Ice shelf collapse sends chills…

To the Canadians that is:

An ancient ice shelf has cracked off northern Ellesmere Island, creating an enormous 66-square-kilometre ice island and leaving a trail of icy blocks in its wake.

“It really is incredible,” said Warwick Vincent of Universite Laval, one of the few people to have laid eyes on the scene. “It’s like a cruise missile has come down and hit the ice shelf.”

The breakup was so powerful, earthquake monitors 250 kilometres away picked up the tremors as the 3,000- to 4,500-year-old shelf tore away from its fjord on Ellesmere.

It broke up 16 months ago, but no one was present to see it. The scientists say they are only now making public details after piecing together what occurred using seismic monitors and Canadian and U.S. satellites.

They say the ice shelf collapse, suspected to have been caused by global warming, is the biggest in Canada in 30 years and is indicative of the transformation under way on Ellesmere, Canada’s most northern land mass.

Do the Great Lakes have to run dry before the U.S. realizes global warming is real?

Climate Change Clash in Africa

This is an intriguing article linking conflict, the arms trade, poverty, disease and climate change all into one. Think this is far-fetched? Welcome to the real world, where everything is interconnected. The title, “Climate Change Clash in Africa” is not just change in the environment:

It’s been a bloody first half of the dry season in Uganda’s Karamoja region. October to February is the time when grass turns brittle, mud dries and cracks, and competition for scarce resources increases. More than 40 people have died in recent weeks in fighting between Karimojong warriors and the Ugandan Army in the arid northeast of the country.

The semi-nomadic Karimojong are pastoralists who protect their cows, violently if necessary. The warriors are well-armed, and this has put them on a collision course with Uganda’s government. But the recent clashes are a symptom of more universal problems.

As elsewhere in Africa, the population in eastern Uganda continues to grow as the environment deteriorates, putting more and more pressure on a land that grows ever drier. At a United Nations conference on climate change held in neighboring Kenya last month, environmentalists warned that Africa would bear the brunt of global warming.

With more people forced to share fewer resources, experts warn that conflict will increase. “Climate change will hit pastoral communities very hard,” says Grace Akumu, executive director of environmental pressure group Climate Network Africa. “The conflict is already getting out of hand and we are going to see an increase in this insecurity.”

Small nuclear war could severely cool the planet

Here are some scary news, in case you are not convinced we should get rid of all nuclear weapons:

A regional nuclear war between Third World nations could trigger planetwide cooling that would likely ravage agriculture and kill millions of people, scientists reported Monday.

[…]Scientists, reporting their findings at the American Geophysical Conference in San Francisco, said vast urban firestorms ignited by war would send thick, dark clouds into the upper atmosphere, blocking the sun’s rays and cooling much of the planet, with severe climatic and agricultural results.

The soot might remain in the upper atmosphere for up to a decade.

“All hell would break loose,” said Prof. Richard Turco of UCLA’s department of atmospheric and ocean sciences.

In some places, the planet could cool more than it did during the so-called Little Ice Age of the 17th century, when glaciers advanced over much of northern Europe, said Alan Robock of Rutgers University, speaking Monday at a news conference at the Moscone Center, where the conference is being held this week.

The planet could cool more, and agriculture would be impossible. Now no one believes a nuclear war could start soon, but the neocons – those crazed, power-hungry maniacs – are actually so ignorant that they think they have to push that button.

Endangered Wildlife Ringtones

I just thought this was to cool to not pass it around. This is from the good folks at the Center for Biological diversity:

“Thanks to the Center’s wild new Web site, now you can use your cell phone for calls of an entirely different nature: rousing ringtones of the croaks, chirps and sensational songs of rare and endangered animals from around the world.”

Just go to http://rareearthtones.com, and easily download free ringtones featuring authentic sounds of some of the world’s most threatened owls, tropical birds, frogs, toads and marine mammals.

Our free Web site allows you to listen to all of the wildlife ringtones – including the Blue-throated Macaw, Beluga Whale, Band-bellied Owl, Mountain Yellow-legged Frog, Yosemite Toad, or any one of 40 other endangered wildlife species – and have your favorites sent directly to your phone with one easy click.”

How bad is climate change? Even the bears have stopped hibernating!

How bad is climate change? Even the bears have stopped hibernating.

Bears have stopped hibernating in the mountains of northern Spain, scientists revealed yesterday, in what may be one of the strongest signals yet of how much climate change is affecting the natural world.

I wonder what could have provoked that behavior in the bears?

The behaviour change suggests that global warming is responsible for this revolution in ursine behaviour, says Juan Carlos García Cordón, a professor of geography at Santander’s Cantabria University, and a climatology specialist.

[…]We cannot prove that non-hibernation is caused by global warming, but everything points in that direction.”

Hey doc, if you don’t find the answers you are looking for, you might want to ask Sen. James M. Inhofe, conservative idiot from Oklahoma, whose own state has established records in wildfires and drought

Oh well, screw the bears. We’ll just show the kids old Coca-Cola ads instead.

Lack of snow hurting tourism

I kid you not:

Hotels throughout the Alps are underbooked; the Italian hoteliers’ association reckons that the lack of snow has so far cost its members £400m this year. World Cup races have already been cancelled or rescheduled in France’s Val d’Isere and Megève and Switzerland’s St Moritz, and one was only able to go ahead in Hochfilzen, in Austria, after local people trucked in 15,000 cubic metres of snow from Grossglockner, the country’s highest peak, to create a thin white run through otherwise green pastures.

Of course that is not the worse of it:

Right across Europe’s highest mountain chain, says the World Meteorological Organisation, only a third as much snow as usual has fallen so far this winter. Temperatures are up to three degrees centigrade higher than normal, and in some resorts the weather is so warm that even artificial snowmaking machines will not work.

[…]A two-year study, which the organisation is due to bring out in February, will conclude that at present 609 of the 666 medium to large Alpine ski resorts have adequate snow cover for at least 100 days a year – but that these could drop to just 200 if temperatures rise by four degrees centigrade. This is something that, according to some experts, could happen by 2050, on the worst-case scenario.

Germany would be the worst affected, with just a one degree rise – which the experts say could happen by 2020 – leading to a 60 per cent drop in resorts with reliable snow. In fact, the Alps abound with signs that climate change is already well under way. In the 15 years running up to the turn of the millennium, they lost nearly a quarter of the area taken up by glaciers. And more than another five per cent melted in the blistering summer of 2003 alone. Average snow levels are half what they were 40 years ago.

Once the rich and pampered find out there is not going to be any snow in their favorite ski resort in Switzerland, they will be global warming’s most ardent activists. Then again, I live near the beach…

Al Gore: The Energy Electranet (updated)

Update: Welcome Crooks & Liars readers! Most people do not read, nor care, about global health & human rights, but with your support, this sad state of affairs *might* change!

I always find it fascinating that the U.S. media screwed Al Gore over and over again with the “I helped invent the internet” comment (which he kind of did), but gloss over every time President Chimpy screws up the English language – which turns out to be every time he is in front of a microphone.

Anyhow, here’s an article by Al Gore, “The Energy Electranet”. Jeez, we really do need someone with brains in the White House ASAP!

Holy shit! North Pole ice free by 2040!!

I told you I was going to curse on this blog. Get a load out of this article:

Ice is melting so fast in the Arctic that the North Pole will be in the open sea in 30 years, according to a team of leading climatologists.

Ships will be able to sail over the top of the world and tourists will be able visit what was, until climate change, one of planet’s most inaccessible landscapes.

Researchers assessing the impact of carbon emissions on the world’s climate have calculated that late summer in the Arctic will be ice-free by 2040 or earlier – well within a lifetime.

I live on an island, and I don’t even want to imagine what may happen if coastal water levels rise by 10 or 20 feet. We need to act on this NOW.

Carbon Emissions Up 25% Since 1990

How many studies and news articles do we need to have lined up in order to convince ignorant politicians (Senator Inhofe, bonafide conservative idiot) and industry fat-cats that global warming is here?

Add one more to the list:

Global carbon emissions rose nearly 3 percent in 2005, up more than a quarter from 1990 levels despite many governments’ pledges of cuts to fight global warming, a scientist who provides data for the US Department of Energy said.

“The rate of acceleration is quite phenomenal,” said Gregg Marland, senior staff scientist at the US Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC), which supplies emissions data to governments, researchers and NGOs worldwide.

“Half of all emissions have been since 1980. I think people lose track of the rate of acceleration. You tend to think of (this as) something that’s been going on — it’s not,” he told Reuters late on Thursday.

Kyoto Gets a Slap in the Face from Canada

Ha, this is beyond belief. From Canada??

Much to the surprise of most Canadians and the world community, Canada is reneging on its international commitments under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which could weaken an international agreement to fight climate change after Kyoto expires in 2012.

I wonder what could possibly have happened in Canada that led to such a change? It seems the people of Canada are in favor of vigorous action against climate change.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, elected early this year, and the new environment minister, Rona Ambrose, have dismissed Canada’s Kyoto commitments for reducing greenhouse gases as impossible to achieve.

They have also cancelled a five-million-dollar pledge to help least developed countries adapt to the impacts of climate change and have withdrawn Canada’s participation and funding of the Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

Impossible to achieve…? You mean without offending the business sector, which just like in the U.S., refuses to believe that investing in preventing the worst calamities of climate change is actually in their best interest.