pThe ongoing disruption of the earthrsquo;s climate by man-made greenhouse gases is already well beyond dangerous and is careening toward completely unmanageable. Under midrange projections for economic growth and technological change, the planetrsquo;s average surface temperature in 2050 will be about two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than its preindustrial value. The last time the earth was that warm was 130,000 years ago, and sea level was four to six meters higher than today. No one knows how long it will take sea level to ldquo;catch uprdquo; with such an increase; it could be several centuries, or it could be less./ppEven with uncertainties, there is reason to believe that tipping points into unmanageable changes will become much more probable for increases larger than two degrees C. To achieve a better-than-even chance of not exceeding that figure, human emissions must start to decline soon, falling to about half of todayrsquo;s level by 2050 and further thereafter./p a href=http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-future-of-climate-change-policy[More]/a

PARIS (AFP) - The challenge posed by climate change could be resolved by a peaceful switch to a low-carbon economy, or alternatively inflict stresses that could include war and desertification of swathes of the US and Australia, a thinktank said on Monday.

Publication Date: 2008 Oct 10 PMID: 18845755br/Authors: Moritz, C. - Patton, J. L. - Conroy, C. J. - Parra, J. L. - White, G. C. - Beissinger, S. R.br/Journal: Sciencebr/br/We provide a century-scale view of small-mammal responses to global warming, without confounding effects of land-use change, by repeating Grinnell's early-20th century survey across a 3000-meter-elevation gradient that spans Yosemite National Park, California, USA. Using occupancy modeling to control for variation in detectability, we show substantial ( approximately 500 meters on average) upward changes in elevational limits for half of 28 species monitored, consistent with the observed approximately 3 degrees C increase in minimum temperatures. Formerly low-elevation species expanded their ranges and high-elevation species contracted theirs, leading to changed community composition at mid- and high elevations. Elevational replacement among congeners changed because species' responses were idiosyncratic. Though some high-elevation species are threatened, protection of elevation gradients allows other species to respond via migration.br/br/post to: a href = http://www.citeulike.org/posturl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Fcmd%3DRetrieve%26db%3DPubMed%26dopt%3DAbstract%26list_uids%3D18845755title=Entrez+PubmedCiteULike/a

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=48dbba31796c7af7000a03b8ctxt=wwwr1.2.0.0maxX=297maxY=237" border="0" alt="capitol.jpg" title="capitol.jpg" width="297" height="237" /We never thought we'd say this either. But some of the best and most innovative new media experiments going on right now on the Internet are coming from the U.S. federal government./p pFor, example: Twitter. Turns out the messaging service's 140 character limit and easy following/unfollowing is a really effective way to check up on our public servants. And it's certainly easier to read than most .gov websites./p pCompare some of the below government twitter feeds with the a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/what_the_corporate_twitters_are_up_to"the mixed bag/a that have been corporate Twitter experiements, or a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/things-better-left-off-twitter-the-funeral-of-a-3-year-old-boy"the disaster/a when emsome/em journalistic enterprises (other than a href="http://twitter.com/alleyinsider"@alleyinsider/a) have tried to get in on the microblogging game. Here are a few of our favorites:/p pa href="http://twitter.com/CSIState"@CSIState/a - Country specific information and travel alerts from the US Department of State/p pa href="http://twitter.com/foodrecalls"@foodrecalls/a - The Food and Drug Adminsitration tweets when food products have been deemed unsafe, about once a day./p pa href="http://twitter.com/jetlab"@jetlab/a - Rocket science from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory/p pa href="http://twitter.com/NIHforHealth"@NIHforHealth/a - Research reports of the National Institutes of Health/p pa href="http://twitter.com/peacecorps"@PeaceCorps/a - Press releases from the Peace Corps/p pa href="http://twitter.com/TSABlogTeam"@TSABlogTeam/a - The Transportation Security Administration, which operates the widely-hated system of airport security checkpoints, links to a series of surprisingly thoughtful articles about its mission./p pa href="http://twitter.com/usgs"@USGS/a - The US Geological Survey. Not just rocks, also tweets about climate change, natural disasters, and alternative energy./p pOf course, not every government twitter feed works well. A few that need to be rethought or dropped:/p pa href="http://twitter.com/HomelandSecurit"@HomelandSecurit/a - Department of Homeland Security. Tweets the national threat level ("yellow.") Both the color codes and this twitter should be abandoned./p pa href="http://twitter.com/SenateFloor"@SenateFloor/a (and a href="http://twitter.com/HouseFloor"@HouseFloor/a) - US Senate/House actions. Actual a href="http://twitter.com/SenateFloor/statuses/941419145"tweet/a: "span class="entry-content"Vote: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Concur in the House Amdt. to the Senate Amdt. to." Well-intentioned but not useful.br //span/p pa href="http://twitter.com/USAgov"@USAgov/a - "span class="bio"Official web portal of the U.S. federal government." Infrequently updated, tinyurl links go to the wrong pages.br //span/p pa href="http://twitter.com/USCIS"@USCIS/a - span class="bio"U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Tweets which CIS offices are closed -- of value solely to CIS employees, not to its customers.br //span/p pGot other favorites and turkeys? Let your fellow SAI readers know in the comments!/p pstrongSee also:/strongbr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/the-cops-are-on-twitter-but-that-s-it-s-a-good-thing"The Cops Are On Twitter. But That's A Good Thing/abr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/things-better-left-off-twitter-the-funeral-of-a-3-year-old-boy"Things Better Left Off Twitter: The Funeral Of A 3-Year-Old Boy/abr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/twitter-s-corporate-users-get-a-new-marketing-tool"Twitter's Corporate Users Get A New Marketing Tool/abr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/what_the_corporate_twitters_are_up_to"Corporate Twitters Worth Following - And Some You Should Avoid/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/zFul9AmooX0321nFU6snbzoU0s0/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/zFul9AmooX0321nFU6snbzoU0s0/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=qh7HIifU"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=qh7HIifU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=OSPNrfer"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=OylFOHYA"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=U2uXVmnl"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=U2uXVmnl" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Y3rLRYnt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=hJjgR8vV"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=kO1P6OR1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=PwCQlihL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/yiwhdGU0jvE" height="1" width="1"/