AL GORE: EARTH IS IN 'FULL-SCALE PLANETARY EMERGENCY'
rudkla - 26. Okt, 23:58
Global Warming - Globale Erwaermung
Donnerstag, 26. Oktober 2006
Collapse of ecosystems likely if plunder continues
rudkla - 26. Okt, 15:32
Time Bomb Ticking for Coral Reefs?
Scientists warn that 60 percent of the world's coral reefs could die in less than 25 years. "Think of it as a high school chemistry class," said Billy Causey of NOAA. "You mix some chemicals together and nothing happens. You crank up the Bunsen burner and all of a sudden things start bubbling around. That's what's happening. That global Bunsen burner is cranking up."
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/102506EA.shtml
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Coral+Reef
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/102506EA.shtml
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Coral+Reef
rudkla - 26. Okt, 13:44
Rising tide of global warming threatens Pacific island states
While rich nations tinker with policies that may shave their carbon dioxide emissions, low-lying South Pacific nations such as Kiribati are sinking beneath the waves.
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1927131.ece
From Information Clearing House
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1927131.ece
From Information Clearing House
rudkla - 26. Okt, 13:09
When It Comes to Global Warming, Market Rule Poses a Mortal Danger
rudkla - 26. Okt, 11:07
Mittwoch, 25. Oktober 2006
Dramatic Efforts Required to Ensure Australia's Well-Being and Planetary Survival
ALERT: Severe Australian Drought Caused by Climate Change, Leave Your Coal in the Ground!
TAKE ACTION http://www.climateark.org/alerts/send.asp?id=australia_climate
Australia is currently experiencing extreme drought as a result of abrupt climate change, and the nation is undergoing unprecedented discussion of global heating reminiscent of America's own post-Katrina reckoning. Australia's per capita greenhouse gas emissions are among the highest in the world, and Australia's economy is based heavily upon the deadly coal fossil fuel industry which exerts undue political influence. Temperatures in Australia are now expected to rise by as much as
8°C (15°F) in the next century with cataclysmic results. Over the coming decades these soaring temperatures will result in water supplies for millions failing, agriculture becoming unviable over huge areas, rising sea levels destroying substantial coastal areas, powerful extreme weather events including super cyclones and bushfires, and countless environmental refugees overwhelming Australia's ability to cope. To address their current climate caused drought emergency, Australia simply must ratify the Kyoto Protocol immediately and engage seriously in negotiations to further establish global mandatory emissions cuts for all nations that are equitable and adequate to achieve what climate science indicates is necessary to conserve the global climatic system. The best estimate is that emissions must be cut as soon as possible by 60-75%, a level which requires Australia forgoing the burning of their coal resources. Australia must stop its obstruction of international climate policies.
Tell them by taking action now: http://www.climateark.org/alerts/send.asp?id=australia_climate
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More Than Half Australia's Farmland Drought-Stricken
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/2850031/
TAKE ACTION http://www.climateark.org/alerts/send.asp?id=australia_climate
Australia is currently experiencing extreme drought as a result of abrupt climate change, and the nation is undergoing unprecedented discussion of global heating reminiscent of America's own post-Katrina reckoning. Australia's per capita greenhouse gas emissions are among the highest in the world, and Australia's economy is based heavily upon the deadly coal fossil fuel industry which exerts undue political influence. Temperatures in Australia are now expected to rise by as much as
8°C (15°F) in the next century with cataclysmic results. Over the coming decades these soaring temperatures will result in water supplies for millions failing, agriculture becoming unviable over huge areas, rising sea levels destroying substantial coastal areas, powerful extreme weather events including super cyclones and bushfires, and countless environmental refugees overwhelming Australia's ability to cope. To address their current climate caused drought emergency, Australia simply must ratify the Kyoto Protocol immediately and engage seriously in negotiations to further establish global mandatory emissions cuts for all nations that are equitable and adequate to achieve what climate science indicates is necessary to conserve the global climatic system. The best estimate is that emissions must be cut as soon as possible by 60-75%, a level which requires Australia forgoing the burning of their coal resources. Australia must stop its obstruction of international climate policies.
Tell them by taking action now: http://www.climateark.org/alerts/send.asp?id=australia_climate
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More Than Half Australia's Farmland Drought-Stricken
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/2850031/
rudkla - 25. Okt, 13:26
More Than Half Australia's Farmland Drought-Stricken
Government Says
More than half of Australia's farm and ranch land is now drought-stricken and an additional 10,000 farmers are eligible for special federal relief. "We are in uncharted waters, if you like, as far as this drought is concerned," said acting Prime Minister Mark Vaile.
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/102406EC.shtml
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Dramatic Efforts Required to Ensure Australia's Well-Being and Planetary Survival
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/2850070/
More than half of Australia's farm and ranch land is now drought-stricken and an additional 10,000 farmers are eligible for special federal relief. "We are in uncharted waters, if you like, as far as this drought is concerned," said acting Prime Minister Mark Vaile.
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/102406EC.shtml
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Dramatic Efforts Required to Ensure Australia's Well-Being and Planetary Survival
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/2850070/
rudkla - 25. Okt, 13:15
Humans Living Far Beyond Planet's Means
rudkla - 25. Okt, 10:38
Global ecosystems 'face collapse'
rudkla - 25. Okt, 09:28
Dienstag, 24. Oktober 2006
Frozen in Memories, but Melting Before Their Eyes
October 24, 2006
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/world/europe/24swiss.html
[foto] Dominic Buettner for The New York Times - An 1870 postcard view of the Rhone glacier in Gletsch, Switzerland, contrasted dramatically with the shrinking 21st-century version of it.
GLETSCH, Switzerland — To hear the locals tell it, you would think they were referring to a loved family member declining in old age.
“It hurts, it hurts,” Philipp Carlen said of his feeling toward the vast Rhone glacier, which once came to the edge of his hotel, but now has receded several hundred yards. The glacier, whose soft contours and dirty gray surface make it resemble some huge sea creature, a whale perhaps, is rapidly shrinking, in the mild autumn weather, by 12 to 15 feet a day.
Eight thousand years ago, Mr. Carlen said, the glacier was the largest in Europe, with arms that reached all the way to Lyon, in France. Indeed, it remains the source of the Rhone River, which flows westward into France and from there into the Mediterranean. Now, however, it is only the fifth largest glacier in Switzerland, and experts foresee the day, probably in this century, when the glacier, all six miles of it, will melt away to nothing.
The shrinkage has consequences for the little village that owes its name — Gletsch means glacier in Swiss German — and its very existence to the icy behemoth.
Like most of the people in Gletsch, Mr. Carlen, 45, spends only the summer in the village; in the winter he practices law in the nearby town of Brig. Gletsch began its role as a summer residence in the mid-19th century, Mr. Carlen said, when the family of a soap maker named Joseph Seiler opened a small hotel here that grew over the years into an establishment consisting of two wings, with accommodations for 150 guests and a pampering staff of 300.
The first tourists were British aristocrats and their families. The Seilers’ hotel had its own butcher shop, bake shop, post office, and even a chapel that still stands, with its slender belfry, for services in the Anglican rite. The family later built a second hotel, up the mountain nearer to the glacier, that Mr. Carlen now owns.
In those days, Mr. Carlen said, the glacier spilled down into the valley below, almost reaching the edge of the village. But as the glacier shrank, so did the number of visitors to the hotel; the automobile challenged a little steam railway as a means of access to Gletsch and made day trips possible, and the number of guests fell further.
“It was not necessarily the shrinking glacier, but today people come by car, and don’t stay overnight,” said Armin Jost, standing in the shadow of Gletsch’s large post office, now boarded up. Mr. Jost, 31, takes care of the roads, in the season when Gletsch is accessible to traffic, and keeps an eye on the buildings.
The hotels, he said, now stay open only from May to October. In winter, snowfalls accumulating to the hotel’s second story, and with drifts even higher, cut Gletsch off from the world. “In the old days, two or three hotel employees would spend the winter in the hotel to look after it, only emerging in the spring,” he said.
First the Seilers sold the hotel in the village to the local government; in the 1980’s they sold the second hotel to Mr. Carlen’s family.
The glacier’s suffering is not unique. All of Switzerland’s glaciers — and there are more than a hundred, large and small, experts say — have lost about 15 percent of their surface in just the past two decades. The experts say global warming is the reason, though particularly hot summers, which might have happened anyway, also played a role.
“This year was a terrible year for the glaciers,” said Max Maisch, an expert on the topic at the University of Zurich. “July was very hot, though August was cool; but September was the warmest in 140 years. Many glaciers are collapsing on the edges.”
In recent years, to help the Rhone glacier over the hottest months, Mr. Carlen has taken a lesson from the care of stranded dolphins and whales, and has spread large tarpaulins of special fleece on the glacier’s edges during the hottest months. “It helps a little,” he said, explaining that it has reduced the shrinkage to about five feet a day.
The diminution is painful for Mr. Carlen because for four generations his family has been boring a tunnel each year into the glacier, so tourists could enter its icy confines. But with the shrinkage, the tunnel, 120 yards long, must be dug and redug, farther up the mountain, by chain saw.
Now a zig-zagging lace of paths and planks covers the side of the mountain that visitors must climb to get to the mouth of the tunnel. In winter, the tunnel has other uses; Mr. Carlen stores barrels of wine there.
Walther Meier, a retired pharmaceutical employee, and his wife stood near the chapel gazing up the mountain where the tongue of the glacier was just barely visible. They had hiked up the valley toward the mountain and had passed stone markers, with the years 1818 or 1856, that showed how far down the valley the glacier once stretched.
Mr. Meier recalled his last visit to Gletsch 15 years ago, when much of the glacier was still visible from the village. “Every year it recedes quite a bit,” he said, shaking his head.
Mr. Carlen is philosophical, reflecting that things could have been worse. In the early 1980’s, he said, the Swiss government drew up plans for a dam and a power station at the end of the valley that would have submerged Gletsch. “Those plans remain in a drawer in the government building,” he said. “And I hope that’s where they stay.”
Informant: binstock
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/world/europe/24swiss.html
[foto] Dominic Buettner for The New York Times - An 1870 postcard view of the Rhone glacier in Gletsch, Switzerland, contrasted dramatically with the shrinking 21st-century version of it.
GLETSCH, Switzerland — To hear the locals tell it, you would think they were referring to a loved family member declining in old age.
“It hurts, it hurts,” Philipp Carlen said of his feeling toward the vast Rhone glacier, which once came to the edge of his hotel, but now has receded several hundred yards. The glacier, whose soft contours and dirty gray surface make it resemble some huge sea creature, a whale perhaps, is rapidly shrinking, in the mild autumn weather, by 12 to 15 feet a day.
Eight thousand years ago, Mr. Carlen said, the glacier was the largest in Europe, with arms that reached all the way to Lyon, in France. Indeed, it remains the source of the Rhone River, which flows westward into France and from there into the Mediterranean. Now, however, it is only the fifth largest glacier in Switzerland, and experts foresee the day, probably in this century, when the glacier, all six miles of it, will melt away to nothing.
The shrinkage has consequences for the little village that owes its name — Gletsch means glacier in Swiss German — and its very existence to the icy behemoth.
Like most of the people in Gletsch, Mr. Carlen, 45, spends only the summer in the village; in the winter he practices law in the nearby town of Brig. Gletsch began its role as a summer residence in the mid-19th century, Mr. Carlen said, when the family of a soap maker named Joseph Seiler opened a small hotel here that grew over the years into an establishment consisting of two wings, with accommodations for 150 guests and a pampering staff of 300.
The first tourists were British aristocrats and their families. The Seilers’ hotel had its own butcher shop, bake shop, post office, and even a chapel that still stands, with its slender belfry, for services in the Anglican rite. The family later built a second hotel, up the mountain nearer to the glacier, that Mr. Carlen now owns.
In those days, Mr. Carlen said, the glacier spilled down into the valley below, almost reaching the edge of the village. But as the glacier shrank, so did the number of visitors to the hotel; the automobile challenged a little steam railway as a means of access to Gletsch and made day trips possible, and the number of guests fell further.
“It was not necessarily the shrinking glacier, but today people come by car, and don’t stay overnight,” said Armin Jost, standing in the shadow of Gletsch’s large post office, now boarded up. Mr. Jost, 31, takes care of the roads, in the season when Gletsch is accessible to traffic, and keeps an eye on the buildings.
The hotels, he said, now stay open only from May to October. In winter, snowfalls accumulating to the hotel’s second story, and with drifts even higher, cut Gletsch off from the world. “In the old days, two or three hotel employees would spend the winter in the hotel to look after it, only emerging in the spring,” he said.
First the Seilers sold the hotel in the village to the local government; in the 1980’s they sold the second hotel to Mr. Carlen’s family.
The glacier’s suffering is not unique. All of Switzerland’s glaciers — and there are more than a hundred, large and small, experts say — have lost about 15 percent of their surface in just the past two decades. The experts say global warming is the reason, though particularly hot summers, which might have happened anyway, also played a role.
“This year was a terrible year for the glaciers,” said Max Maisch, an expert on the topic at the University of Zurich. “July was very hot, though August was cool; but September was the warmest in 140 years. Many glaciers are collapsing on the edges.”
In recent years, to help the Rhone glacier over the hottest months, Mr. Carlen has taken a lesson from the care of stranded dolphins and whales, and has spread large tarpaulins of special fleece on the glacier’s edges during the hottest months. “It helps a little,” he said, explaining that it has reduced the shrinkage to about five feet a day.
The diminution is painful for Mr. Carlen because for four generations his family has been boring a tunnel each year into the glacier, so tourists could enter its icy confines. But with the shrinkage, the tunnel, 120 yards long, must be dug and redug, farther up the mountain, by chain saw.
Now a zig-zagging lace of paths and planks covers the side of the mountain that visitors must climb to get to the mouth of the tunnel. In winter, the tunnel has other uses; Mr. Carlen stores barrels of wine there.
Walther Meier, a retired pharmaceutical employee, and his wife stood near the chapel gazing up the mountain where the tongue of the glacier was just barely visible. They had hiked up the valley toward the mountain and had passed stone markers, with the years 1818 or 1856, that showed how far down the valley the glacier once stretched.
Mr. Meier recalled his last visit to Gletsch 15 years ago, when much of the glacier was still visible from the village. “Every year it recedes quite a bit,” he said, shaking his head.
Mr. Carlen is philosophical, reflecting that things could have been worse. In the early 1980’s, he said, the Swiss government drew up plans for a dam and a power station at the end of the valley that would have submerged Gletsch. “Those plans remain in a drawer in the government building,” he said. “And I hope that’s where they stay.”
Informant: binstock
rudkla - 24. Okt, 18:32
