Steve Connor | Nov 3

The Independent -

The snows of Mount Kilimanjaro – the highest mountain in Africa – may soon be falling on bare ground following a study showing that its ice cap is destined to disappear entirely within 20 years, due largely to climate change.

The vast ice fields of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania are melting at a faster pace than at any time over the past 100 years and at this rate they will be gone completely within two decades or even earlier according to one of the world's leading glaciologists.

A team led by Professor Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University said that the latest assessment of Kilimanjaro's famous ice cap has confirmed that 85 per cent of the ice that covered the mountain in 1912 has been lost, and 26 per cent of the ice that was there in 2000 is now gone.

A series of cores drilled through the ice fields at different points on Kilimanjaro has revealed that the melting observed over the past few decades is unprecedented in nearly 12,000 years. The research also shows that that the current thinning of the ice cap is faster than when a devastating 300-year drought occurred 4,200 years ago, a period when very little snow fell on the mountain.

"The dramatic loss of Kilimanjaro's ice cover has attracted global attention. The three remaining ice fields on the plateau and the slopes are both shrinking laterally and rapidly thinning," the scientists write in a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

If conditions persist, and warmer temperatures continue to melt more ice than falls in the form of snow, then there is a "strong likelihood that the ice field will disappear within a decade or two", the authors conclude.

Philanthropy is not a life style choice for most of Australia's rich and famous.
But Australian science, especially the federal Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO )got a major financial boost due to a 10 year struggle fighting with HP, Apple, Dell et al. over the invention of WiFi; that was settled back in April.

However, Australian politics and science remain closely related, and casting aspersions on the ruling parties attitude to global emissions is not kosher.

Kathy Marks | Oct 28

The Independent - Government report shocks country where 80 per cent of population lives on coast

Australia's love affair with the beach is in danger of being rudely terminated. A parliamentary report released yesterday suggests that the government may have to force people to abandon prime oceanfront homes along thousands of miles of coastline vulnerable to rising sea levels.

The report, published in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit on climate change in December, sent a shiver through a country where 80 per cent of the population lives on the coast. With more than 700,000 homes within two miles of the ocean and less than 20ft above sea level, rising seas – together with more frequent storm surges and higher tides – are a serious threat.

A parliamentary committee spent 18 months investigating the state of Australia's coastline, and MPs were shocked by what they found. Mal Washer, deputy chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on Climate Change, said yesterday: "There's little in reality left of our coast. It's all breakwaters or sandbags... It's a disaster."

Mr Washer said that popular beaches, such as those lining the Queensland Gold Coast, a popular tourist destination, would not exist if sand was not pumped on to them artificially.

The report, entitled The Time to Act is Now, calls for national guidelines to govern development in sensitive coastal areas, replacing the current piecemeal approach by local councils. Mr Washer told ABC radio that a line should be drawn around the coast, "and beyond that there should not be development".

A few weeks ago, Barbara Boxer and John Kerry introduced the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, the long-awaited Senate version of the climate change bill that squeaked through the House in June. With the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen just nine weeks away, U.S. legislative action will be a key to successful global negotiations. Particularly, investment in international adaptation – the multilateral assistance to developing countries in order to withstand the impacts of climate change – is widely expected to be one of the central elements of the looming debate in Copenhagen. Whereas climate change mitigation policies aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, adaptation seeks to lessen the vulnerability and enhance the resilience of the most at-risk countries through disaster management and infrastructure capacity-building. Kerry has called international adaptation “part of the glue” holding together hopes of reaching a new global treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. Still, investment in adaptation – at both the domestic and international levels – has been continuously overlooked.

Steve Connor | Oct 20

The Independent - Study delves back into 200,000 years of history to demonstrate the devastating impact of global warming

A frozen lake on a remote island off Canada's northern coast has yielded remarkable insights into how the Arctic climate has changed dramatically over 50 years.

Muddy sediment from the bottom of the lake, some of it 200,000 years old, shows that Baffin Island, one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, has undergone an unprecedented warming over the past half-century. Scientists believe the temperature rise is probably due to human-induced warming. It has more than offset a natural cooling trend which began 8,000 years ago.

Instead of cooling at a rate of minus 0.C every 1,000 years – a trend that was expected to continue for another 4,000 years because of well-known changes to the Earth's solar orbit – Baffin Island, like the rest of the Arctic, has begun to get warmer, especially since 1950. The Arctic is now about 1.C warmer than it was in 1900, confirming that the region is warming faster than most other parts of the world.

I highly recommend the debate that is going on between Paul Krugman and the men who wrote Freakonomics about global warming. There are lots of other people involved, but the best place to start is here. Then read this post and this post and this post. Make sure you follow as many links as possible, including the replies from the authors of Freakonomics themselves. It's very interesting reading. Krugman, as usual, is devastating.

Andrew Buncombe | Oct 7/Oct 17

The Independent - The president of the Maldives is desperate for the world to know how seriously his government takes the threat of climate change and rising sea levels to the survival of his country. He wants his ministers to know as well.

To this end, Mohamed Nasheed has organised an underwater cabinet meeting and told all his ministers to get in training for the sub-aqua session. Six metres beneath the surface, the ministers will ratify a treaty calling on other countries to cut greenhouse emissions.

Ahead of the meeting, scheduled for 17 October, cabinet members have been squeezing into wet-suits and practising their underwater skills. The President was not present at the first session, held over the weekend, because he is already a qualified diver.

Mr Nasheed, a former political prisoner who was elected President last year, has made the issue of climate change one of his most pressing priorities. Earlier this year, The Independent revealed his plan to transform the Maldives into the world's first carbon neutral country within 10 years. The leader of a nation made up of 1,200 atolls, 80 per cent of which are no more than a metre above sea level, he has also established a fund to seek an alternative homeland, possibly in Sri Lanka, India or Australia for its 330,000 citizens.

UPDATE Oct 17: Maldives cabinet makes a splash
The government of the Maldives has held a cabinet meeting underwater to highlight the threat of global warming to the low-lying Indian Ocean nation. w/video

Ian Traynor | Oct 15

The Guardian - For a man standing alone between Europe and its future, Vaclav Klaus is playing hard to get. Last week a trip to Albania, this week Russia; the Czech president has performed a vanishing act just when he has the rest of Europe dancing to his tune.

He relishes being at the centre of a showdown. But it appears he is currently more interested in selling copies of his tract on global warming denial.

Last week, as a panicky campaign was launched in Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Stockholm, and Prague to try to force Europe's biggest renegade into line, Klaus was dining by the Adriatic.

For five days he refused to return phone calls from Fredrik Reinfeldt, the Swedish prime minister and current EU president saddled with the Klaus emergency. Jan Fischer, the Czech Republic's caretaker prime minister, has an even less enviable task, as mediator between Klaus and the rest of Europe's leaders. But Klaus won't give him the time of day. Fischer admitted he had managed to get him briefly on the phone, but not to arrange a meeting.

Klaus was in Albania to promote Blue Planet in Green Shackles, his book arguing that the only thing man-made about climate change is that it is a myth. Today he decamped to Moscow, promoting a Russian edition of the book.

Sarah Clarke | Bangkok | October 9

ABC News (AU) - The United Nations climate talks in Bangkok have failed to deliver consensus between the world's developing and developed nations.

The meeting finishes today after two weeks of intense negotiations.

Suzanne Goldenberg | Oct 9

The Guardian - • PG&E, Exelon and Apple break with chamber
• Climate change bill now before the Senate

The Obama administration took a deliberate step into the row that has engulfed the business world today, gloating at a mini-exodus from the US chamber of commerce because of its climate change policy.

In the administration's first comments on the row, the energy secretary, Steven Chu, did not conceal his delight that high-profile companies like California's PG&E, Exelon and Apple had broken with the chamber because of its opposition to a climate change bill now before the Senate and moves to regulate greenhouse gas emissions by the Environmental Protection Agency.

"I think it's wonderful," Chu said.

"I think companies like that - Exelon and others - are saying we have recognised the reality," he said. "They are saying we can't be a party to this denial and foot-dragging."

Not that the chamber is ready to listen. Earlier today, a combative head of the chamber, Thomas Donohue, made it clear he was in no mind to rethink the organisation's policies because of the high profile defections.

Nike, meanwhile, has questioned how the board arrives at policy. The footwear maker - which stepped down from the board - said climate change policy was not discussed at meetings.

$$$$$$$

With files from The Canadian Press | October 4

CBC - Sixteen Greenpeace activists were arrested early Sunday after spending 24 hours chained high up on smokestacks and a construction crane at a Shell Canada upgrader expansion site northeast of Edmonton.

The occupation started early Saturday when 19 activists stormed the under-construction upgrader in Fort Saskatchwan, which upgrades heavy oil into a lighter synthetic oil that can be refined into gasoline and other products.

Andrew C. Revkin | Washington | October 2

NYT - President Obama’s top climate and energy official said Friday that there was virtually no chance Congress would have a climate and energy bill ready for him to sign before negotiations on a global climate treaty begin in December in Copenhagen.

The remarks by the official, Carol M. Browner, during an onstage interview in Washington, were the first definitive statement by the administration that it saw little chance of Congressional passage this fall.

John M. Broder | Washington | September 30

NYT - Unwilling to wait for Congress to act, the Obama administration announced on Wednesday that it was moving forward on new rules to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from hundreds of power plants and large industrial facilities.

President Obama has said that he prefers a comprehensive legislative approach to regulating emissions and stemming global warming, not a piecemeal application of rules, and that he is deeply committed to passage of a climate bill this year.

But he has authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to begin moving toward regulation, which could goad lawmakers into reaching an agreement. It could also provide evidence of the United States’ seriousness as negotiators prepare for United Nations talks in Copenhagen in December intended to produce an international agreement to combat global warming.

Stephen Leahy | Uxbridge | Sept 24

IPS/Tierramérica - Millions of trees, especially from the developing countries of the South, are being shipped to Europe and burned in giant furnaces to meet "green energy" requirements that are supposed to combat climate change.

In the last two months alone, energy companies in Britain have announced the construction of at least six new biomass power generation plants to produce 1,200 megawatts of energy, primarily from burning woodchips.

At least another 1,200 megawatts of wood-fired energy plants, including the world's largest, in Port Talbot, Wales, are already under construction.

Those energy plants will burn 20 to 30 million tonnes of wood annually, nearly all imported from other regions and equivalent to at least one million hectares of forest.

"Europe is going to cook the world's tropical forests to fight climate change; it's crazy," Simone Lovera, of the non-governmental Global Forest Coalition, which has a southern officed in Asunción, Paraguay, told Tierramérica.

Suzanne Goldenberg, | Sept 20

The Observer - Pared-down summit will force heads of rich states to listen to those of third world in hope of kickstarting radical action

The United Nations is planning a form of diplomatic shock therapy for world leaders this week in the hope of injecting badly needed urgency into negotiations for a climate change treaty that, it is now widely acknowledged, are dangerously adrift.

UN chief Ban Ki-Moon and negotiators say that unless they can convert world leaders into committed advocates of radical action, it will be very hard to reach a credible and enforceable agreement to avoid the most devastating consequences of climate change.

As the digital counter ticking off the hours to the Copenhagen summit – which had been supposed to seal the deal on climate change – hit 77 days today, progress at the UN summit in New York is seen as vital. Nearly 100 heads of state and government are to attend the summit, for which a pared-down format has been devised.

"We need these leaders to go outside their usual comfort zones," said one diplomat. "Our sense is that leaders have got a little too cosy and comfortable. They really have to hear from countries that are vulnerable and suffering."

David Adam | September 15

Gurdian UK - Europe has clashed with the US Obama administration over climate change in a potentially damaging split that comes ahead of crucial political negotiations on a new global deal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Sept 12

The Independent - Two ships are finishing the first commercial navigation of the fabled North-east Passage. It is an epic moment – but also a vivid sign of climate change in the Arctic

No commercial vessel has ever successfully travelled the North-east Passage, a fabled Arctic Sea route that links the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific far more directly than the usual southerly cargo route.

It has been one of the elusive goals of seafaring nations almost since the beginnings of waterborne trade, but for nearly 500 years the idea has been dismissed as an impossible dream. Now, as a result of global warming, the dream is about to come true.

Within days, a journey that represents both a huge commercial boon and a dark milestone on the route to environmental catastrophe is expected to be completed for the first time. No commercial vessel has ever successfully travelled the North-east Passage, a fabled Arctic Sea route that links the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific far more directly than the usual southerly cargo route. Explorers throughout history have tried, and failed; some have died in the attempt.

But early next week the German-owned vessels, Beluga Fraternity and Beluga Foresight, are scheduled to dock in the Dutch port of Rotterdam. It is the culmination of a two-month voyage from South Korea across the perilous waters of the Arctic, where an unprecedented ice-melt has at last made the previously impassable course a viable possibility.

The new route could transform Russia's economic fortunes. Throughout history, the country's search for a warm-water port that would provide sea routes open year-round has dominated the geopolitics of the region. But the economic advantages are balanced by the disastrous environmental news that the transit represents.

Elizabeth Bluemink | Sept 6

ADN - With ice vanishing from Arctic seas, ships are now venturing north further than they generally have. Last week showed the result. A crew member of one vessel fell ill more than 1,000 miles from the nearest Coast Guard station even as two German cargo ships escorted by a Russian ice breaker entered the Arctic bound from Japan to Europe, saving thousands of miles, 400 tons of fuel and nine days of travel time.

Robin McKie | Manchester, England | Sept 6

The Observer -

(Will this count as "actionable intelligence? MC)

Kirkjufell volcano erupting above the town of Vestmannaeyjar,
Heimaey Island, Westmann Islands, Iceland. Image *

"Scientists are to outline dramatic evidence that global warming threatens the planet in a new and unexpected way – by triggering earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches and volcanic eruptions. Snip

Patrick Barkman | The Sermilik fjord | Sept 1

The Guardian -

It is calving season in the Arctic. A flotilla of icebergs, some as jagged as fairytale castles and others as smooth as dinosaur eggs, calve from the ice sheet that smothers Greenland and sail down the fjords. The journey of these sculptures of ice from glaciers to ocean is eerily beautiful and utterly terrifying.

The wall of ice that rises behind Sermilik fjord stretches for 1,500 miles (2,400km) from north to south and smothers 80% of this country. It has been frozen for 3m years. Now it is melting, far faster than the climate models predicted and far more decisively than any political action to combat our changing climate. If the Greenland ice sheet disappeared sea levels around the world would rise by seven metres, as 10% of the world's fresh water is currently frozen here.

This is also the season for science in Greenland. Glaciologists, seismologists and climatologists from around the world are landing on the ice sheet in helicopters, taking ice-breakers up its inaccessible coastline and measuring glaciers in a race against time to discover why the ice in Greenland is vanishing so much faster than expected.

Jim Tankersley | Washington | August 25

LAT - The nation's largest business lobby wants to put the science of global warming on trial.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to ward off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a rare public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.

Chamber officials say it would be "the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" -- complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect.

As the bus twists and turns up the Sierra Madre del Sur coming out of Zihuatanejo the first thing you notice are the lush green hillsides. The next thought that logically follows is: wow, there is a lot of water here. But like the coastal ranges of California the water is deceiving as I soon discovered.

After climbing above the first range of crests, outcrops and rippling ridges we descended into a broad valley, much as I imagine the Salinas Valley in John Steinbeck's retelling. It was dry, cactuses proliferated. Grasses burned off in the heat of a Mexican summer. Corn fields baked on the banks of a river.

More after the jump.

The months go by and still the sun remains quiet. This current sunspot cycle was supposed to end in 2007 if the usual average solar cycle duration of 10.7 years prevailed. It may have ended last December, about 18 months late, but no one knows for sure. So far the scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and at NASA are only projecting that what is called the solar minimum has occurred, but even this projection is in doubt since the sun has been quiescent throughout 2009.

That means we may be in year 13 of the last solar cycle number 23, which would strengthen the hand of those scientists who have been warning that a major global cooling is coming our way. And by “our”, they mean everybody and everything on the planet. And by “cooling”, some scientists are beginning to wonder if the earth is in for a replay of the Little Ice Age that culminated in 1640. This is why an otherwise obscure scientific discussion of the arcana of sunspots and the solar cycle is starting to get more serious attention. As many parts of the U.S. have just gone through their coldest July since 1891, evidence seems to be mounting that this current prolonged solar minimum may already be having an effect.

Suzanne Goldenberg & Damian Carrington | July 26

The Guardian - Photos from US spy satellites declassified by the Obama White House provide the first graphic images of how the polar ice sheets are retreating in the summer. The effects on the world's weather, environments and wildlife could be devastating

Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months.

The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One particularly striking set of images - selected from the 1,000 photographs released - includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.

Peter Popham | July 7

The Independent - The choice of L'Aquila to host this week's summit of world leaders has highlighted Italy's failure to help the victims of the quake

Silvio Berlusconi switched the location of the G8 summit to the city of L'Aquila as a way of focusing world attention on Italy's most disastrous earthquake for 30 years.

But as Hu Jintao, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, touched down in Rome yesterday, the first of 40 world leaders to arrive for the summit, residents were sceptical that the presence of so many grandees on their doorstop would do them much good.

...

But progress now appears to have ground to a halt, with attention more focused on cosmetic makeovers for the arrival of Barack Obama, Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy and the rest, according to Massimo Manieri, a spokesman for the Association for the Reconstruction of L'Aquila.

"The first phase of the emergency was great," he said. "But then the authorities made a massive mistake: instead of building temporary housing to get the homeless out of tents as fast as possible, they decided to skip that phase altogether and move to permanent housing immediately. But none of that has been built yet. I will be surprised if even a fraction of what is required is built by December."