David Attenborough - Are we changing Planet Earth??

1. The North Pole has risen in temperature by 3 degrees.
2. Polar bear population has decreased by 25% over 20 years
3. Ice melting 3 weeks earlier every year at the North Pole
4. Future bleak for polar bears
5. Temperature rise felt on Mountain Glaciers
6. Rate of Glacier Melt accelerating
7. Sea levels rising

Tropical Island of Tuvalu facing rising seas. Tides rose this year to the highest levels ever known. This is causing health problems for the Islanders.

1. Population may be evacuated to New Zealand
2. Other implications include.. Hurricane Katrina (click on image above), the most distructive hurricane in memory. High sea temperatures (26 deg Celsius) to blame.
3. Global warming, increasing sea temp causing these intense hurricanes.
4. Todays levels of carbon emissions are way above anything the earth has known.
5. Not a natural climate cycle. This is the impact of Humans.
6. Changes occuring in places such as the Amazon.
7. Coral Reefs are being bleached. Stressing the coral and being severley damaged.

Global Warming Or A One Off?

Christmas was just over two weeks away, yet there were still flowers in our gardens. Is this another sign of global warming or just a one off ?

What's flowering now in your garden which shouldn't be? Climate blamed for early springs

Climate change could affect long established patterns, the study says

A Europe-wide study has provided "conclusive proof" that climate change is responsible for spring arriving earlier each year, researchers say.

Scientists from 17 nations examined 125,000 studies involving 561 species.

The season was beginning on average six to eight days earlier than it did 30 years ago, researchers said.

In regions such as Spain, which saw the greatest increases in temperatures, the season began up to two weeks earlier.

The findings were based on what was described as the world's largest study of changes in recurring natural events, such as when plants flowered.

The team of researchers also found that the onset of autumn has been delayed by an average of three days over the same period.

source www.bbc.co.uk

Dundee gets Wind Generators

Driving to the shop on Saturday 13th of May, I saw what I thought was a new stack being built by the municipal incinerator. Next day, on my way to a classic car show, I noticed that it was a wind generator.

I am so chuffed that we are starting to consider alternative energy at last. Now, this turbine can be seen from my back garden. Brilliant!!!

Now Dick Strawbridge and his wife are doing a series on BBC called "It's not easy being green". Dick's wife said she would be in awe of these structures.

I too am in awe of these structures... not only does it look fantastic, it will provide an alternative to using fossil fuels.

Well done Dundee. I will sit and watch this structure and be amazed for years. Here are some of the pictures that I took this afternoon (14th May 2006) as it was being constructed.

Its an issue we are all aware of. Every day we hear something new about Global warming on the news. The evidence is most definitely there that the climate is changing. While Scientist debate the future of the planet we gardeners are noticing the subtle changes in the seasons and the types of plants we can grow in our gardens. Let us know your experiences and thoughts and we will post your comments on the site. Its a big issue and one which is not going to go away.

There is now a second wind generator... pictures soon.. and they are being used by Michelin Tyre Factory. Well done Mr Michelin.

Global Warming - Plants Grow Faster and Longer!

Gardens across Europe and North America are set to bloom as global warming gathers pace, causing plant growth to dramatically accelerate.

Favourite's from roses to rhododendrons will grow to unprecedented sizes and produce earlier and more abundant flowers. Autumn will become a new flowering season as gardens come to life after summer droughts, and winter flower beds are likely to be a riot of colour. Peach trees could even come to replace apples in northern gardens, and grape vines will flourish much further north than they do today.Depending on how green your fingers are, this may strike you as either gardening utopia or a scene from John Wyndham's sci-fi classic The Day of the Triffids, in which giant plants take over the world. Either way, our backyards are in for a makeover courtesy of global warming, a conference in New England was told this week.

As temperatures and carbon dioxide levels in the air both rise, gardens will remain in growth all year round. Instead of putting away lawnmowers and shears every autumn, gardeners will have to keep their blades sharp for a bit of winter cutting and pruning. Worse still, gardeners will face an unrelenting war to save their superplants from superweeds.

For while our favourite varieties will grow up to 50 per cent faster, weeds will often be ahead of them. The Canadian thistle could grow 72 per cent faster, Lewis Ziska of the US Department of Agriculture told the conference, organised by the American Society for Horticultural Science in Providence, Rhode Island.

Aphids and mites

Meanwhile, summer droughts will provide perfect conditions for aphids and mites. And pests and diseases currently confined to greenhouses will venture out into the garden, where they will meet exotic migrants such as North American oak wilt, which could soon be decimating the oak trees of England.

Other effects of climate change are likely to include faster rotting down of organic materials in soils, accelerated evaporation from soils, and pests that stay put for the winter.

"These indirect effects will have far more dramatic effects on the cultivation of plants even than the temperature rise itself," says Richard Bisgrove, a plant scientist from the University of Reading, UK, and author of a pioneering study on climate change and the garden.

"A year-round growing season will be experienced in many years in the south of England before the 2080s," says Bisgrove. "Higher winter temperatures and lower summer rainfall will shift the mowing season from the current April to October to September through to June."

Are such domestic concerns just an entertaining sideshow in the great debate on climate change? Certainly, says Bisgrove. "Unchecked climate change will lead to major disasters in many parts of the world, in comparison with which worries over brown lawns in the UK become trivial or obscene." But at least the flowers should look lovely.

Source : New Scientist Printed Ecition, Fred Pearce

Global Warming - Plants Emitting C02!

The really surprising finding came with the calculation that during the heatwave, European plants and their ecosystems were putting more carbon dioxide into the air than they were absorbing. "In the past we expected that climate change would benefit European ecosystems because growth tends to be limited by the short growing season," said Andrew Friend, "but this analysis hadn't taken into account the possibility of extreme events. "The conclusion of our study is that this extreme event meant a loss of carbon across Europe - a loss which undoes many years of net uptake." Plants can absorb and emit carbon dioxide and oxygen; the process of respiration takes oxygen in and releases CO2, whereas in photosynthesis, the reverse happens. Other parts of the ecosystem such as soil bacteria can also contribute to the overall flow of these gases to and from the atmosphere. During an average year, the net effect is that European plants absorb around 125 million tonnes of carbon (MtC). But in 2003, according to this analysis, they released 500 MtC to the atmosphere. By comparison, global emissions from burning fossil fuels amounts to about 7,000 MtC; by giving rather than taking, European plants were adding about 10% to the global total. "This shows that short-term climatic events such as the 2003 heatwave occurring over regional areas like Europe can have major effects on the climate globally," commented Julia Slingo.

The heat to come

The wider context for all this is a study published last year suggesting that summers as hot and dry as that of 2003 will become commonplace as the global climate changes.

"We concluded that on a middle-of-the-road scenario for emissions - assuming we don't do very much to combat climate change - temperature heatwaves as high as the one in 2003 would be occurring every other year by middle of this century," said Dr Myles Allen of Oxford University. "By the end of the century, 2003 would be a cool year." Plants could of course adapt to the changing climate, meaning that the switch from net absorption of CO2 to net production might not happen. But, said Andrew Friend, this finding may be a sign of things to come. "In the tropics, where it's already warm, higher temperatures are predicted to increase the flux of carbon from plants to the atmosphere," he said.

"We have generally assumed that in northern systems, we would see increased carbon uptake; but that might not be the case."

Source : www.bbc.co.uk