Hurricane Rita from satellite

African nomads to be first people wiped out by climate change

 

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1945770,00.html

 

Kenya's herdsmen are facing extinction as global warming destroys their lands

 

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor

 

Sunday November 12, 2006

The Observer

 

They are dubbed the 'climate canaries' - the people destined to become the first victims of world climate change. And as government ministers sit down in Nairobi at this weekend's UN Climate Conference, the people most likely to be wiped out by devastating global warming will be only a few hundred miles away from their deliberations.

 

Those people, according to research commissioned by the charity Christian Aid, will be the three million pastoralists of northern Kenya, whose way of life has sustained them for thousands of years but who now face eradication. Hundreds of thousands of these seasonal herders have already been forced to forsake their traditional culture and settle in Kenya's north eastern province following consecutive droughts that have decimated their livestock in recent years.

 

Earlier this year the charity commissioned livestock specialist Dr David Kimenye to examine how the herders are coping with the recent drought, uncovering a disastrous story. Over two months, Dr Kimenye talked to pastoralists in five areas across the Mandera district, home to 1.5 million people.

 

The study discovered that:

 

· Incidence of drought has increased fourfold in the Mandera region in the past 25 years.

 

· One-third of herders living there - around half a million people - have already been forced to abandon their pastoral way of life because of adverse climatic conditions.

 

· During the last drought, so many cattle, camels and goats were lost that 60 per cent of the families who remain as herders need outside assistance to recover. Their surviving herds are too small to support them.

 

The new findings follow recent warnings from the UK Met Office that if current trends continue one-third of the planet will be desert by the end of 2100. The scientists modelled how drought is likely to increase globally during the coming century because of predicted changes in rainfall and temperature around the world.

 

At present, according to their calculations, 25 per cent of the Earth's surface is susceptible to moderate drought, rising to 50 per cent by 2100. In addition, the areas susceptible to severe drought - 8 per cent - are expected to rise to 40 per cent. And the figure for extreme drought, currently 3 per cent, will rise to 30 per cent.

 

And what is doubly worrying about Kimenye's research is that it has revealed that a system of nomadic pastoralism that has, over the centuries, been able to cope with unpredictable weather patterns and regular drought has been brought by climate change to the point of utter extinction.

 

It is a fact not lost on those who have been forced out of their historic lifestyle to settle at the Quimbiso settlement. Nearby is a stinking pit where the bones of the last of once thriving herds were dumped and burned - victims of the worst drought in living memory.

 

The families who until a few months ago herded these animals across northern Kenya and beyond now huddle in this riverside settlement, their children prone to malaria and other illnesses, but at least close to a reliable source of water. Now they are completely dependent on aid handouts for most of their food.

 

'Our whole life has been spent moving, but we are desperate people. People who have lost our livelihood,' says Mukhtar Aden, one of the elders at the Quimbiso settlement. 'We didn't settle here by choice, it was forced upon us.'

 

Everywhere are tales of huge livestock losses. In one roadside settlement, which now depends on selling milk from its few remaining animals to passing trucks, a man produces a book recording the dark days of the drought. One entry, for 15 February, shows that the community lost more than 500 sheep and goats and 250 cattle in a single day.

 

And while rain did came to the region for the first time in more than a year last month, it was too late for the makeshift roadside communities who no longer have animals to put out to pasture.

 

Wargadud is another sizeable community running along either side of the region's main road. The chairman of Wargadud's water users' association is Abdullahi Abdi Hussein, who describes how the periods of rain have got shorter and the dry spells longer - changing the pattern of four seasons on which the pastoral communities depended.

 

And while there were always droughts, he says: 'Decade after decade it has been getting more severe. It has only been getting harder and harder and more and more serious.'

 

 

Cities in peril as Andean glaciers melt

 

Ice sheets expected to last centuries could disappear in 25 years, threatening water supplies

 

John Vidal, environment editor Tuesday August 29, 2006 The Guardian

 

Andean glaciers are melting so fast that some are expected to disappear within 15-25 years, denying major cities water supplies and putting populations and food supplies at risk in Colombia, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia.

 

The Chacaltaya glacier in Bolivia, the source of fresh water for the cities of La Paz and El Alto, is expected to completely melt within 15 years if present trends continue. Mount Huascarán, Peru's most famous mountain, has lost 1,280 hectares (3,163 acres) of ice, around 40% of the area it covered only 30 years ago. The O'Higgins glacier in Chile has shrunk by nine miles in 100 years and Argentina's Upsala glacier is losing 14 metres (46ft) a year.

 

Although a few glaciers in southern Patagonia are increasing in size, almost all near the tropics are in rapid retreat. Some glaciers in Colombia are now less than 20% of the mass recorded in 1850 and Ecuador could lose half its most important glaciers within 20 years.

 

The rate of glacier retreat has shocked scientists, says a report on the effects of global warming in Latin America by 20 UK-based environment and development groups who have drawn on national scientific assessments. Their study says climate change is accelerating the deglaciation phenomenon.

 

"The speeding up of the ... process is a catastrophic danger," says Carmen Felipe, president of Peru's water management institute. In the short term, the president says, it could cause overflows of reservoirs and trigger mudslides, and in the longer term cut water supplies.

 

According to the Colombian institute of hydrology, back in 1983 the five major glaciers in El Cocuy national park were expected to last at least 300 years, but measurements taken last year suggest that they may all disappear within 25 years. Meanwhile, the ice sheet on the Ecuadorean volcano Cotopaxi and its glacier has shrunk by 30% since 1976.

 

"The drastic melt forces people to farm at higher altitudes to grow their crops, adding to deforestation, which in turn undermines water sources and leads to soil erosion and putting the survival of Andean cultures at risk," says the report by the Working Group on Climate Change and Development, which includes the International Institute for Environment and Development, Christian Aid, Cafod, WWF, Greenpeace and Progressio.

 

Their report, Up in Smoke, says snow and rainfall patterns in South America and the Caribbean are becoming less predictable and more extreme. "East of the Andes, rainfall has been increasing since about 1970, accompanied by more destructive, sudden deluges. Meanwhile, the last two hurricane seasons in the Caribbean rim have caused $12bn (£6.3bn) damage to countries other than the US. Tropical storms are expected to become more destructive as climate change intensifies. Climate change models predict more rainfall in eastern South America and less in central and southern Chile with a likelihood of greater and opposite extremes. The 2005 drought in the Amazon basin was probably the worst since records began."

 

Rises in sea level are expected to be especially severe in the region over the next 50 years, with 60 of Latin America's 77 largest cities located on the coast. The first hurricanes have recently hit south of the equator line in Brazil. "The net effect ... is to reduce the capacity of natural ecosystems to act as buffers against extreme weather."

 

"What we are seeing are many more negative and cumulative impacts. The larger the rate of climate change, the more the adverse effects predominate. Climate change is set to turn an already rough ride into an impossible one," says the report, which adds that the impact of climate change is "hugely" magnified by existing environmental abuse.

 

It proposes that Latin American governments do not repeat the mistakes made by past and present North American and European governments. Several countries in the region are proposing a new generation of mega dams which would displace thousands more people and destroy vast areas of the Brazilian Amazon. The new importance of soya, both as a food and biofuel crop, could also devastate the environment, leading to a battle for land between companies.

 

Large-scale coal, oil, and copper mining not only threaten fragile environments, says the report, but in some cases can physically endanger remaining glaciers and greatly increase climate changing emissions. "The Pascua Lama project on the borders of Chile and Argentina intends to move three glaciers that cover gold, silver and copper deposits. The glaciers sustain the mountain and valley ecosystems and there are fears that toxic wastes used in the mining will contaminate land and water," says the report.

 

Yesterday, the groups called on rich countries to urgently reduce greenhouse gas emissions and proposed that Latin America and the Caribbean governments be helped to reduce their vulnerability to extreme weather.

 

"The only option we have, apart from demanding that developed countries take responsibility for the damages that climate change is causing, is to try to neutralise the adverse impacts that are already upon us. It is time to rethink the model of international aid," said Juan Maldonado, former Colombian environment minister and president of the UN convention on biological diversity.

 

Backstory

 

"With each new flood, drought or hurricane in Latin America, precious gains in poverty reduction are lost. Extreme weather is set to cause massive loss of life in developing countries throughout the region. The international community must invest more in helping poor communities cope with the effect of climate change," said Simon Trace, chief executive of Practical Action.

 

The world's many thousands of glaciers have been stable or in slow retreat for more than 100 years but since around 1980 they have mostly been retreating drastically. The fastest decline is in the Himalayas, the Arctic, the Alps, the Rockies and the tropics. Most glaciologists believe this natural phenomenon is being accelerated by global warming. The effects of glacier melt are expected to be severe. Hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Latin America are dependent on glacier water. A reduction in runoff will affect the ability to irrigate crops and will reduce summer stream flows to keep dams and reservoirs replenished. In Norway, the Alps, and the Pacific north-west, glacier runoff is important for hydropower. If all the ice on the polar icecaps were to melt, the oceans would rise an estimated 70 metres (230ft). But even a small melt will affect coastal life.

 

 

What is to be done? Scientists find new perils in global warming

 

http://www.workers.org/2006/world/global-warming-0831/

Published Aug 26, 2006 9:23 AM

 

Scientists are now confirming what many people have suspected for several years: that there is a connection between global warming and a rise in seismic activity leading to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

 

This news should be yet another alert to governments around the world-especially the U.S., which produces one quarter of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming-that a Herculean effort must begin now to reduce the use of fossil fuels and at the same time prepare for massive emergencies.

 

Instead, the Herculean effort is going into taking toothpaste and bottled water away from airline passengers. It is going into the disastrous wars that Washington has either launched or provoked in the Middle East, which in turn are aimed at control of the world's richest oil area to generate profits for the politically powerful energy companies and banks while there's still money to be made.

 

All of this only compounds the problem of global warming and its effect upon our entire planet.

 

Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods-and earthquakes?

 

In the United States, there is now widespread awareness that devastating storms are being generated by a warmer Atlantic Ocean. Many parts of the country brace for hurricanes, tornadoes and floods each summer. In July, a heat wave that crossed the continent brought hundreds of deaths and a scorched earth susceptible to dangerous wildfires.

 

After Katrina, can there be any excuses for not preparing every community for the worst?

 

Yet even these casualties pale in comparison to the deaths in Asia over the last two years from earthquakes and related tsunamis. The Indian Ocean tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004, caused by an earthquake deep below the sea off the island of Suma tra, killed about 250,000 people in a few hours. Had there been an early-warning system in place to alert people along the coasts to immediately seek higher ground, like the one the U.S. has installed around the Pacific rim, many, perhaps most, of these casualties could have been avoided.

 

The earthquake that hit a remote mountain area in Pakistan and Kashmir on Oct. 8, 2005, led to 75,000 deaths within the first month, and it was feared that many more people would not survive the harsh winter. An estimated 3.3 million people in Pakistan were left homeless, and landslides blocked most of the small roads into the area.

 

No one can say whether or not these particular earthquakes were precipitated by global warming. But it is a fact that the Earth's crust is shifting as glaciers melt and water is redistributed around the planet.

 

'Evidence is stacking up'

 

An article in New Scientist magazine of May 27 titled "Climate change: Tearing the Earth apart?" takes a cautious but clear look at what is already happening as a result of climate change.

 

"All over the world evidence is stacking up that changes in global climate can and do affect the frequencies of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and catastrophic sea-floor landslides. Not only has this happened several times throughout Earth's history, the evidence suggests that it is starting to happen again," writes Bill McGuire.

 

"The climate interacts with the Earth's crust via the changing mass of water and ice that is shifted around the planet. The pressure of water and ice on the crust is considerable: 1 cubic meter of water weighs 1 ton, while the same volume of ice weighs slightly less, up to 0.9 tons. With this in mind, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the loading and unloading of the Earth's crust by ice or water can trigger seismic and volcanic activity and even landslides," he explains.

 

Scientists have confirmed that during both the arrival and departure of the last ice age, there was a "link between glacial advances and retreats and the rate of global volcanism."

 

In parts of the North American continent, the Earth's crust may still be adjusting to the melting of glaciers some 10,000 years ago.

 

"Yet while we may still be feeling the effects of the last ice age," says McGuire, "the impact of today's warming trend might already be making itself felt. In 2004 NASA geophysicist Jeanne Sauber and geologist Bruce Molnia of the U.S. Geological Survey linked unloading of the crust as a result of the rapid glacial melting in south-west Alaska to a magnitude 7.2 earthquake in

1979, and warned that more could be on the way. 'In areas like Alaska, where earthquakes occur and glaciers are changing, their relationship must be considered to better assess earthquake hazard,' says Sauber."

 

Today, cruise ships in Alaska's magnificent Prince William Sound-the site of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill-routinely entertain their passengers by stopping within stone's throw of ancient glaciers. To everyone's delight, these melting mountains of ice pop and groan as they make their slow progress downhill, huge chunks breaking off and falling into the water every few minutes.

 

The story is the same all over the world. The snow is melting and glaciers are receding in the Alps, the Himalayas, the Rockies and the Andes, all of which are crisscrossed with geological faults.

 

"Of particular concern is the continental shelf around Greenland," says McGuire. "Here, the unloading and uplift that would follow catastrophic melting of the ice sheet might trigger earthquakes strong enough to dislodge the huge piles of sediment that have accumulated around the edges of the land. The resulting underwater landslides could generate tsuna mis on a scale comparable to those that followed the Storegga slide 8,000 years ago off the west coast of Norway. ... The result was a tsunami more than 20 meters 60 feet high in the Shetland Isles off the north coast of Scotland and up to 6 meters 18 feet high along the east coast of the Scottish mainland. This region is now stable, but similar piles of sediment near Greenland are ripe for collapse."

 

These catastrophes are still just in the realm of possibility. How ever, scientists are predicting that by the end of this century, if global warming continues, many glaciers will have melted and sea levels will have risen markedly. Within just one generation, this process may become irreversible.

 

What kind of future?

 

People with the means to do so start preparing for their children's future at birth. They look ahead to getting them into good schools and making sure they have health coverage. They set up trust funds and take out life insurance policies to provide for their kids in case anything happens.

 

These are the people who run this capitalist society-the moneyed class. Why do they seem paralyzed when it comes to doing anything about the looming disasters of global warming? Do they really think that their money will protect them and their families? That they can buy their way out and the hell with the rest of us?

 

Of course, they've done it before. It wasn't the rich in New Orleans who were left behind as the floodwaters rose. They don't live in the trailer camps or flimsy shacks that explode when tornadoes roar by.

 

Yet even rich tourists were trapped by the Indian Ocean tsunami.

 

Modern humans have been around for at least 200,000 years and during most of that time lived in communities where wealth was shared. Global warm ing caused by the combustion of fossil fuels began only decades ago. It is not the product of humanity per se, but of a particular socio-economic system, capitalism, that has vastly expanded the scientific-technological and productive apparatus-but without planning, with little forethought, and always driven by the bottom line: profits for the ruling class.

 

The human race will survive. It has been through many other catastrophes-both social and natural-and is a supremely adaptable species. But capitalism? It will have to go. Its gravediggers will be those who have the least to lose and the most to gain by breaking the political grip of the privileged few and reorganizing production on a rational, socialized basis to meet the long-term needs of all the peoples sharing this planet.

 

This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License. Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011 Email: ww@workers.org Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php

 

Global Warming Facts: Big Business Interests Still In Effect

 

http://www.pchpress.com/local/solar8-23-06.html

by KRISS PERRAS

RUNNING WATERS PCH Press

August 23, 2006 3:04 PM PDT

 

MALIBU - Concluding a two-year effort to help make California the nation’s leader in solar energy, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed SB1, the Million Solar Roofs Plan. Last year, the Governor asked the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to implement his Million Solar Roofs plan. Dubbed the California Solar Initiative by the CPUC, the plan will lead to one million solar roofs in California by 2018.

 

SB1 implements the portions of the Million Solar Roofs plan that the CPUC does not have the authority to mandate, including:

 

1. Expanding the Program: The current implementation of the Million Solar Roofs plan only applies to customers of Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric. SB 1 expands the program to customers of the municipal-owned utilities such as SMUD and LADWP.

 

1. Crediting Consumers for Excess Power Produced: Consumers who install solar panels on their homes and businesses can sell excess energy back to power companies for credit on their monthly bills. This credit is a key incentive for consumers to install solar panels. Currently, the cap on the number of customers who can use this option is .5 percent. SB 1 raises this to 2.5 percent. Raising the ceiling will provide part of the needed financial incentive to bring more solar power on to the grid.

 

According to the California League of Conservation voters (CLCV), California is the tenth largest emitter of carbon dioxide pollution in the world. Global warming gases, including carbon dioxide from human sources, few dispute will devastate the environment, the economy, and public health.

 

In 2002, California was at the forefront of the environmental battle as it passed AB1493 (Fran Pavley). AB1493 mandated the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light-duty trucks. However, power plants, oil refineries, and landfills remain unregulated for greenhouse gas emissions. But, they may also be about to change.

 

Schwarzenegger is also actively involved in negotiations to get Assembly Bill 32 (AB32) pushed through the state legislature. AB32 is designed take a bite out of global warming by significantly reducing carbon emissions by requiring a California EPA mandated statewide cap on greenhouse gas emissions, reduce these emissions from major stationary sources such as power plants and oil refineries and develop a mandatory reporting system for such emissions.

 

Taking such a strong position on AB32 symbolically puts Schwarzenegger at the opposite end of the table with the California Chamber of Commerce, an organization that has been forcing its hand in California economic policy. Such changes in what is in the forefront of the Governor's policymaking decisions suggest the Governor is feeling some heat from voters who took him at his word on the campaign trail that the environment was a top priority for him.

 

According to the CLCV, effects felt from global warming can include: rising sea levels that could damage coastal communities and coastal wetlands, air quality degradation, resulting in an increase in respiratory illness, increased death from heat and insect-borne diseases, loss of the Sierra snow pack, resulting in potentially drastic water supply problems and a dramatic increase in state energy needs. Such effects on the power grid were already present this year when consumption usage was at levels not expected for five years.

 

Despite what pessimist's views of environmental policies state, the CLCV states economic analysts say adoption of low-carbon policies by West coast states could save the region $40 billion by the year 2020.

 

Pressing businesses to use less energy and build more efficient products and fighting for laws that will speed these advances are the solutions to global warming, according to The National Resource Defense Council (NRDC).

 

"Higher temperatures threaten dangerous consequences: drought, disease, floods, lost ecosystems. And from sweltering heat to rising seas, global warming's effects have already begun," the NRDC said in a statement. "But solutions are in sight. We know where most heat-trapping gases come from: power plants and vehicles. And we know how to curb their emissions: modern technologies and stronger laws."

 

According a 2005 MIT study, the earth has experienced a 100 per cent increase in intensity and duration of hurricanes and tropical storms since the 1970's. The National Climatic Data Center estimates the damage caused by these storms is $100 billion. And if the earth continues on its current course, the Glacier National Park will have no glaciers left by the year 2030, and nearly half our plant and wildlife could be wiped out by the year 2050.

 

And yet, the United States is the number one global warming polluter compared to other large nations. And, we continue to promote big oil and corporate business "needs" over the facts that are rapidly trekking to our doors.

 

© PCH Press 2006. All Rights Reserved.

 

Ocean-flow findings mean colder Europe, study says

 

http://tinyurl.com/hmprz

Globe and Mail

Thursday, December 1, 2005 Page A18

 

By Martin Mittelstaedt Environment reporter

 

The ocean currents that weave around the Atlantic like huge rivers, moving vast volumes of warm water from the tropics to moderate the climate of Europe, have suddenly begun to weaken, according to a team of researchers from Britain's National Oceanography Centre.

 

After studying long-term data on ocean currents, the researchers estimate that these flows have fallen by about 30 per cent since 1957. It is the first time scientists have compiled evidence showing a slowdown in the vast system of ocean currents that influences much of the climate in the Northern Hemisphere.

 

The finding, reported in the latest issue of the journal Nature, is being viewed as having great significance because it confirms one of the most dramatic projections from computer models on global warming. These models have indicated that in a warmer world, there will also be big changes in the flow of ocean currents, the best known of which is the Gulf Stream.

 

Without the huge amount of heat it receives from tropical waters, much of Northwestern Europe -- including heavily populated regions of England, Scandinavia, and Germany -- would become substantially colder.

 

A separate analysis in Nature on the ocean-current finding warned that if this system of moving heat around the planet breaks down, it "would have devastating effects on socio-economic conditions in the countries bordering the eastern North Atlantic."

 

The research suggests that there may already be some impact on ocean flows caused by climate change.

 

"In the context of greenhouse warming, this is really important," said Ruth Curry, a researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. "These are the steps we would expect to see if the actual ocean circulation was moving toward a sustained shutdown or slowdown."

 

The parts of Europe that bask in the warmth of the Gulf Stream are at relatively high latitudes and have far more benign climates than they would otherwise have, thanks to heat released into the atmosphere from currents originating in tropical seas.

 

The Cornwall area of southwestern England, for instance, is temperate enough for palm trees, while a comparable latitude in North America is just south of James Bay, where boreal forests prevail.

 

The climate models don't predict Europe will cool enough to have conditions like Northern Canada, but temperatures could fall by as much as four degrees if there is a complete shutdown in the Gulf Stream, according to Nature.

 

This means that global warming could have the paradoxical effect of dramatically cooling parts of Europe, while the rest of the planet undergoes substantial heating.

 

Some researchers say the estimated amount of cooling could be conservative because long-term climate records indicate wider temperature swings have occurred when currents have changed.

 

"Palaeoclimate records show that northern air temperatures can drop by up to 10 C within decades, and that these abrupt changes are intimately linked to switches in the ocean circulation," according to the separate analysis in Nature, which was written by Detlef Quadfasel, a climate researcher at the Universität Hamburg in Germany.

 

The new research was based on current flow measurements taken in 2004 by deep-sea instruments placed in a line across the Atlantic stretching from the Bahamas to the coast of Africa. The results obtained were then compared to readings taken in the same places during the 1950s, 1980s, and 1990s.

 

Currents are powered by changes in the density of water, which is influenced by water temperatures and salinity. Warmer, less saline water flows more slowly.

 

Since the 1950s, there has been a shift in currents, with more warm water recirculating south around the tropics instead of flowing north to the Arctic past the coasts of Ireland and Norway.

 

This has been accompanied by a significant increase in water temperatures near the Bahamas of between one and two degrees stretching east over several hundred kilometres.

 

The researchers didn't measure directly the amount of water moving in the branch of the Gulf Stream that flows to Northern Europe because it originates at a higher latitude than where they placed their instruments. But they were able to measure the return flows of colder water out of the Arctic that balance inflows from the Gulf Stream.

 

This colder water moves south in a deep current flowing three to five kilometres under the ocean's surface along the eastern coast of North America. There was a 50-per-cent drop in the volume of this flow between

1957 and 2004.

 

The big thaw

 

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article328217.ece

20 November 2005 21:35

 

Global disaster will follow if the ice cap on Greenland melts. Now scientists say it is vanishing far faster than even they expected.

 

Geoffrey Lean reports

Published: 20 November 2005

 

Greenland's glaciers have begun to race towards the ocean, leading scientists to predict that the vast island's ice cap is approaching irreversible meltdown, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

 

Research to be published in a few days' time shows how glaciers that have been stable for centuries have started to shrink dramatically as temperatures in the Arctic have soared with global warming. On top of this, record amounts of the ice cap's surface turned to water this summer.

 

The two developments - the most alarming manifestations of climate change to date - suggest that the ice cap is melting far more rapidly than scientists had thought, with immense consequences for civilisation and the planet. Its complete disappearance would raise the levels of the world's seas by 20 feet, spelling inundation for London and other coastal cities around the globe, along with much of low-lying countries such as Bangladesh.

 

More immediately, the vast amount of fresh water discharged into the ocean as the ice melts threatens to shut down the Gulf Stream, which protects Britain and the rest of northern Europe from a freezing climate like that of Labrador.

 

The revelations, which follow the announcement that the melting of sea ice in the Arctic also reached record levels this summer, come as the world's governments are about to embark on new negotiations about how to combat global warming.

 

This week they will meet in Montreal for the first formal talks on whether there should be a new international treaty on cutting the pollution that causes climate change after the Kyoto protocol expires in seven years' time. Writing in The Independent yesterday, Tony Blair called the meeting "crucial", adding that it "must start to shape an inclusive global solution". But little progress is expected, largely because of continued obstruction from President George Bush.

 

The new evidence from Greenland, to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, shows a sudden decline in the giant Helheim glacier, a river of ice that grinds down from the inland ice cap to the sea through a narrow rift in the mountain range on the island's east coast.

 

Professor Slawek Tulaczyk, of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told the IoS that the glacier had dropped 100 feet this summer.

 

Over the past four years, the research adds, the front of the glacier - which has remained in the same place since records began - has retreated four and a half miles. As it has retreated and thinned, the effects have spread inland "very fast indeed", says Professor Tulaczyk. As the centre of the Greenland ice cap is only 150 miles away, the researchers fear that it, too, will soon be affected.

 

The research echoes disturbing studies on the opposite side of Greenland: the giant Jakobshavn glacier - at four miles wide and 1,000 feet thick the biggest on the landmass - is now moving towards the sea at a rate of 113 feet a year; the normal annual speed of a glacier is just one foot.

 

The studies have found that water from melted ice on the surface is percolating down through holes on the glacier until it forms a layer between it and the rock below, slightly lifting it and moving it toward the sea as if on a conveyor belt. This one glacier alone is reckoned now to be responsible for 3 per cent of the annual rise of sea levels worldwide.

 

"We may be very close to the threshold where the Greenland ice cap will melt irreversibly," says Tavi Murray, professor of glaciology at the University of Wales. Professor Tulaczyk adds: "The observations that we are seeing now point in that direction."

 

Until now, scientists believed the ice cap would take 1,000 years to melt entirely, but Ian Howat, who is working with Professor Tulaczyk, says the new developments could "easily" cut this time "in half".

 

There is also a more immediate danger as the melting ice threatens to disrupt the Gulf Stream, responsible for Britain's mild climate. The current, which brings us as much heat in winter as we get from the sun, is driven by very salty water sinking off Greenland. This drives a deep current of cold ocean southwards, in turn forcing the warm water north.

 

Research at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts has shown, that even before the glaciers started accelerating, the water in the North Atlantic was getting fresher in what it describes as "the largest and most dramatic oceanic change ever measured in the era of modern instruments".

 

Even before these discoveries, scientists had shortened to evens the odds on the Gulf Stream failing this century. When it failed before, 12,700 years ago, Britain was covered in permafrost for 1,300 years.

---

 

see also:

Melting of permafrost threatens homes and roads, scientists warn

 

· Study foresees huge release of carbon by 2100 · Water runoff could affect global currents

David Adam, environment correspondent

Wednesday December 21, 2005

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1671774,00.html

 

---

 

Native Alaskans Feel the Heat of Global Warming

 

http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-08-10-voa37.cfm

 

By Brian Padden

Anchorage, Alaska

10 August 2006

 

Native Alaskans have seen many changes in the last century. Many have been converted by Christian missionaries. Their hand-made canoes have been replaced by motorboats. And their meager existence has been supplemented by government assistance. Despite these outside influences, Alaskans have been able to maintain reliance on their traditional way of life. But that could soon change. As VOA's Brian Padden reports, conditions attributed to global warming are now threatening the environment itself.

 

Mike Williams has spent much of his life on the Kushokwim River in the western region of sub-arctic Alaska. He says rising temperatures during the last decade have been melting the permafrost layer of Earth, causing increased erosion. Bethel, Alaska and other towns have had to constantly reinforce their sea walls.

 

Nipaciak and other smaller villages had to be totally relocated. Mr. Williams points out where the villages once stood. "This used to be a village here and because of the erosion, it had wiped it out and people are moving way back."

 

Williams is a leader of the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, which represents 229 native Alaskan tribes. He is a Yupiaq Eskimo, a tribe of native Alaskans who have survived here on the outskirts of the tundra for thousands of years. Most still rely on hunting and fishing done in the summer months to sustain them during the winter freeze.

 

The Elders of the tribes have witnessed many changes to their traditional way of life over the years, such as motorized vehicles to get around, and government assistance to augment their meager existence. But they say global warming is changing the environment itself. Seventy-seven year-old James Willie says even the snow is not the same. "It was a different cold. Snow wasn't, you know, it's just like feather. When it got a little bit warm it melted away fast."

 

Williams describes Katie Kernak as his wife's grandmother. She says the biggest change brought on by the warmer, dryer climate has been forest fires in recent years. "When she was growing up she never used to hear about any fires at all. But now in the summer it is smoky and there are all kinds of fires."

 

Williams says what may seem like small changes are having a major impact. The forest fires threaten delicate ecosystems. The warmer snow and thinner ice are making crossing the river more dangerous. And climate change is also affecting the wildlife, altering migration routes and feeding habits.

 

"It has a huge impact and little changes in climate makes a whole lot of difference on our lives. "

 

Williams says unless action is taken on a global scale, this way of life in the Alaskan wilderness could end.

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