Greenest Hits: The 20 most-read climate change stories this year

via : Timesonline.co.uk

From Times Online
December 7, 2007
Greenest Hits: The 20 most-read climate change stories this year
From Jeremy
1. An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change "Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages."
2. Camilla Cavendish: Wake up and smell the smoke of disaster "Environmentalists may get off on climate porn, but most people just turn away. “If it was really so bad, they'd do something,” says one colleague, without specifying who “they” are. The human tendency to convince yourself that everything is OK, because no one else is worried, is deeply ingrained."
3. Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’"Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance."
4. Jeremy Clarkson on the environment "Ecologically speaking, a spilt tanker load is like sticking a safety pin into an elephant’s foot. The planet barely notices. After the Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska the oil company spent billions tidying up the coastline, but it was a waste of money because the waves were cleaning up faster than Exxon could. Environmentalists can never accept the planet’s ability to self-heal"
5. John-Paul Flintoff: Climate change: A stitch in time "Soon we’ll all have to become more self-sufficient. We must learn to grow and cook food, build and restore buildings and infrastructure, process sewage, create a healthcare system that does not rely on petrochemical-based pills, and puzzle together a no-growth economic system. And, I modestly submit, we must learn to make and repair our clothes."
6. Climate change hits Mars "Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period."
7. La Niña threatens to wreck world's weather "La Niña could even rearrange the pattern of sea ice around the Antarctic, pushing the ice pack towards the Pacific side of the continent. Already, torrential rains have triggered severe floods across a huge swath of Central Africa, stretching from Senegal in the west to Uganda in the east."
8. John-Paul Flintoff meets Zac Goldsmith: You’re going green... or else"The world my children will live in will be very different. The way we travel will change and the way we build and communicate. But I think the changes will be good. I’m optimistic for the first time in my life.”
9. ‘Fertilising’ oceans with iron may combat climate change"Scientists are considering a plan to combat climate change by dumping millions of tons of iron into the ocean to alter its chemical make-up."
10. Damage to the planet ‘is already inevitable’ "Scientists who a decade ago were warning that climate change would first be felt significantly by their grandchildren said they expected it to have a major impact within their own lifetimes."
11. Rapeseed biofuel ‘produces more greenhouse gas than oil or petrol’"Rapeseed and maize biodiesels were calculated to produce up to 70 per cent and 50 per cent more greenhouse gases respectively than fossil fuels. "
12. Climate change may help rainforests "Climate change may lead to lush growth rather than catastrophic tree loss in the Amazonian forests, researchers from the US and Brazil have found."
13. Joanna Lumley: Holy cow! We’re crazy to farm livestock like this"I prefer not to eat food that has a face. But many of my nearest and dearest love their meat, and who am I to ask them not to eat so much of it? Reducing our meat consumption is no longer an option but an urgent necessity."
14. Camilla Cavendish: Save the Planet: cancel that flight now "It’s a vendetta. It’s class war. Those killjoy greens are trying to demonise the air industry and the package holiday. How dare that Mr Osborne and that Mr Cameron ask airlines to pay for the pollution they create."
15. Ice-cream makers frozen out as corn price rises "What’s the connection between ethanol, the biofuel produced from corn, and a cherry vanilla ice-cream? Answer: the first is responsible for pushing up the price of the other."
16. Climate change ‘could create 200m refugees’ "By the middle of the century, the report will warn, more than 200m people could have been forced from their native lands by rising sea levels, floods and droughts, with many more facing early deaths from malnutrition and heat stress."
17. Rapid rise in global warming is forecast "The oceans are losing the capacity to soak up rising man-made carbon emissions, which is increasing the rate of global warming by up to 30 per cent, scientists said yesterday."
18. 'Humanity's very survival' is at risk, says UN "The speed at which mankind has used the Earth’s resources over the past 20 years has put “humanity’s very survival” at risk, a study involving 1,400 scientists has concluded."
19. Camilla Cavendish: The blue-ing of the green movement "Environmentalists were intially sceptical about whether Conservatives could ever marry their belief in markets with the need to reorientate our economy to live within planetary limits."
20. Geoff Mulgan: China's great green leap forward? "To the rest of the world China looks like an environmental car crash, a superpower superpolluter that along with the USA has become the most obdurate barrier to action on climate change."