Take a look at these headlines:
Warming hits 'tipping point' (Guardian)
Siberia feels the heat It's a frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany combined, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas and, for the first time since the ice age, it is melting
It's got hotter in the city (WWF)
a new report from WWF, analyzing summer temperature data from 16 EU cities, shows the continent's capitals warming by sometimes more than 2°C in the last 30 years.
Update [2005-8-11 9:52:3 by Jerome a Paris]: See also
environmentalist's diary:
Trees. Hurricanes. Global Warming.
Update [2005-8-11 14:30:9 by Jerome a Paris]: See also an earlier diary on the same topic which I missed, from
Disgusted in St Louis:
Has Global Warming passed the "Tipping Point"?
from the Guardian article
Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.
The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.
It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying "tipping points" - delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures.
from the WWF
The global conservation organization's report, Europe feels the heat - Extreme weather and the power sector, shows London is the city where average maximum summer temperature increased the most, up 2°C over the last 30 years, followed by Athens and Lisbon (1.9ºC), Warsaw (1.3ºC), and Berlin (1.2ºC).
Meanwhile, the increase in average summer mean temperature was highest in Madrid - up by a staggering 2.2°C, followed by Luxembourg (2ºC), Stockholm (1.5ºC), and Brussels, Rome, and Vienna (1.2ºC). In the last five years, average summer temperatures in 13 of the 16 cities looked at were at least 1ºC higher than during the first five years of the 1970s.
"Summer temperatures in Europe's cities are heading for an 'unbearable' reading on the thermometer," said Imogen Zethoven, Director of WWF's Global PowerSwitch! Campaign. "Scientists estimate that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are doubling the risk of more record-breaking hikes in temperature."
WWF's report highlights the likelihood of more frequent and intense heatwaves, droughts and rainstorms as average temperatures increase, the kind of events expected as a result of global warming.
It emphasizes that the power sector has fuelled a major part of this hike in temperatures, being responsible for 37 percent of man-made CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels, mainly coal.
We get new terrifying stories almost daily now; we feel the consequences ourselves on the weather; meanwhile, we hear stories like this one:
Europe urged to invest in refineries or face 50m ton diesel shortfall by 2015
"There's going to be such a shortage (of diesel) that at the moment there's no answer to (it), because there's just not enough investment being planned to meet this," said Aileen Jamieson, the project manager for the study.
In recent years, European countries have taxed diesel at a lower rate than petrol to encourage drivers to switch - diesel engines are more fuel efficient and can be cleaner than petrol counterparts.
The study suggests that European governments may have become victims of their own success - particularly as it projects a relative glut of petrol in 10 years' time.
Many people have assumed that the looming diesel shortage in Europe could be met by imports from Russia or the Middle East. But the study found that those areas are unlikely to have enough surplus diesel to meet demand.
And what's happening in Washington: the pork laden Energy Bill and Highway Bill, discussed elsewhere, but which can only exacerbate the problem, while ignoring it almost completely.
Do we actually need a 10,000 casualty hurricane to really do something about our consumption habits???