Shocking new research from the US predicts that the Arctic could be ice-free in summer as early as 2013, almost 30 years earlier than previously estimated.
The study, conducted by Professor Wieslaw Maslowski from the US Naval Postgraduate School in California, does not even incorporate data from the two worst summers for Arctic ice coverage, 2005 and this year, leaving Maslowski to believe that even this prediction may be conservative.
The professor told the BBC that he believes other previous climate models have underestimated the speed at which warm water is moving into the Arctic basin and that positive feedback mechanisms are contributing to faster levels of ice melt than previously thought.
More troubling than this, however, is the possibility that predictions on the Greenland Ice Sheet melting could be equally conservative and therefore inaccurate.
Current predictions say it won't melt until around 2100, but bring that forward a few decades and the apocalyptic scenes from the movie The Day After Tomorrow may not be too fanciful.
Scientists around the world agree that the disappearance of the 3km-thick Greenland Ice Sheet would cause about a 7m rise in global sea levels -- enough to inundate several major cities including London, New York, Bombay and Tokyo. Large parts of the Netherlands, Bangladesh and Florida would also disappear.
Such a rise in sea levels would also threaten low-lying areas of Taiwan, most notably the western plains where most of the population lives.
This startling news came as 190 countries from around the world gathered in Bali to try to thrash out a road map to a successor to the Kyoto Protocol that would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to levels that will hopefully minimize the effects of serious climate change.
But negotiations have stalled as the US has rejected a proposal that requires industrial nations to cut emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020. The prospects of a deal that would set cuts anywhere near what are needed seem gloomy, to say the least.
But despite the US government's intransigence, people and governments around the world are now becoming fully aware of the severity of the threat posed by climate change, and not just by rising sea levels -- everyone except Taiwan, that is. As the rest of the world tries desperately to work out solutions to this challenging problem, Taiwan remains locked in its own little "climate bubble."
Being excluded from the UN and other international bodies that deal with environmental issues like climate change severely hampers the green movement and means that Taiwan comes under no pressure whatsoever to reduce its shocking emissions levels. All we get from time to time is bluster about how we should "voluntarily" meet our "obligations." That didn't work too well with Kyoto, because the nation's emissions have doubled since 1990 -- the baseline year in the agreement.
In other countries, protecting the environment and reducing greenhouse gas emissions are hot topics and appear high -- if not at the very top -- of the agenda during election campaigns. The recent Australian elections are a good example.
Not so here. With legislative and presidential elections just round the corner and the UN talkfest in Bali in full swing, we have heard precious little about the environment from anyone, bar a surprising pledge yesterday by Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung cities -- again voluntary -- to cut emissions.
But even that will be an empty gesture as long as politicians of all stripes continue to put the business interests of the few over the future lives of the many.
A failure by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to respond to Israel’s brilliant 12-day (June 12-23) bombing and special operations war against Iran, topped by US President Donald Trump’s ordering the June 21 bombing of Iranian deep underground nuclear weapons fuel processing sites, has been noted by some as demonstrating a profound lack of resolve, even “impotence,” by China. However, this would be a dangerous underestimation of CCP ambitions and its broader and more profound military response to the Trump Administration — a challenge that includes an acceleration of its strategies to assist nuclear proxy states, and developing a wide array
Twenty-four Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers are facing recall votes on Saturday, prompting nearly all KMT officials and lawmakers to rally their supporters over the past weekend, urging them to vote “no” in a bid to retain their seats and preserve the KMT’s majority in the Legislative Yuan. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which had largely kept its distance from the civic recall campaigns, earlier this month instructed its officials and staff to support the recall groups in a final push to protect the nation. The justification for the recalls has increasingly been framed as a “resistance” movement against China and
Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), former chairman of Broadcasting Corp of China and leader of the “blue fighters,” recently announced that he had canned his trip to east Africa, and he would stay in Taiwan for the recall vote on Saturday. He added that he hoped “his friends in the blue camp would follow his lead.” His statement is quite interesting for a few reasons. Jaw had been criticized following media reports that he would be traveling in east Africa during the recall vote. While he decided to stay in Taiwan after drawing a lot of flak, his hesitation says it all: If
Saturday is the day of the first batch of recall votes primarily targeting lawmakers of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). The scale of the recall drive far outstrips the expectations from when the idea was mooted in January by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘). The mass recall effort is reminiscent of the Sunflower movement protests against the then-KMT government’s non-transparent attempts to push through a controversial cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014. That movement, initiated by students, civic groups and non-governmental organizations, included student-led protesters occupying the main legislative chamber for three weeks. The two movements are linked