Arctic Getting Warmer Faster 

02:00 AM May. 28, 2004 PT

Global warming is hitting the Arctic more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, scientists reported this week.

The Arctic is particularly sensitive because the ice normally reflects vast amounts of solar radiation. But when icecaps recede, much more sunlight is absorbed by the darker mass of ocean and land. All that additional heat melts even more ice in what becomes a feedback loop.

Some parts of Alaska have heated up 10 times more than the global average, Robert Corell, a chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, told Reuters.

"I think it (climate change) can be stopped," he said, "but we will need an aggressive response."

Thirsty?: Paradoxically, as all that ice melts, the world faces a future with less fresh water, a new study released this week shows.

While rivers in the unpopulated north will have much more water flowing through them because of the melting ice, those in dry, temperate regions will have less. As temperatures increase, evaporation increases too, and drier regions of the world get even more parched. Water flow in the Mississippi and Nile rivers is expected to shrink.

Water levels are at record lows in lakes Mead and Powell, the southwestern United States' two most important reservoirs. While the six-year drought is the main reason, increased evaporation due to higher temperatures is another factor, said meteorologist Martin Hoerling at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's Climate Diagnostics Center in Boulder, Colorado.

"We've experienced a 3 degree temperature increase in the last 50 years in the West and all the evidence points to global warming," Hoerling said in an interview.

It's going to get a lot hotter, and very likely much drier, in the interior of the United States, he said. The available water resources likely won't be able to sustain the population of the Southwest in the near future.

Urgent action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions is needed, he said. "There is a tremendous amount of conservation that individuals can do such as replacing light bulbs, using fuel-efficient vehicles and so on."

No one has to wait for Washington to act. The city of Boulder is trying to meet the emission reductions laid out in the Kyoto protocol, he said. And there is much potential in alternative energy sources like wind turbines.

"We can afford to do a lot more," he said. "The longer we wait, the worse it's going to be."

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Fertility and sterility: Male infertility rates are soaring worldwide, with environmental toxins and drugs in the drinking water the likely causes, scientists reported at this week's 18th World Congress on Fertility and Sterility in Montreal.

"Over the past 50 years, sperm counts have been declining in humans, in animals, even fish," Serge Belisle, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Montreal, told Montreal newspaper The Gazette.

Although still controversial, the best analyses do show a significant decline in male fertility, said Gail Prins, a male-infertility expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center.

While the cause isn't certain, there is strong evidence that a group of chemicals called endocrine disruptors, which are used in most pesticides, can have a big impact on the reproductive systems of animals, Prins said in an interview.

"I never microwave anything in plastic because of the chemicals that leach out when plastic is heated," she said. Similarly, Prins drinks purified water and tries to minimize her exposure to pesticides in food or in the environment. "There's strong evidence that pesticides can impact on reproductive systems."

Meanwhile, German scientists report that women who live in areas with high levels of pollution are more likely to have twins. Twin birth rates in an area near a toxic-waste incinerator were double those in other regions of Germany.

That's an unusual finding, Prins said. "But it raises a flag that there might be something there."

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Pollution regulation: The Environmental Protection Agency approved an air-pollution regulation allowing emissions of formaldehyde, a potentially cancer-causing chemical used by plywood manufacturers and other industries. The Los Angeles Times reports that the new regulation is based on a cancer-risk model developed by the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology that is about 10,000 times less stringent than the level previously used by the EPA.

The EPA also failed to consider new studies by the National Cancer Institute that show exposure to formaldehyde might also cause leukemia in humans. Senior EPA officials with previous ties to the timber and chemical industries were involved in ushering in the regulation, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Fifteen environmental and labor groups are also suing the EPA for its failure to ban creosote, a common and toxic wood preservative, the Naples Daily News reported. The hazards of human exposure to creosote, from skin rashes to lung cancer, are well-known to government regulators and scientists.

While there's been a voluntary industry phaseout of another dangerous wood preservative, chromated copper arsenate, in new playground equipment and backyard picnic benches, creosote -- which is widely used in telephone poles and railroad ties -- has so far escaped any regulation.