Music, film, science and business industries are uniting to battle the one cause – reverse global warming in a decade’s time.
 
The movement, launched yesterday at the British Museum, believes the worst of global warming could be reduced if one billion people reduce their carbon emissions by just one tonne a year – for the next 10 years.
 
This solution presented by Global Cool is based on scientific research that the climatic tipping point – beyond which the climate becomes irreversibly unstable – can be put back if we reduce the global co2 emissions by one billion tonnes a year - from the 26.5 billion tonnes (rising by 0.5 tonnes per year) currently emitted on an annual basis.
 
By pushing back the tipping point, the global campaign would have bought some time to develop cleaner, renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, water, hydrogen, bio-mass and geothermal power.
 
Famous names stepping up to support Global Cool are among some of the biggest names in the world of entertainment, such as KT Tunstall and Josh Hartnett, who attended the conference yesterday.
 
An exclusive Scissor Sisters concert can be viewed on www.global-cool.com now, and the series will continue with Maroon 5, Kasabian, Kaiser Chiefs and The Fratellis later in the year.

 scenta

Scientists and government officials will meet to review and approve the draft in Paris next week. The following details were given by scientific sources on Thursday:

EVIDENCE OF HUMAN CAUSES

- "It is very likely that anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas increases caused most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century".

The IPCC says "very likely" means at least a 90 percent probability.

Planet Ark

"Our investigations found high-quality science struggling to get out," Francesca Grifo of the watchdog group Union of Concerned Scientists told members

A survey by the group found that 150 climate scientists personally experienced political interference in the past five years, for a total of at least 435 incidents.

"Nearly half of all respondents perceived or personally experienced pressure to eliminate the words 'climate change,' 'global warming' or other similar terms from a variety of communications," Grifo said.

Rick Piltz, a former U.S. government scientist who said he resigned in 2005 after pressure to soft-pedal findings on global warming, told the committee in prepared testimony that former White House official Phil Cooney took an active role in casting doubt on the consequences of global climate change.

DAVOS, Switzerland: At the World Economic Forum, the annual conclave of world leaders, concerns over a digital divide have taken a back seat to the challenge of climate change this year.

Being out of the limelight, however, has not dimmed the debate over the best way to deploy computers in the developing world. The controversy boiled over on Saturday at a meeting where Craig Barrett, chairman of Intel, squared off with Nicholas Negroponte, the former director of the MIT Media Laboratory and head of the nonprofit organization One Laptop Per Child, which is focusing on the 1.2 billion children in the developing world.

Intel also has contributed significant resources to reaching the technology have-nots, ranging from training teachers to use personal computers to designing an inexpensive laptop computer, albeit one that is currently more expensive than Negroponte's prototype, intended to sell for $100 by the end of 2008.

The dispute between Negroponte and Barrett, who is also chairman of the United Nations Global Alliance for Information and Communications Technologies for Development, straddled both substance and philosophy at the forum's third annual meeting on the digital divide.

Barrett sketched out a four-step program for involving emerging economies, including affordable hardware, low-cost data communications, local curriculum and educators.

Click to enlarge photo

John Howard praised Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, who on Sunday announced that residents in the state's tinder-dry southeast would be drinking recycled waste water as early as next year, whether they liked it or not.

"I am very strongly in favour of recycling, and Mr. Beattie

Beattie said record-low inflows to dams had left his government with no alternative but to dump plans for a public referendum on the issue intended for March.

"The reality is at the moment we have no choice, we have to provide people with water," he said.

"It's not like we are part of a freak show -- the rest of the world is doing this," he said, referring to residents in Singapore, London, Washington and southern California, whom he said drank recycled water.

Global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions is rapidly melting the Arctic. Sea ice coverage this past March “was the lowest in winter since measurements by satellite began in the early 1970s,” and NASA-funded U.S. scientists believe in 30-50 years, “summer sea ice will have vanished from almost the entire Arctic region,” conditions not seen in the area in a million years.

For energy companies, this catastrophe means a “new era of oil and natural gas exploration in the region,” Greenwire reports:

The Arctic region contains a quarter of the world’s remaining oil reserves, experts estimate. It also contains massive natural gas fields in the Barents Sea, including Russia’s huge Shtokman field. “By 2040 or 2050, the Arctic Ocean will be navigable and that will mean significant developments very soon,” said ArcticNet research group head Martin Fortier.

European Environment Agency head Jacqueline McGlade warned that “the region’s opening could lead to another rush like the Klondike gold rush, which ‘could potentially destabilize’ the area and its 10 million indigenous inhabitants.”

30 January 2007

The Lotus APX will serve as the basis for the new electric ZAP-X.

ZAP and Lotus Engineering are beginning the first phase of an engineering project to use the British consultancy’s APX ("Aluminum Performance Crossover") as a basis for designing a production-ready electric all-wheel drive crossover high performance vehicle for ZAP—the ZAP-X—in the US market.

A combination of the lightweight aluminum vehicle architecture, a new efficient drive and advanced battery management systems is intended to enable a range of up to 350 miles between charges, with a rapid 10-minute recharging time. An auxiliary power unit is planned to support longer distance journeys.

The APX’s supercharged gasoline 3.0-liter V6 engine will be replaced by in-hub electric motors, delivering 644 horsepower in all-wheel drive mode, theoretically capable of powering the ZAP-X to a potential top speed of 155 mph. A new strong, lightweight and highly efficient structure based on the Lotus technology is planned to give the car a very attractive power-to-weight ratio.

Preparing solar panels in a South African factory

[ADDIS ABABA] African leaders have designated 2007 as the 'year for scientific innovations'. It is hoped that the declaration will raise the profile of Africa's innovative capacity.

The year will be formally launched in July at an extra-ordinary summit in Accra, Ghana to discuss advanced science such as nuclear technology and space science.

African Union (AU) president Alpha Konare said the declaration would help Africa in its quest for self-sustenance, insisting that the continent lagged behind the rest of the world technologically.

"In July, we will celebrate Africa's industrialisation and we shall launch the year 2007 to celebrate Science and technology in Africa," he told the opening session of the AU summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia yesterday (29 January).

African scientists attending the summit hailed the declaration, saying it would make people more aware of innovation, as most are largely unaware of the continent's innovative capacity.

OSLO (Reuters) - Thirteen percent of Americans have never heard of global warming even though their country is the world's top source of greenhouse gases, a 46-country survey showed on Monday.

The report, by ACNielsen of more than 25,000 Internet users, showed that 57 percent of people around the world considered global warming a "very serious problem" and a further 34 percent rated it a "serious problem."

"It has taken extreme and life-threatening weather patterns to finally drive the message home that global warming is happening and is here to stay unless a concerted, global effort is made to reverse it," said Patrick Dodd, the President of ACNielsen Europe.

People in Latin America were most worried while U.S. citizens were least concerned with just 42 percent rating global warming "very serious."

The United States emits about a quarter of all greenhouse gases, the biggest emitter ahead of China, Russia and India.

Thirteen percent of U.S. citizens said they had never heard or read anything about global warming, the survey said.

Almost all climate scientists say that temperatures are creeping higher because of heat-trapping greenhouse gases released by burning fossil fuels.

The study also found that 91 percent of people had heard about global warming and 50 percent reckoned it was caused by human activities.   Continued...

Our Sunday Visitor (www.osv.com)

More pregnant polar bears in Alaska are digging snow dens on land instead of sea ice, and researchers say climate warming is the likely cause.

From 1985 to 1994, 62 per cent of the female polar bears in the study dug dens on sea ice. From 1998 to 2004, just 37 per cent gave birth on sea ice.

The rest instead dug dens on land, according to the study by three US Geological Survey researchers.

Bears that continued to den on ice moved away from ice that was thinner or unstable.

"In recent years, Arctic pack ice has formed progressively later, melted earlier, and lost much of its older and thicker multiyear component," said wildlife biologist Anthony Fischbach, the study's lead author.

The study suggests the local bear population could be harmed if warming continues.

Though bears are powerful swimmers, at some point they might face daunting distances of open water to reach denning habitat on shore.

GENEVA (AFX) - New data released today shows that the melting of mountain glaciers worldwide is accelerating, a clear sign that climate change is also picking up, the UN environmental agency and scientists said.

Thirty reference glaciers monitored by the Swiss-based World Glacier Monitoring Service lost about 66 centimetres (two feet) in thickness on average in 2005, the UN Environment Programme said in a statement.

The new data confirms the trend in accelerated loss during the past two and half decades,' it added.The set of glaciers located around the world have thinned by about 10.5 metres (34.6 feet) on average since 1980, according to the data supplied by the Monitoring Service in Zurich.They melted on average about 1.6 times faster annually this decade compared with the 1990s, and about six times faster than in the 1980s.

AKARTA, Indonesia Jan 29, 2007 (AP) — Rising sea levels because of global warming stand to inundate around 2,000 islands in Indonesia by 2030, the country's environment minister said Monday.

The assessment by Rachmat Witoelar was the government's bleakest yet of the effects of global warming on the Southeast Asian nation that is made up of some 18,000 islands, most of them unpopulated.

"It is very, very serious," he said at a media conference attended by Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. climate treaty secretariat.

Witoelar said respected scientific studies showed around 2,000 islands would be swallowed by 2030. He did not say whether the threatened islands were inhabited or not.

23 January 2007

Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies Worldwide is the supplier of hydrogen fuel injectors to Ford for its H2 internal combustion engine (HICE) powered shuttle bus program, including the three vehicles recently delivered to Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada. (Earlier post.)

The three buses to be used in Ottawa are part of a larger group of twenty shuttle buses that will be demonstrated across the United States and Canada.

These units form a pre-commercial evaluation of Ford’s HICE technology under real-world conditions that will help Ford assess the viability of commercially offering vehicles equipped with hydrogen internal combustion engines.

NEW YORK - Maybe it's the weird winter weather, or the newly Democratic Congress. Maybe it's the news reports about starving polar bears, or the Oscar nomination for Al Gore's global warming cri de coeur, "An Inconvenient Truth." Whatever the reason, years of resistance to the reality of climate change are suddenly melting away like the soon-to-be-history snows of Kilimanjaro.

Now even George W. Bush says it's a problem.

For years, the president and his supporters argued that not enough was known about global warming to do anything about it. But during last week's State of the Union address Bush finally referred to global warming as an established fact.

Will peak oil save the climate, or shall we first embrace a new culture?

We will have to be much more imaginative as a people if we are to take meaningful action to deal with global warming. It is a simple truth that economic activity that transforms the Earth into consumer products is the main problem.

Yet, hardly anyone is proposing that such activity and products have to be mostly stopped. There is actually some thought along these lines, and there always has been, but it is frowned upon by those with industrial axes to grind or who have bought into "progress" and "growth." So it is hard to publicize the idea of ending industrialism. The few authors on this topic are not household names, unless we infer that some famous old writers would have come out against industrialism if they had seen a little more progress and growth. Thomas Jefferson and Henry David Thoreau are examples of men who appreciated small farming and would have decried the concentration of employment in urban factories and the complete triumph of the corporation.

Today, it is claimed that the U.S. is "post-industrial&quo t; or is "a service economy." But in the global economy there has mainly been a geographic change in the exploitation of workers and resources, compared to the heyday of smokestack-industry heavy employment on U.S. soil. U.S. cities are still more like work-camps than communities of enlightened citizens involved in politics.

22 January 2007

China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) and McDonald’s China have opened their first collaborative Drive-Thru restaurant and gas station complex in Beijing. The two companies formed a strategic alliance last June.

The Drive-Thru restaurant—McDonald ’s 16th in China, but the first in partnership with Sinopec—is situated in Sinopec’s Shahedong gas station in Changping District, Beijing. Collaboratively designed and developed by Sinopec and McDonald’s, the Drive-Thru restaurants in Sinopec gas stations represent “a whole new service model” for customers, according to the partners.

Sinopec owns more than 30,000 gas stations in China—the largest work and the most market coverage in the country. The first combined gas station-restaurants will be opened in large and medium cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Wuhan, Chengdu, Shenzhen and Dongguan.

McDonald’s opened its first Drive-Thru restaurant in China in November 2005 in the central business district of Dongguan, Guangdong Province. The company has opened more than 1,000 Drive-Thru restaurants in Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan.

Most crowds expect Jim Macias to be on the defensive these days. Oil prices are down some 33% and the theme of North American International Auto Show in Detroit earlier this month was making cars that are friendlier to the environment.

At Shell, where he is a manager in the company's Fuel Technology Group, Mr. Macias is in charge of investigating which fuels will replace gasoline and developing ways to make them cheaper.

But so far, there's nothing in the pipeline that he said will transform Shell or dramatically change the way the world's vehicles are powered.

"Fossil fuels will dominate the transportation world for the next 100 years," Mr. Macias told the International Motor Press Association yesterday. "Shell's an open-minded company, but as long as the demand is there, we're going to refine oil and gas until anything else becomes more cost effective."

Mr. Macias said the worldwide infrastructure designed to explore, extract, and refine oil is so vast and established that virtually no economic force could justify its replacement.

New York -- Who says politics is show business for ugly people?

"An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's film on the perils of global warming, scored two Oscar nominations Tuesday -- for best documentary feature and best original song.

Though he is not technically a nominee -- the film's director, Davis Guggenheim, won the nod, as did singer Melissa Etheridge for the song "I Need to Wake Up" -- Gore said he was "thrilled" that his movie was honored.

"The film . . . has brought awareness of the climate crisis to people in the United States and all over the world," Gore said in an e-mail statement. "I am so grateful to the entire team and pleased that the Academy [of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences] has recognized their work. This film proves that movies really can make a difference."

Aides say the former vice president plans to walk the red carpet with Hollywood's beautiful people at the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles next month.

18 January 2007

Syntroleum’s FT reactor is indifferent to the source of syngas. Click to enlarge.

Syntroleum Corporation and Marathon Oil Company have struck a new definitive license agreement that replaces the original Master Preferred License Agreement for Syntroleum’s gas-to-liquids (GTL) technology, and it establishes a limited master license for Syntroleum’s coal-to-liquids (CTL) technology.

This agreement allows Marathon Oil the non-exclusive right to use Syntroleum’s Fischer-Tropsch process to produce synthetic crude. Revenue to Syntroleum under this agreement would be in the form of royalties based upon actual production volumes from any licensed plants constructed and operated by Marathon.

As part of this agreement, Marathon terminated and discharged all of its rights under two promissory notes, in the amount of $21.3 million plus accumulated interest in the amount of $6.3 million, originally established in connection with the construction of Syntroleum’s Fischer-Tropsch Catoosa Demonstration Facility. Also, Syntroleum has agreed to pay Marathon two payments of $3 million each in December of 2008 and December of 2009.

In 2003, Marathon and Syntroleum Corporation opened a gas-to-liquids demonstration plant at the Port of Catoosa, near Tulsa, Oklahoma. The synthetic fuel was used in long-term testing and demonstration in buses, and recently in a blend with JP8 in a B52. (Earlier post.)

(H2OPower Editor's Note): I want my readers to really understand this process. In the "Coal to Liquids" manufacturing process artificial crude oil is produced. This process has been known for a very long time but is only recently being commercially developed. In fact this process is providing 40% of the crude oil in South Africa right now.

The raw materials needed are carbon (most often from coal) and water. From these two elements artificial hydrocarbons are created under heat, pressure and in the presence of a catalyst. The hydrogen atoms are stripped off the water molecules and then joined to the carbon atoms. When the resulting hydrocarbon fuels are burned the by-products are water and carbon dioxide. Since carbon and water are both plentiful and nearly endlessly renewable, such artificial petroleum could provide for the energy needs of the world in the future. 

I believe that such artificial petroleum is the ideal energy source. The manufacturing process is well known, the raw materials abundant and the storage and distribution infrastructure already in place. As hydrogen fuel cells become more developed there is a good chance that there will be the opportunity to use only the hydrogen component from hydrocarbons as our energy source thus enabling the recycling of the carbon atoms and making the carbon into nothing more than a carrier medium for the hydrogen. Once this is accomplished hydrocarbons will be endlessly renewable and almost totally non-polluting since the only byproduct of using them will be water vapor.

MJ 

Successful testing of an ‘artificial sun’ has found that it is a reliable energy generator, according to scientists in China.

The artificial sun is an experimental thermonuclear reactor which has been designed to replicate the Sun’s burning energy process.
 
The Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak fusion reactor has received positive results in tests conducted at China's Institute of Plasma Physics recently.
 
"The new tests show the reactor is very reliable, and we can repeat the experiments," an institute official Wu Songtao told Xinhua.

When the sun can generate plasma

By Jon Hurdle

EAST AMWELL, New Jersey (Reuters) - Michael Strizki heats and cools his house year-round and runs a full range of appliances including such power-guzzlers as a hot tub and a wide-screen TV without paying a penny in utility bills.

His conventional-looking family home in the pinewoods of western New Jersey is the first in the United States to show that a combination of solar and hydrogen power can generate all the electricity needed for a home.

The Hopewell Project, named for a nearby town, comes at a time of increasing concern over U.S. energy security and worries over the effects of burning fossil fuels on the climate.

"People understand that climate change is a big concern but they don't know what they can do about it," said Gian-Paolo Caminiti of Renewable Energy International, the commercial arm of the project. "There's a psychological dividend in doing the right thing," he said.

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Climate change over the past two decades has caused Sweden's tree line to move north at a faster rate than at any time in the past 7,000 years, Swedish researchers have said.

"The tree line has moved by up to 200 metres (656 feet) in some places. Trees have not grown at such high levels for around 7,000 years," Leif Kullman, a professor at Umeaa University's department of ecology and environmental science, told AFP Tuesday.

The tree line represents a limit in mountainous, northern and southern latitudes beyond which trees do not grow.

"Recordings began in 1915 but the trend has intensified in the past 15 to 20 years," Kullman said.

Sweden's climate in the past 20 years was as mild as it had been some 7,000 years ago, he added.

18 January 2007

H2Gen’s current analysis is that for use in vehicles, ethanol reforming as a hydrogen pathway produces fewer GHG emissions on a lifecycle basis than SMR-produced hydrogen, but at a higher cost. Click to enlarge. Source: H2Gen.

The Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) at the University of North Dakota is leading a project to investigate the production of hydrogen at existing and future ethanol facilities. The hydrogen produced could be used on-site in fuel cells to provide additional power for the plant or as fuel for hydrogen vehicles.

Project partners include the US Department of Energy, the Minnesota Corn Research & Promotion Council, the North Dakota Corn Utilization Council, Chippewa Valley Ethanol Company, and H2Gen Innovations. H2Gen is a provider of low-cost, on-site steam methane reforming (SMR) systems and gas purification plants.

Under the multiyear contract, the EERC’s Centers for Renewable Energy and Biomass Utilization are testing the technical feasibility of integrating hydrogen production with ethanol production.

• Overview of Bio-Diesel Production, Acceptance and Utilization,
• Overview of Pre-Feasibility Study Guide for Farmer-Owned Ethanol Plants,
• Wind Energy – New Potentials for Rural Communities,
• Overview of Federal Programs Available for Renewable Energy Production, and
• How Renewable Energy Production Can Be an Essential Component to Better Farm Policy.

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Published: 18 January 2007

Climate change stands alongside the use of nuclear weapons as one of the greatest threats posed to the future of the world, the Cambridge cosmologist Stephen Hawking has said.

Professor Hawking said that we stand on the precipice of a second nuclear age and a period of exceptional climate change, both of which could destroy the planet as we know it.

He was speaking at the Royal Society in London yesterday at a conference organised by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists which has decided to move the minute hand of its "Doomsday Clock" forward to five minutes to midnight to reflect the increased dangers faced by the world.

Scientists devised the clock in 1947 as a way of expressing to the public the risk of nuclear conflagration following the use of the atomic weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War.

"As we stand at the brink of a second nuclear age and a period of unprecedented climate change, scientists have a special responsibility, once again, to inform the public and to advise leaders about the perils that humanity faces," Professor Hawking said. "As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth.

Jan 15th 2007
From Economist.com

How big science might fix climate change

FEW scientists like to say so, but cutting greenhouse-gas emissions is not the only way to solve the problem of global warming. If man-made technologies are capable of heating the planet, they are probably capable of cooling it down again. Welcome to "geo-engineering&quo t;, which holds that, rather than trying to change mankind's industrial habits, it is more efficient to counter the effects, using planetary-scale engineering.

This general approach has been kicking around for decades. A paper on climate change prepared for President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 made no mention of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. It nonchalantly proposed dealing with the results by dumping vast quantities of reflective particles into the oceans, to increase the amount of sunlight reflected into space.

That school of thinking has since fallen out of fashion. As scientists have accumulated evidence for global warming and its possible consequences, so the scientific and political consensus has favoured attempts at reducing carbon emissions through taxes and regulations and subsidies, many of them directed at factories and motor-cars.

Correction Appended

LIVERPOOL LAND, Greenland — Flying over snow-capped peaks and into a thick fog, the helicopter set down on a barren strip of rocks between two glaciers. A dozen bags of supplies, a rifle and a can of cooking gas were tossed out onto the cold ground. Then, with engines whining, the helicopter lifted off, snow and fog swirling in the rotor wash.

When it had disappeared over the horizon, no sound remained but the howling of the Arctic wind.

“It feels a little like the days of the old explorers, doesn’t it?” Dennis Schmitt said.

Mr. Schmitt, a 60-year-old explorer from Berkeley, Calif., had just landed on a newly revealed island 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle in eastern Greenland. It was a moment of triumph: he had discovered the island on an ocean voyage in September 2005. Now, a year later, he and a small expedition team had returned to spend a week climbing peaks, crossing treacherous glaciers and documenting animal and plant life.

Despite its remote location, the island would almost certainly have been discovered, named and mapped almost a century ago when explorers like Jean-Baptiste Charcot and Philippe, Duke of Orléans, charted these coastlines. Would have been discovered had it not been bound to the coast by glacial ice.

In just eight years global oil demand will rise by 13.3% to nearly 100 million barrels per day, according to figures from the Energy Information Administration. After that, the EIA predicts another 20.4% increase through 2030.

These skyrocketing increases in demand wouldn't be a problem, barring one major dose of reality: oil is finite.

According to climate change experts at the Met office, 2007 is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998.

Each January the Met Office, in conjunction with the University of East Anglia, issues a forecast of the global surface temperature for the coming year.

The forecast takes into account known contributing factors, such as solar effects, El Nino, greenhouse gas, concentrations and other multi-decadal influences. Over the previous 7 years, the Met Office forecast of annual global temperature has proved remarkably accurate, with a mean forecast error size of just 0.06 °C.

NUNATSIAQ NEWS

Iqaluit residents wearing light spring clothing strolled comfortably around town on Feb. 26, impeded only by huge pools of melt water, as temperatures reached all-time highs for that date. (FILE PHOTO)

---

Here’s what we saw:

Rain in February

On Feb. 26, temperatures reached 6.8 C in Pangnirtung and 4.2 C in Iqaluit, breaking a 60-year monthly record for the capital.

And it rained. Since 1946, In rain has fallen in February on only three other occasions in south Baffin.

Higher than normal temperatures continued into October.

In Iqaluit, temperatures reached 6.8 C on Oct. 15, and 6.9 C on Oct. 16, which also broke records that day.

On Oct. 17, Grise Fiord’s high reached 6 C, which is a full 20 C above the average high for that date. Resolute Bay hit .8 C. This broke a record of -1.4 C set in 2002 for that date, and set a new extreme maximum for the month.

Nunavik also experienced heat waves. On June 8, the temperature in Kuujjuaq hit 29 C, breaking the previous record of 26.1 C, set in 1974.

And temperatures hit new highs in Europe’s circumpolar region. April weather readings for Norway’s High Arctic Svalbard Islands produced new records. A temperature of 7.5 C in Longyearbyen in April was the highest temperature recorded on Svalbard since measurements began in 1912.

Russia, Norway and Finland also experienced above-average summer and autumn temperatures. Winter brought little snow to the more southern regions of northern Europe.

KIBBUTZ MASHABBE SADE, Israel: The coppery last light of the day reflects off the backs of sea bass swimming in fish ponds lined in neat rows on this desert farm.

Fish farming in the desert may at first sound like an anomaly, but in Israel over the last decade a scientific hunch has turned into a bustling business.

Scientists here say they realized they were on to something when they found that brackish water drilled from deep desert aquifers could be used to raise warm-water fish.

The geothermal water, less than one- tenth as saline as sea water, free of pollutants and 37 degrees Celsius, or about 98 degrees Fahrenheit, on average, proved an ideal match.

"It was not simple to convince people that growing fish in the desert makes sense," said Samuel Appelbaum, a fish biologist at the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at the Sede Boqer campus of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Click to enlarge photo

"We are developing medium-term scenarios in case of an absence of precipitation," said Guido Bertolaso, head of Italy's civil protection service, after a meeting here.

December was the warmest in Italy since records began in 1860, though lower temperatures are predicted next week.

The absence of snow has already hurt the winter ski season, and the Italian Agriculture Confederation fears a drought similar to that of 2003, which caused some five billion euros (6.5 billion dollars) in losses, notably in the agricultural sector.

"We must act locally but think globally against climate change because it is a planetary phenomenon that requires a maximum of effort," said Franco Prodi, director of the National Research Center in Bologna.

"It is obvious that the weak precipitation is of concern," added Prodi, a brother of Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi.

Bertolaso said a cold wave would be disastrous for fruit trees that are already flowering.

Italy was declared free of malaria in 1970, but it is making a comeback, said the Italian environmental organisation Legambiente. Tick-borne encephalitis, a virus which attacks the nerve system, is also on the way back. While only 18 cases had been reported before 1993, 100 have been since, mostly around Venice.

Posted by Grist at 10:04 AM on 11 Jan 2007

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FEDERAL WAY, Wash. (AP) -- The school board in this suburb south of Seattle has restricted showings of Al Gore's movie on global warming, including requiring that it be balanced with an adequate opposing viewpoint.

The board also required Superintendent Tom Murphy to approve when the former vice president's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," can be presented.

The decision was sparked by complaints from parents who said their child was taking the film as fact after viewing it at school.

"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who doesn't want the film shown at all.

"The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is," Hardison told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."

Board President Ed Barney told The News Tribune of Tacoma on Wednesday that he'd received about a half-dozen complaints from parents.

To cut the long story short, I waited for the snow in vain to have snapshots for my said Christmas article, and in the end had no other choice but to refrain from writing anything. "It would not look like a Scandinavian Christmas at all if it is not white (no snow)," I told myself. One blogger summed it up in the following words:

"There is an old Finnish Christmas Carol where they sing that Christmas is like a summer in the middle of winter. The global warming is giving a new literal meaning to the song: after the very warm year we are having extremely warm winter. No snow, no ice, instead green grass and buds in bushes -- and because there is no snow the darkness is unbelievable!"

After the "summer" Christmas, I have been making other observations around Helsinki to see how much global warming is truly affecting the city, and I have come to realize from my findings that those changes are just more than enormous. By this time of the year, the temperature in Helsinki normally ranges between -10°C to -22°C, coupled with severe wind. All trees are normally dry and white with snow. Being one of the most northernmost countries in the world, the Finnish winter is normally associated with snow and ice. Since it is too cold, people have to go out in very thick jackets, shoes, and gloves.

MUSCAT — A highly educational show titled ‘NorthSouthEastWest ’ (NSEW) that immensely appeals to both children and adults and acts as a visual wake up call on the dangers of climate change and the solutions that have been proposed by some countries is drawing large numbers of Muscat Festival visitors since it opened at the Qurum Natural Park on Thursday.

Climate scientist

Mike De Souza, CanWest News Service

OTTAWA -- Mounting evidence about the impact and causes of global warming is starting to set off alarm bells for the world's leading researchers, one of Canada's top climate scientists warned Friday.

Dr. Gordon McBean, chair of policy in the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at Western Ontario University, predicted a highlyanticipated report to be released next month in Paris would highlight how human activity is heating up the planet much faster than experts had previously expected.

"We can see it on the basis of what's happening in southern Canada as opposed to just a global basis," McBean said. "We can actually say the smoking gun is there at a regional level, rather than just a global level."

Hardly a day passes with-out some new dire warning of the disastrous impact of man-made global warming. Climate change is on us as we witness huge ice shelves of the Arctic and Antarctica breaking up. Rare and wonderful species are threatened with extinction and low-lying coastlines around the world will soon be flooded and uninhabitable. Campaigns to save the environment are growing. In Subic Bay fisherfolk are trying to close illegal fish pens that are polluting the waters, damaging the corals and the beaches and disrupting the livelihood of hundreds. Speaking out for justice is more important than ever as fish and animals are threatened worldwide.

Polar Bears on the list of endangered species, hundreds of species are going extent and climate change and environmental damage is causing it. The scientific evidence that we humans are heating up the planet by the nonstop burning of fossil fuels is undeniable. Heavy industries pollute the environment with billowing smoke and belching gases that create a seal around the planet and prevents the escape of heat into space.

The environmental sector has the potential to create the next Bill Gates, according to Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling.

Speaking at the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Forum last Friday, Mr Darling continued to promote the Government's position that environmental policy and economic progress were joined at the hip.

He told delegates that climate change represented one of the biggest challenges facing the business community, and society as a whole, and solving the problems it posed could provide massive economic opportunities.

"There are huge opportunities waiting to be seized that will be good for business while being good for the world in which we live," he said.

"Today we tend to think of energy, water and waste, as the main areas of environmental industry, but tomorrow every industry will need to become an environmental industry."