One of the world's largest tiger populations could disappear by the end of this century as rising sea levels caused by climate change destroy their habitat along the coast of Bangladesh in an area known as the Sundarbans, according to a new WWF-led study published in the journal Climatic Change.

Tigers are among the world's most threatened species, with only an estimated 3,200 remaining in the wild. WWF officials said the threats facing these Royal Bengal tigers and other iconic species around the world highlight the need for urgent international action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"If we don't take steps to address the impacts of climate change on the Sundarbans, the only way its tigers will survive this century is with scuba gear," said Colby Loucks, WWF-US deputy director of conservation science and the lead author of the study Sea Level Rise and Tigers: Predicted Impacts to Bangladesh's Sundarbans Mangroves. "Tigers are a highly adaptable species, thriving from the snowy forests of Russia to the tropical forests of Indonesia.

"The projected sea level rise in the Sundarbans will likely outpace the tiger's ability to adapt." Read the rest of this entry »

Right now, at 7am in Colorado, it's -2° F. We might get up to 20° F today, if we're lucky. I finally gave in and bought some Blizzak tires since I got tired of sliding around on the slick roads that have been happening every now and then since October of last year. As I'm sitting here whining about the wintry weather, the Midwest is getting socked with minus double digits everywhere: -52° F with wind chill factor in North Dakota, -27° F in Nebraska, and Iowa is expected to receive another 10 inches of snow on top of the 2 feet it received in December. Chanhassen, Minnesota, has had five straight days of minus double-digit weather.

But yet climate scientists are saying that 2009 will be one for the record books, being one of the top 10 warmest years on record. How in the world can this be? Read the rest of this entry »

…Thus, after operating in deep debt for a number of years, when the shakedown among the giant corporations begins, your government, actually a bankrupt corporation, will shut down slowly and painfully.

The significance of this information provided to Penny Kelly in 1980, and detailed in her book Robes, is all too clearly being realized as we connect this message with today's current political events. At the end of the U.S. government's fiscal year, September 30, 2009, our federal deficit reached a record $1.58 trillion — 11.2 percent of the national GDP. Last fiscal year's deficit was only 3.2 percent of the GDP. Our national debt came to $11.8 trillion. It is a naïve presumption that we will eventually overcome this crippling debt brought on by concurrent wars and economic instability caused by short-sighted consumer and commercial debt. Other identifiably strong nations, such as Japan and Great Britain, have also found themselves in the same predicament. Read the rest of this entry »

From Mt. Everest to the Maldives, people worldwide are turning an arcane number into a movement for a stable climate. Bill McKibben asks: Will you join them?

Let's say you occasionally despair for the future of the planet. In that case, the place you need to be this week is the website for 350.org.

Every few minutes, something new arrives at our headquarters, where young people hunched over laptops do their best to keep up with the pace. News that activists in Afghanistan—Afghanistan—have organized a rally for our big day of action on October 24. They'll assemble on a hillside 20 kilometers from Kabul to write a huge message in the sand: "Let Us Live: 350." Read the rest of this entry »

In part I of my Global Shifts series, I mentioned a modern-day account that provides us with a remarkably detailed depiction of civilization's most likely path of evolvement throughout the 21st Century.

One of the more amazing and especially accurate foretelling of coming events from this account is illustrated in the following excerpt about changes in governments and nations. It describes the utilization of advanced global communications and how it will greatly transform the structure of our governments: Read the rest of this entry »

I think it's reasonable to assume that those who regularly read our site's news and articles for inspiration and insight have grown more aware that we're currently undergoing a vital shift in consciousness, human development, and ecological adjustment of all of Earth's living species. It is not necessarily because we're experiencing or observing epic changes to our civilization and natural cycles; it's more of a deep instinctual knowing that many aspects of our lives cannot stay the same without us going through some significant growing pains. To put these looming changes to our existence into perspective, the global population is expected to reach almost 9 billion by 2050. This exponential growth will in turn lead to a more rapid depletion of natural resources with resulting changes in natural habitats and global climate, causing a loss of almost a third of the world's plants and animal species.

Exactly what does this projected path look like, how will it affect us, what are the signs we need to look for, and once we recognize the signs, how do we change the course we're on? Is it even possible to change the course? It's my objective in this series to address those questions and provide you with an idea of what's possible for a brighter future. Yet some of the answers can only come from within each of you as you are divinely guided toward the fulfillment of your own path of realization through all the future events ahead of us. Read the rest of this entry »

Change has come to the Arctic. Jess Worth visits an Alaskan village and finds lives being turned inexorably upside down.

Bruce Inglangasak scans the gleaming white coastal plain with expert eyes. He's searching for caribou. Spring has finally come to the Arctic and the animals are starting to make their way down from the mountains. The villagers of Kaktovik greet the change in season with understandable enthusiasm. It's been a long winter for this 300-strong Inupiaq village, perched at the edge of the Arctic Ocean where the sun doesn't rise at all for three months and temperatures regularly reach -50°C.

Last week, Bruce made his first successful hunting trip of the year with two other men from the village. They returned with 12 caribou, 90 fish and a moose — a welcome feast of freshness after so many months living off food stored from last year's harvest. Now the sun is beating down and as we travel towards the dramatic Brooks Range of mountains spiky tundra grass is starting to poke through the snow.
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A lot of the media are saying that the Mayan Calendar predicts December 21, 2012 as the "end of the world." For those of you who are already in the know about the history of this ancient timetable, this is utter nonsense. But as we delve deeper into some of the facts and theories surrounding this date, we begin to understand the thinking behind such doomsday predictions.

The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar started 3114 BC with an end-date of December 21 or 23, 2012, spanning a time of 5125.36 years. On this date, the Long Count calendar will reach 13.0.0.0.0, with 13 units being a 144,000-day cycle. Does this date signify the end of civilization and a resetting of the calendar, or can it even continue beyond this time?
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As a followup to my article, Solar Activity and its Global and Spiritual Implications, it's been noted the sun continues to lack in any significant activity. There were a few sunspots earlier this month, but has since quieted down to no activity once again.

This is likely to mean that previous predictions of a calmer overall solar cycle will likely pan out, with the maximum solar cycle peaking on May 2013 being on a much smaller scale in comparison to average cycles. If this is the case, then it will be the weakest solar maximum since 1928. On average, a solar maximum produces 120 sunspots, and this current cycle is predicted to have a maximum of 90.
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Rebecca Adamson offers Native American views on scarcity, Wall Street, and how to thrive in hard times.

Indigenous peoples have known hard times. There are signs of drought, crop failure, and forced migration over the millennia, and of course these peoples survived centuries of colonialism. When we were looking for some wisdom on building a new economy, I immediately thought of Rebecca Adamson. Native peoples have developed societies that function within ecological limits and counter the tendency of societies to polarize between rich and poor, powerful and excluded. Adamson, a Cherokee, is founder of First Nations Development Institute and First Peoples Worldwide. She works globally with grassroots tribal communities, sits on the boards of the Corporation for Enterprise Development and the Calvert Social Investment Fund, and is an advisor to the United Nations on rural development.
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