Seems the UN is coming out with a climate change report that doesn't bode too well:
At http://au.news.yahoo.com/ there is a video-link titled 'Damning environment report expected'
Part summary, part transcript:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A meeting of the world's top international scientists will today hand down bad news on the environment.
Rising sea levels caused by global warming could see beach side villages disappearing under water.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->It was thought sea-level rise would be 88cm, now they think it might be 60cm, whereas some scientists think it will be as high as 1.5m depending on the melting of the <i>unpredictable</i> icesheet in western Antarctica. "If chunks of the West Antarctic iceshelf go into the sea, there'll be a sudden increase in sea level."
Even a tiny rise can take out some Goromorra (?) island off the east coast of mainland India: "1000s of people have already fled as refugees" (they looked Indian in the video, women in what looked like sarees leaving with their children). Scientists warn that "this island won't last 20 years".
Now even Greenland's icesheet, which scientists thought would last 1000 years, poses uncertainty.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/070201/23/12a24.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Friday February 2, 08:58 AM
<b>Report highlights global warming urgency</b>
By 7News
A new international report on global warming has highlighted the urgency of the situation.
The UN report warns of more droughts, heatwaves and rising seas. It also states global warming is 'very likely' man-made.
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd says we need an immediate solution.
"My concern is it's getting late and we're facing a real fork in the road on climate change. We must act, we must act urgently," Mr Rudd said.
The report projects Arctic ice will completely disappear and oceans will continue to rise for the next 1000 years.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Aus related: Urgent action 'needed on climate change'
BBC's late Jan 07 news report: Melting of glaciers 'speeds up'<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Mountain glaciers are shrinking three times faster than they were in the 1980s, scientists have announced.
We can say there were times during the warmer periods of the last 10,000 years when glaciers have been comparable to what they are now," he told the BBC News website.
"But it is not the past that worries us, it is the future. With the scenarios predicted, we will enter conditions which we have not seen in the past 10,000 years, and perhaps conditions which mankind has never experienced." (Wilfried Haeberli, WGMS: The World Glacier Monitoring Service)
Last year, WGMS scientists forecast that the Alps would lose up to three-quarters of their glaciers during the coming century.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5323512.stm
VIEWPOINT: John Ashton (early September 2006) - <i>Excerpts</i> only
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Human-induced climate change must be treated as an immediate threat to national security and prosperity, says John Ashton, the UK's climate change envoy. He argues that we must secure a stable climate whatever the cost, as failure to do so will cost far more.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Then there's a bit about the lawlessness that prevailed where Katrina had struck, followed by<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Hurricane Katrina hit a city in the world's richest nation. If anywhere should have been resilient enough to deal with the force of nature, it was the United States.
The economic and security impacts of extreme climatic events in more vulnerable regions, such as Africa and South Asia, or more strategically important regions, like the Middle East, will be more dramatic. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Economic threat</b>
[...]
Our prosperity is also at stake. Europe's economic health increasingly depends on a thriving Chinese economy. Should China falter as we progress through this century, European pension funds would struggle to earn the returns necessary to pay our pensions. As Europe's population ages, the drag on our economies would be immense.
China's economy is one of the most vulnerable to a changing climate. China is already planning to divert water hundreds of kilometres from the south, where it is currently abundant, to the arid but populous north, in order to maintain economic stability. But that plan will fail if the Himalayan glaciers that feed China's southern rivers continue to melt at an accelerating rate because of a rising temperature.
Last week, Professor John Holdren, the newly elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a distinguished scientist not noted for sensational pronouncements, told the BBC: "We are not talking any more about what climate models say might happen in the future. We are experiencing dangerous human disruption of the global climate and we are going to experience more."
What this means is that we need to treat climate change not as a long-term threat to our environment but as an immediate threat to our security and prosperity.
We need to see a stable climate as a public good without which it will become increasingly difficult to deliver the other public goods that citizens rightly expect from those who govern them.
We need to see the pursuit of a stable climate as an imperative to be secured whatever it costs through the urgent construction of a low carbon global economy, because the cost of not securing it will be far greater.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
http://xtramsn.co.nz/travel/0,,12734-6888287,00.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->02/02/2007
<b>Europe Has Warmest January On Record</b>
Many European countries had their warmest January since records began, weather offices said on Wednesday, bringing Dutch daffodils out early and triggering grassland fires in Hungary.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In the Netherlands, January temperatures were the highest since they were first measured in 1706, the Dutch meteorological institute KNMI said on Wednesday, averaging about 7.1 degrees Celsius -- 2.8 degrees more than usual.
Already daffodils were flowering more than a month early in fields south-west of Amsterdam near the North Sea.
In Switzerland, where many ski resorts had been short of snow until heavy falls late last week, MeteoSwiss said January was set to be the warmest on record in Swiss cities.
Hungary also said January had been its warmest on record, with high temperatures and lack of rain causing fires on grasslands in eastern and southeastern Hungary.
The same story was echoed across Europe with Germany's meteorological office DWD saying that January temperature averages of 4.6 degrees Celsius were some five degrees above long-term averages -- making January 2007 together with January 1975, the warmest since records began in 1901.
In most parts of Austria, the temperatures were also the warmest since records began, according to Austria's Central Institute of Meteorology and Geodynamics ZAMG.
Britain said this month could be the second warmest, with 1916 holding the record.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
At http://au.news.yahoo.com/ there is a video-link titled 'Damning environment report expected'
Part summary, part transcript:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A meeting of the world's top international scientists will today hand down bad news on the environment.
Rising sea levels caused by global warming could see beach side villages disappearing under water.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->It was thought sea-level rise would be 88cm, now they think it might be 60cm, whereas some scientists think it will be as high as 1.5m depending on the melting of the <i>unpredictable</i> icesheet in western Antarctica. "If chunks of the West Antarctic iceshelf go into the sea, there'll be a sudden increase in sea level."
Even a tiny rise can take out some Goromorra (?) island off the east coast of mainland India: "1000s of people have already fled as refugees" (they looked Indian in the video, women in what looked like sarees leaving with their children). Scientists warn that "this island won't last 20 years".
Now even Greenland's icesheet, which scientists thought would last 1000 years, poses uncertainty.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/070201/23/12a24.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Friday February 2, 08:58 AM
<b>Report highlights global warming urgency</b>
By 7News
A new international report on global warming has highlighted the urgency of the situation.
The UN report warns of more droughts, heatwaves and rising seas. It also states global warming is 'very likely' man-made.
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd says we need an immediate solution.
"My concern is it's getting late and we're facing a real fork in the road on climate change. We must act, we must act urgently," Mr Rudd said.
The report projects Arctic ice will completely disappear and oceans will continue to rise for the next 1000 years.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Aus related: Urgent action 'needed on climate change'
BBC's late Jan 07 news report: Melting of glaciers 'speeds up'<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Mountain glaciers are shrinking three times faster than they were in the 1980s, scientists have announced.
We can say there were times during the warmer periods of the last 10,000 years when glaciers have been comparable to what they are now," he told the BBC News website.
"But it is not the past that worries us, it is the future. With the scenarios predicted, we will enter conditions which we have not seen in the past 10,000 years, and perhaps conditions which mankind has never experienced." (Wilfried Haeberli, WGMS: The World Glacier Monitoring Service)
Last year, WGMS scientists forecast that the Alps would lose up to three-quarters of their glaciers during the coming century.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5323512.stm
VIEWPOINT: John Ashton (early September 2006) - <i>Excerpts</i> only
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Human-induced climate change must be treated as an immediate threat to national security and prosperity, says John Ashton, the UK's climate change envoy. He argues that we must secure a stable climate whatever the cost, as failure to do so will cost far more.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Then there's a bit about the lawlessness that prevailed where Katrina had struck, followed by<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Hurricane Katrina hit a city in the world's richest nation. If anywhere should have been resilient enough to deal with the force of nature, it was the United States.
The economic and security impacts of extreme climatic events in more vulnerable regions, such as Africa and South Asia, or more strategically important regions, like the Middle East, will be more dramatic. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Economic threat</b>
[...]
Our prosperity is also at stake. Europe's economic health increasingly depends on a thriving Chinese economy. Should China falter as we progress through this century, European pension funds would struggle to earn the returns necessary to pay our pensions. As Europe's population ages, the drag on our economies would be immense.
China's economy is one of the most vulnerable to a changing climate. China is already planning to divert water hundreds of kilometres from the south, where it is currently abundant, to the arid but populous north, in order to maintain economic stability. But that plan will fail if the Himalayan glaciers that feed China's southern rivers continue to melt at an accelerating rate because of a rising temperature.
Last week, Professor John Holdren, the newly elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a distinguished scientist not noted for sensational pronouncements, told the BBC: "We are not talking any more about what climate models say might happen in the future. We are experiencing dangerous human disruption of the global climate and we are going to experience more."
What this means is that we need to treat climate change not as a long-term threat to our environment but as an immediate threat to our security and prosperity.
We need to see a stable climate as a public good without which it will become increasingly difficult to deliver the other public goods that citizens rightly expect from those who govern them.
We need to see the pursuit of a stable climate as an imperative to be secured whatever it costs through the urgent construction of a low carbon global economy, because the cost of not securing it will be far greater.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
http://xtramsn.co.nz/travel/0,,12734-6888287,00.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->02/02/2007
<b>Europe Has Warmest January On Record</b>
Many European countries had their warmest January since records began, weather offices said on Wednesday, bringing Dutch daffodils out early and triggering grassland fires in Hungary.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In the Netherlands, January temperatures were the highest since they were first measured in 1706, the Dutch meteorological institute KNMI said on Wednesday, averaging about 7.1 degrees Celsius -- 2.8 degrees more than usual.
Already daffodils were flowering more than a month early in fields south-west of Amsterdam near the North Sea.
In Switzerland, where many ski resorts had been short of snow until heavy falls late last week, MeteoSwiss said January was set to be the warmest on record in Swiss cities.
Hungary also said January had been its warmest on record, with high temperatures and lack of rain causing fires on grasslands in eastern and southeastern Hungary.
The same story was echoed across Europe with Germany's meteorological office DWD saying that January temperature averages of 4.6 degrees Celsius were some five degrees above long-term averages -- making January 2007 together with January 1975, the warmest since records began in 1901.
In most parts of Austria, the temperatures were also the warmest since records began, according to Austria's Central Institute of Meteorology and Geodynamics ZAMG.
Britain said this month could be the second warmest, with 1916 holding the record.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->