"It is about the size and weight of a theatre programme and when it was published in Valencia, Spain, at the weekend, the first eagerly grabbed copies were held together by a hastily punched staple. Yet these 23 pages are crucial for the future of the world.
This is the key document on climate change, and from now on you can forget any others you may have read or seen or heard about. This is the one that matters. It is the tightly distilled, peer-reviewed research of several thousand scientists, fully endorsed, without qualification, by all the world's major governments. Its official name is a mouthful: the Policymakers' Summary of the Synthesis Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment. So let's just call it The Synthesis.
It is so important because it provides one concise, easily-readable but comprehensive text of facts, figures and diagrams – in short all the information you need to understand and act on the threat of global warming, be you a politician, a businessman, an activist or a citizen (or for that matter, a doubter)." [via Independent Online Edition]
"For millennia, layers of animal waste and other organic matter left behind by the creatures that used to roam the Arctic tundra have been sealed inside the frozen permafrost. Now climate change is thawing the permafrost and lifting this prehistoric ooze from suspended animation."
"Here in America we've got several vast deserts that are perfect for installing gigantic solar thermal power plants. But not every country has so much free space. At the end of the day, most of the sun's light hits the oceans, because most of the Earth is ocean, but the United Arab Emerates has just contracted with a Swiss firm, CSEM to purchase a floating solar island." [via EcoGeek, Digg]
"In a passionate attack on the climate policies of Prime Minister John Howard and US President George Bush, the former US vice-president, addressing a very expensive lunch in Sydney yesterday, called Australia and the US "the Bonnie and Clyde" outlaws of the global environment for their failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol."
"Mr Gore made his comments after reporters were asked to leave the lunch venue. Despite the cost, lunch in the 700-seat room at the Sydney Convention Centre was a sell-out, as is tomorrow's event in Melbourne. VIP packages, which included a spot close to Mr Gore and a meet-and-greet with him, cost $25,000." [via theage.com.au, DRUDGE REPORT]
"Vice President Cheney came up to see the Republicans yesterday. You can always tell when the Republicans are getting restless, because the Vice President’s motorcade pulls into the Capitol, and Darth Vader emerges," Hillary Clinton said just now at a $100-a-head fundraiser at Town Hall near New York's Times Square, referring to Cheney's efforts shore up Republican congressional support for the Iraq war. [via Ben Smith's blog, DRUDGE REPORT]
"At least 88 people were killed when the aircraft, operated by a Thai budget airline, skidded off a runway in heavy rain on the southern island of Phuket." [via BBC NEWS]
"Mr McRae, 39, his son Johnny, friend Ben Porcelli, 6, and Graeme Duncan, 37, died following a helicopter crash in Lanarkshire on Saturday." [via BBC NEWS]
"DINOSAURS might be revived in one of two ways. Fiction suggests applying the techniques of genetic engineering to DNA extracted from bloodsucking prehistoric insects trapped in amber. To resurrect the dinosaurs of rock, however, all you need is a fat cheque and a block booking at a vast stadium." [via Economist.com]
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