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According to research at Princeton, current technologies are capable of stopping (or at least slowing) the rate of global warming by 2050 if properly applied. Using a mix-and-match approach, students who participated in a game-like experiment found that the current portfolio of energy-saving policies and technologies (flourescent bulbs, nuclear power, wind turbines, reducing deforestation, etc.) could indeed keep global greenhouse gases constant over the next 50 years. The trick is to apply these solutions to developing countries, where rapid industrial growth will put them on track to overtake the developed world in greenhouse gas output within the next several decades.

Meanwhile, Live Science has a top-10 list of side effects of global warming, such as more severe allergies, more sinkholes from permafrost melting, a less dense upper atmosphere that will affect how satellites orbit the earth, more forest fires and rapid deterioration of ancient ruins. Perhaps the strangest prediction of all: mountains that lose their glaciers and permanent snow caps will actually "grow" as the weight on them decreases.

A recent study by the National Audubon Society has found that bird populations -- even those of common, robust species such as grackles -- have fallen drastically over the past 40 years. The populations of whiporwills and bobwhites have fallen by well over 80 percent, a drop so great that these once-common birds are now seldom seen or heard in the eastern US. Deforestation is partly to blame, as well as global warming, which appears to be affecting arctic birds especially hard. Because cold-climate birds must migrate farther north each year to reach their shrinking habitat, they rarely migrate below the northernmost regions of the US.

"These are not rare or exotic birds we're talking about -- these are the birds that visit our feeders and congregate at nearby lakes and seashores and yet they are disappearing day by day," said Carol Browner, Audubon board chairperson and former Environmental Protection Agency administrator in the Clinton administration. "Their decline tells us we have serious work to do, from protecting local habitats to addressing the huge threats from global warming."