What’s New November 2009

This page lists changes to this site for November 2009.

See below for other updates and to get notified of changes to the site.

A 2 or 4 degrees centigrade increase in average global temperature sounds small, but it will have enormous impacts on the earth’s climate and life in general.

This page has been updated to include an interactive map from the UK’s Met Office that illustrates this. Also added are more charts and graphs and videos looking at past emissions and temperatures, projected future changes, and the impact to the arctic.

Pharmaceutical companies have long been criticized for their effects on developing countries. For example, they have lobbied hard against poorer countries producing or using generic drugs, even in emergency situations, which is legitimate under WTO rules.

For many years, they have also been criticized for donating drugs that are inappropriate or out of date. While a lot of drug donation is certainly welcome, and often done out of good will, there are often financial incentives to do so as well (tax breaks, cheaper than destroying drugs, etc).

It also seems that drug testing and trial results are easy to distort to the general public to give a greater sense of success than might be the case.

Updates to this page go into the above further.

The Arctic region has long been considered international territory. Five countries—Canada, Denmark (via Greenland), Norway, Russia, and the United States—share a border with the frozen Arctic Ocean. Some of these nations have claimed parts of the region to be their territory. They are all interested in the potential riches of oil, gas and other resources, as well as the opening up of lucrative passages for trade and economic activity, all made possible by climate change and shrinking Arctic ice.

Climate change provides an additional threat — not just to the local wildlife and indigenous populations that are already seeing their surroundings change rapidly, but to the rest of the planet, too. While retreating sea ice may open up shipping routes, the regions ability to reflect sunlight back into space would diminish, further increasing climate change effects.

In this update, additional information has been added looking at the climate and environmental changes in the Arctic, including images that show pollution sources and retreating ice over time and a video that looks at the impacts on the indigenous Inuit people.

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