people, is a
milestone in some of climate scientists' darker predictions.
The first uninhabited islands recorded to have disappeared were part of the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati, and were submerged over eight years ago. However, the disappearance of Lohachara and the displacement of its ten thousand residents was unprecedented. Refugees from Lohachara and the nearby island of Ghoramara fled to Sagar, an island that has already lost 7500 acres of land to the sea. Ghoramara is presently about two thirds submerged. A total of a dozen islands, home to seventy thousand people, are projected to be submerged by the rising seas during the next fourteen years. During each monsoon season almost all the Bengali delta is submerged, much of it for half a year. A 1990 study noted that "There is no evidence that environmental degradation in the Himalayas or a 'greenhouse'-induced rise in sea level have aggravated floods in Bangladesh." SourcesDecember 24, 2006 - Wikinews
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