By Daniel Schweimler BBC News, Buenos Aires
A court in the central Argentine province of Cordoba has for the first time agreed that a sex change operation can be carried out on a minor.
The case concerns a 17-year-old male called Nati who wants to be a woman.
The decision ends a long-running legal process for Nati, who suffers from the transsexual disorder known as Harry Benjamin Syndrome.
The judge insisted that Nati receive counselling after the operation, which will take place in the next few days.
Nati knew from an early age that she had been born with the wrong body.
The decision by the court in Cordoba, the first of its kind in Argentina, means that that can now be put right.
Legal fight
After the operation Nati will also be able to officially change her name and apply for new documentation.
I'm very happy, she said, that my real identity has been recognised.
Her parents and friends have supported the 17-year-old during a long and often tortuous legal process that saw some decisions go against her.
The president of the Argentine homosexual community, Cesar Cigliutti, was one of those supporters.
"Not only the operation has been authorised but also the necessary changes to her birth certificate," he said.
"What's important and unusual about this case is that Natalie is a minor - she is not yet 18 years old - and this has become an emblematic case for people who have a gender identity different to their biological one."
---------------------------
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7013579.stm
2007년 9월 26일 수요일
Hyundai to Unveil Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle
SEOUL, South Korea - Hyundai Motor Corporation will unveil the i-Blue Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle at the 2007 Frankfurt International Motor Show on September 13. The all-new i-Blue platform is tailored to incorporate Hyundai's third-generation fuel cell technology, currently being developed at Hyundai's Eco-Technology Research Institute in Mabuk, Korea.
"The i-Blue is Hyundai's first-ever model designed from the ground up to incorporate fuel cell technology, marking a tremendous leap forward for our R&D program," said Dr. Hyun-Soon Lee, president of research and development. "Our engineering team has successfully designed a more compact fuel cell vehicle, while still realizing the safety, comfort, convenience and driving range of a traditional internal combustion engine vehicle."
In keeping with this year's show theme, "See What's Driving the Future," which focuses on sustainability and climate protection, the i-Blue signifies a major step towards the commercialization of Hyundai fuel cell vehicles. Unlike its predecessors which were built on SUV platforms, the i-Blue features a new 2+2 crossover utility vehicle (CUV) body type.
Hyundai's new hydrogen-powered, zero-emission concept, the i-Blue Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle was developed at Hyundai's Design and Technical Center in Chiba, Japan.
Hyundai is making tremendous efforts to reach mass production of hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles a reality in the next decade.
-------------------
http://www.enn.com/energy/article/22588
"The i-Blue is Hyundai's first-ever model designed from the ground up to incorporate fuel cell technology, marking a tremendous leap forward for our R&D program," said Dr. Hyun-Soon Lee, president of research and development. "Our engineering team has successfully designed a more compact fuel cell vehicle, while still realizing the safety, comfort, convenience and driving range of a traditional internal combustion engine vehicle."
In keeping with this year's show theme, "See What's Driving the Future," which focuses on sustainability and climate protection, the i-Blue signifies a major step towards the commercialization of Hyundai fuel cell vehicles. Unlike its predecessors which were built on SUV platforms, the i-Blue features a new 2+2 crossover utility vehicle (CUV) body type.
Hyundai's new hydrogen-powered, zero-emission concept, the i-Blue Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle was developed at Hyundai's Design and Technical Center in Chiba, Japan.
Hyundai is making tremendous efforts to reach mass production of hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles a reality in the next decade.
-------------------
http://www.enn.com/energy/article/22588
2007년 9월 20일 목요일
Scores ill in Peru 'meteor crash'
Hundreds of people in Peru have needed treatment after an object from space - said to be a meteorite - plummeted to Earth in a remote area, officials say.
They say the object left a deep crater after crashing down over the weekend near the town of Carancas in the Andes.
People who visited the scene have been complaining of headaches, vomiting and nausea after inhaling gases.
But some experts have questioned whether it was a meteorite or some other object that landed in Carancas.
"Increasingly we think that people witnessed a fireball, which are not uncommon, went off to investigate and found a lake of sedimentary deposit, which may be full of smelly, methane rich organic matter," said Dr Caroline Smith, a meteorite expert at the London-based Natural History Museum.
"This has been mistaken for a crater."
A team of scientists is on its way to the site to collect samples and verify whether it was indeed a meteorite.
Geologists have called on the authorities to stop people going near the crash site.
A local journalist, Martine Hanlon, told the BBC experts did not believe the meteor would make anybody sick, but they did think a chemical reaction caused by its contact with the ground could release toxins such as sulphur and arsenic.
An engineer from the Peruvian Nuclear Energy Institute told AFP news agency that no radiation had been detected from the crater. He ruled out any possibility that the fallen object might be a satellite.
Afraid
Nestor Quispe, the mayor of the municipality to which Carancas belongs, told the BBC that many residents had been affected.
"Lots of people from the town of Carancas have fallen ill. They have headaches, eye problems, irritated skin, nausea and vomiting," he said.
"I think there's also a certain psychological fear in the community."
Local resident Heber Mamani said a bull and some other animals had become ill.
"That is why we are asking for an analysis, because we are worried for our people. They are afraid," he said.
Another local villager, Romulo Quispe, said people were worried that the water was no longer safe to drink.
"This is the water we use for the animals, and for us, for everyone, and it looks like it is contaminated," he said.
"We don't know what is going on at the moment, that is what we are worried about."
The incident took place on Saturday night, when people near Carancas in the remote Puno region, some 1,300km (800 miles) south of the Peruvian capital, Lima, reported seeing a fireball in the sky coming towards them.
The object then hit the ground, leaving a 30m (98ft) wide and 6m (20ft) deep crater.
The crater spewed what officials described as fetid, noxious gases.
Jorge Lopez, a health director in Puno, told Reuters news agency he had an irritated throat and itchy nose after visiting the site.
---------------------
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7001897.stm
Soil degradation issues 'swept aside', say experts
Soil scientists have called for more targeted research and strict guidelines to stop what they say is the massive degradation of land and soil around the world, which is contributing to climate change and threatening food security.
The proposal is the outcome of five days of discussions at the International Forum of Soils, Society and Global Change in Selfoss, Iceland, which concluded last week.
"The soils of the world are degrading," Zafar Adeel, director of the UN University's International Network on Water, Environment and Health, told SciDev.Net.
There is a strong link between soil and land degradation, and climate change, he says.
The forum heard that at least a quarter of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has come from changes in land use — such as deforestation — in the last century.
And without the cover of vegetation, land becomes more reflective, heating up the air above it, and potentially contributing to global warming. It also loses fertility and the capacity to support vegetation and agricultural crops.
By addressing soils and protecting the land cover and vegetation, you can get a "much bigger bang for the buck" in terms of mitigating climate change, Adeel says, but recognition of this link "is not there at the international level".
The forum is currently drafting a set of guiding principles on land care, and will collate methods and lessons learnt on land care to be made available globally.
It has also proposed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change develops a special report on the link between land degradation and climate change.
Forum participants also called for a better understanding of and capacity for carbon sequestration in soil, recognising the potential to put back 1”“2 billion tons [sic] of carbon by restoring degraded ecosystems.
Boshra Salem, from the Department of Environmental Sciences at Egypt's University of Alexandria told SciDev.Net that degradation of soil and land in already marginally productive land is a significant issue for many developing countries, particularly in northern Africa, the Sahara region and parts of Asia, including China.
Salem said that many of these regions have fragile ecosystems. "Any human interventions, for example grazing livestock, can lead to serious degradation."
"There needs to be more collaboration, especially between countries who share the same land degradation problems," Salem added.
--------------------
http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/22831
The proposal is the outcome of five days of discussions at the International Forum of Soils, Society and Global Change in Selfoss, Iceland, which concluded last week.
"The soils of the world are degrading," Zafar Adeel, director of the UN University's International Network on Water, Environment and Health, told SciDev.Net.
There is a strong link between soil and land degradation, and climate change, he says.
The forum heard that at least a quarter of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has come from changes in land use — such as deforestation — in the last century.
And without the cover of vegetation, land becomes more reflective, heating up the air above it, and potentially contributing to global warming. It also loses fertility and the capacity to support vegetation and agricultural crops.
By addressing soils and protecting the land cover and vegetation, you can get a "much bigger bang for the buck" in terms of mitigating climate change, Adeel says, but recognition of this link "is not there at the international level".
The forum is currently drafting a set of guiding principles on land care, and will collate methods and lessons learnt on land care to be made available globally.
It has also proposed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change develops a special report on the link between land degradation and climate change.
Forum participants also called for a better understanding of and capacity for carbon sequestration in soil, recognising the potential to put back 1”“2 billion tons [sic] of carbon by restoring degraded ecosystems.
Boshra Salem, from the Department of Environmental Sciences at Egypt's University of Alexandria told SciDev.Net that degradation of soil and land in already marginally productive land is a significant issue for many developing countries, particularly in northern Africa, the Sahara region and parts of Asia, including China.
Salem said that many of these regions have fragile ecosystems. "Any human interventions, for example grazing livestock, can lead to serious degradation."
"There needs to be more collaboration, especially between countries who share the same land degradation problems," Salem added.
--------------------
http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/22831
2007년 9월 13일 목요일
Experts: Climate change puts sea at risk
ROME --Climate change is affecting Europe faster than the rest of the world and rising temperatures could transform the Mediterranean into a salty and stagnant sea, Italian experts said Wednesday.
Warmer waters and increased salinity could doom many of the sea's plant and animal species and ravage the fishing industry, warned participants at a two-day climate change conference that brought together some 2,000 scientists and officials in Rome.
"Europe and the Mediterranean are warming up faster than the rest of the world," said climatologist Filippo Giorgi. "It's a climate change hot spot, one of the areas where we actually see the change happening."
Scientists still don't know why the region is more sensitive to climate change, but Giorgi said that in the next decades, temperature increases hitting Europe during the summer months could be 40 percent to 50 percent higher than elsewhere.
Giorgi said the effects would be similar to those felt during the deadly summer of 2003, when the extraordinary heat was blamed for the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Europe and millions of dollars in agricultural losses.
"That was a one-in-a-million freak event, but in the future it will be the norm for the summer," said Giorgi, who is a top official in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N. network of 2,000 scientists.
The change is also being felt at sea level, with a surface temperature increase of 1 degree every decade, said Vincenzo Ferrara, an Italian government adviser on climate.
"The Mediterranean is becoming warmer and saltier" due to increased evaporation, Ferrara told the conference, which was held at the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
Ferrara said this could disrupt the flow at the Strait of Gibraltar, a key gateway to the Mediterranean. The higher salt concentration in the Mediterranean would cause water to flow out into the Atlantic Ocean, as opposed to Atlantic water coming into the Mediterranean, which serves as the sea's lifeline.
Even more worrying, a study conducted by ICRAM, Italy's marine research institute, indicates the temperature increases are creeping into the cold depths of the Mediterranean.
Measurements conducted last winter off Italy's western coast at a depth of up to 300 feet showed temperatures were about 3.6 degrees above average.
Temperature differences between the sea's layers create the currents that allow the Mediterranean's waters to mix and bring up fresh nutrients to feed the algae that form the basic diet of most fish species, according to the study.
These temperature rises could wipe out "up to 50 percent of the species," the study said. The decline in the algae population measured last winter also reduced by 30 percent the sea's ability to absorb carbon dioxide, one of the gases blamed by scientists for heating the atmosphere like a greenhouse.
---------------------------
http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/23016
Warmer waters and increased salinity could doom many of the sea's plant and animal species and ravage the fishing industry, warned participants at a two-day climate change conference that brought together some 2,000 scientists and officials in Rome.
"Europe and the Mediterranean are warming up faster than the rest of the world," said climatologist Filippo Giorgi. "It's a climate change hot spot, one of the areas where we actually see the change happening."
Scientists still don't know why the region is more sensitive to climate change, but Giorgi said that in the next decades, temperature increases hitting Europe during the summer months could be 40 percent to 50 percent higher than elsewhere.
Giorgi said the effects would be similar to those felt during the deadly summer of 2003, when the extraordinary heat was blamed for the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Europe and millions of dollars in agricultural losses.
"That was a one-in-a-million freak event, but in the future it will be the norm for the summer," said Giorgi, who is a top official in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N. network of 2,000 scientists.
The change is also being felt at sea level, with a surface temperature increase of 1 degree every decade, said Vincenzo Ferrara, an Italian government adviser on climate.
"The Mediterranean is becoming warmer and saltier" due to increased evaporation, Ferrara told the conference, which was held at the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
Ferrara said this could disrupt the flow at the Strait of Gibraltar, a key gateway to the Mediterranean. The higher salt concentration in the Mediterranean would cause water to flow out into the Atlantic Ocean, as opposed to Atlantic water coming into the Mediterranean, which serves as the sea's lifeline.
Even more worrying, a study conducted by ICRAM, Italy's marine research institute, indicates the temperature increases are creeping into the cold depths of the Mediterranean.
Measurements conducted last winter off Italy's western coast at a depth of up to 300 feet showed temperatures were about 3.6 degrees above average.
Temperature differences between the sea's layers create the currents that allow the Mediterranean's waters to mix and bring up fresh nutrients to feed the algae that form the basic diet of most fish species, according to the study.
These temperature rises could wipe out "up to 50 percent of the species," the study said. The decline in the algae population measured last winter also reduced by 30 percent the sea's ability to absorb carbon dioxide, one of the gases blamed by scientists for heating the atmosphere like a greenhouse.
---------------------------
http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/23016
Forgotten, But Not Gone
A tour guide at the legendary ruins of Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico, likes to tell the story. A tourist, after staring in awe at the towering pyramids, turned to the guide and said, "The buildings are beautiful, but where did all the people go?" "Of course, she was talking to a Maya," the guide says, shaking his head at the irony. "We're still here. We never left." The exchange illustrates a living paradox at the heart of the Maya puzzle: even as scientists continue to investigate the mysterious eclipse of the classic Maya empire, the Maya themselves are all around them. An estimated 1.2 million Maya still live in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, and nearly 5 million more are spread throughout the Yucatan Peninsula and the cities and rural farm communities of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Ethnically, they are derived from the same people who created the most exalted culture in Mesoamerica. Yet the thousands of visitors who come each year to admire the imposing temples of Palenque might be shocked to know the ignominious fate of the Maya's modern-day descendants.
Centuries of persecution and cultural isolation have turned the Maya into impoverished outcasts in their own land. At best, they are often reduced to tourist attractions; for a little money, Mexico's Lacandon Indians, for instance, will display their traditional white cotton shikur and long black hair. But condescension is the mildest of the abuses suffered by today's Maya. In a 1992 report on the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Amnesty International cited dozens of human-rights violations carried out by Mexican authorities against the Maya people of Chiapas: they include an incident in 1990 when 11 Maya were tortured after being arrested during a land dispute, and another one two years ago when 100 Maya were beaten and imprisoned for 30 hours without food or medical attention. In Guatemala's 30-year-old civil war, it has been the Maya who have been the primary victims of the military's antiguerrilla campaigns in the highlands, which have left 140,000 Guatemalans dead or missing. In some cases, government troops have burned entire Maya villages.
The systematic subjugation of the Maya dates back to the Spanish Conquest of the early 16th century, when Catholic missionaries outlawed the Maya religion and burned all but four of their sacred bark-paper books. Indians who were not killed in battle or felled by European diseases were forced to work on colonial plantations, often as slaves. Bands of Maya rebels, known to be ferocious fighters, resisted pacification for almost 400 years, first under the Spanish occupation and then under the Mexican army after Mexico became independent.
Despite this history of defiance -- or maybe, in some cases, because of it -- the Maya continued to be targets of abuse even after being incorporated into the family of Central American nations. As recently as 20 years ago, Maya peasants carrying chickens or peanuts to the town market in San Cristobal de las Casas were in danger of having their wares snatched away by non-Indian women, or "Black Widows." And though the town's economy depended on trade with the Indians, Maya found walking the streets at night would be thrown into jail and fined.
Today, despite government decrees that guarantee equal rights for Indians and the new presidency in Guatemala of human-rights champion Ramiro de Leon Carpio, indigenous peoples like the Maya remain at the bottom rung of the political and economic ladder. In Chiapas, where the natives speak nine different languages, literacy rates are about 50%, compared with 88% for Mexico as a whole. Infant mortality among the Maya is 500 per 1,000 live births, 10 times as high as the national average. And 70% of the Indians in the countryside lack access to potable water.
In these sorry conditions, many Maya have seized on their old ways to make sense of their modern lives. In the remote highlands of Guatemala and Mexico, where the rugged terrain has held the outside world at bay, contemporary Maya still practice many of the same rituals that were performed by their ancestors 4,000 years ago. Maya weavers embroider their wares with diamond motifs that are virtually identical to the cosmological patterns depicted on the lintels of ancient temples at Yaxchilan and other Maya sites. By marking their clothing with the symbols of their ancestors, the Maya artisans build a material link to pre-Columbian gods -- and the indelible spirit of their cultural past. "Depictions of everyday life do not occur in the weaving," notes Walter F. Morris Jr., a Seattle-based anthropologist and author of Living Maya. "It's always something supernatural, something dreamt, something you can only see in dreams."
With reporting by Laura Lopez/San Cristobal de las Casas
----------------------
2007년 9월 7일 금요일
Venezuela's Chavez Challenges U.S. with Energy Summit
Venezuela's Chavez Challenges U.S. with Energy Summit
http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/6375
PORLAMAR, Venezuela -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will seek to use oil wealth to consolidate regional support for his anti-U.S. politics as he hosts an energy summit of South American leaders Monday.
But the meeting on the Caribbean tourist island of Margarita comes as rifts have emerged across the continent over ethanol, with Brazil working with Washington to promote the fuel in an effort Chavez says will increase world hunger.
Chavez, who governs atop the hemisphere's largest oil reserves and wins political influence with subsidized exports to neighbors, wants the 12-nation conference to focus on regional integration as a counterweight to the United States.
"Gradually the U.S. empire will end up a paper tiger and we the peoples of Latin America will become true tigers of steel," Chavez said on the eve of the summit.
Security is tight for almost a dozens heads of state.
In the last few days, gray military vessels have churned through crystalline waters and helicopters have clattered above sunbathers on the resort island that is popular with Venezuelan vacationers for its white-sand beaches and VAT-free stores.
Local authorities have also been sprucing up the island, repainting street markings and replacing roadside lampposts.
At the two-day summit, Chavez will promote a much-heralded project to build a 5,000-mile natural gas pipeline linking the OPEC nation's gas reserves to nations such as Brazil and Argentina.
While Chavez will seek to show unity with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, taking him on a tour early Monday of a petrochemical plant, the conference is unlikely to avoid the controversy of ethanol.
Aides to Lula say it is his "obsession" despite being labeled "genocidal" by Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Chavez's political mentor.
Venezuela, the fifth-largest exporter of oil to the United States, has urged Latin America to pass over ethanol and instead rely on its oil reserves and cooperate in developing ways to reduce energy consumption.
Power outages have traditionally blighted Margarita island, and particularly its main city Porlamar.
But with Cuban help, the government has installed millions of power-saving light bulbs in recent months that Chavez -- who often speaks in apocalyptic terms about the environment -- said can serve as an inspiration at the summit.
"This planet is in danger, the human race is is danger," he said after railing about high U.S. energy demand. "Let's do what we have to do to save mankind."
(With additional reporting by Fabian Andres Cambero in Caracas)
Source: Reuters
Contact Info:
http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/6375
Antarctic Melting May Be Speeding Up, Scientists Say
Antarctic Melting May Be Speeding Up, Scientists Say
HOBART -- Rising sea levels and melting polar ice-sheets are at upper limits of projections, leaving some human population centres already unable to cope, top world scientists say as they analyse latest satellite data.
A United Nations report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in February projected sea level gains of 18-59 centimetres (7-23 inches) this century from temperature rises of 1.8-4.0 Celsius (3.2-7.8 Farenheit).
"Observations are in the very upper edge of the projections," leading Australian marine scientist John Church told Reuters.
"I feel that we're getting uncomfortably close to threshhold," said Church, of Australia's CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research said.
Past this level, parts of the Antarctic and Greenland would approach a virtually irreversible melting that would produce sea level rises of metres, he said.
There has been no repeat in the Antarctic of the 2002 break-up of part of the Larsen ice shelf that created a 500 billion tonne iceberg as big as Luxembourg.
But the Antarctic Peninsula is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, and glaciers are in massive retreat.
"There have been doomsday scenarios that west Antarctica could collapse quite quickly. And there's six metres of sea level in west Antarctica," says Tas van Ommen, a glaciologist at the Hobart-based Australian Antarctic Division.
Doomsday has not yet arrived.
But even in east Antarctica, which is insulated from global warming by extreme cold temperatures and high-altitudes, new information shows the height of the Tottenham Glacier near Australia's Casey Base has fallen by 10 metres over 15-16 years.
MELTING POLES
Scientists say massive glacier retreat at Heard Island, 1,000 km (620 miles) north of Antarctica, is an example of how fringe areas of the polar region are melting.
The break-up of ice in Antarctica to create icebergs is also opening pathways for accelerated flows to the sea by glaciers.
Church pointed out that sea levels were 4-6 metres higher more than 100,000 years ago when temperatures were at levels expected to be reached at the end of this century.
Dynamic ice-flows could add 25 percent to IPCC forecasts of sea level rise, van Ommen said.
Australian scientist John Hunter, who has focused on historical sea level information, said that to keep the sea water out, communities would need to begin raising sea walls.
"There's lots of places where you can't do that and where you'll have to put up with actual flooding," he said.
This was already happening in the south of England, where local councils and governments could not afford to protect all areas from sea water erosion as land continued to sink.
About 100 million people around the world live within a metre of the present-day sea level, CSIRO Marine Research senior principal research scientist Steve Rintoul said. "Those 100 million people will need to go somewhere," he said.
Worse, every metre of sea level rise causes an inland recession of around 100 metres (300 feet) and more erosion occurs with every storm.
"You can't just say we'll just put sea walls," Hunter said.
Source: Reuters
Contact Info:
Website :
------------------------
http://www.enn.com/climate/article/6242
HOBART -- Rising sea levels and melting polar ice-sheets are at upper limits of projections, leaving some human population centres already unable to cope, top world scientists say as they analyse latest satellite data.
A United Nations report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in February projected sea level gains of 18-59 centimetres (7-23 inches) this century from temperature rises of 1.8-4.0 Celsius (3.2-7.8 Farenheit).
"Observations are in the very upper edge of the projections," leading Australian marine scientist John Church told Reuters.
"I feel that we're getting uncomfortably close to threshhold," said Church, of Australia's CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research said.
Past this level, parts of the Antarctic and Greenland would approach a virtually irreversible melting that would produce sea level rises of metres, he said.
There has been no repeat in the Antarctic of the 2002 break-up of part of the Larsen ice shelf that created a 500 billion tonne iceberg as big as Luxembourg.
But the Antarctic Peninsula is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, and glaciers are in massive retreat.
"There have been doomsday scenarios that west Antarctica could collapse quite quickly. And there's six metres of sea level in west Antarctica," says Tas van Ommen, a glaciologist at the Hobart-based Australian Antarctic Division.
Doomsday has not yet arrived.
But even in east Antarctica, which is insulated from global warming by extreme cold temperatures and high-altitudes, new information shows the height of the Tottenham Glacier near Australia's Casey Base has fallen by 10 metres over 15-16 years.
MELTING POLES
Scientists say massive glacier retreat at Heard Island, 1,000 km (620 miles) north of Antarctica, is an example of how fringe areas of the polar region are melting.
The break-up of ice in Antarctica to create icebergs is also opening pathways for accelerated flows to the sea by glaciers.
Church pointed out that sea levels were 4-6 metres higher more than 100,000 years ago when temperatures were at levels expected to be reached at the end of this century.
Dynamic ice-flows could add 25 percent to IPCC forecasts of sea level rise, van Ommen said.
Australian scientist John Hunter, who has focused on historical sea level information, said that to keep the sea water out, communities would need to begin raising sea walls.
"There's lots of places where you can't do that and where you'll have to put up with actual flooding," he said.
This was already happening in the south of England, where local councils and governments could not afford to protect all areas from sea water erosion as land continued to sink.
About 100 million people around the world live within a metre of the present-day sea level, CSIRO Marine Research senior principal research scientist Steve Rintoul said. "Those 100 million people will need to go somewhere," he said.
Worse, every metre of sea level rise causes an inland recession of around 100 metres (300 feet) and more erosion occurs with every storm.
"You can't just say we'll just put sea walls," Hunter said.
Source: Reuters
Contact Info:
Website :
------------------------
http://www.enn.com/climate/article/6242
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