Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

The Federal Government felt the heat of climate change today when a huge solar energy project given federal funds said it may not have gone ahead without the Victorian Labor government.

watched a report from the canadian hurrican-forecasting centre yesterday .
their assessment was as follows :
- there are fewer hurricans than last year but total number is not below average

Australia made a U-turn in climate politics today, however

"The problem with solar power is all the information I've seen is that, like wind power, it is not, in the Australian context, going to make a big contribution to the general of base load power,"
"Base load power is only going to be generated using fossil fuel or, in the long run, nuclear (power).

Scientists have uncovered more evidence for a dramatic weakening in the vast ocean current that gives Britain its relatively balmy climate by dragging warm water northwards from the tropics. The slowdown, which climate modellers have predicted will follow global warming, has been confirmed by the most detailed study yet of ocean flow in the Atlantic.

Most alarmingly, the data reveal that a part of the current, which is usually 60 times more powerful than the Amazon river, came to a temporary halt during November 2004.

The European Union, self-styled global champion in the battle against climate change, is falling woefully short of its targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and will need to take radical measures to achieve them, new projections have shown.
The European commission said that, based on current measures and policies, the emissions of the EU's original 15 members will be just 0.6% below 1990 levels by 2010. The EU-15 countries are committed under the Kyoto protocol to an 8% cut on 1990 levels by 2012.

The new figures predict that emissions in 2010 will actually be 0.3% higher than they were in 2004.
...
Mr Dimas said that, on unchanged policies, seven countries - Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain - would exceed their individual emission limits, which are binding under EU law. Even with extra measures, Spain is projected to exceed its 1990 emissions by 51.3% in 2010, compared with an allowed increase under Kyoto of 15%.
... ... ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Ignoring climate change could lead to economic upheaval on the scale of the 1930s Depression, underlining the need for urgent action to combat global warming, a British report on the costs of climate change said.

The report by chief British government economist Nicholas Stern, a 27-page summary of which was obtained by Reuters, says the benefits of determined worldwide steps to tackle climate change would greatly outweigh the costs.

The 700-page report, to be published on Monday, said that no matter what we do now the chance "is already almost out of reach" to keep greenhouse gases at a level which scientists say should avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Tony Blair said the Stern Review showed the scientific evidence of global warming was "overwhelming" and its consequences "disastrous"

A scientific report commissioned by the US government has concluded there is "clear evidence" of climate change caused by human activities.

The Stern Review says that climate change represents the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen. And on the basis of this intellectually rigorous and thorough report, it is hard to disagree.

Sir Nicholas Stern, a distinguished development economist and former chief economist at the World Bank, is not a man given to hyperbole.

Yet he says "our actions over the coming few decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th Century".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4969772.stm

Quote:

A scientific report commissioned by the US government has concluded there is "clear evidence" of climate change caused by human activities.

2005 is a very good year.

Well, it seems that many others have a different opinion to some experts here.

Probably we really should trust A2K-members more than those so-called scientists ...

A report by economist Sir Nicholas Stern suggests that global warming could shrink the global economy by 20%.

But taking action now would cost just 1% of global gross domestic product, the 700-page study says.