Oct. 21, 2004— The world's population is consuming about 20 percent more natural resources than the planet can produce... "We are spending nature's capital faster than it can regenerate," WWF's Director General Claude Martin said. "We are running up an ecological debt which we won't be able to pay off unless governments restore the balance between our consumption of natural resources and the earth's ability to renew them," he added... Each person occupies an "ecological footprint" equivalent to 2.2 hectares (5.4 acres) in terms of their capacity to pollute or consume energy and other resources including food, while the planet can only offer them 1.8 hectares each, the 2004 report said.... "That means we are eating into the biological capital of our only planet," Martin told journalists. WWF said it was particularly alarmed at the continuing growth in the use of polluting fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal — for industrial and personal consumption, w... hich increased by 700 percent between 1961 and 2000. .... The country with the largest overall footprint in 2001 was the United Arab Emirates, with just below ten hectares per person, mainly due to energy consumption that accounted for more than 70 percent of the size. It was followed by the United States and Kuwait, with scores above nine hectares. 

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Scientists say 2007 may be warmest yet

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Writer Thu Jan 4, 7:41 AM ET  2007

LONDON - A resurgent El Nino and persistently high levels of greenhouse gases are likely to make 2007 the world's hottest year ever recorded, British climate scientists said Thursday. Britain's Meteorological Office said there was a 60 percent probability that 2007 would break the record set by 1998, which was 1.20 degrees over the long-term average."This new information represents another warning that climate change is happening around the world," the office said.

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Group warns mountains will lose ice caps

By MALKHADIR M. MUHUMED, Associated Press Writer Thu Oct 12, 9:11 PM ET  2007

NAIROBI, Kenya - Africa's two highest mountains — Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya — will lose their ice cover within 25 to 50 years if deforestation and industrial pollution are not stopped, environmentalists warned Thursday. Kilimanjaro has already lost 82 percent of its ice cover over 80 years, said Fredrick Njau of the Kenyan Green Belt Movement. Mount Kenya, one of the few places near the equator with permanent glaciers, has lost 92 percent over the past 100 years. "This is a major issue because declining ice caps mean the water tap is effectively going to be turned off and that is a major concern," said Nick Nuttall from the U.N.'s Environment Program. All the evidence shows climate change is underway and Africa is the must vulnerable continent to this, he said, adding that foreign aid must address the threat of climate change.
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Global warming said killing some species

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Tue Nov 21, 8:07 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Animal and plant species have begun dying off or changing sooner than predicted because of global warming, a review of hundreds of research studies contends. These fast-moving adaptations come as a surprise even to biologists and ecologists because they are occurring so rapidly. At least 70 species of frogs, mostly mountain-dwellers that had nowhere to go to escape the creeping heat, have gone extinct because of climate change, the analysis says. It also reports that between 100 and 200 other cold-dependent animal species, such as penguins and polar bears are in deep trouble. "We are finally seeing species going extinct," said University of Texas biologist Camille Parmesan, author of the study. "Now we've got the evidence. It's here. It's real. This is not just biologists' intuition. It's what's happening."

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Climate conference convenes in Kenya

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent 16 minutes ago

NAIROBI, Kenya - Facing rising temperatures and flagging efforts to control greenhouse gases, thousands of delegates from around the world opened a U.N. conference Monday on next steps to ward off the worst effects of climate change. Many at the two-week session will look for signs the United States might ease its stand against mandatory reductions in emissions that scientists blame for global warming. Few expect to see such a change, however, while the Bush administration is in power. "We are all gathered this morning on behalf of mankind, because we acknowledge that climate change is rapidly emerging as one of the most serious threats humanity will ever face," Kenyan Vice President Moody Awori told delegates in an opening speech.

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Ice Age gives clues to global warming: study

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent Fri Aug 25, 1:23 PM ET

OSLO (Reuters) - Ice Age evidence confirms that a doubling of greenhouse gases could drive up world temperatures by about 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit), causing havoc with the climate, a study showed on Friday. The researchers made a novel check of computer climate forecasts about the modern impact of heat-trapping gases, widely blamed on use of fossil fuels, against ice cores and marine sediments from the last Ice Age which ended 10,000 years ago. "A doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations would cause a global temperature increase of around 3 Celsius," said Thomas Schneider of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research who led the report.

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Melting Ice Threatens Sea-Level Rise

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer 43 minutes ago

 WASHINGTON - The Earth is already shaking beneath melting ice as rising temperatures threaten to shrink polar glaciers and raise sea levels around the world.

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Warmed-up oceans reduce key food link

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer 2 hours, 20 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - In a "sneak peak" revealing a grim side effect of future warmer seas, new
NASA satellite data find that the vital base of the ocean food web shrinks when the world's seas get hotter. And that discovery has scientists worried about how much food marine life will have as global warming progresses. The data show a significant link between warmer water — either from the El Nino weather phenomenon or global warming — and reduced production of phytoplankton of the world's oceans, according to a study in Thursday's journal Nature.

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2011
A report released Thursday noted high levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium in tissue samples taken by dart gun from nearly 1,000 whales over five years. From polar areas to equatorial waters, the whales ingested pollutants that may have been produced by humans thousands of miles away, the researchers said.

"These contaminants, I think, are threatening the human food supply. They certainly are threatening the whales and the other animals that live in the ocean," said biologist Roger Payne, founder and president of Ocean Alliance, the research and conservation group that produced the report.


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courtesy: earthtimes.org

'Guilty as charged' Mans blame for global warming prooved Posted on : 2005-02-18| Author : Peter Goodyear


Scientists now have proof that man is responsible for global warming, as if you didn’t know that. But then again there were few theories that held sun and volcanoes responsible for global warming.

A new study conducted by Scripps Institution of Oceanography has now proved it beyond doubts that man is solely responsible for rise in global temperatures during the last century.

"The debate over whether or not there is a global warming signal is now over, at least for rational people," said Tim Barnett a marine physicist, who led the research. He was talking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The convincing proof was obtained after the scientists used computer models based on data collected from oceans in last 40 years. The computer simulations showed how higher levels of human-generated greenhouse gases will heat the oceans.

"We were stunned by the degree of similarity between the observations and the models," said Barnett.

"It's really undeniable that global warming is going on, whether you see it in the ocean or in the ecosystems," he said. "There's really a gazillion places to look for it."

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Ocean Study Confirms Human Cause of Global Warming

By Bob Keefe

Cox News
02/18/05 9:35 AM PT

"The implications are huge ... and in the short term, we're sort of screwed," said Tim Barnett, a marine physicist at Scripps, part of the University of California, San Diego.

Barnett said the findings were so significant that the Bush administration should immediately convene research for solutions on the level of the Manhattan Project, the unprecedented World War II research operation that quickly developed the atomic bomb.

A Bush administration spokesman greeted news of the study with indifference.

"Our position has been the same for a long time," said Bill Holbrook, spokesman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "The science of global climate change is uncertain."

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The sea is coming in - for good

April 11 2004 at 01:25PM

By Steve Connor

A dramatic and irreversible rise in the world's sea levels could result from the melting of the Greenland ice sheet if global warming continues unchecked.

Scientists have calculated that the melting of the massive ice sheet on Greenland, which has been stable for thousands of years, could increase sea levels by as much as seven metres.

This would inundate vast areas of land and vulnerable cities, such as London, which are built at sea level.

'A global average sea level rise of seven metres'
Some of the world's most populated regions, such as Bangladesh, would disappear.


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January 13, 2004, 21:45

Swiss glaciers shrink at unprecedented rate

Scientists have discovered that Switzerland’s glaciers are retreating at the fastest rate recorded since measuring began in 1880.

A report by the glaciology commission at the Swiss Academy of Sciences says that all Switzerland’s glaciers shrank last year.

The measure of retreat among the glaciers observed over the period 2002-2003 varied from one metre – at the Schwarz glacier in canton Bern – to 152 metres at the Trift glacier, also in canton Bern.

According to Andreas Bauser, one of the scientists involved in the report, the shrinking is not directly linked to the record high temperatures of last summer but is due to long-term changes in climate.

"This is a long-term glacial retreat, which started at the end of the last so-called ice age 150 years ago," he told swissinfo.

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2005

Is global warming making hurricanes more ferocious? New research suggests the answer is yes. Scientists call the findings both surprising and "alarming" because they suggest global warming is influencing storms now — rather than in the distant future.