Global Warming

Wildlife populations ‘plummeting’

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“Reduced biodiversity means millions of people face a future where food supplies are more vulnerable to pests and disease and where water is in irregular or short supply.”
James Leape, Director general, WWF UK

Between a quarter and a third of the world’s wildlife has been lost since 1970, according to data compiled by the Zoological Society of London.


Over-fishing and demand for their fins as a delicacy have hit shark numbers

Populations of land-based species fell by 25%, marine by 28% and freshwater by 29%, it says.

Humans are wiping out about 1% of all other species every year, and one of the “great extinction episodes” in the Earth’s history is under way, it says.

Read moreWildlife populations ‘plummeting’

Obesity contributes to global warming: study

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(Those people got paid to make such an idiotic study. – The Infinite Unknown)

GENEVA (Reuters) – Obesity contributes to global warming, too.

Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.

This adds to food shortages and higher energy prices, the school’s researchers Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts wrote in the journal Lancet on Friday.

“We are all becoming heavier and it is a global responsibility,” Edwards said in a telephone interview. “Obesity is a key part of the big picture.”

At least 400 million adults worldwide are obese. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects by 2015, 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese.

In their model, the researchers pegged 40 percent of the global population as obese with a body mass index of near 30. Many nations are fast approaching or have surpassed this level, Edwards said.

Read moreObesity contributes to global warming: study

Ted Turner Repeats Call For Population Curb

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Says diminishing farmland will lead to food riots, despite being behind corn-based ethanol push

Says diminishing farmland will lead to food riots, despite being behind corn-based ethanol push
Billionaire Globalist Ted Turner, who earlier this month predicted that global warming would eventually lead to cannibalism, has repeated his call to curb population growth, claiming that disappearing farmland will cause food riots, despite the fact that Turner himself is behind the push to grow corn-based ethanol, an industry the UN has blamed for food shortages and increased poverty.

“There are a lot of different problems being caused by an ever-increasing number of people in a finite-sized world,” Turner told CNBC’s Bob Pisani. “The resources of the planet just can’t keep up with the demand and I’m afraid this going to be more commonplace. I’m afraid we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg. It’s very complicated I do want to say.”

Watch the video.

“We’ve had warnings for a number of years,” Turner said. “Grain stocks have been dropping every year for the last 10 years or pretty close to that – the reserves. And, the environment in so many different areas is being – the pressure being put on it by the ever-increasing number of people and the number of people using more stuff and more energy – that’s what ‘s leading to global climate change and the over-fishing of the oceans,” he added.

Read moreTed Turner Repeats Call For Population Curb

World might be heading towards Ice Age

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CANBERRA: Scientists have warned that the world might once again be heading towards an Ice Age, with global warming approaching a possible end.

Evidence in support of this theory has come from pictures obtained from the US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, which showed no spots on the sun, thus determining that sunspot activity has not resumed after hitting an 11-year low in March last year.

A sunspot is a region on the sun that is cooler than the rest and appears dark.

Some scientists believe a strong solar magnetic field, when there is plenty of sunspot activity, protects the earth from cosmic rays, cutting cloud formation, but that when the field is weak – during low sunspot activity – the rays can penetrate into the lower atmosphere and cloud cover increases, cooling the surface.

According to Australian astronaut and geophysicist Phil Chapman, this might have caused the world to cool quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7C.

Read moreWorld might be heading towards Ice Age

Gore Used CG Video To Hype Climate Crisis

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Al Gore’s widely discredited film “An Inconvenient Truth” that falsely hypes the threat of global warming has now been further discredited. ABC News has discovered that Gore used computer generated footage in his documentary that was taken from the 2004 natural disaster film “The Day After Tomorrow” to fraudulently emphasize the global warming threat. If global warming is such a dire threat to us, why would Gore need to use computer generated footage in the documentary to justify his point? The bottom line is that Gore’s film is based off of lies in order to scare the public into believing that man made carbon emissions are the cause of all of the planet’s environmental problems. Gore ignores scientific data that indicates solar activity is the real cause for planetary warming. Mars and other planets have also experienced rising temperatures the same time that warming has been reported on Earth. So unless man is on other planets emitting carbon, it is clear that solar activity is the cause for the planetary warming. Gore also ignores the fact that this past winter saw record snowfalls and record low temperatures in various parts of the world which indicate that this warming cycle might be coming to an end. Gore’s theories simply don’t add up, but that doesn’t stop him from attempting to recruit a green army of 10 million useful idiots to help him push this agenda. Instead of tackling real environmental problems like chemicals being dumped in oceans, the disappearance of the bees, genetically modified foods, the mixing of human and animal DNA and chemicals being sprayed in the air, Gore would prefer to tackle a problem that isn’t real. This makes Gore a phony environmentalist and he has positioned himself to profit greatly off of this scam. Gore is nothing more than a propagandist who is hyping this phony doomsday scenario so the global elite can justify implementing a planetary carbon tax which will be used to enslave humanity.

The following blurb is taken from ABC News.

Al Gore’s “traveling global warming show,” the award-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” includes a long flyover shot of majestic Antarctic ice shelves. But this shot was first seen in the 2004 blockbuster “The Day After Tomorrow.” Sculpted from Styrofoam and later scanned into a computer, the ice shelf “flyover” looks real.

Karen Goulekas, the special effects supervisor for “The Day After Tomorrow” said the shot is a digital image. She was glad Al Gore used it in the documentary since “It is one hell of a shot.” Both movies use the shot to convincingly portray global warming, but it is left to the audience to decide if this created image can both entertain and educate us about our changing planet.

This is blatant fraud on the part of Gore and more proof that his film is nothing more than propaganda designed to misdirect people’s legitimate environmental concerns towards something that helps their goal of a global carbon tax. It is entirely dishonest for Gore to be using computer generated video footage in a documentary that is supposed to be based off of facts. Gore is using this footage to exaggerate his phony claims.

Read moreGore Used CG Video To Hype Climate Crisis

China: One of the strongest typhoons in history

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BEIJING (Reuters) – Fifty-six Chinese fishermen were missing on Friday as a typhoon bore down on the southern resort island of Hainan which state media said was the earliest to threaten the region in decades and may well be the strongest.

The fishermen were taking shelter near the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea and had not been heard from since Thursday evening, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Hainan and the neighboring province of Guangdong are braced for Typhoon Neoguri, the first of the year, with almost 22,000 fishing boats having been called back to harbor as the storm skirted Vietnam.

“Neoguri will be the earliest typhoon of the season to affect the south China region since the founding of new China in 1949,” Chen Lei, deputy commander of the State Headquarters of Flood Control and Drought Relief, was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

The storm was expected to be “one of the strongest in history” to hit the region, Xinhua said.

Typhoon tracker Tropical Storm Risk labeled the storm as category two in a scale up to five, with maximum sustained winds of 96-110 miles per hour.

Read moreChina: One of the strongest typhoons in history

Colony Collapse Disorder – a Moment for Reflection?

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Our previous posts on the mysterious bee disappearances (here, here, and here) have been a very interesting exercise. We’ve had great feedback from farmers, amateur and professional beekeepers, scientists, and dozens of other interested/concerned observers. In the meantime, accumulating reports tell us that the problem is not constrained to the U.S. alone – but that, to one degree or another, empty hives are becoming common in Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Poland, and now possibly the UK. Canada, so far, seems unsure if they have the problem, or not. We’ve now also had unconfirmed reports from Brazil.

Personally, I believe situations like this are an opportune moment for reflection – a time to humbly consider a few realities, and perhaps learn a few lessons. Of significance to me is the fact that scientists haven’t got this figured out as yet. It begs the question – which is easier, when dealing with the infinitely complex interactions of nature: 1) predicting specific consequences to our ‘tinkering’ before they occur, or 2) understanding how something happened after-the-fact? I would have thought the latter was the easiest – you know the old saying, “hindsight is a wonderful thing”. Looking back at the results, following the trail of clues, is a lot less challenging than postulating over what could happen. Or, to put it into a framework that might be better understood – if Sherlock Holmes, expert in crime scene deductions, were to turn his attention to predicting crimes rather than solving them, how would he have fared? Short of the kind of psychic predictive skills seen in Minority Report-type science fiction movies, I don’t expect he’d fare so well.

What am I on about, you ask? Simply this – too many people hand scientists the keys to the car, as it were, and bid them take it wherever their employer wishes. Our governments do this, and too many either encourage it, or stand by and let it happen. When the PR departments that front these scientists portray a glorious new world where man manages to, with perfect and meticulous coordination, juggle all the intricacies of the natural world in one hand, whilst cashing in on it and providing world peace and equality with the other – we believe it. Yet, how can we have so much confidence in their ability to read the future, when they are unable to decipher the past and present – a task that should be a damned sight simpler, no?

As Australians are benefiting from an export boom in bees to the U.S., and while the best recommendations from the groups that have been tasked with finding solutions to these problems are to advise which chemicals to use and which not to (PDF), I will list some of the possible causes for the present pollination crisis below (I call it a pollination crisis here, rather than a honeybee crisis, because there are other pollinators that would be lending us a hand – if we hadn’t driven them into exile):

Read moreColony Collapse Disorder – a Moment for Reflection?

Glass Particles in the Sky Studied As ‘Global Warming’ Fix

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(CNSNews.com) – Government scientists are studying the feasibility of sending nearly microscopic particles of specially made glass into the Earth’s upper atmosphere to try to dampen the effects of “global warming.” The idea, while “interesting,” said one leading global warming skeptic, is “not practical” and, if done on a large scale, could depress the ozone layer and cause other problems.

Details from documents Cybercast News Service obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, S.C., are developing computer models of what might happen if a huge amount of particulate matter is shot into the stratosphere.

The particles, consisting of a very fine and special form of glass – “porous-walled glass microspheres” – would be able to absorb a certain amount of carbon dioxide, and would reflect sunlight away from the Earth.

Read moreGlass Particles in the Sky Studied As ‘Global Warming’ Fix

World Bank accused of climate change “hijack”

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BANGKOK – Developing countries and environmental groups accused the World Bank on Friday of trying to seize control of the billions of dollars of aid that will be used to tackle climate change in the next four decades.

“The World Bank’s foray into climate change has gone down like a lead balloon,” Friends of the Earth campaigner Tom Picken said at the end of a major climate change conference in the Thai capital.

“Many countries and civil society have expressed outrage at the World Bank’s attempted hijacking of real efforts to fund climate change efforts,” he said.

Read moreWorld Bank accused of climate change “hijack”

Warming withers Aussie wine industry

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High cost of water adds to pressure to sell, change grapes or even move

MELBOURNE – Australian grape growers reckon they are the canary in the coal mine of global warming, as a long drought forces winemakers to rethink the styles of wine they can produce and the regions they can grow in.

The three largest grape-growing regions in Australia, the driest inhabited continent on earth, all depend on irrigation to survive. The high cost of water has made life tough for growers.

Some say they probably won’t survive this year’s harvest, because of the cost of keeping vines alive. Water prices have more than tripled.

Read moreWarming withers Aussie wine industry

Ice shelf on verge of collapse

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Latest sign of global warming’s impact shocks scientists

A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming’s impact on Earth’s southernmost continent.

Scientists are shocked by the rapid change of events.


An image of the Wilkins Ice Shelf disintegration taken from the
British Antarctic Survey’s Twin Otter aircraft reconnaissance flight.

Read moreIce shelf on verge of collapse

2008: The year of global food crisis

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IT IS the new face of hunger. A perfect storm of food scarcity, global warming, rocketing oil prices and the world population explosion is plunging humanity into the biggest crisis of the 21st century by pushing up food prices and spreading hunger and poverty from rural areas into cities.

Millions more of the world’s most vulnerable people are facing starvation as food shortages loom and crop prices spiral ever upwards.

And for the first time in history, say experts, the impact is spreading from the developing to the developed world.

More than 73 million people in 78 countries that depend on food handouts from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) are facing reduced rations this year. The increasing scarcity of food is the biggest crisis looming for the world”, according to WFP officials.

At the same time, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has warned that rising prices have triggered a food crisis in 36 countries, all of which will need extra help. The threat of malnutrition is the world’s forgotten problem”, says the World Bank as it demands urgent action.

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The bank points out that global food prices have risen by 75% since 2000, while wheat prices have increased by 200%. The cost of other staples such as rice and soya bean have also hit record highs, while corn is at its most expensive in 12 years.

Read more2008: The year of global food crisis

Storms destroy one tenth of China’s forests

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China has lost about one tenth of its forest resources to recent snow storms regarded as the most severe in half a century, state media reported Sunday.A total of 43 million acres of forest have been damaged across China as the result of three weeks of savage winter weather, the China Daily website said, citing the State Forestry Administration.

More than half the country’s provinces have been affected, and in the worst-hit regions, nearly 90 percent of forests have been destroyed, according to the paper.

Read moreStorms destroy one tenth of China’s forests

Hungary to start the world’s first wild seed bank

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The world’s first gene bank for wild plants is to be established in Hungary, reports geographic.hu, the online version of National Geographic magazine’s Hungarian edition. The collection would be stored at the Institute of Agrobotany in Tápiószele, Pest County, and store the genes of 85,000 types of cultivated plants, making it Europe’s fifth largest agrobotany gene bank.
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Colchicum hungaricum (Magyar kikerics), one of Hungary’s protected plant species that lives only on the highest hill in the Villány Hills, the Szársomlyó, in Baranya County.

Read moreHungary to start the world’s first wild seed bank

Warming could trigger insect food frenzy

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Global warming could bring about a veritable insect explosion, if past performance is an indication of future gains.

Just such a buggy invasion swarmed parts of the northern United States during an abrupt global warming event more than 50 million years ago, a new study of leaf fossils shows.

The study’s findings, detailed in the Feb. 11 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that the same thing could happen during our current period of warming.

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This fossilized leaf shows where insects ate away at the plant some 50 million years ago during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Read moreWarming could trigger insect food frenzy

Tens of thousands camp out after Indonesian quake: official

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JAKARTA, Feb 21, 2008 (AFP) – Tens of thousands of people camped outside their homes on the Indonesian island of Simeulue after a 7.5-magnitude quake that killed three, an official said Thursday.

The quake hit just off the remote island located near Sumatra on Wednesday, triggering panic across the region lashed by the earthquake-triggered 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed 168,000 people in Indonesia.

Read moreTens of thousands camp out after Indonesian quake: official

Cyclone heads to Mozambique tourist area and Madagascar

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MAPUTO, March 13 (Reuters) – The tropical cyclone that has lashed parts of Mozambique, killing 10 people, is expected to hit the southern tourist region of the country before gathering speed on its way to Madagascar, authorities said on Thursday.

Cyclone Jokwe struck ferociously last Friday, displacing 55,000 people, destroying electricity pylons and uprooting trees in the northern Nampula province.

“It is too dangerous for shipping. It is now over the Mozambique channel on its current course and is likely to strike both Mozambique and Madagascar again,” Mussa Mustafa, head of the National Institute of Meteorology, said in an interview.

Read moreCyclone heads to Mozambique tourist area and Madagascar

Climate change soon could kill thousands in UK, says report

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Climate change could lead to a heatwave in the south-east of England killing 3,000 people within the next decade, a Department of Health report said today.It put the chances of a heatwave of that severity happening by 2017 at 25%.

Without preventative action, the report said that a nine-day heatwave, with temperatures averaging at least 27 degrees over 24 hours, would cause 3,000 immediate deaths, with another 3,350 people dying from heat-related conditions during the summer.

It predicted that there would be an increase in skin cancers due to increased exposure to sunlight and that, over the next half century, air pollution could lead to an extra 1,500 deaths and hospital admissions a year.

While malaria outbreaks were likely to remain rare, the report – Health Effects of Climate Change in the UK 2008 – said health authorities would need to be alert to the dangers posed by possible larger outbreaks of malaria in continental Europe.

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Eggborough power station, near Selby. The report says climate change
could lead to a heatwave in the south-east of England killing 3,000 people.
Photograph: John Giles/PA

Read moreClimate change soon could kill thousands in UK, says report

Fossil Record Suggests Insect Assaults On Foliage May Increase With Warming Globe

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During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum more than 55 million years ago, insects chewed large holes in this leaf.

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More than 55 million years ago, the Earth experienced a rapid jump in global carbon dioxide levels that raised temperatures across the planet. Now, researchers studying plants from that time have found that the rising temperatures may have boosted the foraging of insects. As modern temperatures continue to rise, the researchers believe the planet could see increasing crop damage and forest devastation.

Read moreFossil Record Suggests Insect Assaults On Foliage May Increase With Warming Globe

Finnland – areas normally covered in snow and ice…

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RSOE Emergency and Disaster Information Service
Budapest, Hungary2008-03-04 19:23:42 – Climate Change – Finland

GLIDE CODE: CC-20080304-15687-FIN
Date & Time: 2008-03-04 19:23:42 [UTC]
Area: Finland, , Statewide,

Description:

Southern Finland had only 20 days of snow, compared to 70 days normally,
while neighboring Estonia had to cancel a popular cross-country ski
marathon in the southern city of Tartu in early February. “I don’t
remember winter like this. We had almost no snow at all in February,”
said Merike Merilain, chief weather forecaster at Estonia’s
meteorological institute, EMHI. “It’s been emotionally very stressful,
especially to many older people, that it’s dark and rainy all the time,”
she added. The Finnish Meteorological Institute said the mild winter
partly resulted from strong southerly and westerly air currents caused
by exceptionally warm surface temperatures of the Atlantic.
Nevertheless, the higher temperatures have only fueled concern that
greenhouse gasses are changing the climate, especially in the sensitive
Arctic region.

“When we were young, back in the ’80s, then winter existed,” said Ronny
Ahlstedt, 28, who works at an outdoor ice-skating rink in downtown
Stockholm. “We are contributing to this warm weather by letting out all
this pollution in the air.” In areas normally covered in snow and ice,
spring-like temperatures have brought premature sightings of flowers
such as winter aconite, snowdrops, wood anemone, daffodils and
coltsfoot. Finland’s coasts are clear of ice up to 350 miles north of
Helsinki, said Jouni Vainio from the Finnish Institute of Marine
Research. “It’s most unusual because now the whole sea should be frozen
along the Finnish coast.” Railway traffic is also being helped by the
warmth. More than 90 percent of all trains this winter have been on time
or less than five minutes late, according to the Finnish state railway,
VR. “Hard frosts and heavy blizzards have always been a bane of rail
traffic. This winter has been punctuated by their absence,” VR spokesman
Herbert Mannerstrom said.

Sweden: Winter ended before it started in Europe’s north

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RSOE Emergency and Disaster Information Service
Budapest, Hungary2008-03-04 19:22:55 – Climate Change – Sweden

GLIDE CODE: CC-20080304-15686-SWE
Date & Time: 2008-03-04 19:22:55 [UTC]
Area: Sweden, , Statewide,

Description:Icebreakers sit idle in ports. Insects crawl out of forest hideouts.
Daffodils sprout up from green lawns. Winter ended before it started in
Europe’s north, where record-high temperatures have people wondering
whether it’s a fluke or an ominous sign of a warming world. “It’s the
warmest winter ever” recorded, said John Ekwall of the Swedish
Meteorological and Hydrological Institute. In December, January and
February, the average temperature in Stockholm was 36 degrees – the
highest on record since record-keeping began in 1756. Record winter
highs were set at 12 other locations across the country, according to
the national weather service, SMHI. Migratory birds have returned from
southern latitudes prematurely. In southern Sweden, they never left.
“The birds that have stayed are robins and chaffinches,” said biologist
Lars-Ake Janzon at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. “They stayed
because there hasn’t been any snow.”

The warm weather also has stirred life inside the vast forests of the
Nordic and Baltic countries, where insects such as ants and ticks
emerged early from winter shelter. For businesses, the mild weather has
been a mixed blessing. For winter sports enthusiasts, the green winter
has been a nightmare. Small ski resorts around Stockholm never opened,
and skating enthusiasts waited in vain for ice to form on the waterways
surrounding the Swedish capital. “There’s not one millimeter of ice,”
said Anders Tysk, organizer of the annual Vikingarannet ice-skating race
on Lake Malaren. After postponing the race several weekends, he had to
tell 500 registered participants on Monday there would be no race this
year. “It’s the first time we’ve canceled since we introduced flexible
dates in 2003,” he said.

Finland this year has recorded its highest average temperature for a winter season since 1900

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RSOE Emergency and Disaster Information Service
Budapest, Hungary

2008-02-29 03:52:25 – Climate Change – Finland

GLIDE CODE: CC-20080229-15599-FIN
Date & Time: 2008-02-29 03:52:25 [UTC]
Area: Finland, , Statewide,

Description:

Finland this year has recorded its highest average temperature for a
winter season since 1900, the Finnish Meteorological Institute said
Thursday. The average temperature in the Finnish capital Helsinki in
January was 0.6 degrees Celsius, which was 4.8 degrees higher than that
of the period between 1971 and 2000, said the institute. Global warming
and unusually constant warm currents from the south and the southwest
may have contributed to the extraordinarily mild winter, the institute
added. A recent poll showed that eight out of ten people see climate
change as a great threat and most Finns would be willing to take more
economic responsibility for global climate change.