Category: Climate chaos

The atmosphere is to the earth as a layer of varnish is to a desktop globe. It is thin, fragile and essential for preserving the items on the surface.150 years of burning fossil fuel have overloaded the atmosphere to the point where the earth is ill. It now has a fever. Read the detailed article, Soothing Gaia’s Fever for an evocative account of that analogy. The items listed here detail progress on coordinating 6.5 billion people in the most critical project undertaken by humanity. 

Copenhagen: World leaders ‘face public fury’ if agreement proves impossible

admin /17 December, 2009

Copenhagen: World leaders ‘face public fury’ if agreement proves impossible

Miliband warns heads not to stall on technicalities as some progress is made between the biggest polluters US and China

 

   Suzanne Goldenberg, Jonathan Watts and John Vidal in      Copenhagen

Ed Miliband at the Copenhagen summit

Ed Miliband speaks to reporters during a news conference at the Copenhagen summit. Photograph: Bob Strong/Reuters

World leaders arriving at the Copenhagen climate change summit today and tomorrow face public “fury” if they fail to inject crucial new momentum into the talks, according to climate secretary Ed Miliband.

Talks resumed late last night following many hours of delay as negotiators wrangled over the form a treaty to fight global warming should take. “People will find it extraordinary that this conference is being stalled on points of order,” said Miliband. “People will be rightly furious if agreement is not possible.”

Further to IPCC 9m Sea-level rise prediction

admin /17 December, 2009

 

It is not good policy, when so much depends on it, to assume that glaciers will melt slowly. Past evidence is that this can happen quickly, at least within 12 months on one occasion. Wise people (who pay for personal insurance) should consider the risk: if it were to happen quickly, then please read the following, which appeared in FOOTPRINTS 38 in August:

IPCC forecasts 9m sea-level rise if temperatures meet 2C threshold

admin /17 December, 2009

IPCC forecasts 9m sea-level rise if temperatures meet 2C threshold

Hundreds of millions of people around the world would be affected as low low-lying coastal areas became inundated, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warns

Climate change : rising sea levels in Lahiripur in Sundarban delta

A villager walks on an embankment as trees are submerged in the river water at Lahiripur in India. Scientists have warned of alarming rise in temperatures. Photograph: Bikas Das/AP

Global sea levels could rise by up to 9m in the next few hundred years, even if the world manages to stabilise average temperatures to 2C above pre-industrial levels, according to a new study.

 

In this scenario, hundreds of millions of people around the world would be affected as low low-lying coastal areas became inundated. New Orleans would be lost to the sea, much of southern Florida and Bangladesh and most of the Netherlands.

Penny Wong jeered, Hugo Chavez cheered

admin /17 December, 2009

Penny Wong jeered, Hugo Chavez cheered

THE Copenhagen climate summit was pretty much summed up in the high-level segment yesterday when Penny Wong’s speech was interrupted by whistles and chanting and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez got a standing ovation.

The Australian climate change minister may not be the world’s greatest orator but she had some sensible things to say when she stood up on behalf of the so-called “umbrella group” of developed countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan, Norway, Iceland and Ukraine.

Support the Island Leaders now

admin /16 December, 2009

  Dear friend, I am writing to you again from Copenhagen, where the conference has been reverberating for days with the brave voices of island leaders. The island leaders, from Tuvalu to the Maldives, Grenada to Kiribati, are pleading for serious climate action from developed and developing countries alike. They rightly point out that the Continue Reading →