A leading scientist has revealed that Europe could be just five years away from the start of a new Ice Age.

While climate change campaigners say global warming is the planet's biggest danger, renowned physicist Vladimir Paar says most of central Europe will soon be covered in ice.

The freeze will be so complete that people will be able to walk from England to Ireland or across the North Sea from Scotland to northern Europe.

Professor Paar, from Croatia's Zagreb University, has spent decades analysing previous ice ages in Europe and what caused them.

"Most of Europe will be under ice, including Germany, Poland, France, Austria, Slovakia and a part of Slovenia," said the professor in an interview with the Index.hr. 

The world's most stunning coral reefs will have dissolved within 100 years, a new study claims.

Scientists say rising levels of acid in the seas and warmer ocean temperatures are wiping out the spectacular reefs enjoyed by millions of divers, tourists and wildlife lovers.

The destruction would also be a disaster for tropical fish and marine life which use coral reefs as nurseries and feeding grounds.

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.

The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.

At the time, Mark Siddall, from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, said the study "strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results". The IPCC said that sea level would probably rise by 18cm-59cm by 2100, though stressed this was based on incomplete information about ice sheet melting and that the true rise could be higher.

The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.

In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was “unequivocal”.

It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100, with devastating impacts on humanity and wildlife. However, new research, including work by British scientists, is casting doubt on such claims. Some even suggest the world may not be warming much at all.

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.(TIMES ONLINE)

Professor Phil Jones, who is at the centre of the “Climategate” affair, conceded that there has been no “statistically significant” rise in temperatures since 1995.

The admission comes as new research casts serious doubt on temperature records collected around the world and used to support the global warming theory. (DAILY EXPRESS)

A record 2 1/2 feet or more was predicted for Washington, where snow was falling heavily by evening, with big amounts expected elsewhere throughout the Mid-Atlantic. Authorities already were blaming the storm for hundreds of accidents and the deaths of father-son Samaritans in Virginia.

The region's second snowstorm in less than two months could be "extremely dangerous," the National Weather Service said. Heavy, wet snow and strong winds threatened to knock out power, clog roads and paralyze the region's transportation and retail.

Greenpeace warned that, without a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the frequency of severe fire danger in drought-parched southeastern Australia would grow threefold by 2050.

"Catastrophic" conditions similar to those ahead of February's so-called "Black Saturday" wildfires which killed 173 people in towns around Melbourne would occur once every three years, instead of once in every 33.

"The frequency of catastrophic fire danger could increase more than tenfold in Melbourne, and the number of total fire ban days could triple in Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra by 2050," according to a Greenpeace report entitled "Future Risk."

Scientists must be more 'honest and open' about the uncertainties of global warming, the Government's chief scientific adviser declared yesterday.

Professor John Beddington said climate researchers should be less hostile to sceptics who question their predictions.

But he added that the underlying physics of climate change - that carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels warms the planet - was 'unchallengeable'.

Professor Beddington's comments follow a series of blunders by climate scientists.

Last week, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was forced to apologise after wrongly claiming most of the Himalayan glaciers would vanish within 25 years.

The warning, which appeared in the IPCC's 2007 report, turned out to be taken from a news story from New Scientist magazine in the late 1990s based on an interview with a glacier expert. The expert later admitted his comment was speculation.

The impact of global warming has been exaggerated by some scientists and there is an urgent need for more honest disclosure of the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change, according to the Government’s chief scientific adviser.

John Beddington was speaking to The Times in the wake of an admission by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that it grossly overstated the rate at which Himalayan glaciers were receding.

Professor Beddington said that climate scientists should be less hostile to sceptics who questioned man-made global warming. He condemned scientists who refused to publish the data underpinning their reports.

He said that public confidence in climate science would be improved if there were more openness about its uncertainties, even if that meant admitting that sceptics had been right on some hotly-disputed issues.

Experts appointed by the United Nations said rising temperatures were to blame for an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

But it has emerged that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change based the statement, made in 2007, on an unpublished report that had not been properly reviewed by other scientists. 

 

False warning? Ministers linked floods in Cumbria last year to global warming

The report's author has since withdrawn the claim, saying there is not enough evidence to link climate change to worsening natural disasters, and criticised the use of his data as 'completely misleading'.

t follows the IPCC's admission that it was wrong to state in its influential 2007 Fourth Assessment Report that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.

That assertion was based on ' speculation' featured in an eight-year-old article in New Scientist magazine.

Britain's big freeze is the start of a worldwide trend towards colder weather that seriously challenges global warming theories, eminent scientists claimed yesterday.

The world has entered a 'cold mode' which is likely to bring a global dip in temperatures which will last for 20 to 30 years, they say.

Summers and winters will all be cooler than in recent years, and the changes will mean that global warming will be 'paused' or even reversed, it was claimed.

 

Frigid weather also was gripping the South, where a rare cold snap was expected to bring snow and ice Thursday to states from South Carolina to Louisiana. Forecasters said wind chills could drop to near zero at night in some areas.

Dangerously cold wind chills were anticipated in the Midwest overnight, including as low as 35 below in eastern Nebraska, minus 45 in parts of South Dakota and negative 50 in North Dakota, according to National Weather Service warnings. (Source : YAHOO )

Britain in grip of coldest winter for 30 years

Britain remained in the grip of the coldest winter for more than 30 years today, with conditions set to feel even more icy in the coming days.

Temperatures were already on a par with the South Pole after the country suffered its coldest night of the winter so far. (Source : INDEPENDENT UK )

Accumulations of 3 to 6 inches (locally up to 8 inches) are possible along the path of this latest winter storm. Cities included are Omaha, Neb., Kansas City, Mo., Des Moines, Iowa, Moline, Ill. St. Louis, Mo., and Indianapolis, Ind.

Moisture from Lake Michigan will enhance snowfall in the Milwaukee, Wis. to Chicago, Ill. corridor. Total accumulations of 8 to 12 inches are in the forecast for Thursday.

Behind the snow, strong winds gusting between 30 and 40 mph will develop through the Plains by tonight and spread eastward to the near the Mississippi River Thursday. Blowing and drifting snow is likely to lead to dangerous travel and the potential for near-blizzard or blizzard conditions in some locales.

Bitter cold air will keep the mercury from rising above zero in the Dakotas, northern Nebraska and western Minnesota Thursday. Wind chills will bottom out in the -20s, -30s and even -40s across these states.

The study of the fossil and archaeological record over the past 30 million years by UC Berkeley and Penn State University researchers shows that between 15 and 42 percent of the mammals in North America disappeared after humans arrived.

That means North American mammals are well on the way - perhaps as much as half way - to a level of extinction comparable to other epic die-offs, like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Anthony Barnosky, a UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology and co-author of the study, said the most dramatic human-caused impacts on the ecosystem have occurred in the last century.

"We are seeing a lot of geographic range reductions that are of a greater magnitude than we would expect, and we are seeing loss of subspecies and even a few species," Barnosky said. "So it looks like we are going into another one of these extinction events."

Looking ahead to the future, there's no reason why such a freeze shouldn't happen again - and in ironic fashion it could be precipitated if ongoing changes in climate force the Greenland ice sheet to suddenly melt.

Starting roughly 12,800 years ago, the Northern Hemisphere was gripped by a chill that lasted some 1,300 years. Known by scientists as the Younger Dryas and nicknamed the "Big Freeze," geological evidence suggests it was brought on when a vast pulse of fresh water - a greater volume than all of North America's Great Lakes combined - poured into the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.

This abrupt influx, caused when the glacial Lake Agassiz in North America burst its banks, diluted the circulation of warmer water in the North Atlantic, bringing this "conveyer belt" to a halt. Without this warming influence, evidence shows that temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere plummeted.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

As it is, humanity each year uses resources equivalent to nearly one-and-a-half Earths to meet its needs, said the report by Global Footprint Network, an international think tank.

"We are demanding nature's services -- using resources and creating CO2 emissions -- at a rate 44 percent faster than what nature can regenerate and reabsorb," the document said.

"That means it takes the Earth just under 18 months to produce the ecological services humanity needs in one year," it said.

And if humankind continues to use natural resources and produce waste at the current rate, "we will require the resources of two planets to meet our demands by the early 2030s," a gluttonous level of ecological spending that may cause major ecosystem collapse, the report said.

It took just six months for a warm and sunny Europe to be engulfed in ice, according to new research.

Previous studies have suggested the arrival of the last Ice Age nearly 13,000 years ago took about a decade - but now scientists believe the process was up to 20 times as fast.

In scenes reminiscent of the Hollywood blockbuster The day After Tomorrow, the Northern Hemisphere was frozen by a sudden slowdown of the Gulf Stream, which allowed ice to spread hundreds of miles southwards from the Arctic.

Geological sciences professor William Patterson, who led the research, said: 'It would have been very sudden for those alive at the time. It would be the equivalent of taking Britain and moving it to the Arctic over the space of a few months.'

Professor Patterson's findings emerged from one of the most painstaking studies of climate changes ever attempted and reinforce the theory that the earth's climate is  unstable and can switch between warm and cold incredibly quickly.

Only 41 percent accept as an established scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made.

Almost a third, or 32 percent, believe that the link is not yet proved; eight percent say it is environmentalist propaganda to blame man and 15 percent believe the world is not warming.

Only slightly more than a quarter (28 percent) think climate change is the most serious problem that the world faces.

Today, just about anywhere there is water, there can be toxic algae. The microscopic plants usually exist in small concentrations, but a sudden warming in the water or an injection of dust or sediment from land can trigger a bloom that kills thousands of fish, poisons shellfish, or even humans.

James Castle and John Rodgers of Clemson University think the same thing happened during the five largest mass extinctions in Earth's history. Each time a large die off occurred, they found a spike in the number of fossil algae mats called stromatolites strewn around the planet. Castle will be presenting the research on October 19 at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Portland, Oregon.

"If you go through theories of mass extinctions, there are always some unanswered questions," Castle said. "For example, an impact – how does that cause species to go extinct? Is it climate change, dust in the atmosphere? It's probably not going to kill off all these species on its own."

The team has conducted a major data collection exercise, bringing together computer and paper-based records from across the south of England, from the Scilly Isles to Sheerness, to form a single data set of south coast sea levels across the years.

Their work has added collectively about 150 years worth of historic data to the existing record of English Channel sea-level change and extended the data along the south coast. Their findings are published in the latest edition of the journal Continental Shelf Research.

THERE is a pervading myth that efforts to fight climate change and other environmental perils will be to no avail unless we "do something" about population growth.

Even seasoned analysts talk about the threat of "exponential" population growth. But there is no exponential growth. In most of the world fertility rates are falling fast, and the countries where population growth continues are those that contribute least to our planetary predicament.