(New ones on top please)
National Climate March on Saturday December 6th 2008. March on Parliament to demand that the government acts on climate now! The march this year goes to Parliament Square to demand that the government act now on climate. The march will now start at Grosvenor Square (5 mins from Speakers Corner, Hyde Park - Bond Street or Marble Arch tube) - assemble 12 noon.
On Thursday 27th November, The Public Interest Research Centre will present the Climate Safety report at Friends Meeting House, Euston, London. The ‘Climate Safety’ report gives a simple summary of the latest science, delivering a clear message that to have any chance of maintaining a safe climate, we must rapidly decarbonise our society, preserve global sinks, and address the problem with an unprecedented degree of seriousness.
This leader from the Times, 13th October 2008, warns that tougher economic times cannot be a pretext for abandoning climate change targets.
What the Public Doesn't Get About Climate Change. This article in Time Magazine reports on a study in the 23rd October issue of Science. The study showed that even MIT graduate students greatly underestimated the cuts in greenhouse gas that are necessary. The shocking study reflects the tremendous gap in understanding that exists regarding global warming. The study's author, professor John Sterman, believes that what is needed is something like a new civil rights movement, to dramatically change the public's beliefs and behaviours.
The third and final part of the BBC series "Earth: The Climate Wars" was broadcast on Sunday 21st September 2008. In it Dr Iain Stewart discusses the reliability of climate models and reviews the evidence of recent rapid arctic warming and the drying trend in the United States Southwest region. He also states that rapid and catastrophic warming within our lifetimes is a possibility, because evidence of past climate changes shows that sudden shifts in climate are relatively common i.e. non-linear climate change is an inherent part of the climate system. He interviews a climate scientist who states that if such a rapid change occurred we would not be able to grow enough food and it would be a challenge for even the most industrialised countries to adapt. The programme can be viewed online until 28th September on the BBC's iPlayer site
In this report in the Financial Times, Lord Rees (president of the Royal Society) says that emission reductions and carbon capture must be deployed with much more urgency.
Professor Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany has said that only a return to pre-industrial levels of CO2 would be enough to guarantee a safe future for the planet. Current political targets to slow the growth in emissions and stabilise carbon levels were insufficient, and ways may have to be found to actively remove CO2 from the air. Read more
The Kingsnorth coal power station protestors have been found not guilty of criminal damage. The jury accepted the "lawful excuse" defence after hearing testimony from climate experts. Read this for the full story.
"A shadowy scientific elite codenamed Jason warned the US about global warming 30 years ago, but was sidelined for political convenience." A 3 part tv series by geologist Iain Stewart tells the story of climate science from the beginning, including the contribution of the Jasons. Part 2 will be shown and part 1 repeated on BBC2 on Sunday 14th September 2008. This article gives some of the detail.
Open water now stretches all the way round the Arctic, making it possible for the first time in human history to circumnavigate the North Pole. New satellite images show that melting ice has opened up both the North-west and North-east passages, signalling the unexpectedly rapid progress of global warming. Reported on 31st August 2008
How much could the sea level rise by 2100? Read this for a discussion of some recent science. In summary, inclusion of dynamic ice sheet processes gives projected sea level rise somewhere in the 80 cm to 2 metre range.
An article published in Nature Geoscience has examined the demise of the Laurentide (North American) ice sheet at the end of the last ice age. It identifies two periods during which melting ice contributed about 1.3 and 0.7 cm of sea level rise per year. It concludes that geologic evidence for a rapid retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet may describe a precedent for changes of the Greenland ice sheet over the coming century. Abstract of article
SIAS meeting on 12 August 2008. The working party are in association with SIAS putting on a meeting on 12 August at Staple Inn. Read more here
Friends of the Earth have reported on their public meeting on the Climate Change bill, held on 22nd April 2008. Read here for details. You can also read this blog for some additional detail not reported by FoE. The public meeting gave a good overview of the climate change policies of the 3 main British political parties.
Climate change expert Nicholas Stern says he under-estimated the threat from global warming in a major report 18 months ago when he compared the economic risk to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Latest climate science showed global emissions of planet-heating gases were rising faster and upsetting the climate more than previously thought, Stern said in a Reuters interview on 16th April 2008.