UN Chief Ban Ki-Moon Visits California

SAN FRANCISCO -- United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the United States to take the lead in combating global warming during a visit to California to learn about the state's campaign to curb its greenhouse gas emissions.

"The whole planet Earth is at a crucial juncture," Ban said Thursday at an event organized by the World Affairs Council of Northern California. "Time is of essence. The cost of inaction will be far greater than the cost of action."

Ban, who served as South Korea's foreign minister before he became U.N. chief in January, arrived in San Francisco on Thursday for a two-day visit of the Bay Area. Read More

British Prime Minister Blames Floods on Climate Change

LONDON, UK, July 24, 2007 (ENS) - The sun is forecast to shine across much of England Wednesday, illuminating flood waters that have risen to 60 year highs. Prime Minister Gordon Brown blamed climate change for the torrential rains that pounded the British Isles on Friday and through the weekend, inundating vast stretches of southwest England and leaving more than 50,000 homes without power.

In Gloucestershire, up to 350,000 people had no drinking water Monday after a water treatment plant in in the city of Tewkesbury was flooded, local police authorities said.

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UN members to table climate change plans

UN member states will, between 31 July and 1 August in New York, US, present their national strategies and commitments to address the adverse effects of climate change.

The countries' plans, which will be discussed at a special meeting, is aimed at fostering sustainable growth and development.

The meeting tagged: ‘Climate Change as a Global Challenge’, is convened by UN General Assembly President Sheikha Haya Al-Khalifa, ahead of the General Assembly scheduled for September and October.

A UN source, who spoke to PANA Monday, said that it will be attended by the three UN Secretary-General's Special Envoys for Climate Change. Read More

Glaciers and Ice Caps Quickly Melting Into the Seas

Environment News Service

BOULDER, Colorado, July 20, 2007 (ENS) - Sea level rise this century may be greater than previously thought, posing risks to hundreds of millions of people who live close to the world's oceans, concludes a new study of ice loss from glaciers and ice caps. The researchers say that in the near future, the giant Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will contribute less to sea level rise than glaciers and ice caps.

Scientists with the University of Colorado-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, INSTAAR, and the Russian Academy of Sciences conclude that glaciers and ice caps now contribute about 60 percent of the ice melting into the oceans and the rate has been accelerating over the past decade.

"One reason for this study is the widely held view that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will be the principal causes of sea-level rise," says lead author Emeritus Professor Mark Meier, former INSTAAR director and CU-Boulder professor in geological sciences.

"But we show that it is the glaciers and ice caps, not the two large ice sheets, that will be the big players in sea rise for at least the next few generations, he says. Read More

Influence of global warming seen in changing rains

NewScientist.com news service 23 July 2007

The pattern of rainfall around the world is being changed by greenhouse-gas emissions from human activities, researchers have shown for the first time.

Tropical regions north of the equator, including such areas as the Sahel in Africa which borders the Sahara desert, have already begun to get even drier and will continue to do so, the data show. Regions in the far north, including Canada, Northern Europe and Russia, will get wetter, as will the southern tropics.

Detecting the effects of climate change on rainfall patterns has proved much more elusive than temperature changes because of the much greater natural variability of precipitation.

The key was to take results from 92 computer simulations, using 14 different global circulation models, and to compare the average of these with actual rainfall data over wide bands of latitude around the world. Read More

Tibet warming up faster than anywhere in the world

Sun Jul 22, 2007 6:41AM EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - Tibet is warming up faster than anywhere else in the world, Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.
The average annual temperature in Tibet, the roof of the world, was rising at a speed of 0.3 degrees Celsius every 10 years, Xinhua said.
Chinese scientists have long warned that rising temperatures on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau will melt glaciers, dry up major Chinese rivers and trigger more droughts, sandstorms and desertification.
The Tibet Meteorological Bureau said the temperature rise was most obvious in the west of the region. Tibet, with its glaciers and high altitude, has been regarded as sensitive to the effects of global warming.
Currently, China's average temperature is rising at 0.4 degree Celsius every 100 years, while a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed the average surface temperature of the globe had risen 0.74 degree Celsius in the past 100 years, Xinhua said.
China is rapidly overtaking the United States to become the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases. It is under rising international pressure to accept mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions from its factories and vehicles.
China has refused to comply, but the government has shown greater efforts in addressing energy and environment issues.

The illness in Planet Earth

Planet Earth is unwell, argues James Lovelock in The Green Room. Emissions of greenhouse gases and other environmental changes have, he says, brought humanity and the natural world to the edge of crisis.

Climate change alarms me, and it should alarm anyone Send us your comments

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, published in 2001, is one of the scariest documents you will ever read.

It talks about changes to the Earth by the end of this century which will be as great or greater than occurred between the end of the last Ice Age and the time when humans started changing the atmosphere; it is huge.

It alarms me, and it should alarm anyone.

Just imagine that you had lived 12,000 years ago, before the last Ice Age ended, in a tropical civilisation somewhere in South-East Asia.

What would have been your reaction if some scientist had told you that within not too many years the sea level would rise by 120m, by 400ft?

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