For more eco collapse fun, check out Hilary Osborne's article "Earth's temperature is dangerously high, Nasa scientists warn" in The Guardian.
Apparently researchers at Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies say that Earth's temperature could be reaching its highest level in a million years.
Here's some more pix to stick in your pipe and smoke, The black spot is the North Pole, the map of the UK is overlayed to give a sense of scale.
Here's an explanation of everything else from Softpedia:
Besides the fact that the ice sea is shrinking rapidly, scientists have now revealed that it also becomes more mobile and thin. The black and white images on the left are taken by Envisat ASAR (Courtesy of Polar View). The right colored images are from EOS Aqua AMSR-E ice concentration acquired on the same day (Courtesy of Leif Toudal Pedersen). In the colored AMSR-E images, ice cover, or the concentration of ice, is represented by the color. Pink represents pack ice and the color blue open water. Intermediate colors orange, yellow, and green indicate lower ice concentrations of 70%, 50% and 30%, respectively. In the ASAR images, the ice cover is represented by the uniform grey area which extends radially-outwards from the North Pole, represented by the central black circle. The 2006 images show fractures and openings in the sea-ice cover – just below the pole in both the ASAR image, seen as splashes of dark grey and black, and in the AMSR-E image (with British Isles shown for scale), seen by the high concentration of yellow, orange and green colors, signifying low ice concentrations.
After all the bad news I've heard about the environment and what we're doing to it, you'd think it would be hard to be shocked anymore - and then something: a fact; a statistic; a statement; an image - comes along and I'm straight back there gawping at the insanity of it all.
Like with this photo of the North Pole which accompanies the fact that "Arctic ice cover had disappeared so much last month that a ship could sail unhindered from Europe's most northerly outpost to the North Pole itself." Reported by Agence France-Presse and presented via Yahoo News.
Pulsing the pastures
the spring rod I hold
all mental and yet still
bowing and straightening
to some rhythm 'neath the tilth
feet treading to the senescence of grass
each step a sonar signal
to the earthworm and her burrowing kind
root twist and earth crumble
a fungus drifts through the soil
and I had seen only dirt before
dead cake and the murder of loam
the parched remains of a chemistry experiment
this ruined laboratory of a field.
IMAGE: Lucketts (2005) by Jo March available from Tabretts.
Rose petals fall into both lakes
Eyes of the woman
Beside the fire
another haiku Leafmelt is over at Rubedo.
The BBC is back on the case of oil with a new four part series on Radio 4 “Driven by Oil”.
The first episode “When will the Tap Run Dry?” was broadcast on Monday September 4th, and is currently still available via the listen again feature. This episode focuses on the peak oil issue.
The second episode “The China Syndrome” to be broadcast on September 11th looks at the new demand for oil and the impact of emerging economies such as China and India.
IMAGE: For Your Oil Only lifted from Tropical Boy
