Eco-Post Day 2

This last weekend's Independent carried an article with a provocative headline, and a clear message. If you follow the link, you'll find the piece titled: "What planet are you on, Mr Bush? (and do you care, Mr Blair?)"

It's a sternly worded piece that is not available to non-subscribers.

The essential theme of the piece is that we are now in the grip of global climatic change, and that without the co-operation of the US, China, India, Brazil and others in the establishment of a new set of protocols once Kyoto expires in 2012, we're pretty much f&cked.

I'll offer the following points concerning indisputable, measureable facts about what is happening to our climate right now.

I'll toss them in a little bulleted blockquote for easy digestion:

• GLOBAL MELTDOWN


Across the planet, rising temperatures are taking their toll


• CARBON DIOXIDE


New research has found that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - the main cause of global warming - are higher than at any time in the past 625,000 years.


• HOTTEST EVER


This year is expected to be the warmest ever recorded; 1998 was the hottest so far, but the past three years currently occupy the next three places.


• DESERTIFICATION


The giant Kalahari desert, already four times the size of Britain, threatens to become larger still, covering farmland in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa.


• EXPANDING OCEANS


The level of the world's seas and oceans is rising twice as fast as in the past, as their waters expand in rising temperatures and glaciers melt.


• OCEAN EXILES


The people of the Carteret Islands, a scattering of atolls off Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific, have started to leave as their homes succumb to rising seas.


• HURRICANES


Hurricane Epsilon - the 14th of the year - is forming in the Atlantic, even though the worst recorded hurricane season by far formally ended on Wednesday.


• GLACIER MELT


Greenland glaciers have suddenly started racing towards the sea and melting. Much the same is beginning to happen to glaciers in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.


• WATER SHORTAGE


Areas such as the western USA, which depend on mountain snows for their water supplies, are running short as less snow falls - and what does fall melts earlier.


• DISAPPEARING SPECIES


Sealife and birdlife have declined catastrophically this year along America's north-west Pacific coast, after a similar meltdown in the North Sea.


• CORAL REEFS


Corals on the Great Barrier Reef are bleaching out and dying as sea temperatures rise and scientists fear that the whole reef may perish by 2050.

Tomorrow's environmental installment will cover the popular movement to alter the politics of global climate change, and dis-honor those countries that are unwilling to at least try to do something to save the planet's climate and ecosystems.