The next day (2/3/07), alarmed headlines greeted newspaper readers: “Official: Global Warming Is All Our Fault.” “World’s Scientists Convinced That Humans Cause Global Warming.” “Worse Than We Thought: Report Warns of 4 C Rise by 2100: Floods and Food and Water Shortages Likely.”

None of those, though, were seen by readers of U.S. newspapers–they appeared in, respectively, Britain’s Daily Telegraph, Financial Times and Guardian. The same day’s U.S. headlines were mostly far more demure: “U.N. Study Spurs Call to Fight Warming” (Boston Globe); “From Global Warming Report, U.S. Feels Heat” (Chicago Tribune). The New York Times titled its front-page story “Science Panel Calls Global Warm-ing ‘Unequivocal'”–ducking the more significant finding that not only is climate change underway, but that human-created greenhouse gases are the culprit.

Such extremes are likely to get worse and more common in the future, said Song Lianchun, head of the China Meteorological Administration’s Department of Forecasting Services and Disaster Mitigation.

“It should be said that one of the reasons for the weather extremes this year has been unusual atmospheric circulation bought about by global warming,” Song told a news conference carried live on the central government Web site (www.gov.cn).

“These kind of extremes will become more frequent, and more obvious. This has already been borne out by the facts,” he said. “I think the impact on our country will definitely be very large.”

Some parts of China have had too much rain, and others too little this summer.

“A joint statement issued by the Australian Academy of Sciences, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Royal Society of Canada, Caribbean Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, French Academy of Sciences, German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, Indian National Science Academy, Indonesian Academy of Sciences, Royal Irish Academy, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy), Academy of Sciences Malaysia, Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and Royal Society (UK) said:

The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognise IPCC as the world’s most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes, and we endorse its method of achieving this consensus. Despite increasing consensus on the science underpinning predictions of global climate change, doubts have been expressed recently about the need to mitigate the risks posed by global climate change. We do not consider such doubts justified.

Many other science academies and scientific organizations support the conclusions of the IPCC.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy

“Hockey stick” not really discredited.
Medieval warming disputed: maybe just localised, rather than global.

“backward-looking bigotry”?? – good grief; global warming is about the present and the future.
If any bigots around, Durkin is clearly among them.

Might wonder what the Durkins of the day might have said on places like Easter Island, where islanders chopped down the last of the trees, in part to move around immense statues – and in doing so, taking their society huge leaps backwards, so the first Europeans to arrive there found a sad bunch of people, scratching a living from a rough, grassy landscape.

“God bless Australia. The DVD will be out soon.” – I hope readers don’t fall for Durkin’s attempts at smooth talking salesmanship (Ooh, those of you who liked my documentary are so wonderful and sane … and while you’re at it, maybe give me some money.)

The report, produced in co-operation with Chinese government ministries over several years, found about 750,000 people die prematurely in China each year, mainly from air pollution in large cities.
…
Advisers to the research team said ministries told them this information, including a detailed map showing which parts of the country suffered the most deaths, was too sensitive.

“The World Bank was told that it could not publish this information. It was too sensitive and could cause social unrest,” one adviser to the study told the Financial Times.

Sixteen of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China, according to previous World Bank research.
…
Missing from this report are the research project’s findings that high air-pollution levels in Chinese cities is leading to the premature deaths of 350,000-400,000 people each year. A further 300,000 people die prematurely each year from exposure to poor air indoors, according to advisers, but little discussion of this issue survived in the report because it was outside the ambit of the Chinese ministries which sponsored the research.

Another 60,000-odd premature deaths were attributable to poor-quality water, largely in the countryside, from severe diarrhoea, and stomach, liver and bladder cancers.

The mortality information was “reluctantly” excised by the World Bank from the published report, according to advisers to the research project.

However, the correct response to the sort of grim news contained in the World Bank report is not to suppress the truth but to tackle the underlying problem. Reducing emissions from coal-fired power stations, for example, is neither as expensive nor as difficult as businesses and the provincial governments with which they collude often pretend.

Moreover, China can tie the essentially domestic crisis of urban air pollution into solving the international problem of climate change. Spewing out local air pollutants and carbon, the main global warming gas, often go hand in hand. The same holds for modernising plants to avoid either type of emissions. Many foreign companies are eager to fund these clean-up projects in exchange for carbon credits valued at home. In the meantime, these could help China solve its local air pollution problem.

All of the above can only happen if Chinese leaders overcome their fear of the facts and start telling the truth. They may find it easier than they think and it would certainly produce better results.

In a study that underscored the impact of global warming on the northern polar region, researchers discovered that plant, insect and bird life native to the High Arctic had made dramatic seasonal cycle adjustments to the region’s earlier snowmelt in the space of just 10 years.

In some cases, flowers are emerging from buds and chicks are hatching a full 30 days sooner than they did in the mid-1990s in response to sharply increased temperatures burning off the winter’s snow layer.

Birds such as the Sanderling and the Ruddy Turnstone had moved their springtime rituals forward by an average of two weeks by 2005, compared to 1996.

The Agriculture, Fisheries & Conservation Department tonight temporarily closed the shop and took its birds for observation and further testing. It also ordered all nearby bird shops to undergo thorough cleansing.

The sample was collected on June 4 under the department’s routine avian influenza surveillance programme.

The Leisure & Cultural Services Department will enhance cleansing of the Bird Garden, and the Food & Environmental Hygiene Department will boost street cleaning near it.

The Centre for Health Protection has put all stall operators and workers under medical surveillance. It has launched a hotline (2125 1122) to provide health advice to people who may have recently visited bird pet shops.

The carcass of the bird was collected at 13 Jat Min Chuen Street, Sha Tin on May 31 by department staff following a public referral.

Nearly 15000 glaciers and 9000 glacial lakes are found in the Himalayan mountain chain which stretches 2500 km across five countries – Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, India and China. The mountain range feeds nine perennial river systems in the region and constitutes a lifeline for nearly 1.3 billion people downstream.

Himalayan glaciers are shrinking at an average of 10 to 60 m annually, with some retreating by 74 m a year. In China, glaciers have been retreating at a rate of 5.5 per cent in the last three decades. With current climate change projections two-thirds of China’s glaciers are likely to disappear by 2050, and almost all would be gone by 2100.

Significant changes were also seen in the Indian Himalaya, with the highest rate of glacial retreat found in the Bada Shigri Glacier and lowest in the Chhota Shigri Glacier in the Chenab River Basin, where glaciers are retreating by 6.8 to 29.8 m each year.

In Bhutan, the Luggye Glacier retreated by 160 m yearly from 1988 to 1993 resulting in rapid growth of the Luggye Tso Lake. The Raphstreng Glacier retreated 35 m every year on average from 1984 to 1998 but from 1988 to 1993 the retreat rate almost doubled to 60 m per year.

Glacier retreat has been accelerating in Nepal since the 1990s, with dramatic retreats recorded between 1994 and 1998 especially in the Dudh Koshi sub-basin where all of the glaciers studied have retreat by 10 to 59 m yearly. The Dudh Koshi sub-basin is the largest basin and most densely glaciated region in Nepal.

Melting glaciers are also leading to some of the fastest-growing glacial lakes in the region. Some glacial lakes have grown by almost 800 per cent since the 1970s.

The Starling was collected at 101-109 Boundary Street on May 26 by AFCD staff following a public referral.

A department spokesman reminded the public to observe good personal hygiene.

“They should avoid personal contact with wild birds and live poultry and clean their hands thoroughly after coming into contact with them,” he said.

In a picture taken in 1968, the Middle Rongbuk glacier skirts through the mountain valley with the peaks above thickly covered with snow.

But almost exactly the same shot taken this year by a Greenpeace team reveals much barer peaks and a scarcely visible glacier.

And the environmental pressure group is in no doubt that the radical changes to the area are due to the effects of climate change.

“The degradation of the Everest environment and glacial retreat is, Greenpeace believes, a direct result of climate change,” a spokeswoman said.
…
The Greenpeace team found that the glaciers of the Yellow River source have shrunk by 17 per cent in the past 30 years and warns that this trend could leave the region without glaciers by the end of the century.

Global production of solar photovoltaic cells, which turn sunlight
directly into electricity, has risen sixfold since 2000 and grew 41
percent in 2006 alone. Although grid-connected solar capacity still
provides less than 1 percent of the world’s electricity, it increased
nearly 50 percent in 2006, to 5,000 megawatts, propelled by booming
markets in Germany and Japan. Spain is likely to join the big leagues in
2007, and the United States soon thereafter.

* The Sun has sufficient helium mass to provide the Earth with energy for another 5 billion years and, every 15 minutes, it emits more energy than humankind uses in an entire year.

* The Earth receives only one half of one billionth of the Sun’s radiant energy, but, in just a few days, it gets as much heat and light as could be produced by burning all the oil, coal and wood on the planet.

* The Sun represents 99.8% of the total mass of our solar system, its surface temperature is 6000ºC, and its total energy could melt an ice cube the size of planet Earth in just 30 minutes.

* Worldwide, some 2 billion people are still without electricity and, for these populations, it is more economically viable to install solar panels than to extend established electricity grids.

Global warming isn’t just a matter of melting icebergs and polar bears chasing after them. It’s also Lake Chad drying up, the glaciers of Mt. Kilimanjaro disappearing, increasing extreme weather, conflict and hungry people throughout Africa.

According to a landmark effort to assess the risks of global warming, Africa — by far the lowest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world — is projected to be among the regions hardest hit by environmental change.

“We never used to have malaria in the highlands where I’m from, now we do,” said Kenyan lawmaker Mwancha Okioma, at a briefing on climate change at the Pan African Parliament Monday.

The new environmental committee, headed by Okioma, raised concerns about the severity of climate change on Africa and called for those responsible to help reduce its effects.

“Planes used to take people through Kilimanjaro to see the snows, now it’s only at the very top. We are asking the ones in North America and Europe who are producing the pollution to help us,” Okioma said.

By reviewing four years of research on projected climate change in Africa, scientists with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change got a nuanced view of possible scenarios and assessed how these scenarios could play themselves out in a continent already stressed — water and food insecurity, infectious diseases, conflict, poverty.

“There’s a whole suite of indicators which with climate change would undoubtedly make Africa one of the most stressed regions,” said Coleen Vogel, an environmental expert at South Africa’s University of Witwatersrand and lead author of a chapter on Africa being released this month by the Intergovernmental Panel.

An orbiting satellite over Africa in 2050 might see, according to the scientists’ models, a drier north-northwest and south-southwest and wetter eastern and central regions.