UPDATE - Global Warming

Earth's magnetic pole drifting quickly.

Earth's north magnetic pole is drifting away from North America and toward Siberia at such a clip that Alaska might lose its spectacular Northern Lights in the next 50 years. Despite accelerated movement over the past century, the possibility that Earth's modestly fading magnetic field will collapse is remote. But the shift could mean Alaska may no longer see the sky lights known as auroras, which might then be more visible in more southerly areas of Siberia and Europe.

Scientists have long known that magnetic poles migrate and in rare cases, swap places. Exactly why this happens is a mystery. They found that the north magnetic field shifted significantly in the last thousand years. It generally migrated between northern Canada and Siberia, but it sometimes moved in other directions, too.

Clinton comes out against Bush environmental plan.

Former US president Bill Clinton took to the podium at the UN climate talks here to ram home a grim message about global warming and demand the United States move quickly away from the fossil fuels causing the problem.

"There's no longer any serious doubt that climate change is real, accelerating, and caused by human activities," Clinton said. He pointed to an array of gloomy scientific studies published in past weeks, including evidence that carbon dioxide levels are at their highest in 650,000 years, that glaciers in the Himalayas and Arctic sea ice were melting and the warm Atlantic currents that bathe northwestern Europe were slowing down.

Rumours spread among the conference that the US delegation was angry that Clinton had come, and that it had even tried to block his appearance.
The delegation issued a statement, though, saying it encouraged "stakeholder presentations" of the kind symbolised by the Clinton visit.