Science

Beyond Zero Radio show spoke to James Hansen the world's leading
climate scientist about his call for CO2 emissions stabilisation at
300-350ppm, well below todays 385ppm.

Global warming is set to reverse decades of
social and economic progress across Asia, home to more than four
billion
people or 60 per cent of the world’s population, according to a new
multi-agency report published today called 'Up in Smoke: Asia and the
Pacific.'
The report--the fourth in a series, compiled by more than 35
development and environmental groups including Oxfam and
Greenpeace--says there isgrowing consensus about the huge challenges
facing Asia. However it notes "reason to hope" that there is now enough

Further evidence for the decline of the oceans' historical role as an important sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide is supplied by new research by environmental scientists from the University of East Anglia.

Since the industrial revolution, much of the CO2 we have released into the atmosphere has been taken up by the world’s oceans which act as a strong ‘sink’ for the emissions.

This has slowed climate change. Without this uptake, CO2 levels would have risen much faster and the climate would be warming more rapidly.

Fifty Australian marine scientists have issued a consensus statement warning of the impact of climate change on coral reefs and calling for immediate and substantive reduction targets in human produced greenhouse emissions. The unprecedented call for action is the outcome of a National Forum on Coral Reef Futures, held at the Australian Academy of Science, in Canberra. The scientists have already warned that ocean acidification due to increased atmospheric CO2 is accelerating.

Ocean acidity is increasing at a much faster pace according to marine scientists meeting in Canberra at the Coral Reef Futures 07 Forum, October 18-19, 2007. "It appears this acidification is now taking place over decades, rather than centuries as originally predicted. It is happening even faster in the cooler waters of the Southern Ocean than in the tropics. It is starting to look like a very serious issue." said Professor Malcolm McCulloch of the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) and the Australian National University.

Arctic summer sea ice is headed towards rapid disintegration as early as 2013, a century ahead of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections, according to 'the Big Melt' (PDF), a new review of recent scientific literature on climate change produced by www.carbonequity.info. We have gone past the tipping point for Arctic sea ice and now we watch the disintegration of the Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets which will result in catastrophic changes in sea level of 5 metres or more in the next 100 years.

25 June 07 - For immediate Release - Melbourne, Australia - http://beyondzeroemissions.org/

Sea levels will rise by several metres by the end of the century due to rapidly increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, according to research by a group of esteemed international scientists. Led by James Hansen from NASA's Goddard Institute, the group warns that the Earth is 'perilously' close to entering a new era of dangerous runaway climate change.

The Earth today stands in imminent peril
...and nothing short of a planetary rescue will save it from the environmental cataclysm of dangerous climate change. Those are not the words of eco-warriors but the considered opinion of a group of eminent scientists writing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 19 June 2007
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2675747.ece

'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.