Seven Generational Ruminations

Using radar images acquired by European ERS-1 and -2 satellites, scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) tracked the flow rate of more than 300 previously unstudied glaciers. They found a 12% increase in glacier speed from 1993 to 2003. These observations, echoing recent findings from coastal Greenland, indicate that the cause is the melting of the lower glaciers, which flow directly into the sea.

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the main UN international group studying climate change -- has released the second installment of the IPCC fourth assessment report enitled "Impact, Adaptation and Vulnerability" [more | more2]. Building on February's IPCC report which found human greenhouse gas emissions are very likely to be the main cause of recent warming, thousands of the world's leading climate scientists concurred that heat-trapping emissions from industry and other activities are already influencing weather patterns and ecology.

"And we have far greater regional detail than in [our previous global assessment in] 2001 on things like glacier melting, and what the implications of that melting will be; on sea level rise, which clearly threatens a number of countries in the world including mega-deltas which are particularly vulnerable; and on agriculture, which has implications for food security."