Can the world reach a new deal to combat climate change without the world's richest country, the world's sole superpower? Such is the question looming over the Copenhagen climate change summit, now only three weeks away, as the international community waits anxiously to see if President Barack Obama can publicly commit the United States to action on global warming.

If he does, it may bring a global agreement in its train. If he does not, the chances of a worthwhile deal in Denmark are virtually zero. The decision is his. A lonely one, or what?

The world is now firmly on course for the worst-case scenario in terms of climate change, with average global temperatures rising by up to 6C by the end of the century, leading scientists said yesterday. Such a rise – which would be much higher nearer the poles – would have cataclysmic and irreversible consequences for the Earth, making large parts of the planet uninhabitable and threatening the basis of human civilisation.

We are headed for it, the scientists said, because the carbon dioxide emissions from industry, transport and deforestation which are responsible for warming the atmosphere have increased dramatically since 2002, in a way which no one anticipated, and are now running at treble the annual rate of the 1990s.

This means that the most extreme scenario envisaged in the last report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in 2007, is now the one for which society is set, according to the 31 researchers from seven countries involved in the Global Carbon Project.

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Hopefully, the Australian people are beginning to see through the Howard (New Order) claim that humans are not even part of the climate change and, in fact, there is no climate change at all.  Fair dinkum.

By co-incidence my Wife and I were watching the simple-minded and camera shy Coalition “poodle” Christopher Pyne, performing for the objective of seemingly being important when Nicola Roxon spoke on the health problems of Climate Change.  The poodle laughed of course.

Irrespective of the many reasons given by this modern world which seems to accept cancer as an almost absolute for humanity only mitigated by the suggestion that it is different for women than men, and vice-versa, we are being coerced (my words) into believing that – with age - it is inevitable.

I am 79 and over the last nine years I have been operated on for prostrate cancer and cancer on the lung.

My Wife however, is only 55 (and I love it) and she has suffered with three primary cancers in one breast but, thankfully she has been clear for nine years.

Although Nicola was dealing with well known health matters, we just wonder how much damage to health is being caused by climate change over the last century? 

Is the damage to the environment by Chernobyl/Hiroshima/Nagasaki slowly affecting our planet?  Is the depleted Uranium used by the UK and the US in Kosovo; Iraq and Afghanistan coming back to haunt them and us by the accumulation of toxic chemicals in the atmosphere?

It is already accepted that the amount of nuclear waste which was used in Iraq is causing deformed children and many deaths, even after the US scattered their multi-mines in that helpless country – why? What a vicious and unnecessary crime.

In my simple terms, the crazy desire by the UK and the US (and others) to create a cheap nuclear method of energy supply has left their environments with the problem of what to do with the nuclear waste.  In short, nuclear energy is, at least at this time, contradicted by the problem of what (or who) should be loaded with the problem of handling the waste.

In the meantime, does big business consider only the next decade or, does a genuinely responsible government consider the long-term future?  I believe that Kevin Rudd (the Mouse that roared) is right in his determination to try to correct the pollution of the planet and it can be done as the Ozone layer has demonstrated.

God Bless Australia.  NE OUBLIE.

Women in developing countries will be the most vulnerable to climate change, a report from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has warned.

The agency said there was a disproportionate burden on those women and called for greater equality.

They do most of the agricultural work, and are therefore affected by weather-related natural disasters impacting on food, energy and water, it said.

Slower population growth would help cut greenhouse gas emissions, it added.

The report suggested family planning, reproductive healthcare and "gender relations" could influence how the world adapts to rising seas, worsening storms and severe droughts.

By SINDYA N. BHANOO

The Earth’s oceans, which have absorbed carbon dioxide from fuel emissions since the dawn of the industrial era, have recently grown less efficient at sopping it up, new research suggests.

Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels began soaring in the 1950s, and oceans largely kept up, scientists say. But the growth in the intake rate has slowed since the 1980s, and markedly so since 2000, the authors of a study write in a report in Thursday’s issue of Nature.

The research suggests that the seas cannot indefinitely be considered a reliable “carbon sink” as humans generate heat-trapping gases linked to global warming.

The slowdown in the rise of the absorption rate resulted from a gradual change in the oceans’ chemistry, the study found. “The more carbon dioxide the ocean absorbs, the more acidic it becomes and the less carbon dioxide it can absorb,” said the study’s lead author, Samar Khatiwala, a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

“It’s a small change in absolute terms,” Dr. Khatiwala said. “What I think is fairly clear and important in the long term is the trend toward lower values, which implies that more of the emissions will remain in the atmosphere.”

To calculate the slowdown, Dr. Khatiwala and his collaborators created a mathematical model using tens of thousands of measurements of seawater collected over the past 20 years, including temperature, salinity and the presence of manufactured chlorofluorocarbons as a reflection of industrial activity.

The number of people in Africa has passed the one billion mark, the UN Population Fund says in a report.

UNPF's Executive Director Thoraya Obeid told the BBC that the annual figures showed the continent's population had doubled in the last 27 years.

"Africa countries are all growing fast... because there is large number of women who have no access to planning their families," she said.

The populations of Nigeria and Uganda were growing the fastest, she said.

"It's an African phenomenon of a large growing population and a large percentage of young people in the population," she told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

In its State of the World Report, the UNPF says the world's population currently stands at about 6.8 billion.

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Meanwhile in the land of milk and honey...:

Some Australians must have felt similar estrangement when they read federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner's defence of Australia's runaway immigration targets, playfully comparing our population densities with those of Bangladesh.

That Tanner is one of the best minds in federal politics will only deepen the rift between 90 per cent of Australians and their political and business leadership over population policy, or rather the absence of any policy except "more".

In March the Australian Bureau of Statistics projected that one scenario, with ramped-up immigration, could mean a population as high as 42.5 million by 2056. Its mid-range scenario comes in at 35.5 million.

I need only summarise the indictments of such high-end population growth. It assumes rainfall reliability not reflected in any known data. It ignores evidence that high immigration has only a marginal impact on age distribution over the long term. It glides over the proof marshalled by Ross Gittins that high immigration worsens, not relieves, skill shortages. It also spikes the cost of land and cruels housing affordability.

Unlike the noxious gases pumped into the atmosphere by gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles in the United States and smoke-belching factories in China, danger here in the heart of Borneo rises from the ground itself.

Peat, formed over thousands of years from decomposed trees, grass and scrub, contains gigantic quantities of carbon dioxide, which used to stay locked in the ground. It is now drying and disintegrating, as once-soggy swamps are shorn of trees and drained by canals, and when it burns, carbon dioxide gushes into the atmosphere.

From Johann Hari at the Independent

Almost a year after Barack Obama ascended to the White House, many of his supporters are bemused. His healthcare bill is a hefty improvement but it still won't provide coverage for all Americans, and may not provide a public alternative to the over-charging insurance companies - if it passes at all. His environmental team is vandalising the vital Copenhagen conference by saying the US – the single biggest emitter of warming gases – will not sign up to any legally binding restrictions there. He has placed the deregulation-fanatics who caused the New Depression, like Lawrence Summers, in charge of the recovery. Despite the real improvements on Bush – such as the end of torture, the resumption of stem-cell research, and opposition to the coup in Honduras – many people are asking: why he is delivering so little, so slowly?

A pair of seemingly small stories about the forces warping American politics can help us to answer this question. At first glance, they will seem like preposterous caricatures, but the facts are plain. The institutions that are blocking progress on all these issues – Republicans in the Senate, and the mighty corporate lobbying machine that bankrolls both parties – have rallied over the past few months to defend two causes with very little popular support in the United States: rape and slavery.

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see toon at top.

Since people like US ex-vice/President Al Gore (Howard called him a "peeved" politician) took up the cudgels of arguing the case of "The Inconvenient Truth" people of good intentions, all over the globe, have rallied to confirm the science behind that concern.

In spite of the extreme right Corporations and their cronies whining and lying all over the place, even in Australia, and using the typical "Howard New Order" of fear and smear, these modern day "Galileo" scientists are calmly taking the unsupported and paid rogue commentators with a grain of salt.  God willing, so will we.

The whole issue of the Rudd government's attempt to at least begin a move towards doing something positive regarding the issue - has been sidelined by the "Howard style" issue of "boat people" - and the Murdoch media have really played it up (but not the SIEV X).

The debate regarding that issue has been blown way out of proportion when you realize that the immigration of "new Australians from the queue" out-numbers the boat people by some 90%.  In all commonsense, which subject is more worthy of discussion – the future of the planet or the future of 78 boat people?  Fair dinkum.

Perhaps on Tuesday next the much abused system of “democracy” will, at least in the case of the conservative Liberal/Nationalists, be put to sleep by their decision.  That underhanded fascist Minchin has caused the Turnbull leadership to depend on the decision announced NOT necessarily the majority vote.  Who gains by that?

All week the “narcissus” poodle, Christopher Pyne, has again annoyed me, and others I hope, by his constant appearance where ever the camera is and his persistent interference in the Speaker-accepted answer that any Government Minister may try to give.  He even outdoes Bromwyn Bishop but, I guess any exposure can be beneficial to a megalomaniac?

The dedicated abuse of the Senate has become even more ridiculous than it was under the Howard regime.  They are still together as a “rabble” in that the Liberals have a different view to each other; and different to the Nationals; the Greens have a different view to both of them and the Independents have a different opinion to all of them!  Now try to run a country with that opposition? Fair dinkum.

If the Rudd Labor government is so wrong – why doesn’t the attitude of the Senate unite under their claim of acting in “Australia’s best interests”?  Has trying to embarrass or defy the federally elected House of Representatives become the ultimate in the duties of a State elected Senate?

One day, one of the parties will have to ask the High Court to decide that issue according to the Constitution.

I certainly didn’t vote for Barnaby Joyce to decide the fate of my country. Struth!

God Bless Australia.  NE OUBLIE.