I guess bears are in on the climate change hoax too… Source: The Independent Published: 21 December 2006 Bears have stopped hibernating in the mountains of northern Spain, scientists revealed yesterday, in what may be one of the strongest signals yet of how much climate change is affecting the natural world. In a December in which bumblebees, butterflies and even swallows have been on the wing in Britain, European brown bears have been lumbering through the...
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Monthly Archives: December 2006
Giant ice shelf snaps free from Canada’s Arctic
STEVE LILLEBUEN Canadian Press A giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada’s Arctic, leaving a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake. The mass of ice broke clear from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 800 kilometres south of the North Pole. Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, travelled to the newly formed ice island and couldn’t believe what he saw. “It was...
US Government sees polar bears as ‘threatened’
WASHINGTON – Polar bears are in jeopardy and need stronger government protection because of melting Arctic sea ice related to global warming, the Bush administration said Wednesday. Pollution and overhunting also threaten their existence. Greenland and Norway have the most polar bears, while a quarter of them live mainly in Alaska and travel to Canada and Russia. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on Wednesday proposed listing polar bears as a “threatened” species on the government...
Mercury News Editorial: Climate change at crisis level
Everyone, public and private, must act to avoid a catastrophe (Source: Mercury News Editorial) Global warming is the greatest environmental threat that humanity has ever faced. Caused mainly by the unprecedented levels of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by automobiles and industries, the rise in temperature is already starting to melt the polar ice caps and disrupt weather patterns. The potential consequences for California are dire. At current rates of warming, state researchers...
Carl Sagan: paying hommage to an American hero
Today marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Carl Sagan, he would have been 72. Carl was in my opinion, one of the greatest Americans that ever lived, certainly one of the greatest Americans of the 20th century. He was an extremely intelligent, generous, passionate, compassionate, articulate, and devoted man and scientist. He devoted his life to science, and communicating his love of science to people. Carl was single-handedly responsible for getting me...
Global Warming Map Animation
NASA has produced an animated map that illustrates changes in global temperatures between meteorological years 1891 and 2006. This animated map is an .mp4 file that can be viewed using a QuickTime player. Each frame in the animation represents a one year increment of the ten year mean temperature anomaly. This animation begins with an historic ten year (1891-1900) mean meteorological year temperature anomaly map and ends with a recent (1997-2006) ten year mean...
The government knows that its airport plans will cancel out all its efforts to tackle climate change.
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 19th December 2006 I suppose I should be flattered. In a speech to fellow airline bosses a few days ago, Martin Broughton, the chief executive of British Airways, announced that the primary challenge for the industry is to “isolate the George Monbiots of this worldâ€. That shouldn’t be difficult. For a terrifying spectre, I’m feeling pretty lonely. Almost everyone in politics appears to want to forget about...
Arctic Ice Retreat May Speed, Leaving Ice-Free Ocean
By Alex Morales Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) — Arctic sea-ice retreat is likely to accelerate so rapidly that the Arctic Ocean will be nearly ice- free in summer by 2040, atmospheric scientists said. Here’s a few extracts: This October, temperatures across much of the Canadian Arctic were as much as 9.3 degrees centigrade warmer than the 1951-1980 average for that month, according to graphics on the Web site of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies....
Superefficient, Cost-Effective Solar Cell Breaks Conversion Records
Some good news on the green technology front. A tiny solar cell doubles the efficiency of common photovoltaics’s conversion of sunlight to electricity by capturing the energy from a broader spectrum of light. This new cell can achieve efficiency over 40% and will be available within 12 months. Read the full story here… Â
Alps are warmest in 1,300 years
By Veronika Oleksyn, AP, Tuesday Dec 5Â Â VIENNA, Austria – Europe’s Alpine region is going through its warmest period in 1,300 years, the head of an extensive climate study said Tuesday. “We are currently experiencing the warmest period in the Alpine region in 1,300 years,” Reinhard Boehm, a climatologist at Austria’s Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics said. Read the full story…