UNITED NATIONS GIVES THE STATE OF THE PLANET

As this BBC report neatly puts it: 'In the language of James Lovelock's Gaia theory, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that have punctuated 2007 allowed us to take the planet's temperature; Geo-4 shows us what is going on in the blood supply, the lymph system, the intestines and the immune defences.'

In one word, it's sick.

The full report, which weighs in at 21.8MB, can be downloaded from the BBC site.

CO2 HAS RISEN FASTER THAN EXPECTED

An international study has found that carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen 35% faster than expected since 2000, reports the BBC.

About half came from inefficiency in the use of fossil fuels, the rest from a decline in the natural ability of land and oceans to soak up CO2 from the atmosphere.

FUELLING CATASTROPHIC CLIMATE-CHANGE

The latest Worldwatch Institute report says our consumption of energy and other critical resources is constantly breaking records, disrupting the climate and undermining life on earth.

In 2006 the world used 3.9 billion tons of oil, our use of fossil fuels produced 7.6 billion tons of carbon emissions, and atmospheric carbon-dioxide reached 380 parts per million. In 2005 more wood was removed from forests than ever before.

A full summary of the Institute's chilling report is on Science Daily.

AWARD-WINNING SOLAR HOUSE POWERS CAR TOO

Science Daily details an award-winning house built by University of Maryland students, which generates enough power to run both the house and the car, and employs a simple dessicant system to remove excess moisture from the air, thus eliminating the expense and complexity of an air-conditioning system.

OCEAN ACIDIFICATION EVEN WORSE THAN GOH?

Serious acidification of the oceans caused by dissolved CO2 seems to be taking place over decades rather than the centuries originally predicted, with potentially devastating effects for corals and the marine organisms that build reefs and provide much of the Earth's breathable oxygen.

Corals and plankton with chalky skeletons are at the base of the marine food-chain. They rely on seawater saturated with calcium carbonate to form their skeletons (the process is called calcification). But as acidity rises, saturation falls, making that harder and harder.

'When CO2 levels in the atmosphere reach 500ppm, you put calcification out of business in the oceans,' says Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of CoECRS and the University of Queensland (present levels are 385ppm, increasing at 2-3ppm per year).

'Global warming is incredibly serious, but ocean acidification could be even more serious.'

See Science Daily for the full report.

ARCTIC WIND OF CHANGE NOW BLOWING

A new wind-circulation pattern is blowing more warm air towards the North Pole than in the twentieth century, says a new US government study--click for the BBC report.

The report stresss that the fate of the Arctic affects the whole planet.

GREENHOUSE GASES WORSE THAN PREDICTED

The IPCC report due in November, has been heralded by Australia's top conservation scientist, Tim Flannery, as saying that the level of greenhouse gases is worse than the the worst-case scenario foreseen in 2001, and that by mid 2005 they had already reached dangerous levels. Click here for the NewsDaily story.

As this blog has said many times, global-overheating has passed the point of no return. The sooner we pull our stupid heads out of the Arabian sands and the world's coal-mines and put planet-friendly technologies on a war-footing the better. We cannot roll this thing back but we can at least try to knock the top off the worst of it.

ARCTIC SEA-ICE ON A DEATH-SPIRAL?

Some think so, after it shrank to the smallest area on record this year. The US National Snow & Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) says the minimum extent of 4.13 million square kilometres was well under the previous record low of 5.32 million square kilometres set in 2005. See the BBC report.

But that is hardly surprising, given the temperatures shown at this Website for this August. Look at the hotspot at the top of the world in the ENSO SST Analysis graphic, and look at how far it is above the baseline average. At this rate NOAA-NCDC will have to add a new colour to the right of the scale underneath. Funereal black?

CO2 WILL MAKE OCEANS ILLEGAL BY 2050

If carbon-dioxide emissions are not cut drastically, they will have so altered the chemistry of the oceans by the middle of the century that the water-quality criteria set by the US Environmental Protection Agency will have been violated. Not to mention creating a serious risk for what lives in them. Click here for the Science Daily article.

MORE NASTY SNIPPETS FROM GOH RESEARCH

Global-overheating research and news items keep delivering more and more nasty stuff. Here are some more snippets.

Because we are making the planet warmer, the amount of moisture in the atmosphere has increased by 0.41 kilograms per cubic metre per decade since 1988. Details in this report from
Science Daily. A report three weeks later on the BBC's site on an article in Nature underlined the point.

A British-led study has offered the first evidence that climate-change has weakened the Southern Ocean carbon-sink . Click here for details

Then there's this report in
Science Daily to cheer you up, which says that the mortality of plants could increase 40% if land temperatures increase by up to 4 degrees Celsius, which modelling predicts for this century--unless you take the less conservative models which predict far higher rises.

Ex-president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, rightly worries about the world's water-supply. Creatures that are 80% water should. You would think.

Then there's the methane from bogs, which will obviously worsen the feedback-loop.

Meanwhile, over the US of A, a judge washes his hands in front of the world. It's political, not legal, he tells the State of California, dismissing its case against carmakers--see the BBC report. There are none so blind...

BUSH AIDE SAYS NO SAFE TEMPERATURE RISE

Professor John Marburger, the US chief scientist and an advisor to President Bush, said
in this BBC interview that global-overheating is man-made and that there is no safe temperature increase.

GREENLAND ICECAP TREMBLING WITH APPREHENSION

Mini-earthquakes and the acceleration of glaciers on the Greenland icecap are signs that global-overheating is speeding up, reports
Science Daily.

Estimates of the consequent rise in sea-levels by 2100 now range up to 2 metres, far more than the 20-60cm in IPCC's prognosis.

As if that were not bad enough, the Arctic sea-ice is getting thinner and thinner, as this report, also in Science Daily, makes alarmingly clear. Down to a metre, a 50% drop from what it was in 2001.

INSIGHT ON THE WORKING OF THE BRAIN NOW PROVED

This blog has from time to time gone right off the topic of energy to publish ideas about DNA, cellular proteins and the detailed workings of neurons. It is gratifying to see that empirical research has now shown those ideas to have been correct--see this report in
Science Daily.

The point was underlined by another report that came out a month later, also in Science Daily.

For the earlier postings click here, and here, and here.

CLIMATE-CHANGE HELPS GOBBLE HUMAN FLESH

Just when you thought it might be safe to come out of your climate-change bunker and stop living on slimmer's soybean and freeze-dried lawn-cuttings, you get this cheerful little item in
Science Daily.

CORAL AND ARCTIC SEA ICE VANISHING FAST

Research reported on the BBC shows that coral is vanishing from the earth faster than predicted. The UN expects 60% of it to have gone by 2030.

Arctic sea ice is also vanishing at a great rate of knots, and this year is expected to set a record for minimum cover. Click for the BBC's story.

MUCK IN ASIAN AIR OVERHEATS EARTH TOO

Tiny particles from burning wood and fossil-fuels in Asia are another significant contributor to regional overheating. Details in this BBC News report.

As if we needed another cause of global overheating.

YET MORE CLIMATE-CHANGE LEVERS FOUND

Oh dear! Just when optimists might have hoped that the news could not get worse, researchers have found a hitherto unknown driver of manmade climate-ruination, as this BBC News item shows.

That, on top of this research, also reported by the BBC, was enough to make this a most a joyous week for all the Earthlings that noticed and cared.

The report on the BBC World Service of that research on rainfall included an interview with one of the research team. He said they could not understand why the actuality was worse than the computer models had predicted. He said they would have to go back and look at the models.

Which underlines the point made so often in this blog. Things are worse than we are being told, and much worse than we know, so we are headed for a very nasty future on this planet.

EUROPEAN MELTDOWN ANOTHER HARBINGER

This article in the New Zealand Herald, which shows Greece on a 'war-footing' to combat the effects of the present heatwave, is the right idea--about forty years too late. We should have put the whole planet on a war-footing long ago so as to get us off the black-stuff long before the carbon-dioxide buildup went past the point of no-return and headed for critical. As it now has and is.

GLACIERS & ICECAPS CAUSE MORE SEA RISE

A new University of Colorado at Boulder study (funded mainly by the National Science Foundation and NASA), reported in ScienceDaily, the ice-loss from glaciers and ice-caps is expected to cause more global sea rise this century than the massive Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets.

The researchers concluded that glaciers and ice-caps are now contributing about 60% of the world's ice to the oceans and the rate has been markedly accelerating in the past decade, said Emeritus Professor Mark Meier of CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, the lead author of the study. The contribution is about 415 cubic kilometres of ice annually--nearly the volume of water in Lake Erie--and is rising by about 12.5 cubic kilometres per year.

In contrast, the CU-Boulder team estimated that Greenland now contributes about 28% of the total global sea rise from ice-loss and Antarctica about 12%. Greenland is not expected to catch up to glaciers and ice-caps in terms of sea level rise contributions until the end of the century, according to the study.

The team estimated that the accelerating melt of glaciers and ice-caps could add 10-24cm of sea-level rise globally by 2100. That does not include the expansion of warming ocean water, which could double those numbers, to 20-48cm. A 30cm sea-level rise typically causes a shoreline retreat of 30 metres or more, and about 100 million people now live within a metre of sea level.

If the sea-level rise generated by melting glaciers and ice-caps is 60% of the total the total rise anticipated by 2100 by this study is 1.6 times the above numbers--i.e., up to 32-77cm. But the expected temperature-increase used in this study is not given. If it was only the IPCCC's modest figure, the change in sea-levels will obviously be far greater--even several times as much. Add what floods and storm-surges can contribute, and a very grim prospect is in store for all coastal cities and their ports and airports, and for low-lying countries, and thus for vast numbers of people.

ANOTHER BLOW TO JUNK-SCIENCE ADDICTS

Those who sneer at the massive amount of evidence for climate-change, and exist in deep denial of it, now have to put up with even more weighty disproof of their blind assertions, as this BBC News item shows.

On top of that is the news that this year is shaping up to be one of the warmest on record. The January-to-June data is now off the satellites and the numbers do not look good. Globally, for land, temperatures were the warmest on record, at an alarming 1.18 degrees Celsius above the baseline average. And for land and ocean combined they were the second warmest. Click here.

But don't worry about any of that, Junkheads. Just carry on driving your planet-trashers, and loving your coal-fired power-stations, and chopping down swathes of forest. Yay!