By Paul Tighe
    Bloomberg

    Wednesday 16 May 2007

    Snow melted across an area of western Antarctica the size of California in 2005 as a result of warmer temperatures, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said, citing data recorded by a satellite.

    "Increases in snowmelt, such as this in 2005, definitely could have an impact on larger scale melting of Antarctica's ice sheets if they were severe or sustained over time," said Konrad Steffen, of the University of Colorado, according to NASA'S Web site. "Large regions are showing the first signs of warming."

    Water from melted snow can penetrate ice sheets through cracks and lubricate the base of the formations "causing the ice mass to move toward the ocean faster, increasing sea level," said Steffen, the director of the university's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Studies.

    Antarctica's ice mass is the world's largest fresh water reservoir and large amounts of water flowing into the ocean may affect the salinity, currents and global climate, NASA said. No further melting has been detected through to March this year, the agency said.

    The melting in 2005 was mapped by NASA's QuikScat craft and is the "most significant melt observed using satellites in the past three decades," NASA said on its Web site.

    
    By Michael McCarthy
    The Independent UK

    Friday 18 May 2007

    The earth's ability to soak up the gases causing global warming is beginning to fail because of rising temperatures, in a long-feared sign of "positive feedback," new research reveals today.

    Climate change itself is weakening one of the principal "sinks" absorbing carbon dioxide - the Southern Ocean around Antarctica - a new study has found.

    As a result, atmospheric CO2 levels may rise faster and bring about rising temperatures more quickly than previously anticipated. Stabilising the CO2 level, which must be done to bring the warming under control, is likely to become much more difficult, even if the world community agrees to do it.

    The news may give added urgency to the meeting in three weeks' time between the G8 group of rich nations and the leading developing countries led by China, at Heiligendamm in Germany, when an attempt will be made to put together the framework of a new world climate treaty to succeed the current Kyoto protocol.

    "This is a timely warning in advance of Heiligendamm and the G8 that the climate clock is beginning to tick faster," said the leading environmentalist Tom Burke, visiting professor at Imperial College London.

  
    By Stephen Leahy
    Inter Press Service

    Thursday 17 May 2007

    Brooklyn, Canada - Climate change is accelerating species extinctions and unraveling the intricate web of life, experts fear.

    Birds, animals, insects and even plants are on the move around the Earth, trying to flee new and increasingly inhospitable local weather conditions. For some, including alpine species and polar bears, there is nowhere to go. And many others, like plants, lack the mobility to stay ahead of changing climatic conditions.

    "We're already seeing species moving, but they're not moving fast enough to avoid potential extinction," says Jeremy Kerr, an ecologist at the University of Ottawa in Canada.

    "The really awful predictions about rapid, massive extinction appear to be true, according to the early evidence," Kerr told IPS.

    One of those predictions came last year from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), an unprecedented international four-year research effort. The MA warned that up to 30 percent of all species on Earth could vanish by 2050 due to unsustainable human activities.

    
    By Fiona Harvey and Hugh Williamson
    The Financial Times

    Wednesday 16 May 2007

    Attempts to step up international action on climate change among the Group of Eight industrialised nations are being strongly contested by the US.

    A draft of the proposed communiqué from the G8's summit in Germany in June, seen by the Financial Times, shows the US is trying to weaken some of the starkest language on climate change.

    The US, which declined to comment, wants to remove all reference to the scientific prediction, contained in the original draft, that "beyond a temperature increase of 2°C, risks from climate change will be largely unmanageable."

    US officials object to setting a safe limit on the global rise in temperatures that will result from climate change but the European Union wants to use such a safety limit as the basis on which to work out the safe limit of global greenhouse gas emissions, and thereby impose emissions curbs on most countries.

    Philip Clapp, president of the US National Environmental Trust, said: "This is another stonewalling tactic. The Bush administration is as out of step with the US Congress on climate change as with the G8 leaders. I hope Chancellor [Angela] Merkel and Prime Minister [Tony] Blair will stand their ground and not allow a watered down agreement to masquerade as real progress."

    
    By David Adam and Patrick Wintour
    The Guardian UK

    Tuesday 15 May 2007

Britain and Germany lead effort to get US, China and India to agree to carbon trading scheme.

    Tony Blair believes he is close to persuading George Bush to accept an ambitious plan to bring the world's greatest polluters into international partnership to fight climate change for the first time.

    The plan would involve setting up a network of carbon trading schemes and is one of five main proposals drawn up by the Germans and British ahead of the G8 summit next month.

    The concept of an international agreement involving the G8 industrialised nations, and some of the poorest but most polluting countries such as India and China, was first mooted by Mr Blair at the G8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005. British officials believe they are now close to securing an outline agreement in time for the June summit in the German seaside resort of Heiligendamm. Mr Blair wants an agreement before President Bush leaves the White House; they are due to hold talks tomorrow at the White House during the prime minister's last official visit to Washington.

   
    By David Adam
    The Sydney Morning Herald

    Saturday 12 May 2007

    Climate change may have passed a key tipping point that could mean temperatures rising more quickly than predicted and it being harder to tackle global warming, research suggests.

    Scientists at Bristol University say a previously unexplained surge of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in recent years is due to more greenhouse gas escaping from trees, plants and soils. Global warming was making vegetation less able to absorb the carbon pollution pumped out by human activity.

    Such a shift would worsen the gloomy predictions of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned last week that there is less than a decade to tackle rising emissions to avoid the worst effects of global warming.

    The prediction came as an equally stark warning was issued that global warming was contributing to increased conflict over dwindling resources.

    At the moment about half of human carbon emissions are re-absorbed into the environment, but the fear among scientists is that increased temperatures will reduce this effect. Wolfgang Knorr, a climate researcher at Bristol, said: "We could be seeing the carbon cycle feedback kicking in, which is good news for scientists because it shows our models are correct. But it's bad news for everybody else." Measurements of carbon dioxide in samples of air show a sharp increase since the turn of the century, with unusually high levels in four of the past five years. The spike does not seem to match the pattern of increased emissions from fossil-fuel burning, and can only be partly explained by natural events such as fires and weather phenomena including El Nino.