climate | Rainbow Warrior

Climate Change !

Cree Indian Proverb.

Only after the last tree has been cut down
Only after the last river has been poisoned
Only after the last fish has been caught
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.

New islands previously unknown are discovered because there is less ice in the Arctic region than ever before ...

Islands Emerge as Arctic Ice Shrinks to Record Low

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent.

NY ALESUND, Norway (Reuters) - Previously unknown islands are appearing as Arctic summer sea ice shrinks to record lows, raising questions about whether global warming is outpacing U.N. projections, experts said.

Polar bears and seals have also suffered this year on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard because the sea ice they rely on for hunts melted far earlier than normal.

"Reductions of snow and ice are happening at an alarming rate," Norwegian Environment Minister Helen Bjoernoy said at a seminar of 40 scientists and politicians that began late on Monday in Ny Alesund, 1,200 km (750 miles) from the North Pole.

"This acceleration may be faster than predicted" by the U.N. climate panel this year, she told reporters at the August 20-22 seminar. Ny Alesund calls itself the world's most northerly permanent settlement, and is a base for Arctic research.

The U.N. panel of 2,500 scientists said in February that summer sea ice could almost vanish in the Arctic towards the end of this century. It said warming in the past 50 years was "very likely" the result of greenhouse gases caused by fossil fuel use.

"There may well be an ice-free Arctic by the middle of the century," Christopher Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, told the seminar, accusing the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of underestimating the melt.

The thaw of glaciers that stretch out to sea around Svalbard has revealed several islands that are not on any maps.

"Islands are appearing just over the fjord here" as glaciers recede, said Kim Holmen, research Director at the Norwegian Polar Institute, gesturing out across the bay. "We're already seeing adverse effects on polar bears and other species".

UNCLAIMED

"I know of two islands that appeared in the north of Svalbard this summer. They haven't been claimed yet," said Rune Bergstrom, environmental expert with the Norwegian governor's office on Svalbard.

He said he had seen one of the islands, roughly the size of a basketball court. Islands have also appeared in recent years off Greenland and Canada.

Rapley also said the IPCC was "restrained to the point of being seriously misleading" in toning down what he said were risks of a melt of parts of Antarctica, by far the biggest store of ice on the planet that could raise world sea levels.

Still, in a contrast to the warnings about retreating ice and climate change, snow was falling in Ny Alesund on Monday, several weeks earlier than normal in a region still bathed by the midnight sun. About 30 to 130 people live in the fjord-side settlement, backed by snow-covered mountains.

Bjoernoy said it was a freak storm that did not detract from an overall warming trend.
The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said on Friday that Arctic sea ice had "fallen below the 2005 record low absolute minimum and is still melting". Arctic sea ice reaches an annual minimum in September before freezing again.

The U.S. records are based on satellite data back to the 1970s.
Rapley said that shrinking ice was bad for indigenous peoples and for much wildlife but could help anyone wanting to hunt for oil and gas or open short-cut shipping lanes between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Norway hopes the seminar, with delegates from countries including top greenhouse gas emitters the United States and China, may put pressure on governments to agree to make deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, Bjoernoy sai.

This is woolly and commercial, to say the least ...

--------------------

Here is a piece from The Japan Times 17/08/07, simple data.

"HUGE ARCTIC THAW"

Arctic Ice Seen Shrinking Faster Than Forecast:

Beating forecasts by more than 40 years, arctic sea ice has shrunk to about 5.31million sq km, the smallest area since satellite observations began in 1978, Japanese state-run agencies reported thursday. (Temperatures in parts of Japan were the highest ever recorded at 40.9C and 10 people died of heatstroke on thursday 16/08/07).

The ice is melting because a stagnant low pressure system over Siberia has caused warm air to flow into the Arctic region from over land at a time when the winter ice is relatively thin, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.

In mid- September, when the ice is usually at its smallest in any year, it could shrink to as little as 4.5 million sq. km, a threshold the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted would be reached in 2050, they said.

"If the reduction continues at this pace, it is feared that global warming will accelerate and bring about changes to the climate system, such as frequent abnormal weather," said JAMSTEC, based in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture.

According to the two agencies' analyses based on observations using satellites and ocean buoys, the ice Wednesday shrank further than the previous record, logged on Sept. 22 2005, of about 5.32 million sq. km.."

This is direct and to the point!!! Climate Change is clearly 43 years ahead of predictions here. A fact that the previous MSN article from Reuters is evasive about. Here is another Reuters article ...

U.N. says "Momentum building" for new climate deal.

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

VIENNA (Reuters) - The United Nations says momentum is building for broader long-term action to fight global warming beyond the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol and a climate meeting starting in Vienna on Monday will be a crucial test.

About 1,000 delegates from more than 100 countries at the Aug 27-31 talks will seek common ground between industrial nations with Kyoto greenhouse gas caps until 2012 and outsiders led by the United States and China, the top two emitters.

"Momentum is very much building," for global action, Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate change official, said of the meeting of senior officials, scientists and activists. "And Vienna's going to be crucial.

"The coming week will give us an indication of whether the political community ... is willing to move beyond well-intentioned platitudes towards real negotiations," he told a news conference on the eve of the talks.

"The fight against climate change must be broadened," Austrian Environment Minister Josef Proell said, welcoming U.S. willingness to take part in a long-term U.N. deal to cut emissions mainly from burning fossil fuels.

Vienna will try to break a diplomatic logjam and enable environment ministers to agree at a meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in December to launch formal two-year negotiations to define stiffer long-term curbs on greenhouse gases.

But while delegates talk about talks, many worry that climate change is already taking its toll, especially in developing nations heavily dependent on agriculture.

"We have a very dangerous situation developing," said Lesotho's Minister of Natural Resources Monyane Moleleki. "For the past 30 years climate change has been spooky to say the least.

DROUGHTS !

The number of severe droughts in southern Africa had doubled since 1978 compared to the rest of the 20th century, he said. "And when the rains come they come in deluges, torrents that are useless.

"Cape Verde is an island state, hit by all vulnerabilities of climate change," said Cape Verde Environment Minister Madalena Neves, pointing to risks such as rising seas and desertification.

Chances of a deal in Bali have risen sharply after U.N. reports this year blamed human activities, led by use of fossil fuels, for a changing climate set to bring ever more severe heat waves, droughts, erosion, melting glaciers and rising seas.

And President George W. Bush, a Kyoto opponent, agreed in June with his industrial allies on a need for "substantial cuts" in greenhouse gas emissions. It is unclear exactly what "substantial" means for Washington.

The European Union, Japan and Canada have all talked about a need to halve world emissions by 2050 to slow warming.

Many nations want a "Bali road map" agreed in Indonesia -- a two-year plan to work out a deal to succeed Kyoto, which obliges 35 industrial nations to cut emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

A road map could include principles that a deal should include major emitters, that it should not undermine economic growth in developing nations and that rich nations should take the lead, delegates say.

Even though there are five years left until 2012, many experts say time is already running short. Anyone planning to build a coal-fired power plant, or to invest in carbon markets, wants to know the long-term rules."

The two Reuters articles are definitely full of spin mixed with fact - soon the USA will be shouting "do something", thinking the rest of the world will forget their destructive greed thus far methinks. Compare with the Japanese article.
------------------------

"Scientists can't adopt that lofty attitude any more... ...Because, like it or not, we are in the middle of a war - a global war of information versus disinformation. The war is fought on many battlegrounds.Newspaper op-eds. Television reports. Scientific journals. Websites, conferences, classrooms - and courtrooms too, if it comes to that... ...We have truth on our side, but we're outnumbered and out-funded. Today the environmental movement is David battling Goliath. And Goliath is Aventis and Alcatel, Humana and GE, BP and Bayer, Shell and Glaxo - huge, global, corporate.These people are the implacable enemies of our planet." (A small quote from the excellent book " State of Fear" by Michael Crichton - this edition published 2004 by BCA - no political stance by either author or publisher is implied, hope no copyright infringed)
---------------------

On 08/03/07 Channel 4 broadcast the "The Great Global Warming Swindle". This put forward the view that climate change is natural and the contribution through pollution by the human race is negligible. Is global warming really just anti-capitalist propaganda? For the programme see link below.

http://stage6.divx.com/Outlaw-News/video/1405776/The-Great-Global-Warming-Swindle

On 09/03/07 this response was posted as a blog on the site below.

Last night Channel Four kindly gave an hour and half and a large budget to the international network of professional climate change deniers. ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ was a propaganda gift to the various vested interests who seek to undermine the fragile political and social will to take action on this global crisis.

http://www.climatedenial.org/

On 14/03/07 this more specific response was posted.

"Stuff and Nonscience"

Guest blogger, Ross Gelbspan, Pulitzer award winning journalist, argues that the two main contensions in the “Great Global Warming Swindle” have been already been challenged and settled by science.

“The Great Global Warming Swindle” may make for good television. But it is based on a premise that has been disproved by more than 2,000 scientists from more than 100 countries reporting to the United Nations in the largest and most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific collaboration in history.

It does so by cherry picking a few selective facts which, by themselves, prove nothing — except the scientific illiteracy of a culture that takes “Swindle” seriously.
The film argues, for one example, that the planet’s rising temperature plateaued around 1940 and didn’t resume its upward thrust until 1970. According to scientists in “Swindle,” that constitutes proof that human activities don’t influence the climate.

Whether by intention or ignorance on the part of the film’s producers, that conclusion betrays a profound ignorance of atmospheric dynamics. During the years leading up to and through World War II, the nations of the world accelerated their industrialization — pumping out large amounts of carbon dioxide. At the same time, they also generated huge amounts of lower-level air pollutants which exert a temporary cooling effect by reflecting sunlight back into space.

Eventually, the warming overwhelms the cooling — since low-level pollutants (sulfate aerosols) stay in the air for only a matter of months — while carbon dioxide has an atmospheric residency of about 100 years.

Sure enough, the increase in offsetting pollutants during the 30-year period did cause the temperature to plateau. (Some of that heat was also absorbed by the world’s oceans). Since that time, however, the planet has been heating faster than at any time in the last 10,000 years.

For another example, the film posits the hypothesis that the planet’s warming is due more to solar intensity than to heat-trapping carbon dioxide. But that assertion was long ago laid to rest by the mainstream scientific community. A number of different scientists (see below) found that the sun was the dominant external influence on the climate until the late 19th century. But with the rise of industrialization in much of the world, carbon dioxide became the dominant external influence on the climate. Today, scientists tell us, the sun exerts about 15 percent of the external forcing of our climate, while CO2 and the other gases are responsible for about 85 percent of the heating. In other words, the buildup of greenhouse gases has swamped the influence of the sun on the planet’s temperature.

None of this is to say that our climate is a benign, predictable beast. It was best characterized by the author, Dianne Dumanoski, as a “leaping dragon.” But the natural swings of the global climate have been exacerbated — and pushed far beyond any historical swings — but our relentless addition of heat-trapping gases.

The most significant aspect of our changing climate is not the range of warming — but the rate of warming. It is unmatched at any time in recorded history. It exceeds any rate of natural climate change throughout prehistory. And it is leading us rapidly to a point of no return in terms of climate chaos.

“The Great Global Warming Swindle” is a program we can turn off at will. The changes that are occurring in our climate are threatening to become, in James Joyce’s words, “a nightmare from which [we] can not awaken.”

Ross Gelbspan is the leading US journalist on climate change. He is author of two books; The Heat is On (1998) and Boiling Point (2004). He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1984.

Climate Related Links mosly UK - Some International !

http://www2.btcv.org.uk/
A green site where you can volunteer to help. I looked everywhere to find out what BTCV stands for. Probably stared me in the face.

http://www.cat.org.uk
The Centre for Alternative Technology.

http://www.thecarbontrust.co.uk/default.ct
Totally climate and eco friendly.
http://www.climal.com/
100% climate oriented site too.

http://stage6.divx.com/Outlaw-News/video/1405776/The-Great-Global-Warming-Swindle
This is a link to the Channel 4 "Great Global Warming Swindle". The other side of the coin? It makes me sick!

http://www.climatedenial.org/
The reasonable argument against the "Great Channel Four Swindle".

http://www.earthportals.com/index.html
Alternative site with eco-links.

http://www.edenproject.com/
More than just a green theme park, then? Eden is about connecting plants, people and places.

http://www.est.org.uk/
Shows ways to save energy. And we dont mean give up sex.

http://www.foe.co.uk
Another no need to say anything. This is Friends of the Earth.

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/
No need say anything here either...

http://www.gvi.co.uk/
Volunteer to help conservation projects abroad. Looks posh.

http://www.iesd.dmu.ac.uk/
Want to take a degree in "eco-warrior"? This is the Institute for the Environment and Sustainable Technology.

http://www.pcrecycler.co.uk/
National collection of unwanted computers. Reuse and recycle.

http://www.rainforestfoundationuk.org
Protecting the "lungs of the earth". (Do you love the trees?)

http://www.rsatrees.org/plantatree
The Royal Society of Arts no less - with an excellent suggestion. Plant a tree. A well known campaign.

http://www.waterfuelcell.org
Drive your car on water. Why is this technology shelved? Surely not... conspiracy theories just pour into my mind...

http://www.worldwildlife.org/
Too well known for us to add anything. The World Wildlife Fund. (Do you love the animals?


Climate Change ! Cree Indian Proverb. Only after the last tree has been cut down Only after the last river has been poisoned Only after the last fish has been caught Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten. New islands previously unknown are discovered because there is less ice in the Arctic region than ever before ... Islands Emerge as Arctic Ice Shrinks to Record Low By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent. NY ALESUND, Norway (Reuters) - Previously unknown islands are appearing as Arctic summer sea ice shrinks to record lows, raising questions about whether global warming is outpacing U.N. projections, experts said. Polar bears and seals have also suffered this year on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard because the sea ice they rely on for hunts melted far earlier than normal. "Reductions of snow and ice are happening at an alarming rate," Norwegian Environment Minister Helen Bjoernoy said at a seminar of 40 scientists and politicians that began late on Monday in Ny Alesund, 1,200 km (750 miles) from the North Pole. "This acceleration may be faster than predicted" by the U.N. climate panel this year, she told reporters at the August 20-22 seminar. Ny Alesund calls itself the world's most northerly permanent settlement, and is a base for Arctic research. The U.N. panel of 2,500 scientists said in February that summer sea ice could almost vanish in the Arctic towards the end of this century. It said warming in the past 50 years was "very likely" the result of greenhouse gases caused by fossil fuel use. "There may well be an ice-free Arctic by the middle of the century," Christopher Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, told the seminar, accusing the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of underestimating the melt. The thaw of glaciers that stretch out to sea around Svalbard has revealed several islands that are not on any maps. "Islands are appearing just over the fjord here" as glaciers recede, said Kim Holmen, research Director at the Norwegian Polar Institute, gesturing out across the bay. "We're already seeing adverse effects on polar bears and other species". UNCLAIMED "I know of two islands that appeared in the north of Svalbard this summer. They haven't been claimed yet," said Rune Bergstrom, environmental expert with the Norwegian governor's office on Svalbard. He said he had seen one of the islands, roughly the size of a basketball court. Islands have also appeared in recent years off Greenland and Canada. Rapley also said the IPCC was "restrained to the point of being seriously misleading" in toning down what he said were risks of a melt of parts of Antarctica, by far the biggest store of ice on the planet that could raise world sea levels. Still, in a contrast to the warnings about retreating ice and climate change, snow was falling in Ny Alesund on Monday, several weeks earlier than normal in a region still bathed by the midnight sun. About 30 to 130 people live in the fjord-side settlement, backed by snow-covered mountains. Bjoernoy said it was a freak storm that did not detract from an overall warming trend. The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said on Friday that Arctic sea ice had "fallen below the 2005 record low absolute minimum and is still melting". Arctic sea ice reaches an annual minimum in September before freezing again. The U.S. records are based on satellite data back to the 1970s. Rapley said that shrinking ice was bad for indigenous peoples and for much wildlife but could help anyone wanting to hunt for oil and gas or open short-cut shipping lanes between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Norway hopes the seminar, with delegates from countries including top greenhouse gas emitters the United States and China, may put pressure on governments to agree to make deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, Bjoernoy sai. This is woolly and commercial, to say the least ... -------------------- Here is a piece from The Japan Times 17/08/07, simple data. "HUGE ARCTIC THAW" Arctic Ice Seen Shrinking Faster Than Forecast: Beating forecasts by more than 40 years, arctic sea ice has shrunk to about 5.31million sq km, the smallest area since satellite observations began in 1978, Japanese state-run agencies reported thursday. (Temperatures in parts of Japan were the highest ever recorded at 40.9C and 10 people died of heatstroke on thursday 16/08/07). The ice is melting because a stagnant low pressure system over Siberia has caused warm air to flow into the Arctic region from over land at a time when the winter ice is relatively thin, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said. In mid- September, when the ice is usually at its smallest in any year, it could shrink to as little as 4.5 million sq. km, a threshold the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted would be reached in 2050, they said. "If the reduction continues at this pace, it is feared that global warming will accelerate and bring about changes to the climate system, such as frequent abnormal weather," said JAMSTEC, based in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture. According to the two agencies' analyses based on observations using satellites and ocean buoys, the ice Wednesday shrank further than the previous record, logged on Sept. 22 2005, of about 5.32 million sq. km.." This is direct and to the point!!! Climate Change is clearly 43 years ahead of predictions here. A fact that the previous MSN article from Reuters is evasive about. Here is another Reuters article ... U.N. says "Momentum building" for new climate deal. By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent VIENNA (Reuters) - The United Nations says momentum is building for broader long-term action to fight global warming beyond the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol and a climate meeting starting in Vienna on Monday will be a crucial test. About 1,000 delegates from more than 100 countries at the Aug 27-31 talks will seek common ground between industrial nations with Kyoto greenhouse gas caps until 2012 and outsiders led by the United States and China, the top two emitters. "Momentum is very much building," for global action, Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate change official, said of the meeting of senior officials, scientists and activists. "And Vienna's going to be crucial. "The coming week will give us an indication of whether the political community ... is willing to move beyond well-intentioned platitudes towards real negotiations," he told a news conference on the eve of the talks. "The fight against climate change must be broadened," Austrian Environment Minister Josef Proell said, welcoming U.S. willingness to take part in a long-term U.N. deal to cut emissions mainly from burning fossil fuels. Vienna will try to break a diplomatic logjam and enable environment ministers to agree at a meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in December to launch formal two-year negotiations to define stiffer long-term curbs on greenhouse gases. But while delegates talk about talks, many worry that climate change is already taking its toll, especially in developing nations heavily dependent on agriculture. "We have a very dangerous situation developing," said Lesotho's Minister of Natural Resources Monyane Moleleki. "For the past 30 years climate change has been spooky to say the least. DROUGHTS ! The number of severe droughts in southern Africa had doubled since 1978 compared to the rest of the 20th century, he said. "And when the rains come they come in deluges, torrents that are useless. "Cape Verde is an island state, hit by all vulnerabilities of climate change," said Cape Verde Environment Minister Madalena Neves, pointing to risks such as rising seas and desertification. Chances of a deal in Bali have risen sharply after U.N. reports this year blamed human activities, led by use of fossil fuels, for a changing climate set to bring ever more severe heat waves, droughts, erosion, melting glaciers and rising seas. And President George W. Bush, a Kyoto opponent, agreed in June with his industrial allies on a need for "substantial cuts" in greenhouse gas emissions. It is unclear exactly what "substantial" means for Washington. The European Union, Japan and Canada have all talked about a need to halve world emissions by 2050 to slow warming. Many nations want a "Bali road map" agreed in Indonesia -- a two-year plan to work out a deal to succeed Kyoto, which obliges 35 industrial nations to cut emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. A road map could include principles that a deal should include major emitters, that it should not undermine economic growth in developing nations and that rich nations should take the lead, delegates say. Even though there are five years left until 2012, many experts say time is already running short. Anyone planning to build a coal-fired power plant, or to invest in carbon markets, wants to know the long-term rules." The two Reuters articles are definitely full of spin mixed with fact - soon the USA will be shouting "do something", thinking the rest of the world will forget their destructive greed thus far methinks. Compare with the Japanese article. ------------------------ "Scientists can't adopt that lofty attitude any more... ...Because, like it or not, we are in the middle of a war - a global war of information versus disinformation. The war is fought on many battlegrounds.Newspaper op-eds. Television reports. Scientific journals. Websites, conferences, classrooms - and courtrooms too, if it comes to that... ...We have truth on our side, but we're outnumbered and out-funded. Today the environmental movement is David battling Goliath. And Goliath is Aventis and Alcatel, Humana and GE, BP and Bayer, Shell and Glaxo - huge, global, corporate.These people are the implacable enemies of our planet." (A small quote from the excellent book " State of Fear" by Michael Crichton - this edition published 2004 by BCA - no political stance by either author or publisher is implied, hope no copyright infringed) --------------------- On 08/03/07 Channel 4 broadcast the "The Great Global Warming Swindle". This put forward the view that climate change is natural and the contribution through pollution by the human race is negligible. Is global warming really just anti-capitalist propaganda? For the programme see link below. http://stage6.divx.com/Outlaw-News/video/1405776/The-Great-Global-Warming-Swindle On 09/03/07 this response was posted as a blog on the site below. Last night Channel Four kindly gave an hour and half and a large budget to the international network of professional climate change deniers. ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ was a propaganda gift to the various vested interests who seek to undermine the fragile political and social will to take action on this global crisis. http://www.climatedenial.org/ On 14/03/07 this more specific response was posted. "Stuff and Nonscience" Guest blogger, Ross Gelbspan, Pulitzer award winning journalist, argues that the two main contensions in the “Great Global Warming Swindle” have been already been challenged and settled by science. “The Great Global Warming Swindle” may make for good television. But it is based on a premise that has been disproved by more than 2,000 scientists from more than 100 countries reporting to the United Nations in the largest and most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific collaboration in history. It does so by cherry picking a few selective facts which, by themselves, prove nothing — except the scientific illiteracy of a culture that takes “Swindle” seriously. The film argues, for one example, that the planet’s rising temperature plateaued around 1940 and didn’t resume its upward thrust until 1970. According to scientists in “Swindle,” that constitutes proof that human activities don’t influence the climate. Whether by intention or ignorance on the part of the film’s producers, that conclusion betrays a profound ignorance of atmospheric dynamics. During the years leading up to and through World War II, the nations of the world accelerated their industrialization — pumping out large amounts of carbon dioxide. At the same time, they also generated huge amounts of lower-level air pollutants which exert a temporary cooling effect by reflecting sunlight back into space. Eventually, the warming overwhelms the cooling — since low-level pollutants (sulfate aerosols) stay in the air for only a matter of months — while carbon dioxide has an atmospheric residency of about 100 years. Sure enough, the increase in offsetting pollutants during the 30-year period did cause the temperature to plateau. (Some of that heat was also absorbed by the world’s oceans). Since that time, however, the planet has been heating faster than at any time in the last 10,000 years. For another example, the film posits the hypothesis that the planet’s warming is due more to solar intensity than to heat-trapping carbon dioxide. But that assertion was long ago laid to rest by the mainstream scientific community. A number of different scientists (see below) found that the sun was the dominant external influence on the climate until the late 19th century. But with the rise of industrialization in much of the world, carbon dioxide became the dominant external influence on the climate. Today, scientists tell us, the sun exerts about 15 percent of the external forcing of our climate, while CO2 and the other gases are responsible for about 85 percent of the heating. In other words, the buildup of greenhouse gases has swamped the influence of the sun on the planet’s temperature. None of this is to say that our climate is a benign, predictable beast. It was best characterized by the author, Dianne Dumanoski, as a “leaping dragon.” But the natural swings of the global climate have been exacerbated — and pushed far beyond any historical swings — but our relentless addition of heat-trapping gases. The most significant aspect of our changing climate is not the range of warming — but the rate of warming. It is unmatched at any time in recorded history. It exceeds any rate of natural climate change throughout prehistory. And it is leading us rapidly to a point of no return in terms of climate chaos. “The Great Global Warming Swindle” is a program we can turn off at will. The changes that are occurring in our climate are threatening to become, in James Joyce’s words, “a nightmare from which [we] can not awaken.” Ross Gelbspan is the leading US journalist on climate change. He is author of two books; The Heat is On (1998) and Boiling Point (2004). He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. Climate Related Links mosly UK - Some International ! http://www2.btcv.org.uk/ A green site where you can volunteer to help. I looked everywhere to find out what BTCV stands for. Probably stared me in the face. http://www.cat.org.uk The Centre for Alternative Technology. http://www.thecarbontrust.co.uk/default.ct Totally climate and eco friendly. http://www.climal.com/ 100% climate oriented site too. http://stage6.divx.com/Outlaw-News/video/1405776/The-Great-Global-Warming-Swindle This is a link to the Channel 4 "Great Global Warming Swindle". The other side of the coin? It makes me sick! http://www.climatedenial.org/ The reasonable argument against the "Great Channel Four Swindle". http://www.earthportals.com/index.html Alternative site with eco-links. http://www.edenproject.com/ More than just a green theme park, then? Eden is about connecting plants, people and places. http://www.est.org.uk/ Shows ways to save energy. And we dont mean give up sex. http://www.foe.co.uk Another no need to say anything. This is Friends of the Earth. http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/ No need say anything here either... http://www.gvi.co.uk/ Volunteer to help conservation projects abroad. Looks posh. http://www.iesd.dmu.ac.uk/ Want to take a degree in "eco-warrior"? This is the Institute for the Environment and Sustainable Technology. http://www.pcrecycler.co.uk/ National collection of unwanted computers. Reuse and recycle. http://www.rainforestfoundationuk.org Protecting the "lungs of the earth". (Do you love the trees?) http://www.rsatrees.org/plantatree The Royal Society of Arts no less - with an excellent suggestion. Plant a tree. A well known campaign. http://www.waterfuelcell.org Drive your car on water. Why is this technology shelved? Surely not... conspiracy theories just pour into my mind... http://www.worldwildlife.org/ Too well known for us to add anything. The World Wildlife Fund. (Do you love the animals?