Scientists believe this is down to climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
This concentration of power has been matched by rising levels of corruption, enriching Yanukovich's family and inner circle while the Ukrainian economy has become progressively more impoverished.
The risk is that this shift could become a demographic disaster marked by rising levels of youth unemployment, social dislocation and hunger.
Meanwhile, the oceans' growing acidity, caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the water, impedes the biological processes that allow corals to create their limestone structures.
Since the 1970s virtually the entire increase in the ratio of private-sector debt to GDP around the world has been caused by rising levels of mortgage lending.
Recurrence of the cancer, defined by rising levels of the blood marker prostate specific antigen (PSA), was nearly three times higher among patients only given hormone therapy.
For instance, forest growth is spurred -- and terrestrial carbon stocks are increased -- by a warming climate, and by rising levels of carbon dioxide and of atmospheric nitrogen deposited on forests as a result of industrial emissions.
There's now a good piece of direct evidence that the increasing acidification of the oceans, brought on by rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, is affecting the ability of small marine organisms to create shells.
Glaciers worldwide serve as a barometer for global warming, which has, according to a report this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, been spurred in recent decades by rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
In the case of West Nile virus, researchers say global warming caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases may be contributing to the warm winters and summer droughts that seem to favor the spread of the virus.
