The G8 summit may have been our last, best chance to effectively tackle global warming. The prospects for reaching a binding agreement on GHG emission caps or maximum temperature increases seem perhaps more remote than they were before the world leaders convened.
The lynchpin to progress, George w. Bush, resorted to his usual weasel words which, judging by the past, speak for themselves. He's promised to "seriously consider" the European proposal and - surprise, surprise - he's got just about 18-months remaining in his presidency so he'll be able to do lots and lots and lots of considerin'.
Meanwhile Bush and his ventriloquist's dummy, Harper, have held on to their "intensity based" fetish. Intensity based is just another way of saying "no" to caps or limits to global warming. It's also a way of saying a huge "yes" to continued fossil fuel dependency, especially the really filthy stuff, the tar sands. Let'er rip.
The G8 failure also sends a powerful message to the emerging, global economic powerhouses - India and China. If the West isn't going to get its house in order, they won't either. That's not to say that China and India won't take some significant environmental improvements. They will because they have no choice, especially when it comes to fresh water. But, where GHG and global warming are concerned, it'll be like herding cats to get them into the pen we don't want to go into ourselves.
Where are we headed? In large measure that will hinge on who comes in to dung out the George Bush Oval Office and, probably, how much Big Oil has kicked in to that campaign. I don't know if you've watched any of the Democratic or Republican presidential debates but they feature an enormous gaggle of very, very little reason for optimism.
But that's not to say that we're not headed somewhere. We are. The Sydney Morning Herald has a report on yet more acceleration in the Greenland glaciers slide into the sea. And the latest climate model developed by the Goddard Institute in New York suggests the Earth is close to a tipping point that would start the disintegration of the Western Antarctic ice sheet and Arctic sea ice.
Goddard researcher James Hansen (by now you should know that name) says the model indicates that a 1.7 degree celsius increase over pre-industrial levels will be the likely tipping point for truly dangerous climate change.
"This was due to natural feedback mechanisms that could amplify the impact of a small temperature rise, he said. "If global emissions of carbon dioxide continue to rise at the rate of the past decade, this research shows there will be disastrous effects," he said.
"Published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, the study used a computer model that incorporated more information than previous ones on factors such as changes in solar radiation, volcanic particles, soot, land use and clouds.
"In another study, British Antarctic Survey scientists reported this week they had tracked the flow of more than 300 previously unstudied glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula using satellite radar systems. They found the rate at which they slid into the sea increased by 12 per cent between 1993 and 2003.
"The British team's leader, Hamish Pritchard, said the Antarctic Peninsula had experienced some of the fastest warming on Earth, with a rise of nearly 3 degrees in the past 50 years. "Eighty-seven per cent of its glaciers have been retreating during this period and now we see these glaciers are also speeding up," he said.
"The cause was meltwater acting as a lubricant between the ice and underlying rocks, said Dr Pritchard, whose study is published in the journal Geophysical Research.
"Satellite observations of the Greenland ice sheet, which are made daily, have shown that the period when snow melted during 2006 was 10 days longer than the average for the previous 18 years."
"Dr Marco Tedesco, of NASA's Joint Centre for Earth Systems Technology, said melted and refrozen snow absorbed up to four times more energy from the sun than dry snow, creating a feedback loop that could accelerate melting."
Studies, studies, studies; results, results, results - hmm, must be hogwash.
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