KidsGCCI

An unusually high proportion of thinner 'first year' ice in the Arctic raises the prospect of an acceleration in the loss of ice during the warmer summer months

The world has only six years left to limit greenhouse gas emissions, Pachauri warns. "It's essential that we take action by which we allow emissions to peak no later than 2015," he says, to limit the world's temperature increase to 2C. Beyond that and we reach a tipping point when the world's poorest communities will suffer the most. "They are the ones who are the most vulnerable" due to a much greater scarcity of water, a decline in agricultural lands, and the danger of sea level rises, as spelt out in the fourth assessment report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"Climate change will continue to be taught in geography across key stages 1-3 in England, after education secretary Michael Gove scrapped plans to take it off the national curriculum. The move represents a victory for a number of campaigners, teachers, environmentalists and scientists, as well as energy secretary Ed Davey, who had lobbied his fellow MP to reconsider his decision to remove the topic from the geography syllabus. In a letter to Gove in May, Davey wrote, "As you'll be aware, there has been a significant number of responses, both from academic experts and the public, calling for climate change to feature explicitly in the geography curriculum. I am writing to express my strong support for such a change." In the draft guidelines of the national curriculum, published in March, it appeared that climate change had been omitted from geography altogether, and instead, would be taught as an aspect of chemistry. Many said this move was reducing the threat of climate change among under-15s. Within days, thousands of people had signed a petition on Change.org, set up by 15-year-old West London student Esha Marwaha, which called for Gove to reconsider his position. To date, the petition has attracted over 31,000 names."

"Imagine these scenarios: The rice bowl of Vietnam cracking. Popular diving spots in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia lying idle with no tourists. Nearly half of Bangkok inundated with water. Well, they could become a reality in 20 to 30 years-no thanks to the adverse effects of climate change in Southeast Asia exacerbated by forest fires particularly in Indonesia which recently blanketed the region with deadly smoky haze. Scientists warn in a new World Bank report of major impacts on the region if the temperature rises by up to 2 degrees Celsius-warming which they say may be reached in two to three decades-fueled by the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. The warming climate will push up the sea level in the region and cause an increase in heat extremes, a higher intensity of tropical cyclones, and ocean acidification stemming from excess carbon dioxide in the air, according to the latest edition of the bank's "Turn Down the Heat" report."

The draft measure, written by Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, sets a slightly more ambitious goal for capping heat-trapping gases than Mr. Obama's proposal. The bill requires that emissions be reduced 20 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, while Mr. Obama's plancalls for a 14 percent reduction by 2020. Both would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases by roughly 80 percent by 2050.

At the moment, global emissions are thought to be rising at nearly 3 per cent a year - so turning that into a 3 per cent annual cut would be a gigantic slashing of what the earth's factories and motor vehicles are pumping into the atmosphere. There is as yet nothing remotely like that on the table for potential agreement in Copenhagen, and if a deal of this ambition were to be done, it would be regarded as a triumph. Yet even with that, the Hadley Centre research suggests, the chances of keeping the rise down to about 2C by 2100 would be only 50-50. Furthermore, the simulations suggest that there is a worst-case scenario - about a 10 per cent chance - of the rise by the end of the current century reaching, even with these drastic cuts, a level of 2.8C above the pre-industrial, which is well into disaster territory.

The concluding message from the seminar is that climatic change will place unprecedented pressures on agriculture. New crop varieties are needed to maintain the level of food production under the climate changes predicted for the 21st century in all IPCC scenarios, irrespective of any action taken today. Plant breeders are dependent on genetic diversity from many countries to adapt crops to changing climatic conditions. This biological diversity is under continuous threat. All countries should recognize their responsibility for food production and the need for international collaboration in this regard. At the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December 2009 the need to conserve and make available crop diversity as the bedrock of all plant breeding efforts must be recognised as a fundamental component of climate change adaption.

Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the BAP affirms the importance of reducing deforestation, which accounts for 17 to 20 percent of the world's annual greenhouse gas emissions, as a strategy for mitigating climate change. It specifies "policy approaches and positive incentives on issues relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries" (REDD) to be included in the NAMAs that countries can undertake (UNFCCC 2007, 3; FCCC/ CP/2007/6/Add.1 Decision 1). For many experts, the term REDD has become synonymous with a carbon-financing approach, in which the developing countries' reduction of emissions from forests is supported by the developed countries' purchase of carbon credits, which they can use to meet their own emissions reduction or other obligations.

Though the team is not yet ready to definitively pin the cause of the increased erosion rate on any one factor, changing conditions such as declining sea ice extent, increasing summertime sea-surface temperature, rising sea level, and increases in storm power may have all contributed to the coastal decline.

The prospect that human-driven warming is poised to push Earth past dangerous tipping points is now a cornerstone of many environmental campaigns. But what tipping points are well established and which ones remain what Stephen W. Pacala of Princeton University has called "the monsters behind the door"? I have a piece in the Week in Review section exploring these concerns. Given the limits on space in print, I thought it worthwhile to add some additional voices here and encourage further discussion. The bottom line? A growing effort to clarify such risks has yielded what amounts to the same message climate experts have been conveying for more than two decades: More emissions of greenhouse gases raise the odds of trouble.

AN ICE bridge which had apparently held a vast Antarctic ice shelf in place during recorded history shattered on Saturday and could herald a wider collapse linked to global warming, a leading scientist said.

In a one-hour High-Definition special, NOW on PBS host David Brancaccio travels to the Gangotri Glacier in the Himalayas-the source of the legendary river Ganges-to witness the impact of global warming first hand. Global warming, scientists say, is dangerously melting away glaciers around the world, including Gangotri

The Obama administration's carbon tax spokesman - the one who should sell this to the country - should be the president's national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, not the environmentalists. The imposing former head of the Marine Corps could make a powerful case that a carbon tax is vitally necessary to stimulate investments in the clean technologies that would enable the U.S. to dominate E.T., while also shifting consumers to buy these new, more efficient and cleaner power systems, homes and cars. He could make the case that the country with the most powerful clean-technology industry in the 21st century will have the most energy security, national security, economic security, healthy environment, innovative companies and global respect. That country must be America.

In Alaska, climate change is creating an unforeseen humanitarian crisis. Arctic sea ice - which had protected communities from coastal erosion and flooding - is rapidly disappearing and signalling a radical transformation of this northern ecosystem. Scientific observations during the summer of 2007 documented a new record low. In 2006, the US government completed a $2.5m (£1.7m) seawall to protect the native village of Kivalina, located on an island in the Chukchi Sea. But on the day of the dedication ceremony, a storm surge partly destroyed the newly constructed sea barrier. One year later, the community was evacuated to protect inhabitants from a severe storm.

Earlier this year, the World Bank released yet another in a seemingly endless stream of reports by global institutions and universities chronicling the melting of the world's cryosphere, or ice zone. This latest report concerned the glaciers in the Andes and revealed the following: Bolivia's famed Chacaltaya glacier has lost 80 percent of its surface area since 1982, and Peruvian glaciers have lost more than one-fifth of their mass in the past 35 years, reducing by 12 percent the water flow to the country's coastal region, home to 60 percent of Peru's population.