Greenpeace International said the report revealed a "climate emergency" which the world's richest nations needed to tackle urgently.

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That climate change may or may not be an emergency which we need to control and direct our fear about is another debatable point.

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The NRDC report also suggested that framing climate change vulnerability and preparedness planning in terms of emergency or risk management could be useful, as many state and municipal officials are already familiar with those concepts.

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Emergency managers along the Mississippi, Missouri and Red River basins used NOAA climate data to help lessen flooding, months before it began.

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This meeting was organized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency and is co-hosted by the Florida Energy and Climate Commission and the Miami-Dade County Office of Sustainability.

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Shares of BP slid by 1.6% to 408.5 pence in London after a report in the Financial Times said four of the company's five North Sea installations inspected in 2009 had failed to comply with emergency regulations on oil spills, according to offshore inspection reports from the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

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