Between the 9th of November and the 14th of December 2007, TNS Opinion & Social, carried out wave 68.2 of the EUROBAROMETER, on request of the EUROPEAN COMMISSION, Directorate-General for Communication, “Research and Political Analysis”.
Report: 127 pages, including fieldwork details, questionaire, data tables, technical specifications
Conclusion:
96% of Europeans say that protecting the environment is important for them personally. For two-thirds of this group it is even very important.
| A Beautiful Lie |
via: Hug-Lies and A Beautiful Lie
Nice collection of tips from abeautifullie.org helpful to reduce energy consumption.
1. Slow down to cut costs and cut carbon! Slowing down from 75 mph to 65 mph will drop your highway gasoline consumption 15 percent.
2. If everyone took 30 seconds to inflate their tires to the proper pressure we would save 200,000 barrels of oil a day!
3. Bring Your Own Bag: You’ll save one mile’s worth of petroleum for every 14 plastic bags you don’t use. Not to mention cut down on pollution-we throw away over 30 billion one time use bags each year. (more…)
Though the eleven year solor cycle as well as the Southern Oscillation hit their minimum 2007 is recorded as second warmth year in the period of instrumental data.
More:
Wikipedia: Solar Cycle
Marshall Space Flight Center: NASA Satellites Capture Start of New Solar Cycle
Goddard Institute for Space Studies : Global Temperature Trends: 2007 Summation
The NEO Project (NASA Earth Observations) provides an advanced flash interface, map download, analysis features and a full fledged OGC WMS server. The range of available layers are all related to Climate Change and Global Warming.
As a first try ExploreOurPla.net implements 5 layers with interesting data. All of them show combined data of last full month. This leads to full coverage since clouds are elimated. See following examples with direct links to the map interface and the description taken from layer abstract (credits go to NASA).
This map shows the temperature of Earth’s lands during the daytime. Temperature is a measure of how warm or cold an object is. During the day, the Sun’s rays warm Earth’s lands. Some of this warmth rises into the air where gases catch and hold the warmth near the surface. These gases (called greenhouse gases) also help to warm Earth’s land surface.
We can use a thermometer to measure the temperature of any single place. Likewise, scientists can measure the temperature of the whole world from space using instruments carried on satellites. Scientists want to know the land’s temperature for many important reasons. For example, in places where it is too hot or too cold food crops may die.
Temperature also influences weather and climate patterns. So, mapping the temperature of Earth’s lands helps scientists to better understand our world.
(more…)
Quoted from press release, Jan 28 2007:
New survey shows students think climate should be Government’s biggest priority
A hard-hitting climate change advertising campaign showing condoms covering a coal station chimney, a car exhaust and aeroplane engine will be launched in universities across the country this month as part of Friends of the Earth’s The Big Ask campaign.
The launch of the ad campaign coincides with the publication of a new survey which shows that the majority of students think that climate change should be the Government’s biggest priority, with 95 per cent agreeing it is an important issue - ahead of issues such as the war in Iraq, terrorism and student loans. …
The advertising campaign will be delivered to 30 universities across England. Universities taking part in the scheme are:
Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Coventry, Derby, Greenwich, Hertfordshire, Hull, Leeds Metropolitan, Leeds University, Liverpool, London Uni of the Arts, Loughborough, Manchester, Middlesex, Newcastle, Newcastle, Northumbria, Nottingham, Oxford Brookes University, Plymouth, Sheffield University, Southampton, Southbank, Surrey, Thames Valley, Uni of Central England - Birmingham, Uni of West England - Bristol, University College London (UCL), Westminster
Picture credit: Friends of Earth
Nice story written by Patrick Barkham, published in the Guardian 9th, January:
Hedgehogs shun hibernation to gambol amongst blooming daffodils. Cherry trees blossom and red admiral butterflies soar in the balmy breeze. From sheep to parrots, creatures pop out unseasonal sprogs. January is the new March, and not just in Britain: as Arctic ice retreats, ice rinks are closed across the pond; New Yorkers bask in 22C heat. …
More on realclimate.org: El Nino, Global Warming, and Anomalous U.S. Winter Warmth
Ongoing global climate change causes changes in the species composition of marine ecosystems, especially in shallow coastal oceans. During evolution, animals have specialised on environmental conditions and are often very limited in their tolerance to environmental change.
In this context, fish species from the North Sea which experience large seasonal temperature fluctuations, are more tolerant to higher temperatures and display wider thermal windows than, for instance, fishes from polar regions living at constant low temperatures. The latter are able to grow and reproduce only within a very limited thermal tolerance window.
A new investigation, leaded by scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, reveals that a warming induced deficiency in oxygen uptake and supply to tissues is the key factor limiting the stock size of a fish species under heat stress.
The paper ‘Climate change affects marine fishes through the oxygen limitation of thermal tolerance’ is published on January 5, 2007 in the scientific journal Science.
aiw-bremerhaven.de: Press release
Camille Parmesan: Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate Change
Picture credit: Stephen Ausmus, ars.usda.gov
Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
About 20,000-25,000 polar bears live around North Pol in the Arctic and suffer from melting ice sheets. They have to swim far more to reach a summer habitat needed to find seals and places to raise their young.
Assuming no summer ice sheets in a few decades, polar bears will only survive in zoos. Latest researches find that now the bears have less children, are thinner and population shrinks. (more…)
World Meteorological Organization’s 4 pages press release No. 768 from December 14th summarizes year 2006 and counts reords.
Averaged separately for both hemispheres, 2006 surface temperatures for the northern hemisphere (0.58°C above 30-year mean of 14.6°C/58.28°F) are likely to be the fourth warmest and for the southern hemisphere (0.26°C above 30-year mean of 13.4°C/56.12°F), the seventh warmest in the instrumental record from 1861 to the present.
Since the start of the 20th century, the global average surface temperature has risen approximately 0.7°C. But this rise has not been continuous. Since 1976, the global average temperature has risen sharply, at 0.18°C per decade. In the northern and southern hemispheres, the period 1997-2006 averaged 0.53°C and 0.27°C above the 1961-1990 mean, respectively
Read about regional temperature anomalies, drought, heavy precipitation and flooding, El Niño, deadly typhoons, ozone depletion and Arctic sea-ice decline from all over the planet.
As an impressive part the forest gallery presents photos of the biggest 18 forests on Earth from leading photograpers.
Moreover the documentation explains the importance of forests and trees for humans and biodiversity.
Take some time, enjoy the ambient background music and explore worlds most important plants and their habitat.
via: Ehrensenf.de
