Thursday, March 01, 2007

CLIMATE ALARM


More evidence of the immediate impact of global climate change comes today from Australia where the Canberra Times reports an Australian National University scientist says that recent freakish weather there can be partially blamed on the increasing global temperatures.

Canberra has been struck by seven severe storms in two months the last of which hit on Tuesday night and covered Civic in hailstones. This is not normal weather, according to ANU paleoclimatologist Dr Bradley Opdyke. "We can say with some confidence that global warming would have influenced the storms we've seen right here," he said.

Fellow ANU scientist Dr Janette Lindesay said more severe storms were a part of global warming.

She said the sequence of severe storms to hit Canberra in the last two years was "entirely consistent with what we would expect with global warming". "There are a lot of people that remain semi-sceptical about all of this [global warming]," Dr Lindesay, associate professor of climatology with the ANU's Fenner School of environment and society, said.

"All of my scientific knowledge and experience convinces me that it's real ... and the vast majority of the world's scientists see it too."

Dr Lindesay said global warming led to an increase in rainfall intensity, which meant more storms.

Another impact of global warming was more very hot days, also borne out in Canberra this summer, she said.


FYI - Last night we had a rather strange storm ourselves for the last day of February. Flooding rains, tons of hail, high winds and tornados. These severe storms seem to be occuring more and more often. CNN's main coverage all day today has been of the huge severe storm system traversing the U.S. of A.

In Hungry some are taking public action in the fight to force governments worldwide to deal with an issue that threatens our planet.

The following article comes from MTI (Hungry).

Greenpeace campaign on Danube Bridge against climate change

Budapest, March 1 (MTI) - Environmental protection organisation Greenpeace held a campaign on Budapest's Chain Bridge on Thursday to call attention to the threat of climate change.

Eight Greenpeace activists dressed in yellow descended on ropes hanging from the bridge, holding a 120-square-metre poster that showed the words Climate Alarm! Green Energy! in the direction of the parliament. At the same time, a Greenpeace boat was cruising in circles on the Danube and a siren was started regularly on a Greenpeace van along the river bank.

The police closed the bridge after 1100 local time and the fire services arrived with cranes.

Greenpeace spokesperson Szabina Mozes told MTI that the campaign was designed to encourage Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany to support the strictest measures in the fight against climate change at a European Union Energy Summit in Brussels next week.

Minister of Environment Protection and Water Management Miklos Persanyi told the press on Thursday that Gyurcsany would support the European Commission proposal on climate protection at the EU summit on March 7-8.

Police will initiate proceedings against 21 activists for the Greenpeace campaign, the Budapest Police Headquarters said in a statement on Thursday afternoon.

Disorderly conduct is the charge against 14 people who tied themselves to the railing of the bridge and the remaining 7 are accused of endangering water traffic because they were hanging from the bridge above the water, the police said. The activists include Hungarian, Slovakian, Romanian, German and Austrian citizens.

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