I – Chapter 18

0100 [00:52:06] "So the same phenomena of changing all these patterns is also affecting the seasons. Here is the study from the Netherlands. " (Al Gore)

0200 [00:52:15] "The peak arrival date for migratory birds 25 yeas ago was April 25th. And their chicks hatched on June the 3rd. Just at the time when the caterpillars were coming out. Nature's plan." (Al Gore)

0300 [00:52:30] "But 20 years of warming later, the caterpillars peaked two weeks earlier and chicks tried to catch up with it, but they couldn't. And so they are in trouble. And there are millions of ecological niches that are affected by global warming in just this way. " (Al Gore)

0400 [00:52:49] "This is the number of days with frost in Southern Switzerland over the last 100 years. It has gone down rapidly. But now watch this. This is the...um...number of invasive exotic species that have rushed in to fill the new ecological niches that are opening up." (Al Gore)

0500 [00:53:08] "That's happening here in the United States, too. You've heard of the pine beetle problem? Those pine beetles used to be killed by the cold winters. But there are fewer days of frost, and so the pine trees are being devastated. " (Al Gore)

0600 [00:53:23] "This is part of 14 million acres of spruce trees in Alaska that have been killed by bark beetles. The exact same phenomenon. " (Al Gore)

0700 [00:53:33] "There are cities that were founded because they were just above the mosquito line. Nairobi is one, Harare is another. There are plenty of others. Now the mosquitoes, with warming, are climbing to higher altitudes. There are a lot of vectors for infectious diseases that are worrisome to us that are also expanding their range. Not only mosquitoes, but all of these others as well. " (Al Gore)

0800 [00:53:54] "And we've had 30 so-called new diseases that have emerged just in the last quarter century. And a lot of them, like SARS, have caused tremendous problems. The resistant forms of tuberculosis. There are others. And there's been a re-emergence of some diseases that were once under control. The avian flu, of course, quite a serious matter, as you know. West Nile virus. It came to the eastern shore of Maryland in 1999. Two years later, it was across the Mississippi. And two years after that, it had spread across the continent. " (Al Gore)

0900 [00:54:30] "But these are very troubling signs. Coral reefs all over the world, because of global warming and other factors, are bleaching and they end up like this. And all the fish species that depend on the coral reefs are also in jeopardy as a result. " (Al Gore)

1000 [00:54:49] "Overall, species loss is now occurring at a rate 1,000 times greater than the natural background rate." (Al Gore)