Post by GerryWe have heard a lot about climate change and the need to reduce emissions of
greenhouse gases such as CO2. Although we are told that climate change will
lead to an increase in floods, droughts and hurricanes, many people assume
that the changes will be very slow and, for people living in cold climates,
they could mean some nice warm weather.
But the threat of climate change is much worse than most people imagine.
There is a real risk that rising temperatures could spiral out of control
and reach levels that would wipe out the majority of species on the planet,
including the human species.
A two page summary of the reasons may be found in "Climate change: its worse
than you think" issued by the Campaign against Climate Change. This summary,
and other articles on the same theme, can be reached from
www.mng.org.uk/green_house/threat/threat.htm .
Gerry
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1066-1611366,00.html
May 14, 2005
A wrapped glacier, orange butterflies, uneaten wood mice: what's the
link?
Wild Notebook by Simon Barnes
THE BEST COMEDY always has an edge: so this week has been livened up
with a funny story about the ecological holocaust and the extinction of
the human species. Have you heard what they are doing about the
Gurschen Glacier in Switzerland? They are wrapping it up in plastic.
They are applying an insulating fleece, which will be in place all
summer to keep the glacier nice and cool. Because the damn thing is
melting like the cubes in a jug of Pimm's.
Already it is impossible to reach the start of the best runs. At the
top skiing station, the glacier is 20m less thick than it was 15 years
ago. To speak only financially, it's a disaster. So they are wrapping
up 2.5 sq km of glacier to try and stop the sun from doing its worst
this summer: "Like trying to repair the Titanic with sticking
plaster," Andrew Lee, of WWF, said.
Global warming has always been a joke. At least, it has for those of us
who live in the North: and that is where the power and the money of the
world is concentrated. What, warmth a bad thing? That's obviously
absurd. Counter-intuitive. Early spring feels good. For us in the
North, warmth is life.
But try being in Africa in what old Africa hands still call the suicide
month. That's warm all right. It's the rain you long for. The
equation is the same everywhere: sun plus water equals life. In Africa
they get too much warmth, just as we get too much cold and wet. We just
can't believe that warmth could ever be a bad thing.
But it's killing us. It's killing the planet. Sir David King, chief
scientific adviser to the Government, writing in the RSPB Birds
magazine, puts climate change as the fourth great threat to
biodiversity: along with the old favourites, habitat destruction,
overexploitation by human beings and the invasion of exotic species.
Carry on the way we are going, and 37 per cent of existing species will
be extinct by 2050. The system is falling apart. We are being killed by
kindness, by the ever balmier springs and the ever sweeter summer sun
of the North. But before you despair, pass the Pimm's.
AM I BEING too grim? One of the great things about life is life, and
life is the greatest thing for cheering up a gloomy conservationist. A
conservationist of the old-fashioned kind, rooted in wildlife, is
always finding consolation. Like, for example, orange-tip butterflies.
They're everywhere: white butterflies with, yes, orange tips on their
wings. That's the males: the females are mostly white and overlooked.
And no, they're not endangered so I can't moan about that. You can
see them in hedgerows, road verges and woodland edges: small, rapid
wing beats, and the vivid flash of orange. They're actually doing
rather well: spreading further and further north. To do with climate
change, you know. Prettiest messenger of doom you'll ever see.
BUT I'LL START getting bitter if I go on like this. Let's talk
about barn owls: always a favourite subject of mine. The Hawk and Owl
Trust reports hordes of barn owls breeding absurdly early in Wiltshire.
One pair laid eggs as early as the first week in February. A local
observer later found a nestful of owlets with a larder of uneaten wood
mice for future reference. It's a great success story.
And it all seems nothing less than great. Global warming is fun: early
orange tips, early barn owls, and don't we all feel better for the
sun on our backs? We'd think different thoughts if the capital cities
of the world were in Zambia. But in New York and London, we wait all
year for a bit of warmth: the day when the girls metamorphose into
dazzling nymphs, the men wear their jackets on their thumbs and we all
spill across the pavements, drinking and laughing.
And who cares if the Greenland ice sheet is shrinking? If - when -
it does, the sea level will rise by seven metres. And that will drown
sea-girt New York and riverine London both. Perhaps then people will
take this subject seriously. And everybody will say: isn't it a
frightful shame that those bloody fools of the Nineties and the Noughts
didn't do something when they could? I'd better make another jug of
Pimm's.