Thanks to Edward Levering for this link. The story ran on CNN on March 25.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/03/25/antartica.collapse.ap/index.html

Thanks to Lester Brown for the following article.
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The world is now facing a climate-driven shrinkage of river-based irrigation water supplies. Mountain glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau are melting and could soon deprive the major rivers of India and China of the ice melt needed to sustain them during the dry season. In the Ganges, the Yellow, and the Yangtze river basins, where irrigated agriculture depends heavily on rivers, this loss of dry-season flow will shrink harvests.

The world has never faced such a predictably massive threat to food production as that posed by the melting mountain glaciers of Asia. China and India are the world’s leading producers of both wheat and rice — humanity’s food staples. China’s wheat harvest is nearly double that of the United States, which ranks third after India. With rice, these two countries are far and away the leading producers, together accounting for over half of the world harvest.
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Eco-Economy Indicator — ICE MELT

Eco-Economy Indicators are the twelve trends the Earth Policy Institute tracks to measure progress in building an eco-economy. Ice melting is one of the most visible indicators of climate change.

With atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at new record highs and global average temperature now some 0.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the frozen regions of the earth are showing us just how rapidly climate change can take effect. Recent years have seen ice melt accelerate and spread to new, previously unaffected regions. In many areas, the pace of melting has surprised even the scientists studying it most closely, providing a strong early indication that the consequences of climate change could come faster and be more severe than previously believed.

For full article, visit:

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Indicators/Ice/2008.htm

It was a pleasure to have lunch last week with Dr. Norman Myers of Oxford University during his visit to the University of Vermont. Below is a paper of his addressing security concerns arising from environmental refugees.

Environmental Refugees an Emergent Security Issue (PDF, 26 MB)

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Thanks to Edmund Levering for the second article attached, from the Christian Science Monitor. Below is a UN Wire link to a recent article from Reuters on this same phenomenon sent in by Sonny Fox.

Climate refugee problems looming, few solutions on horizon
The looming specter of millions of potential refugees driven from their homes by rising seas and other climate change effects has yet to result in any real planning by the international community to deal with the problem. Residents of the Tuvalu islands, predicted to be among the world’s first climate refugees, have received little enthusiastic support from other governments in their initial attempts to plan a relocation. AlertNet.org/Reuters (3/13)

UN Wire is a FREE daily e-mail newsletter covering the United Nations and the World. Aggregating the most important news from hundreds of top international sources, UN Wire provides the latest news and information you need to be an informed citizen. Sign up for your very own free subscription to UN Wire.

Thanks to Katie Elmore for this link.
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Andrew Revkin maintains a blog for the NY Times on Climate Change and has a big section dedicated to population http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/population/.

Plenty Magazine ran this article about Alleyne Regis, PMC’s Caribbean Regional Director, in its current edition. It deals with the project Alleyne oversaw in the Western Pacific.

You can find it on their website at http://www.plentymag.com/features/2008/03/cause_celeb.php.

Climate change will have a huge impact on human health and bold environmental policy decisions are needed now to protect the world’s population, according to the author of an article published in the BMJ today.

The threat to human health is of a more fundamental kind than is the threat to the world’s economic system, says Professor McMichael, a Professor of public health from the Australian National University. “Climate change is beginning to damage our natural life-support system,” he says.

For full article, visit:

http://www.enn.com/health/article/30011

Thanks to Dick Grossman for a link to an editorial by him and Joe Speidel in Contraception, an international journal.

You can access it at: http://www.arhp.org/editorials/December2007.cfm.

Thanks to Ned Lundquist for sending me the link to this report:

National Security and the Threat of Climate Change

http://securityandclimate.cna.org/

From the Earth Portal:

Presidential candidate representatives and one candidate himself debated their climate change plans recently at the National Council for Science and the Environment’s national conference. I thought you might want to check out written and video clips of the debate online on the Earth Forum (http://www.earthportal.org/forum/).

You can also join in or start discussion on these topics at the site.