Tiempo Climate Newswatch

"The debate is over. The science is in. The time to act is now. Global warming is a serious issue facing the world and California has taken an historic step with the release of this report," said California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. "We are all convinced that we can protect our environment and leave California a better place without harming our economy," he continued. Schwarzenegger was speaking at the launch of a report by the state's Climate Action Team. The report recommends means to achieve pollution reduction targets set last year: to reduce global warming emissions to 2000 levels by 2010, to 1990 levels by 2020 and to 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Canada's new government has begun dismantling the nation's Climate Change Program, according to the Sierra Club of Canada. "Apparently, the federal government has launched a stealth campaign against action on climate change," said John Bennett of the Sierra Club. Programmes announced in Action Plan 2000 have not been renewed and Natural Resources Canada has been reducing its staff. The government has been sending equivocal signals regarding its commitment to the Kyoto process since its election two months ago.

More information

• ENS
• Voice of America
• Press release, NRDC
• Video of launch
• Download report, Office of the Governor

• ENS
• The Dominion

The region of Gedo, in the south of Somalia, is undergoing a "critical nutrition situation", according to a team led by Food Security Analysis Unit-Nutrition. With pastureland disappearing and most water sources dry, "the only coping mechanisms left are migration; reducing the number and quantity of meals; collection and selling firewood by the poor; and food aid," said Sidow Ibrahim Addou of the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

It is estimated that around 1.7 million people in northern, central and southern Somalia are facing an acute crisis because of drought. Christian Balslev-Olesen, United Nations Acting Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, warned that "Somalia is facing a drought, an emergency situation - the most severe in a decade - and this is coming on top of a situation where you already have all the most difficult indicators for human development," he said. Drought-induced hardship is putting recent political progress in danger. "The two elements - the political peace process and the humanitarian situation - of course do present two different momentums. But they are interlinked," he concluded.

More information

• Reuters
• Washington Post
• Voice of America

• Latest situation, FSAU
• Latest situation, FEWS

Analysis of the longest pollen records for Central and South America suggests that, on geological timescales, global warming is accompanied by an expansion of the rainforest and an increase in biodiversity. "We found that pollen diversity tracks global temperature through time over millions of years. Diversity increases as the planet warms and decreases as it cools," reports Carlos Jaramillo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Jaramillo proposes that the changes in area drive speciation and extinction. "There is good correlation between area and number of species: more area implies more species. During global warming, tropical areas expand and diversity goes up, the opposite happens during global cooling," he said. If this is the case, fragmentation of modern tropical forest could be equated to a global cooling period, because forested areas are shrinking dramatically, resulting in plummeting diversity in the forests that remain."

More information

• Mongabay

• Science Daily