Page 5246 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 18 November 2009
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This is research from France’s National Centre for Scientific Research. It quotes Professor Jean-Pierre Gattuso, who says:
… now we realise the situation is much worse. The water will become so acidic it will actually dissolve the shells of living shellfish … This will affect the whole food chain, including the North Atlantic salmon, which feeds on molluscs.
This next article is from the Age. It was published at the end of August. Under the headline “It’s not drought, it’s climate change, say scientists”, the article states:
Scientists studying Victoria’s crippling drought have, for the first time, proved the link between rising levels of greenhouse gases and the state’s dramatic decline in rainfall.
It goes on to say:
… the 13-year drought in Victoria is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change.
This is according to a three-year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO. The article goes on to state that scientists working on the program:
… say the rain has dropped away because the subtropical ridge—a band of high pressure systems that sits over the country’s south—has strengthened over the past 13 years.
The next report is from BBC World, the BBC news service online. Under the heading “‘Scary’ climate message from the past,” it states:
A new historical record of carbon dioxide levels suggests current political targets on climate change may be “playing with fire”, scientists say.
In this case, researchers have used ocean sediments to plot CO2 levels back 20 million years. What they found is that in the last period when CO2 levels were sustained at levels close to where they are today, there was no ice cap on Antarctica and sea levels were 25 to 40 metres higher. It also notes that these CO2 and sea levels were associated with temperatures three to six degrees higher than today.
That is just a sample of the science that one can find with a very simple Google search. It really underlines the urgency. It is an urgency that unfortunately is not being carried forward by political leaders as we move towards the vital Copenhagen climate summit because the outcomes at the UNFCCC in Copenhagen next month are unclear. Indeed, it is unclear whether they will get the kind of outcome that the global community actually needs. There is no doubt that there has been mobilisation of governments, non-government organisations, and church and civil society leaders around Copenhagen.
If we could measure the outcomes at the meeting in terms of the political will and motivation of hundreds of thousands of people around the world, surely we would get
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