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27/08/06 Sprung: warming alters seasons, Ian Sample, London, Guardian Europe
16/08/06 Water shortage 'a global problem', By Imogen Foulkes , BBC News, Geneva
16/08/06 Forests under threat from global warming, The Age
12/08/06 Not waving but drowning at our back door, - Liz Minchin, The Age
09/08/06 Oil field shutdown chaos warning, The Age
Ian Sample, London, Guardian
August 27, 2006
SPRING is arriving earlier each year as a result of climate change, the first "conclusive proof" that global warming is altering the timing of the seasons, European scientists have announced.
In what is believed to be the world's largest study of seasonal events, such as the flowering of plants, autumnal leaf fall and insect behaviour, scientists found that spring now starts six to eight days earlier across Europe than in the early 1970s.
Warmer temperatures have also delayed autumn by an average of three days in the past 30 years, the scientists report.
Countries that have experienced the greatest warming saw the earliest springs, according to the study in the journal Global Change Biology. In Spain, where early spring temperatures have risen by up to 1 degree a decade, spring now arrives two weeks earlier.
Britain is warming at a slower rate, with temperatures creeping up 1 degree in the past three decades.
"Not only do we clearly demonstrate change in the timing of seasons, but that change is much stronger in countries that have experienced more warming," said Tim Sparks, an environmental scientist on the study.
Dr Sparks said the shifting seasons were already disrupting sensitive ecosystems by knocking natural processes such as pollination out of kilter.
Scientists from 17 countries took part in the study and analysed 125,000 records and observations in Europe compiled between 1971 and 2000. The records, which covered 542 plant species and 19 animals, showed that 80 per cent of all leafing, flowering and fruiting now happened earlier in the year.
Co-author Annette Menzel said it was the first comprehensive examination of data on a continental scale.
GUARDIAN
Water shortage 'a global problem'
The report says water loss is a problem facing the whole world
RELATED IN DEPTH REPORT :- BBC' s Science and Technology News :- Planet under pressure A six-part series exploring the planet's environmental problems. including; Including Climate Change Section and How Climate Change Works - Animated Story Board
Forests under threat from global warming
August 16, 2006, The Age,
Our highlighting
Up to 60 per cent of the world's forests, including Australia, will be lost if global temperatures rise by an average of 3 degrees or more, research has found.
University of Bristol's Marko Scholze
has found a rise of more than 3 degrees will cause the loss of forests in Amazonia, Europe, Asia, Canada and Central America. His research predicts extreme floods, forest fires and droughts will become more common in the next 200 years.The research took 52 simulations of the world's climate over the next century based on 16 models. Dr Scholze said his work could help to define the concept of dangerous climate change.
Liz Minchin, The Age
August 12, 2006
Ali Tamwoy, 3, of Masig Island, in the Torres Strait, swims during hide tide.
Photo: Andrew Meares
The Age LINK
BABY Sedoi Passi was alone in her parents' bedroom just before midnight when the waves broke through a wall and began flooding the room.
"The tide had been rolling in all afternoon, bigger than usual, like surfing waves. But we kept thinking, 'It's going to stop,"' recalls her father, Sunny Passi.
"But it just kept coming up … So we were all running around like crazy, moving stuff, and with everything happening, my partner and I didn't realise our little girl was still inside."
When they went back in, "we found Sedoi sitting in her cot, covered from head to toe in sand, poor girl. She didn't cry the whole time, it was like she was in shock or something."
For Mr Passi and others living on Australia's northern frontier, climate change is no longer an abstract threat. They believe it is happening now.
Over the past two years, half the populated islands of the Torres Strait have experienced unprecedented flooding from surging king tides. The islanders cannot prove that climate change is to blame for the tidal flooding or for shifts in the weather, but their elders are baffled.
Although the flooding of the islands has gone largely unnoticed on Australia's mainland, from next year it is set to become a globally reported issue.
According to the draft of the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, written by the world's top climate scientists and seen by The Age before its official release next year, the king tides have exposed a need for better coastal protection and long-term planning to potentially relocate half the 4000 people living on the islands.
The draft report also warns that those islanders may not be alone in seeking refuge on the Australian mainland.
"About 60,000 to 90,000 people from the Pacific islands may be exposed to flooding from sea-level rise each year by the 2050s," it says.
"This would place pressure internally on these countries and on surrounding nations (such as New Zealand and Australia) to help sustain communities or to consider emergency immigrants. Displacement of Torres Strait islanders to mainland Australia is also likely to occur within this time frame."
CSIRO scientist Donna Green is working with indigenous communities in remote northern Australia on adapting to climate change. She says the Torres Strait is one of the most vulnerable regions in the country.
"While we don't have historical records of sea levels in the Torres Strait, we do know that climate change is causing sea levels to rise in this region and is increasing the intensity of extreme weather and tidal events," she says. "So it is likely that climate change is playing a part in these recent inundations."
Flying over the strait in a light plane, a teardrop-shaped island appears below, its dark green interior of palm trees fringed with pale sand in the opal-coloured sea. There are more than 100 of these remote islands between Cape York Peninsula and Papua New Guinea, but only 14 are inhabited.
For mainland Australians, this coral teardrop, known as Masig or Yorke island, is the most recognisable feature of the Torres Strait after its starring role in the recent SBS television series Remote Area Nurse. Masig is among six low-lying islands in the central and north-western Torres Strait that have been hardest hit by repeated flooding over the past two years.
On Masig, the waves have surged 50 metres past the beach to lap at the steps of the 113-year-old St John the Evangelist Church. "When I went out that night with my family, geez, my eyes nearly popped out," says Father Ned Mosby, who appeared on RAN.
"My kids asked me, 'Dad, what's happening?' I told them, 'I don't know' … But that night I told them, 'Hey, this is our home, but the day will come when you have to move."'
It is a message Father Mosby and fellow priest Father Edward Nai reluctantly preach to their congregation. "I get upset talking about it, but I'm a realist," says Father Nai. "That's why I'd like John Howard to start talking to indigenous people on mainland Australia now about places where you might be able to settle islander communities."
He would "also ask the Prime Minister to do everything he can to slow down the process of global warming because, otherwise, God only knows how much longer we will be here".
Although the waves did not damage the church, its roof needs replacing at a cost of $101,000. "Do we try to raise that money to replace the roof here, or do we start thinking about having to rebuild the church somewhere else?" he asks.
Some islanders have a nickname for mainlanders, particularly politicians, who fly through the strait, make a lot of noise about local concerns, then fly off without doing anything to help. They call them seagulls.
But after years of frustrated lobbying by the Torres Strait Regional Authority and the Island Co-ordinating Council, finally there are signs that politicians are listening. Late last year, the Federal Government granted $300,000 towards a major study of the six islands at greatest risk: Poruma, Iama, Masig and Warraber in the central Strait, and the swampy north-western islands of Saibai and Boigu. As well as preparing long-overdue emergency evacuation plans, the islands have also lodged an application for $4.4 million from the federal and Queensland governments to patch up sea walls, raise houses on stilts and protect vital infrastructure such as water.
Regional authority chairman John Toshie Kris says relocation has been discussed "as a last resort", but believes it can be avoided with government help. "At the moment, you cannot move these people, because they are connected by blood and bone to their traditional homes," he says.
On the far-eastern volcanic island of Mer — also known as Murray Island — five Meriam men led by Eddie Mabo fought an epic High Court case over native land rights, which overturned the legal myth that Australia belonged to no one before the British arrived.
But today it is the sea, not the law, that is taking their land.
Over two nights in July last year, Mer was struck by strong winds and king tides that prompted more than half a dozen families to move inland.
It came as no surprise to council chairman Ron Day, who has for years been warning that "no one can stop the sea from rising".
But like other Torres Strait islanders, the Meriam people have deep ties to the sea and land, celebrated in a slow, tender song about living "within thy opal waters … blessed with all good things".
The song was written a century ago by Scotsman John Stewart Bruce, whose family were the first Europeans to live on Mer. They loved it so much they were buried there. Last July, their overgrown graves were flooded.
It was that flood, and the fright of finding his daughter Sedoi covered in sand, that convinced Mr Passi to pack up his beachfront home and move to the hills.
Although Mr Passi says it will be hard for his children to give up their backyard beach and falling asleep to the sound of lapping waves, he is trying to be optimistic about their move.
"We're going to have solar panels on the roof, a wind generator, our own vegie garden, a compost toilet and all that stuff," he says.
"I'm just going to start by doing my little bit, and see where we go from there."
"NATIVES quit vanishing Torres islands," shouts the headline above a photo of sombre-faced women and children in a newspaper published more than half a century ago.
"This Saibai Island group … are being dispossessed by the encroaching sea," the story reads.
On most of the low-lying islands of the Torres Strait, even elders with long memories say that the recent flooding from king tides is the worst they have seen. But on Saibai, mostly a metre above sea level, the flooding has been this bad once before, in 1948, when hundreds were forced to resettle on the mainland. Today, the 379 people on Saibai fear flooding is increasing. Even with a long sea wall, the streets have been repeatedly washed out, most recently in February.
A wooden placard hammered into a palm tree sums up the locals' fears: "Urgent. To the leaders of this community, please HELP ME, I'M SINKING … To the community, please PRAY FOR ME."
But council chairman Jensen Warusam insists it is not too late to save the island. He wants funds to repair the crumbling sea wall.
"We do have to think hard now, because some areas (that were flooded) this year were untouched by water before," he says. "But we will lose our identity as Saibai people if we scatter. If we separate, there will be no more Saibai."
August 9, 2006 - 8:20AM, The Age
A US think-tank believes the possible shutdown of North America's largest oil field could be more damaging for motorists more than any other war or natural disaster.
British Petroleum (BP) may be forced to shut down its Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska after discovering severe corrosion in 12 separate sections of transit pipelines.
Prudhoe Bay produces 400,000 barrels of oil per day, about 8 per cent of the US oil production.
Private sector intelligence group Stratfor says the problem could not come at a worse time.
"This shutdown could hurt markets in a more sustained way than any of the other chaos about the globe," Stratfor's recent briefing on the shutdown said.
"The markets already know the Russians are prickly, the Nigerians trigger-happy, the Venezuelans a bit nutty, the Iranians confrontational, the Iraqis less than organised and that Israel and its neighbours rarely see eye to eye, and thus have already corrected for such issues.
"But Alaskan production is normally considered rock-solid reliable, so any real problems there are not yet priced into the market."
The intelligence comes at the same time that NSW and ACT motoring group NRMA predicts Australians will soon be paying as much as $1.80 for petrol at the pump.
"We're looking at a $1.60 to $1.80 for a litre of petrol in the next few months," NRMA president Alan Evans said.
Meanwhile, the US government has moved to minimise the impact of the problems at Prudhoe Bay.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said he had been assured by senior managers from the British energy giant that it may not be necessary to close down the entire pipeline.
"Should the shutdown of Prudhoe Bay, of the system, prove to be necessary and appropriate, we believe that there are crude oil inventories, as well as additional crude oil availability, that will help us alleviate disruption from Alaska," he said.
Bodman said that US oil reserves are at healthy levels, and noted that Saudi Arabia has up to 1.3 million barrels per day of surplus crude capacity if needed to plug any US shortfalls.
The White House said that Mexico as well as Saudi Arabia had offered to provide extra supplies.
"They've agreed to help," spokesman Tony Snow said.
AAP/AFP