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Seen at ABC News Australia - A lobby group of climate skeptics is to send every British school a copy of the film The Great Global Warming Swindle, a controversial film that claims climate change is a myth.

The film caused a storm when it was screened in both Britain and Australia because it swims against the scientific consensus espoused by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Last week some British sceptics failed in a legal bid to stop every school being sent a copy of Al Gore’s Oscar-winning climate change film An Inconvenient Truth.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Government had decided every high school student should see it.

British climate skeptics target schools in Britain

Related:

Oil firms fund climate change denial

Greenhouse gas climate change the greatest swindle?

Lloyd’s of London’s 360 Reports on Climate Change and Risk Reports. Lloyd’s reports that the insurance industry should start planning and modeling now for a higher level of losses across the world by the middle of the century as both the severity and frequency of weather events increase. The alternative - waiting until definitive scientific pronouncements on impact at a regional level or likelihood of catastrophic change are available – seems like an increasingly risky strategy.

Excerpt from the Lloyd’s 360 Rapid Climate Change Report:

“Until now, we have tended to think of climate change as a gradual phenomenon which will take place slowly over a long period of hundreds – or perhaps thousands – of years. In turn, this thinking is likely to influence how we forecast and prepare for climate related loss, with the impact expected to be felt evenly over time, and any increase in loss taking place incrementally. In fact, the latest science presented in this report suggests that climate change is likely to bring increasingly dramatic, and possibly rapid, effects at a local level, which differ in their intensity and even in their outcome. In addition, a growing number of potential feedback mechanisms within the climate have the capacity to cause tipping points in the system and speed change further. While we cannot yet determine what the exact impact of climate change will be, the evidence is increasing to suggest we will see tangible change within our lifetime, and insurers and business should begin to consider and prepare for the range of outcomes now.”

With a wealth of new research becoming available recently, the global insurance sector and the wider business community should factor the latest science into its business planning.

• Global warming is not only changing the average climate, but will also make it more erratic which should be of particular concern to the insurance industry.
• As climate change takes hold, insurers and businesses should therefore keep a close watch on future developments, and be prepared to revise their longer term strategies regularly.
• While not all of the increased risks may result in huge losses which significantly damage the capital of the insurance industry, increased unexpected attritional losses could certainly impact financial performance on a regular basis.

Lloyd’s of London’s 360 Rapid Climate Change Report

Lloyd’s of London’s FINAL 360 Climate Change Report

Oct 4 2007 - Shrinking ice ‘locked into spiral of decline’ by Darren Devine, Western Mail

DRAMATIC new evidence showing that ice cover on the Arctic Ocean has fallen to its lowest level recorded proves the area is “locked into a spiral of decline”, a Welsh scientist said last night.

Bangor University Oceanographer Dr Tom Rippeth, who has a team doing research in Arctic, says the polar ice cap has shrunk by almost a third compared with its size this time last year.

Research from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) reveals that at 4.2m sq km the cap has shrunk by an area about seven times larger than the UK.

When compared to the typical September ice coverage for the 1960s and 70s the change is even greater, as the cap has shrunk to about half the size it was then.

Over the past 10 years the polar ice cap has never been observed to shrink by more than 0.2m square km, but this year has fallen by more than 1m square km.

Dr Rippeth insists the magnitude of the fall is clear evidence of how global warming is changing the planet.

He said, “The magnitude of the decline in arctic ice cover has taken everyone by surprise. It’s far too big to be a result of natural variability and tends to suggest that we are actually locked into a spiral of decline.”

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“Night-shining” clouds are bringing a mystery that NASA has now made a mission to study- these hauntingly beautiful noctilucent clouds were previously restricted to the poles but are now being seen over Colorado. This photograph here was taken over the Juneau, Alaska, ice field in 1998.

‘Night-shining’ clouds, also known as ‘noctilucent’ clouds were discovered 120 years ago - the strangely luminescent clouds have been moving slowly toward the equator and also appear to be getting brighter and more numerous, too, said David Rusch, a University of Colorado atmospheric scientist.

NASA launched a $110 million AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere) mission to measure noctilucent clouds and the circumstances in which they form - which may be linked to climate change. The AIM satellite will measure air temperature and pressure, moisture content and cloud dimensions.

Noctilucent clouds appear only at night at an altitude of 50 miles up in the atmosphere; a position which lets them catch sunlight no longer visible from Earth’s surface. Normal clouds are less than 10 miles up in the atmosphere. James Russell, an atmospheric scientist at Hampton University in Virginia, the NASA mission’s principal investigator reported that:

“They’re very beautiful, they look very mysterious, but aside from all that, these clouds are changing in ways we don’t understand … Observed increases in water vapor in the atmosphere - a consequence of warming - may also make it easier for the clouds to form”

Scott Bailey, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia said:

“Methane, another powerful greenhouse gas, may also be involved … Methane’s presence can increase the amount of water in the upper atmosphere, through a complicated chemical dance”

Researchers have many ideas about why noctilucent clouds are going through these changes and developments and most of them are related to global warming. NASA hopes to get answers with the AIM mission.

Found by Jennie at Neatorama:

A hunter-trapper Brian LaDoon was taking care of his pack of Husky dogs on a Canadian tundra whilst German photographer Norbert Rosing was setting up his cameras, when out of nowhere a large polar bear walked up to one of the dogs.

Brian knew that the bear had not eaten for months, and thought it was “curtains” for the dog when something completely unexpected happened: the polar bear and the dog started playing with each other! As if that wasn’t enough, the polar bear returned every night for the following week to continue playing with the dogs.

Here’s the audio slide show given by Stuart Brown about the encounter:

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