November 2006

Big Brother is ...

watching you,

listening to you,

and shouting at you.

Spring has Sprung (II)

It's an unusual autumn we're having this year.

Roses are still still in bloom (photo taken today)

and Mr and Mrs Mallard, despite their feigned innocence below, were spotted flirting on the canal this afternoon, outdoing the courting couple I observed back in January, 2003. Why do the ducks bob their heads like that, anyway?

Footnote: Despite this being the earliest I've ever seen Mallards courting, it's not in any way unusual, according to several articles on the net. It was news to me ☺

The Times has also reported on our unusual Autumn.

Photos Copyright © Phil Randal, 2006

Carbon emissions are going down, thanks to the Kyoto Protocol and all that, right?

Wrong!

Nature reports that:

Global carbon emissions are now growing by 3.2% a year, according to results presented at an Earth science conference in Beijing on 9 November. That's four times higher than the average annual growth of 0.8% from 1990-99.

"We are not on any of the stabilization paths," says Michael Raupach, a carbon-cycle scientist with Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Canberra, who presented the Global Carbon Project results.

and if that's not bad enough,

Sea-level rise is also at the upper end of IPCC projections, adds John Church, who works at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research in Hobart, Tasmania. Analyses published in 2006 have shown that sea level is currently rising at 1.5-2 mm per year, which is in the upper half of the IPCC value of 1-2 mm per year. The rate of the rise is accelerating.

This is expected to lead to an 88 cm rise in sea level by 2100. "We have to start acting soon — it's urgent," says Church. Raupach's results, he says, are "really striking".