People in Philadelphia would swelter through as many as 30 days over 100 degrees each summer. The entire Northeast ski industry except western Maine would likely go out of business. And spruce and hemlock forests -- as well as song birds such as the Baltimore oriole -- would all but disappear from New Jersey to the Canada border.

These are some of the conclusions of a two-year study by the public interest group Union of Concerned Scientists of the effects of global warming in the Northeast if current greenhouse gas emission patterns around the world continue unabated. Winters will be on average 8 to 12 degrees warmer by the end of the century, and summers 6 to 14 degrees hotter.

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