Prince Charles Says We Need To Act on Climate Change Now

Prince Charles, the future king of Britain, has told a meeting of ministers from the UK and abroad, and tropical forest scientists, that world leaders need to act on climate change now.

He says they must move based on the vast body of evidence that is already there, because the risk of doing nothing was too great.

He went on to say they must have "the courage to face down a storm of opposition from all sides" giving special mention to what he called "the incorporated society of syndicated sceptics and the International Association of Corporate lobbyists".

Wise words indeed.

CO2 Levels Reach New High: 400 ppm

Atmospheric C02 has just broken through the 400 parts per million barrier for the first time in human history reports the US government agency lab on Hawaii.

400 ppm is up 40% over pre-industrial times when it was just 280 ppm. It is the proverbial 'smoking gun' where climate change is concerned.

Will this new record wake up the politicians and give them a sense of renewed urgency?

What do you think?!

More Bad News For The Arctic

Last Summer, Arctic sea ice reached it's lowest extent since satellite records began in 1979 (and probably since the last ice age). Part of an ongoing decline, it was a real blow both to our chances of beating climate change and for the Arctic environment. Of course, the oil companies love it - They relish the chance of exploring for resources in an ice free Arctic.

Declining ice cover is, of course, thanks to global warming, but another effect of uncontrolled CO2 emissions, ocean acidification, is also rapidly increasing in the Arctic according to a new report by AMAP,

Ocean acidification is a process whereby the absorption of atmospheric CO2 by the world's oceans is slowly changing their pH from the alkaline end towards an acid one. This could seriously compromise marine creatures like shell-fish, corals, and plankton, that have calcium-based skeletons and shells. And if they're hit, there would be knock-on effects for all the other life that depends on them in one way or another.

Now it seems acidification is increasing in the Arctic at a faster rate than anywhere else. It's a big concern, but the precise effects are uncertain. One possible outcome is that it could reduce the size of the  fish stocks we take for granted. As if over-fishing and pollution weren't bad enough.

More and more it feels like the Arctic is reaching a tipping point. We could all live to regret it.

UKIP: The Climate Deniers

Farage - The UKIP leader....

Last week the UK Independence Party (UKIP) made big gains in the British local elections.

Non-Brits can be forgiven for saying "who?" because they aren't one of the 3 major parties most may have heard of.

UKIP are a right-wing party founded on the principle that they want Britain out of the European Union (EU). They are also anti-immigration, anti-gay marriage, and climate deniers. You know the sort.

The main reason they did so well was not because the British are turning into closet racists (at least, I hope not) but it's mid-term for an unpopular government and UKIP have become the home for protest votes this year. Of course, UKIP's leader, Nigel Farage, is trying to make out it's a sea-change in UK politics. We shall see.

One of the many disturbing ideas they have is that climate change is insignificant and nothing to do with us humans. No doubt that idea was encouraged by UKIP's scottish leader, Christopher Monckton, a notorious climate denier.

Not only have they got the facts about climate change wrong, they can't even get the facts about the cost to consumers of the UK's attempts to cut carbon emissions. They claim that 12% of our energy bills are down to these attempts, when the actual figure is 2%. I could quote you a litany of other mis-informed statistics they come up with but I'll leave it up to this and this article. If UKIP can't even get such basic facts straight, they're not fit for politics.

I heard one of Farage's tirades just after the results of the election came out. He said that he would fight against "wind turbines marching across this green and pleasant land". No doubt trying to invoke images of an idyllic british countryside being swamped with turbines. But I bet he's all for the coalition government's stealthy dismantling of planning laws in this country to allow developments like housing estates, roads, industrial estates, and factories to be more easily built on that exact same "green and pleasant land".

UKIP are opportunists of the worst kind and I hope the British public come to realise that before it's too late.