[Save] Climate Change at the AMC Friday Night....

[Stephen R. Connors]

              ... And everywhere else for that matter...

Friday, 2 April 04 - 7:30p : AMC Cabot Auditorium - 3 Joy St. Boston

AMC Conservation Action Network Sponored Event
----------------------------------------------

TALKING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE    ...with...

Jim Motavalli (ed.) and Ross Gelbspan (contributor)
  Feeling the Heat: Dispatches From the Frontlines of Climate Change
                                                           (March04, 
Routledge Press)

                                       *** Free Admission ***

Come here Jim and Ross talk about latest manifestations of climate 
change that have begun appearing across the world.  Also featured 
will be slides by award-winning nature photographer Gary Braasch. 
Jim is a frequent contributor to AMC Outdoors and is the author of 
two books on alternative transportation.  Many of you will remember 
Ross Gelbspan as an environmental reporter for the Boston Globe, and 
subsequent author of The Heat Is On several years ago. (More below).

Walk, run, SWIM!, to Joy St. tomorrow and 'get nervous.'  Coffee and 
refreshments provided.

More info at...
    http://ga0.org/amc/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=2669011

Thanks,

   Steve Connors,
   Chair, Boston Chapter Conservation Committee


*** First Ever South Atlantic Hurricane Hits Brazil ***

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2004-03-28-brazil-storm_x.htm

*** Feeling the Heat - Book Blurb ***

Did you know that climate change will probably also mean global 
cooling? That could indeed be one effect in western Europe and parts 
of New England, as melting polar ice forces changes to the Gulf 
Stream (which carries warm water from the Pacific, raising 
temperatures in what would otherwise be chilly latitudes). And these 
unprecedented changes--detailed in a recent chilling Pentagon report 
that sees global warming as potentially more dangerous than 
terrorism--could happen in 10-20 years, not the next century.

Jim Motavalli is editor of E/The Environmental Magazine, a frequent 
New York Times contributor and author of two previous books, Forward 
Drive: The Race to Build Clean Cars for the Future, and Breaking 
Gridlock: Moving Toward Transportation That Works (both Sierra Club 
Books). Boston-based Ross Gelbspan is a veteran journalist with The 
Philadelphia Bulletin, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe, and 
is the author of The Heat Is On: The Climate Crisis, the Cover-up, 
the Prescription (Perseus Books, 1998).

Feeling the Heat is the missing link in global warming literature; a 
reporter's book written not from the UN floor or the scientists' lab, 
but from the world's "hot spots" where this dangerous shift has 
already started. Instead of conjecture, it documents with vivid, 
on-the-spot prose the dramatic impact of rising tides, melting 
glaciers, disappearing beaches and intensifying storms on people's 
lives today.

For an increasing number of people, global warming is not an academic 
and scientific debate, but a matter of survival. From the frozen 
Arctic to the tropical islands at the earth's Equator, people are 
being affected by dramatic changes in long-established climatic 
patterns and the very geography of the places they call home. As the 
planet warms at a rate of four degrees Fahrenheit per century, 
violent storms are increasing in frequency, icebergs are melting, sea 
level is rising, species are losing their habitats, and temperature 
records are being broken.

Feeling The Heat is not a dry discussion, dotted with computer models 
and scientific back-and-forth; it's a travelogue to actual world hot 
spots, where people are already coping day-to-day with the 
consequences of climactic disruption.

 From China to New York, minor changes in what were fairly established 
weather patterns have already produced profound and permanent effects 
on local ecosystems. Fish species are disappearing, with ripples 
throughout the food chain. Birds and butterflies are moving, turning 
up in places they have never been seen before. Some plants are dying, 
others thrive. In France alone 10,000 people die from a prolonged 
heatwave that hit Europe in the summer of 2003. A mere few months 
later, the Eastern Seaboard experiences a cold front that sets 
records tumbling.

The locations for the book were strategically chosen because each 
represents a separate and important global warming impact, such as 
rising tides, melting glaciers, evolving ecosystems and air 
pollution. They are: the California coast, where sea level has risen 
between three and eight inches; the low-lying islands of Antigua and 
Barbuda, members of the threatened Alliance of Small Island States, 
which has proposed a very modest 20 percent reduction in greenhouse 
gas emissions; New Jersey, where "the largest and costliest 'beach 
nourishment' project ever" is underway; Alaska, deeply impacted by 
warming temperatures and melting ice; western Europe, under attack 
both by rising seas and a loss of warming Gulf Stream waters; 
Australia's Great Barrier Reef, threatened by coral bleaching and 
rising tides; China, where rapid industrialization has pushed sharp 
increases in fossil fuel use; India, challenged by a vast air 
pollution haze; New York City, which has formed a coalition to fight 
climate change; the Pacific Northwest, whose mountains are slowly 
losing their snow cover; Fiji, threatened with total disappearance by 
sea level rise; and the Antarctic, where the habitat of penguins and 
other birds has been disrupted and polar ice is breaking up, as 
scientists predicted.

Global warming is no longer a matter for serious debate, these 
authors say, it is real and it is here.

(End)

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