GLOBAL MELTDOWN
The catalogue of disasters that are happening right now
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.
Also in this section
The Kyoto protocol to tackle climate change allows nations and corporations to trade carbon emissions they make which go beyond their set limit with other nations or corporations whose emissions are not so high. This has led to a new form of colonialism.
Rising Tide International writes in their political statement:
"The market in carbon emissions trading is colonialism with a modern face. The biggest polluters have not only evaded responsibility for their emissions, but have created carbon trading, which perpetuates and deepens unequal access to and control of resources. A key element of carbon trading is the carbon sink, which is a strategy designed to appropriate indigenous lands. Other development projects, such as nuclear energy, large dams and other large-scale, hi-tech projects have come to be known as Joint Implementation and Clean Development Mechanisms in the Kyoto Protocol. These are false solutions which are being dumped on marginalised communities, thus widening the gap between rich and poor. They create the illusion that southern countries are benefiting, while masking the fact that it is rich countries and companies which are profiting from access to emissions permits and control of new southern markets. People are being cheated in the name of sustainable development."
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Threads: Climate Change