SATURDAY 8th DECEMBER ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE BEFORE ITS TOO LATE

Join people all around the world to demand that world leaders take the urgent action we need to prevent the catastrophic destabilisation of global climate. The National Demo in London will be one of many demonstrations on climate taking place all around the world on the same day ( see here <http://www.globalclimatecampaign.org/> ), midway through the UN Climate Talks in Bali.

10.00 am Cycle Protest assembles at Lincoln's Inn Fields. More details here. <http://www.campaigncc.org/cycle.html>

12 noon Assemble Millbank for main march (Westminster Tube)

2.30 pm Rally at US embassy. Speakers include Chris Huhne MP, Michael Meacher MP, Caroline Lucas MEP and George Monbiot.

2007 Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists

This consensus document was prepared under the auspices of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

For the complete list of signed scientist see:

http://www.climate.unsw.edu.au/bali/

The 2007 IPCC report, compiled by several hundred climate scientists, has unequivocally concluded that our climate is warming rapidly, and that we are now at least 90% certain that this is mostly due to human activities. The amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere now far exceeds the natural range of the past 650,000 years, and it is rising very quickly due to human activity. If this trend is not halted soon, many millions of people will be at risk from extreme events such as heat waves, drought, floods and storms, our coasts and cities will be threatened by rising sea levels, and many ecosystems, plants and animal species will be in serious danger of extinction.
The next round of focused negotiations for a new global climate treaty (within the 1992 UNFCCC process) needs to begin in December 2007 and be completed by 2009. The prime goal of this new regime must be to limit global warming to no more than 2 ºC above the pre-industrial temperature, a limit that has already been formally adopted by the European Union and a number of other countries.
Based on current scientific understanding, this requires that global greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by at least 50% below their 1990 levels by the year 2050. In the long run, greenhouse gas concentrations need to be stabilised at a level well below 450 ppm (parts per million; measured in CO2-equivalent concentration). In order to stay below 2 ºC, global emissions must peak and decline in the next 10 to 15 years, so there is no time to lose.
As scientists, we urge the negotiators to reach an agreement that takes these targets as a minimum requirement for a fair and effective global climate agreement.

'Tropics expand' as world warms

Tuesday, 4 December 2007, 02:40 GMT
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Expansion of the tropics could mean an increase in droughts

Climate change is causing the tropics to widen, with possible impacts on the global food supply, research suggests.
Scientists examined five different measures of the width of the tropical belt, and found it expanded by between 2 and 4.8 degrees latitude since 1979.
Other researchers meanwhile said climatic change could increase the number of thunderstorms in the US.
The findings emerged as delegates met in Bali for UN climate talks focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The capacity of poorer countries - many of them in the tropics - to respond and adapt to impacts of climate change will be another major theme of the talks.

Widening belts
The new analysis of tropical expansion comes from a team of US scientists who reviewed five separate strands of evidence, all gathered from satellite data.
While geographers define "The Tropics" rigidly as the region between 23.5 degrees North and 23.5 degrees South, to atmospheric scientists it is a more variable zone marked by features such as the jet stream and the circulation known as Hadley cells.

On these measures, the tropics have expanded since the era of reliable satellite observation began in 1979.
"The edges of the tropical belt are the outer boundaries of the subtropical dry zones, and their poleward shift could lead to fundamental shifts in ecosystems and in human settlements," the researchers write in the journal Nature Geoscience. "Shifts in precipitation patterns would have obvious implications for agriculture and water resources, and could present serious hardships in marginal areas."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in its series of reports this year that serious impacts on food and water supplies lie ahead, including:

• 75-250 million people across Africa could face water shortages by 2020
• Crop yields could increase by 20% in East and South East Asia, but decrease by up to 30% in Central and South Asia
• Agriculture fed by rainfall could drop by 50% in some African countries by 2020

The scientists behind the new study note that the tropical zone appears to be expanding much faster than predicted by computer models.
Thunder rolls
While impacts on agriculture could prove important for developing countries, a bigger concern for richer nations such as the US may be the damage wrought by extreme weather.
The IPCC forecasts stronger hurricanes in the future, but possibly fewer of them. Now another US team is suggesting an increase in thunderstorms over the country as well.
In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers report a computer modelling study that projects a doubling of the frequency of weather conditions right for the formation of severe thunderstorms.

Already, they write, extreme weather events are costing the US economy more than $2bn (£970m) each year.

Mapping climate change
New crops for warmer world