US President Barack Obama on Saturday said that climate change is already damaging the US’ national parks, with rising temperatures causing Yosemite’s meadows to dry out and raising the prospect of a glacier preserve without its glaciers someday.
“Make no mistake. Climate change is no longer just a threat. It’s already a reality,” Obama said from a podium, with Yosemite Falls, one of the world’s tallest at 739m, as a backdrop.
At the California park, where Obama was spending the weekend with his wife, Michelle, and daughters Malia and Sasha, the president also talked about how a rabbit-like animal known as a pika is being forced further upslope at Yosemite to escape the heat.
Photo: Reuters
“Rising temperatures could mean no more glaciers at Glacier National Park. No more Joshua trees at Joshua Tree National Park,” he said, adding that a changing climate could destroy vital ecosystems in the Everglades and threaten landmarks such as Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.
Obama spoke near Yosemite’s Sentinel Bridge, where views of Half Dome, a well-known rock formation, and Yosemite Falls created a picturesque background.
After a night with his family in a rented cabin in the popular park, Obama stuck to his usual routine by rising early on Saturday and heading to a recreation center on the grounds for his daily gym workout.
Obama’s weekend in the great outdoors was planned to encourage more people to appreciate and visit the US’ national parks.
The National Park Services manages more than 400 sites around the country and celebrates its centennial in August.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
RSS