World leaders flying into Copenhagen today to discuss a solution to global warming will first face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.
"Temperatures will stay low at least the next three days," Henning Gisseloe, an official at Denmark's Meteorological Institute, said today by telephone, forecasting more snow in coming days. "There's a good chance of a white Christmas."
Delegates from 193 countries have been in Copenhagen since Dec. 7 to discuss how to fund global greenhouse gas emission cuts. U.S. President Barack Obama will arrive before the summit is scheduled to end tomorrow.
Denmark has a maritime climate and milder winters than its Scandinavian neighbors. It hasn't had a white Christmas for 14 years, under the DMI's definition, and only had seven last century. Temperatures today fell as low as minus 4 Celsius (25 Fahrenheit).
DMI defines a white Christmas as 90 percent of the country being covered by at least 2 centimeters of snow on the afternoon of Dec. 24.
Earth Changes
© Agence France-Presse
Many people from the evacuated villages have been creeping back to look after their crops and animals.
Many people from the evacuated villages have been creeping back to look after their crops and animals.
The picturesque Mayon volcano continued to spout spectacular fountains of ash into the sky amid a series of minor eruptions, heightening concerns that a major explosion could occur at any time.
Earthquakes inside Mayon also increased due to the enormous pressure of the ever-increasing amount of lava on its slopes, according to the government's volcanology institute.
"The important thing is that people should not be in those danger zones when a hazardous explosion happens," said chief government volcanologist Renato Solidum.
The so-called danger zone is a radius of six to eight kilometres (3.5 to five miles) from Mayon, and nearly 50,000 people have been evacuated from those areas since the volcano began spewing lava on Monday.
Two Copenhagen climate conferences took place last week. The UN Copenhagen conference was attended by politicians, 16,500 bureaucrats, thousands of journalists, activists and NGOs. Hundreds of limos, over 100 private jets and huge amounts of energy were expended by more than 30,000 attendees. Many of the attendees were ascientific agitators with a political agenda.
Australia's prime minister had a Copenhagen photo opportunity whistle stop in his dedicated jet and expended more fuel on this trip than the Arkaroola Wilderness Resort does in a year. Your taxes payed for 114 Australian bureaucrats to attend this junket yet some 71 UK delegates attended.
The UK Taxpayers' Alliance calculated the conference cost as much as the GDP of Malawi. If such funds were used to provide electricity and drinking water to Malawian families, then land clearing, wood and dung burning and disease would decrease. Now, that would have been true environmentalism!
Australia's prime minister had a Copenhagen photo opportunity whistle stop in his dedicated jet and expended more fuel on this trip than the Arkaroola Wilderness Resort does in a year. Your taxes payed for 114 Australian bureaucrats to attend this junket yet some 71 UK delegates attended.
The UK Taxpayers' Alliance calculated the conference cost as much as the GDP of Malawi. If such funds were used to provide electricity and drinking water to Malawian families, then land clearing, wood and dung burning and disease would decrease. Now, that would have been true environmentalism!
© Timesonline
Al Gore's office admitted that the percentage he quoted in his speech was from an old, ballpark figure
Al Gore's office admitted that the percentage he quoted in his speech was from an old, ballpark figure
The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, became entangled in a new climate change "spin" row.
Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.
In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: "These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years."
However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.
"It's unclear to me how this figure was arrived at," Dr Maslowski said. "I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this."
© Nick Moir
Richard Pain, 45, a Sydney film-maker and environmentalist, is planning to swim 9000 kilometres across the Pacific Ocean.
Richard Pain, 45, a Sydney film-maker and environmentalist, is planning to swim 9000 kilometres across the Pacific Ocean.
"I realize it's completely mad," said the filmmaker, 45, who is selling his Randwick home to raise some of the money needed for the project.
"But I'm aware there is a lot of green fatigue in the broader population. This is a way to try and raise awareness by doing something more compelling. It's like trying to do an environmental version of Super Size Me."
© Unknown
The Great Lakes, USA
The Great Lakes, USA
After a two-year, $3.5 million study, the U.S.-Canadian panel concluded there was no reason to stem the flow from Lake Huron by placing structures in a river that connects Huron with Lake Erie to the south.
The report disagreed with Georgian Bay Forever, a Canadian environmental charity that has commissioned engineering studies of the St. Clair River. Those studies found that human activities, primarily dredging during the early 1960s, enlarged the river bottom and increased the volume of water moving down the river from Lake Huron to Lake Erie.
Because of that, the group says, Lake Huron is losing up to 12 billion gallons per day in addition to its normal outflow - enough to fill 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
A vast "plume" of hot rock, which scientists say is responsible for Yellowstone's famous geysers and other geothermal features, is coming into sharper focus in research coordinated by University of Utah scientists that sheds new light on our planet's inner workings.
Geophysicist Robert Smith and colleagues monitored seismic waves from 800 earthquakes to assemble the most complete image ever published of the 500-mile "plumbing" system under Yellowstone National Park, suggesting its bottom is at least 400 miles deep in the Earth's mantle, directly under the southwest Montana town of Wisdom.
Thousands of people in the Philippines have fled their homes after the country's most active volcano oozed lava and shot up plumes of ash on Tuesday. State volcanologists raised the alert level on the cone-shaped, 2,460-metre Mayon volcano to two steps below a major eruption, saying the activity could get worse in the coming days.
"It's already erupting," said Renato Solidum, head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.
More than 20,000 people living near the volcano were evacuated to safety by nightfall Tuesday, said Gov. Joey Salceda of Albay province, where Mayon is located about 340 kilometres southeast of Manila.
Nearly 50,000 people live within an eight-kilometre radius of the volcano.
Salceda said Tuesday that the province of Albay has been placed under a "state of imminent disaster" to allow for better mobilization of resources to handle the evacuation.
"It's already erupting," said Renato Solidum, head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.
More than 20,000 people living near the volcano were evacuated to safety by nightfall Tuesday, said Gov. Joey Salceda of Albay province, where Mayon is located about 340 kilometres southeast of Manila.
Nearly 50,000 people live within an eight-kilometre radius of the volcano.
Salceda said Tuesday that the province of Albay has been placed under a "state of imminent disaster" to allow for better mobilization of resources to handle the evacuation.
The algal blooms stretch for hundreds of miles in some areas in a phenomenon known as "red tides" and give off toxins that sicken fish and birds and can cause paralysis in humans, said Wayne Litaker, a research scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The blooms have been getting increasingly larger and more toxic since 2004, causing an estimated $100 million a year in damage to the country's seafood and tourism industries, he said.
Researchers from the Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research in Spain, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany, and the University of Concepcion in Chile have identified the presence of high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) on mountain ranges all over North and South America. Banned worldwide since 2001, PCBs are being found at the highest levels in many of the tallest mountain ranges.
Published in the journal Environmental Chemistry Letters, the discovery coincides with a similar study conducted by Swiss scientists that found other pollutants in Alpine glacial lakes that affect drinking water supplies. The PCBs found on mountaintops may eventually make their way down the mountains and pollute fields, crops, and water supplies. Some scientists fear that such contamination is already taking place in certain areas.
Up until the 1980s, PCBs were widely used as coolants and insulating fluids for transformers and capacitors. They were also heavily used in paints, cements, coatings, and pesticides. Once it was discovered that these compounds cause liver damage, male infertility, hair loss, acne, and other serious problems, they were banned globally under the Stockholm Convention.
Published in the journal Environmental Chemistry Letters, the discovery coincides with a similar study conducted by Swiss scientists that found other pollutants in Alpine glacial lakes that affect drinking water supplies. The PCBs found on mountaintops may eventually make their way down the mountains and pollute fields, crops, and water supplies. Some scientists fear that such contamination is already taking place in certain areas.
Up until the 1980s, PCBs were widely used as coolants and insulating fluids for transformers and capacitors. They were also heavily used in paints, cements, coatings, and pesticides. Once it was discovered that these compounds cause liver damage, male infertility, hair loss, acne, and other serious problems, they were banned globally under the Stockholm Convention.
