Just read a very interesting thing on the arctic and all the territorial squabbles over parts of it.

Wonder how big those 'squabbles' could get?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/graphics/2008/08/06/eaarctic106.pdf

I saw on Ice Road Truckers that they were mining diamonds in Arctic Canada. plus who knows what else is up there, gold, oil. etc etc..

What happens when it all melts?

Also, the polar bear has been listed as endangered by the World Wildlife Fund. This is of course disputed by some nations that have an eye on those oil and gas reserves.

Last September saw the largest melt of sea ice since for thousands of years. Ice (snow) is the best reflector of heat on the planet and sea water is the worst. Add to that, the permafrost under many of those northern forest is only a degree or two from melting and destroying those forests. Scientists believe we are at the 'tipping point' of GW.

Total lunacy to be looking for more oil and gas!

There is plenty of oil there. Bush has been bullying congress to allow dirlling in Alaska and "to leave nothing but footprints" bolllocks.

the google earth nerds have been tracking the melting of the greenland ice cap, and it is shrinking every year.

The other danger is that the melting of the ice caps will cause the gulf stream to stop flowing..

Yes. If this happens, Europe's temperature may plunge by 5-10 deg.

causing another ice age.. ironically..

Climate change: Prepare for global temperature rise of 4C, warns top scientistDefra's chief adviser says we need strategy to adapt to potential catastrophic increase

The UK should take active steps to prepare for dangerous climate change of perhaps 4C according to one of the government's chief scientific advisers.

In policy areas such as flood protection, agriculture and coastal erosion Professor Bob Watson said the country should plan for the effects of a 4C global average rise on pre-industrial levels. The EU is committed to limiting emissions globally so that temperatures do not rise more than 2C.


In todays Guardian

Can someone please tell George 'oil' Bush!

This is quite scary, I'm not versed enough with this to comment heaps, but, these countries are excited, because they can get another 20-50 years worth of resources (oil, gas etc), which will then create a mass change in world economies.

I just wish, instead of fighting over these untapped resources, they would look at cleaner alternatives.

It seems if Russia go ahead, they could become one of the richest nations around, outdoing the Saudies.

Go green, we have the technology!

That ice cap thing, sounds scarey, but is it just that; to get people scared.

I saw An Inconvenient Truth and I was quite shocked, like everybody else. But there has been alot of discussion on GW and the science presented in the film.

I've not made up my mind either way on GW. I'm sitting on the fence burning my gas in my guzzler car.

...and then they will be able to afford to buy the fancy new technology once it is reliably available. There is a reason why China builds coal fired powder stations - more than the entire UK power capacity added this year alone. It is quick, reliable and most importantly, cheap.

don't remind me, I'm crabbed on some coal stock.

You should sell it before global warming brings the world to an end, which, to hear the way the GW zealots describe it, will happen sometime towards the end of October this year.

It's just crazy. Aust is very seriously considering an emissions trading scheme which will simply drive up costs and not much else - a sort of environmental equivalent to a hair shirt. It won't do much but our suffering will give us a wonderful moral self righteousness.

Even if Aust shut up shop entirely and everyone walked around naked and lived on home grown mungbeans, the carbon savings would be entirely consumed by China's monthly increase. If hysteria could be toned down just a little people might appreciate for that Australia at least, there would be a greater global impact if it were to spend a little more on R&D for clean energy - the results of which could then be utilised around the world

I've heard that when the CO2 emmissions are divied up amost the world's countries, Australia contributes about 0.5% to the total. It make you wonder what my piss-ant little efforts is going to do when China and the U.S. control the fate of us all.

Still, what am I suppossed to tell my kids?
"Sorry kids, it was all a bit too hard"

There's not too many on that fence these days thurs.

From today until the end of the games, there is no polution in China.

You are dead right mate.

Financially, this will screw with Australians. they say, in a Poll, 70% (or something like that), would be happy to pay more, if it means our impact is lower. WTF??? I wasn't questioned, and besides, even if we did this, it probably wouldn't make one ounce of difference.
My advice, buy a house in the hills areas, in 20 years time you can enjoy beach side living.

I'm off to go work on my tan

And yet there seems to be a underlying expectation in Australian that if we implement an ETS then somehow the rivers will flow and the grass will be green again and all will be right in our wide brown land of droughts and flooding rain. Kind of odd how those sentiments were expressed all the way back in 1904. How is that Australia was able to have droughts and floods without global warming?

Love the poem though. On a day of uber nationalism, seems only right:

The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of rugged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze…

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.



Thanks Dotty.

>How is that Australia was able to have droughts and floods without global warming? <

Are you a fence sitter too RD?