2007 August: Climate
Anchor: Base Index
Other months: July September
Other areas: Business computing
education health international
Internet science social
technology Others
Topics: Aquatic causes denial
energy food
forecasts forests fires
fuel ice
international invertebrates
marine mitigation
national suppression vertebrates
water weather
See also The Guardian's archive
and current collections,
and New Scientist's special report, which is continually updated.
David Shukman, Vast ice island stuck in Arctic, BBC, 2007 Aug. 31 (an island of ice the size of Manhattan has drifted into a remote channel and is now jammed by pack ice)
Louise Johncox, 'We're in meltdown', Guardian, 2007 Aug. 23 (sea ice in the Arctic is approaching a record low - and the locals wear T-shirts in the summer; Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier tells how climate change is threatening her people's way of life)
Alok Jha, Scientists warn on climate tipping points, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 16 (scientists predict that the loss of the massive Greenland ice sheet may now be unstoppable)
Mark Kinver, Arctic sea ice set to hit new low, BBC, 2007 Aug. 13 (Arctic sea ice is expected to retreat to a record low by the end of this summer)
Rachel Williams, 17 British tourists injured as ice falls from Arctic glacier, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 10 (sightseeing ship may have sailed too close; remote area has seen effects of global warming)
Soot 'influences Arctic climate', BBC, 2007 Aug. 10 (measurements from ice cores suggest that soot released by industrial activities has influenced climate change in the Arctic)
Catherine Brahic, Early springs show Siberia is warming fast, New Scientist, 2007 Aug. 1 (in a study of a wide range of Siberian ecosystems, Heiko Baltzer of the University of Leicester, UK, and his colleagues found that from 1982 to 1999 spring began and peaked increasingly earlier for almost all the ecosystems)
Neville Nicholls, A warning we ignored 35 years ago, The Age, 2007 Aug. 31 (tomorrow it will be 35 years since the leading science journal Nature published a review paper entitled "Man-made carbon dioxide and the 'greenhouse' effect", by the eminent atmospheric scientist J. S. Sawyer, director of research at the United Kingdom Meteorological Office)
Climate flooding risk 'misjudged', BBC, 2007 Aug. 29 (climate change may carry a higher risk of flooding than was previously thought)
Statistics and climatology: Gambling on tomorrow, Economist, 2007 Aug. 18 (modelling the Earth's climate mathematically is hard already; now a new difficulty is emerging)
Modelling the climate: Tomorrow and tomorrow, Economist, 2007 Aug. 18 (a group of climatologists discover reality)
Alok Jha, Scientists warn on climate tipping points, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 16 (scientists predict that the loss of the massive Greenland ice sheet may now be unstoppable)
Ian Sample, Global warming: Met Office predicts plateau then record temperatures, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 10 (British scientists are predicting a succession of record-breaking high temperatures)
Liz Minchin, Brief respite, with more heat to come, The Age, 2007 Aug. 10 (in the next couple of years, natural changes in the ocean and atmosphere are likely to partly offset the ongoing trend of global warming; but the outlook beyond 2009 is getting hotter, with about half the years before 2015 forecast to be hotter than the record temperature set in 1998, the warmest year since records began)
Ten-year climate model unveiled, BBC, 2007 Aug. 9 (scientists say they have developed a model to predict how ocean currents, as well as human activities, will affect temperatures over the next decade)
Marian Wilkinson and Wendy Frew, Sea level rise risk exceeds forecasts, The Age, 2007 Aug. 6 (sea level rise caused by climate change is likely to be greater and potentially more dangerous than predicted but scientists are reluctant to "stick their necks out" for fear of being labelled alarmists)
Kate Ravilious, Asia's brown clouds heat the Himalayas, New Scientist, 2007 Aug. 1 (for much of the year south Asia languishes under a thick brown haze some 3 kilometres thick; now scientists have shown that this polluted atmospheric layer is causing significant warming in the region)
Asia's brown clouds 'warm planet', BBC, 2007 Aug. 1 (air pollution over Asia is warming the lower atmosphere as much as greenhouse gas emissions)
Eamon O'Hara, Focus on carbon 'missing the point', BBC, 2007 July 30 (the focus on reducing carbon emissions has blinded us to the real problem - unsustainable lifestyles)
Joanna Benn, Time to tune in to the real world, BBC, 2007 Aug. 28 (people are more interested in reality TV and the world of celebrities than the real world and the challenges it faces)
George Monbiot, Attack of the baby eaters, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 18 (shameless exaggerations of the climate protesters' dastardly plans have left us baffled at the camp)
George Monbiot, The editorials urge us to cut emissions, but the ads tell a very different story, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 14 (newspaper exhortations on climate change sit uncomfortably alongside promotions for budget flights and oil companies)
Jewel Topsfield, MPs query human link to warming, The Age, 2007 Aug. 14 (the election stoush over climate change has heated up, with four Coalition MPs embarrassing the Prime Minister by disputing the link between global warming and human activity)
John Vidal and Helen Pidd, Police to use terror laws on Heathrow climate protesters, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 11 (armed police will use anti-terrorism powers to 'deal robustly' with climate change protesters at Heathrow; government has encouraged use of stop and search and detention without charge)
Katharine Murphy, No change on climate at APEC: envoy, The Age, 2007 Aug. 7 (Prime Minister John Howard's hand-picked climate change envoy says APEC is unlikely to deliver big breakthroughs on global warming)
Jo Chandler, Call of the mild, The Age, 2007 Aug. 7 (scientists are being asked to set aside their professional reticence and become vocal crusaders - for the sake of the planet)
Jason Koutsoukis, Why GMO is not such a dirty term, The Age, 2007 Aug. 5 (fanatics are robbing the world of the benefits of smart foods)
George Hatzidakis, Dozens die as fires sweep Greek peninsula, The Age, 2007 Aug. 26 (at least 41 people died and huge swathes of forest were consumed in fires racing through Greece's Peloponnese Peninsula as south-east Europe experienced a resurgence of summer blazes)
Wildfires: Burn, baby, burn, Economist, 2007 Aug. 25 (thanks to decades of zealous fire-suppression, forests are overcrowded and carpeted with dead trees and other fuels)
Andrew Darby, Gunns first to see mill rules, The Age, 2007 Aug. 16 (timber company Gunns will be allowed to argue for changes to environmental permits for its bitterly disputed Tasmanian pulp mill - before the documents are made public)
Tom Phillips, Brazilian ministers claim victory in war on illegal loggers, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 13 (the destruction of the world's largest rainforest last year fell to its lowest rate in nearly two decades)
Javier Espinoza, BP firm hit by deforestation damage claim, Observer, 2007 Aug. 12 (a BP-owned oil company faces demands to pay £385m for ecological damage in Patagonia)
Marian Wilkinson, Gunns pulp mill back on track for approval, The Age, 2007 Aug. 10 (construction of the nation's biggest pulp mill could start within weeks after Tasmanian environmentalists lost a crucial case against Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull in the Federal Court)
Brendan Mackey, Save the forests: they are crucial to reducing carbon dioxide, The Age, 2007 Aug. 6 (stopping logging will help solve the global warming problem)
Philip Hopkins, Farmers to feel heat from greenhouse gas policy, The Age, 2007 Aug. 6 (farmers who have achieved big greenhouse gas savings by not clearing land are financially disadvantaged under the Federal Government's proposed emissions trading scheme, according to an agricultural think tank)
Charlemagne: Smoke gets in their eyes, Economist, 2007 Aug. 4 (what this summer's forest fires say about the priorities of EU politicians)
AFP, Fires ravage Canary Islands, The Age, 2007 Aug. 1 (thousands evacuated across Gran Canaria and Tenerife)
John M Broder, Bush's 'parting gift to the coal industry', IHT, 2007 Aug. 23 (the Bush administration is set to issue a regulation on Friday that would extend the coal mining practice of mountaintop removal; the technique involves blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams)
Saeed Shah and Alex Brett, Oil giants rush to lay claim to Iraq, Observer, 2007 Aug. 19 (the world's oil majors will descend on two key conferences about Iraqi oil next month)
EU biofuel policy is a 'mistake', BBC, 2007 Aug. 17 (the EU target of ensuring 10% of petrol and diesel comes from renewable sources by 2020 is not an effective way to curb carbon emissions)
Tristan Farrow, Biofuels switch a mistake, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 17 (increasing production of biofuels to combat climate change will release more carbon gases than fossil fuels)
Leo Shanahan, A renewable energy idea that could hold water, The Age, 2007 Aug. 17 (around the corner from power stations pumping out carbon emissions in the Latrobe Valley, farmer and inventor Fred Sundermann has come up with an idea that he claims will revolutionise renewable energy generation)
Ewen MacAskill, Canada uses military might in Arctic scramble, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 11 (building programme launched in response to Russian move, while UN to decide on oil seabed claims)
Andrew McCathie, German sun powers a revolution, The Age, 2007 Aug. 11 (a vast former Soviet military training base under the often sullen grey skies of what was once communist East Germany is a hub for the world's solar energy industry)
European energy: The Hungarian defence, Economist, 2007 Aug. 11 (an oil company develops an imaginative takeover defence)
Hillary Rosner, Beyond biofuels, scientists seek uses for byproducts, IHT, 2007 Aug. 7 (if Ronald Holser, a research chemist, and his colleague Steven Vaughn, a plant physiologist, are successful, they will not only have found ecologically friendly ways to fight weeds and grow grass; they will have found innovative uses for a byproduct of biodiesel production, glycerol)
John M Broder, Sweeping energy measure to be voted on in U.S. House, IHT, 2007 Aug. 3 (a 786-page energy bill that could be a major leap toward the twin goals polls say most Americans have come to embrace: reducing reliance on dirty-burning fossil fuels and slowing global warming)
Political corruption: Investigating Alaska, Economist, 2007 Aug. 4 (state and federal officials are facing a pile of indictments and inquiries; the common thread: oil)
Tom Parfitt, Miles below the North Pole, Russian mini-subs lay claim to Arctic wealth, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 3 (flag planted on sea bed in record-breaking dive; Canada accuses Moscow of colonial style land-grab)
Richard Simon, US Congress' climate to spend, The Age, 2007 Aug. 22 (reflecting a shift in priorities under the Democratic majority, US Congress is moving to spend as much as $US6.7 billion next financial year to combat global warming)
Marian Wilkinson, Big firms, small expectations at APEC summit, The Age, 2007 Aug. 17 (two corporate giants who are among the biggest contributors to global warming are the major sponsors of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-Operation business summit which will debate climate change next month)
Katharine Murphy, No change on climate at APEC: envoy, The Age, 2007 Aug. 7 (Prime Minister John Howard's hand-picked climate change envoy says APEC is unlikely to deliver big breakthroughs on global warming)
Peter Nettleship, US House passes clean energy bill, BBC, 2007 Aug. 5 (US legislators adopt a radical new energy bill, supporting renewable fuels and cutting tax breaks to oil firms)
Tim Colebatch, China emissions proposal gives hope, The Age, 2007 Aug. 4 (in what could be a crucial step towards global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, China proposes an emissions trading scheme within China, linked to others)
Anne Davies and Katharine Murphy, US puts a damper on APEC hopes, The Age, 2007 Aug. 1 (America is focused on a United Nations meeting in Bali to combat global warming rather than the APEC meeting in Sydney)
John Vidal, Britain's badgers and beetles revel in summer washout, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 25 (insect-eating mammals and mosquitos prosper but swallows head south early)
Lee Glendinning, Slugs thrive in wet summer, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 22 (wet weather sees slug population in gardens double)
Richard Black, Atlantic yields climate secrets, BBC, 2007 Aug. 16 (scientists have painted the first detailed picture of Atlantic ocean currents crucial to Europe's climate)
Swifter decline for coral reefs, BBC, 2007 Aug. 8 (coral reefs in the Pacific and Indian oceans are vanishing faster than had previously been thought)
Marian Wilkinson and Wendy Frew, Sea level rise risk exceeds forecasts, The Age, 2007 Aug. 6 (sea level rise caused by climate change is likely to be greater and potentially more dangerous than predicted but scientists are reluctant to "stick their necks out" for fear of being labelled alarmists)
William Birnbauer, Gas traps: salvation or delusion?, The Age, 2007 Aug. 26 (the newest front in the battle against our warming climate is in the Otways)
Jewel Topsfield, EPA approves carbon capture plan, The Age, 2007 Aug. 23 (the world's most extensive trial to capture and bury carbon dioxide has been approved in south-western Victoria by the Environmental Protection Authority)
Michael Fitzgerald, Want to cut global warming? Dig into your pockets, IHT, 2007 Aug. 14 (if creating carbon landfills is a relative slam dunk but is underfinanced, it is little wonder that more exotic ideas get even less money)
Peter Weekes and Jacinta Hannaford, Insurers embrace the winds of change, The Age, 2007 Aug. 12 (dozens of new global-warming related insurance policies, such as cheaper premiums for hybrid cars, are about to become available as insurers respond to the growing risk of weather-related losses)
Steven Morris, Crematorium concern over carbon footprint becomes a burning issue, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 11 (council plans efficiency and environmental drive; some bodies may have to be stored overnight)
Richard Glover, Global warming—the new way to turn relationships cold, The Age, 2007 Aug. 11 (from carbon footprints to sinking the boot in, life's hard in a household with a live-in energy cop who will brook no breaches)
Aubrey Meyer, Gore belatedly gets the key message on emissions, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 8 (at last, Gore says what is needed: contraction and convergence)
Catherine Brahic, 'Sunshade' for global warming could cause drought, New Scientist, 2007 Aug. 2 (pumping sulphur particles into the atmosphere to mimic the cooling effect of a large volcanic eruption may not be the last-ditch solution some hope)
Mary-Anne Toy, China's promotion policy goes green, The Age, 2007 Aug. 1 (China has announced a new promotion system under which local officials' careers will be judged by their performance in meeting environmental targets)
Robert McClelland, Five pillars climate change policy proves shaky, The Age, 2007 Aug. 20 (Australia may not get a seat at the climate change negotiation table)
Marian Wilkinson, Move to lower greenhouse expectations, The Age, 2007 Aug. 18 (a secret document prepared for John Howard's summit of world leaders reveals they will only be asked to back an "aspirational" global goal to cut dangerous greenhouse gases, rather than hard targets)
Anna Degotardi, Activists tip a bucket on big companies, The Age, 2007 Aug. 16 (communities are using Hollywood-style tactics to fight polluting industries)
Tony Cutcliffe, Water everywhere, perhaps too many drops to drink, The Age, 2007 Aug. 16 (how our desalination plant will be funded, owned and operated)
Leon Gettler, Global warming shows signs of risky business, The Age, 2007 Aug. 7 (climate change is presenting a new set of rules when it comes to business liability)
Climate fear for visiting birds, BBC, 2007 Aug. 17 (climate change is causing a decline in the number of some birds visiting Britain each winter)
Orietta Guerrera, An uphill swim for survival, The Age, 2007 Aug. 16 (ten of the 22 native fish species known or believed to have existed in the Lower Murray-Darling are extinct or in danger of extinction)
Peter Weekes, State's emblem nearly extinct, The Age, 2007 Aug. 5 (the tiny Leadbeater's possum, Victoria's state faunal emblem, could be extinct in a few years if its numbers continue to plummet)
Richard Black, World facing 'arsenic timebomb', BBC, 2007 Aug. 30 (about 140 million people globally face arsenic poisoning from drinking water, more than previously realised)
Jason Dowling and Carmel Egan, Water warning as rain hopes turn to dust, The Age, 2007 Aug. 26 (Melbourne's water storages are now 151 billion litres - or almost 10 per cent below where they were at the end of last winter, and householders should prepare for even tougher restrictions this summer)
Jason Koutsoukis, The real cost of bottled water, The Age, 2007 Aug. 19 (an enormous amount of energy goes into bottling water and delivering it to the shelf)
Drought in Ankara: Praying for water, Economist, 2007 Aug. 18 (a water shortage that may reflect bad management as much as drought)
David Rood, Wimmera pipeline hit by huge cost blow-out, The Age, 2007 Aug. 16 (the cost of the Wimmera-Mallee pipeline - expected to save the equivalent of 100,000 Olympic pools of water - has blown out by more than a third to at least $688 million)
Philip Hopkins, Rice, cotton pack big water punch, The Age, 2007 Aug. 15 (just under a third of Australian farms use irrigation, applying on average about 42 centimetres of water per hectare a year to their land)
David Brown, Pulling the plug on wasting water, BBC, 2007 Aug. 13 (water is a finite resource and attitudes towards its consumption have to change if we do not want the taps to run dry)
PA, 3,420m litres of water leak away every day, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 10 (water firms in England and Wales lose 3,420m litres of water daily to leakages)
Rachel Kleinman and Peter Ker, Desal chief favours recycling, The Age, 2007 Aug. 10 (the man in charge of delivering Victoria's $3.1 billion desalination plant says the State Government should use recycled water for drinking supplies)
Claire Scobie, Magazine: A river ran through it, Observer, 2007 Aug. 5 (the Murray is the lifeblood of Australia's farming country, a legendary river that thundered 1,500 miles from the Snowy Mountains to the Indian Ocean; now, it's choking to death in the worst drought for a thousand years, sparking water rationing and suicides on devastated farms; but is the 'big dry' a national emergency, or a warning that the earth is running out of water?)
AP, Turkey rations water as cities hit by drought, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 3 (water shortages after record low levels of snow and rain in the winter and searing summer temperatures)
Kenneth Davidson, Water is the issue to make Brumby, The Age, 2007 Aug. 2 (there is a better solution to this crisis - and it can be found off the mainland)
Record rains for British summer, BBC, 2007 Aug. 31 (this summer looks to have been the wettest since records began in 1914, according to Met Office figures)
Mary-Anne Toy, China feels heat as crops shrink, The Age, 2007 Aug. 24 (global warming will cut China's annual grain harvest by up to 10 per cent, placing extra demands on the country's shrinking farmland and threatening its cherished notion of food security, an official warns)
AP, Storms force 1,000 out of homes in Ohio, IHT, 2007 Aug. 23 (the storm's death toll also rose when three people were electrocuted by lightning at a bus stop)
Ned Temko, Six killed as Hurricane Dean threatens Jamaica, Observer, 2007 Aug. 19 (with winds already hitting 150mph, Hurricane Dean was heading towards Jamaica last night, strengthening predictions that it would build to a monster 'Category Five' storm)
David Smith, Victims march against building on flood plains, Observer, 2007 Aug. 19 (thousands of residents of one of the worst-hit towns during last month's devastating floods staged a march yesterday to protest against plans to build homes on flood plains)
Jonathan Watts, Flooding devastates North Korea, Guardian, 2007 Aug. 16 (country appeals for aid as vital crops destroyed and as many as 200,000 homeless)
Bagehot: Summer in the noughties, Economist, 2007 Aug. 11 (like the English themselves, the English summer has changed yet stayed the same)
Hurricane insurance: Wishing the wind not to blow, Economist, 2007 Aug. 11 (a rather small pot of money for potentially huge storms)
Somini Sengupta, Warming threatens farms in India, UN official says, IHT, 2007 Aug. 8 (as exceptionally heavy rains continued to cut a wide swath of ruin across northern India, a top United Nations official warned Tuesday that the vagaries of climate change could destroy vast areas of farmland in this country, ultimately affecting food production and adding to the woes of already desperate peasants who live off of the land)
Reuters, AP, Extreme weather: A global problem, IHT, 2007 Aug. 7 (much of the world has experienced record-breaking weather events this year, from flooding in Asia to heat waves in Europe and snowfall in South Africa)
European heatwaves 'have doubled', BBC, 2007 Aug. 4 (the average duration of heatwaves in Western Europe has doubled since 1880)
Reuters, Desperation rises among South Asia's flood-hit, The Age, 2007 Aug. 3 (desperation spreads among millions of people made homeless by monsoon flooding in South Asia, as hungry victims clash with police and loot food)