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Birds fly north in climate change vanguard -study
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-07-30 17:27

GREENHOUSE GASES

The shifts in the birds' ranges since 1980 were also consistent with scientists' expectations because of global warming, blamed by the UN Climate Panel on human use of fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars, he said.

The panel predicted last year that warming will bring desertification, floods, melt glaciers, raise world sea levels, bring big shifts in the ranges of species and extinctions.

"This gives us greater confidence in the climate models we use for other groups of species -- butterflies, plants, reptiles and amphibians," Huntley said.

"We rarely have the opportunity to test these kinds of models. We can only wait around for 50 years and wait to see if we were correct. It's better to have historic data" as a benchmark, he said.

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