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Message: Earth Systems Bake As Planet Heats Up Unless you are a card carrying Republican working for an international oil company, there is no avoiding the reality of this news. “Humans are influencing climate through increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and the warming world is causing impacts on physical and biological systems attributable at the global scale,” said lead author Cynthia Rosenzweig, scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies last week. In what has to close the final chapter in any U.S. policy-maker’s handbook of denial, NASA is now fully standing by decades of research showing the extent of how human activity impacts the earth. Symptoms of the earth’s warming range from glacial melting, to earlier bird migration, and hotter oceans. The news is especially troubling for North Americans: the patterns of change here are strongest. Symptoms in North America Earlier spring plant flowering 89 species (examples: American holly, sassafras, box elder maple) in Washington, D.C. area; earlier flowering in Boston, Massachusetts. Cannibalism and declining populations among polar bears in southern Beaufort Sea. Rapid melting of Alaska glaciers. Earlier breeding and earlier arrival dates of birds (American robins are arriving 14 days earlier in Colorado). Shoreline retreat in southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. Advancing spring flight of butterflies in lowa and California. Change in mollusk poulations in Monterey, California. Earlier high river flows in New England. Earlier peak migration of Atlantic salmon in New England. Earlier breakup and later freezing dates in lake and rive ice over wide areas. Declining mountain snowpack in the West. Earlier streamflow timing across the West. Changes in diatoms in northern Canadian lakes. Genetic shift in pitcher plant mosquito to more warm-adapted type in Eastern U.S. Marmots are emerging 38 days earlier in the Rockies. Frogs (including the bullfrog and the American toad) are calling earlier in Ithaca, N.Y www.corporateknightsforum.com