Today's doom for you...Time is running out lah.

Voyage into the Arctic as summer ice vanishes...


THE vast Arctic sea ice which spreads across the North Pole could disappear during the summer within a decade or two - or even by 2013 - leading scientists are warning.
The Canadian Coast Guard's strongest icebreaker, the Louis S. St Laurent, took the Herald and an ABC Four Corners crew with a team of scientists going to the Arctic at the beginning of this summer's melt in July to explore the extraordinary changes there first hand.
Only a few years ago, climate modellers predicted the sea ice would not disappear in summer until at least the end of the century.
"Then they said 2070, and then they said 2050 and then they said 2030," said Robie Macdonald, a leading Canadian oceanographer on board the Louis.
"Not only do I see the change, but it's like they're moving the goalposts toward me and it's an amazing thing," he said.
The team on board the Louis are some of the thousands of scientists from 60 nations working to draw attention to the rapid changes in the Arctic and Antarctic during International Polar Year.
The icebreaker's route took us through thick sea ice at the entrance to the fabled Northwest Passage where over the centuries many navigators perished, most famously Sir John Franklin, a former governor of Tasmania.
Last year the Northwest Passage was virtually ice free for the first time in memory when the Arctic sea ice shrank to its lowest level since satellite observations began.
The US Interior Secretary, Dirk Kempthorne, announced in May the drastic loss of Arctic sea ice had forced him to list the polar bear as an endangered species because their populations could collapse within a few decades.
Hopes the sea ice would return to robust levels after last year's record low are unlikely to be realised, according to the latest figures from the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre. While this year's melt is not expected to shatter last year's record, the sea ice is already significantly below average as the melt season peaks.
"We might see an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2030 - within some of our lifetimes," said Mark Serreze, a geographer at the snow and ice data centre.
"There are some scientists out there who think that even might be optimistic."
The loss of the sea ice in summer would be unprecedented in human history, said Don Perovich a geophysicist with the US Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory.
"As near as we can tell looking at the historical record, there's been ice in the Arctic in the summer for at least 16 million years," he said.

"There's a group that makes a very strong case that in 2012 or 2013 we'll have an ice-free [summer] Arctic - as soon as that. It's astounding what's happened," said Dr Ted Scambos, a glaciologist from the snow and ice data centre.
The melt is leading Arctic nations, including Canada, Russia and the US, to seriously examine new shipping routes through the Arctic - including the Northwest Passage - and the potential expansion of huge oil and gas fields.
"As the ice recedes, it's opening up not only the Arctic passage but all the resources in the Arctic Ocean," said Scott Borgerson, from the US Council on Foreign Relations.
Last year's melt was produced by a "perfect storm" of natural weather patterns and rising temperatures in the Arctic caused by global warming. The Arctic is warming at twice the average rate of the rest of the planet and the sea ice is considered by many scientists to be crucial for monitoring the speed of global climate change.
The more the bright white sea ice melts, the more the dark Arctic Ocean absorbs sunlight, in turn melting more sea ice and feeding back into global warming.
The disappearance of the sea ice could have serious ramifications for the earth's climate and weather patterns, scientists say, explaining it would be like leaving the refrigerator door open on the planet.
"We could think of the Arctic as the refrigerator of the northern hemisphere climate system," Dr Serreze said.
"What we're doing by getting rid of that sea ice is radically changing the nature of that refrigerator. We're making it much less efficient. But everything is connected together so what happens up there eventually influences what happens in other parts of the globe."
Scientists are rapidly working to understand how much the loss of the summer sea ice might change weather patterns amid fears it will cause extreme storms and rainfall in some regions and prolong drought in others.
"The Arctic really can feed back into the global climate system," said Dr Macdonald, who has worked with the UN's peak scientific body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "You know what happens when you get feedbacks - you get surprises and we don't like surprises."
The Louis' ice specialist, Erin Clark, explained that much of the ice at the entrance to the Northwest Passage this July was "first-year ice", frozen over just last year, and it would be prone to melting. The extent of this year's melt will not be known until September and scientists are worried that with six weeks still left in the melt season, this thin first-year ice could be vulnerable to rapid loss.

"A race has developed between the waning sunlight and the weakened ice," the report of the national snow and ice data centre for the end of July explains.
Despite a colder winter in parts of the Arctic and cooler temperatures in late July, the size of the sea ice is expected to shrink to levels close to the second or third lowest on record by September, according to the centre.
Researchers are trying to understand how much of the melting is due to the extreme natural variability in the northern polar climate system and how much is due to global warming caused by humans. The Arctic Oscillation climate pattern, which plays a big part in the weather patterns in the northern hemisphere, has been in "positive" mode in recent decades bringing higher temperatures to the Arctic.
Dr Igor Polyakov, an oceanographer from the International Arctic Research Centre in Fairbanks, Alaska, explained that natural variability as well as global warming is crucial to understanding the ice melt. "A combination of these two forces led to what we observe now and we should not ignore either forces" he said.
The consensus among scientists is that while the natural variability in the Arctic is an important contributor to climate change there, the climate models cannot explain the rapid loss of sea ice without including "human-induced" global warming. This means human activity such as burning fossil fuels and land clearing which are releasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
"There have been numerous models run that have looked at that and basically they can't reproduce the ice loss we've had with natural variability," said Dr Perovich. "You have to add a carbon dioxide warming component to it."
As the sea ice fails to recover, there are concerns it will become one of the "tipping points" pushing the planet to faster climate change.
A number of scientific papers are raising concerns that global warming, especially in the Arctic, will begin to thaw some of the vast areas of permafrost in the Arctic regions, especially in Siberia and Alaska.
If that happens infrastructure including roads, railways, bridges and pipelines could begin to collapse. More importantly, scientists say, it's possible that large amounts of the carbon dioxide and methane that are trapped in the permafrost will be released into the atmosphere, producing another feedback that will increase global warming.
The Arctic is a sentinel of change, Dr Macdonald explained on board the Louis, and urged everyone to take notice. "We should care in the sense that what happens here is coming to us and sometimes, you know, a warning is a helpful thing to mobilise people," he said.
"If it takes the iconic polar bear for people to say maybe we need to do something, that's a good thing

Somewhat attractive Virgins, in a most pleasing way..

Yes besides enjoying the delights of these lovely ladies, if one was convinced enough to partake of a "Virgin mobile"...not sure if that means a phone, or one of these roller skating lovelies, apparently you could also eat as many pies as you wanted, at Harrys pie shop next door.

With appetites enlarged by all the pleasing scenery, a good feed is allways in order.

Sexpo 2008...

A few pictures from this, er, fascinating event, forthwith.

Thankfully we also had a few hornbags in attendance of our own, that were somewhat shocked at times on what was on offer.....

Considering the normal saucy things that are purveyed by these fine ladies, we were somewhat amused by their sudden shyness in the presence of so much joyful smut and sexiness.

Just shows that life can still hold some surprises...

More random hornbags from one's wanderings...

Singapore and Indonesia lah!

Good old human interaction, working well with nature again..

Starving bears eat Russian guards
MOSCOW: Bad weather is thwarting efforts to rescue a group of mine workers trapped by hungry bears in Russia's wild far eastern region of Kamchatka.
The bears have already eaten two of the workers.
The bears - apparently starving - killed the men on July 17, it was reported in Russia. As many as 30 bears have surrounded a platinum mine. Both victims worked at the mine as security guards.
About 400 geologists and miners are refusing to return to work, afraid of further attacks. Attempts by local officials to fly to the scene by helicopter and shoot the bears have so far failed because of poor weather, it was reported.
Kamchatka, 12,000 kilometres east of Moscow on Russia's Pacific coast, is one of the world's last great natural wilderness areas. The remote volcanic peninsula is home to the rare Steller's sea eagle, puffins, and brown bears that roam its geysers and snow-covered collapsed volcanoes.
Kamchatka's 12,000-strong bear population is the largest in Eurasia. Recently, however, the bears have faced unprecedented ecological pressures.
Poaching has led to a dramatic decline in the bear's main food source - the Pacific salmon.
Kamchatka is home to a quarter of the world's salmon, but they are disappearing. Poachers have cleaned out entire species by netting rivers.
Last year hunters shot dead at least 300 bears - picking off most of the large ones. At least another 600 were killed illegally, conservationists estimate.
"It's always the bear's fault," said Laura Williams, the director of WWF's Kamchatka office. She said she was seeking further details of the stand-off at the mine amid reports that hunters had been sent in an sports utility vehicle to the region to kill the bears.
About 10 bears have also been seen near the village of Khalino, sniffing fish remains and other garbage.
A village official, Viktor Leushkin, told Itar-Tass that a team of hunters would be sent to shoot or chase away the bears.
"These predators have to be destroyed," he said. "Once they kill a human they will do it again and again."

Siti, a bit of an Indonesian hottie

Yes, it would appear that Siti is well used name in those parts...hearing it mentioned here, and there, whilst grubbing about, one would turn and look for the one we have to come know here in Sydney, and be surprised, by, well, another.This one was encountered with her family in Bogor, and of course put on fine display of cuteness, and tingling in one's netherparts.However, she possessed keen intelligence, perfect English, and is studying to a vet, you know one of them animal doctor type people...That could be a slightly wasted occupation in Indonesia, as wherever there are people, there is a distinct lack of animals.Except for, well, dogs, cats, and rats, all in various states of starvation.This not include the house rat of the infamous backpacker's dive, The Scumbag Vermin, or the Pension Firman to give its real name.The rat in question is exceptionally sleek, and well fed, and delights in taking a shower with unsuspecting western women in the outdoor dunny.Anyway, after, um, all that, here is Siti, forthwith.

More warnings from those, who, well can.

Mainstream debate about global warming has moved on from the question of what needs to be done to when it needs to be done. There is broad agreement that heat-trapping emissions need to be cut. That is prompted by the science. But there is furious argument over when to start doing it. That is an especially tricky one because it's where the science ends and politics and economics take over.
And while science may be imprecise and incomplete, it is usually a better guide than politics, which Ambrose Bierce defined in his 1911 classic The Devil's Dictionary as "a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles". And physical science is generally more dependable than economics, the so-called dismal science. As George Bernard Shaw said: "If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion."
Yet these are the disciplines, or perhaps indisciplines, that societies are obliged to work with. So what do they tell us in answering this question - should a country act unilaterally and cut its carbon emissions even if other countries do not?
Modern history gives us two models for weighing the merit of unilateral action in a highly interdependent world.
One is from the world of military strategy and the other is from trade policy. In the case of military strategy, the Cold War posed the question of whether one of the superpowers should start cutting its nuclear arsenal even if the other did not.
The argument in favour of unilateral disarmament said that doing so would break the cycle of confrontation and escalation, ease tensions, save money, and move the superpowers to a better relationship.
But reality showed otherwise. Unilateral disarmament turned out to be the equivalent of surrender. The Soviet Union abandoned the arms race and lost its empire. The lesson here is clear - unilateral action is a bad idea.
In the case of trade, one of the big questions of the last century was whether a country should cut its protective tariffs even if other countries did not.
We shouldn't cut the tariffs on our car industry, for example, unless other countries do. Because if we did lower our protective barriers unilaterally, other countries will flood our market and ruin our industry. To this day, global trade negotiations are based on this concept of reciprocity - I will if you will.
But in the real world, experience showed that it doesn't work that way. Even if other countries keep their protective barriers in place, the country that liberalises its trade reaps big benefits of efficiency and competitiveness. So the experience from trade is that unilateral action is generally a good idea.
How do these examples help us understand whether to start cutting carbon emissions unilaterally?
The eminent economist Ross Garnaut, the man appointed by the Rudd Government to report on the economics of climate change, put it to me this way: "With trade liberalisation, you are going to benefit whatever the rest of the world does. With unilateral disarmament, you open yourself to a security risk, but at least you save money in the national budget.
"With climate change, it's even worse than unilateral disarmament - if you are the only country to move, there is only cost."
If Australia were to impose a significant price on the right to emit carbon and other countries did not, companies here would be put at a disadvantage.
Some, like the electricity companies, are stuck and would have to sit tight and put up with it. But the ones that sell so-called tradeable goods could just take their factories overseas, and their jobs with them.
And if Australia managed to curb its greenhouse emissions as a result, so what? Accounting for all of 1.5 per cent of global carbon output, it would make no discernable difference whatsoever. Australia would have punished itself economically for no good purpose environmentally.
In his report to the Federal Government released last week, Garnaut likens this to the prisoner's dilemma.
Consider: Two people are arrested for a crime. They are questioned separately. Each may give evidence against the other, or say nothing. If both say nothing, both go free for lack of evidence. But if one rats on the other, he goes free and the other is severely punished. If both give evidence, both are severely punished.
Not knowing or trusting what the other may do, the best individual - or local - strategy is to give evidence against your friend. In climate change, this translates into a strategy of allowing other countries to act while you do not. Or as Garnaut puts it: "With climate change, a country can be rewarded for cheating."
But the best overall - or global - strategy for the prisoners is for them to each trust the other and for neither to give evidence. This way, both go free. Or, in climate change terms, for all nations to agree to act at broadly the same time in roughly the same manner.
This was the aspiration that Kevin Rudd voiced at the G8 meeting in Japan this week, urging the developing countries and the developed to act in unison. But the response from China and India starkly revealed that, even with the US signing up to a communiqué that supports the idea of cutting emissions in half by 2050, the two biggest emerging economies are not interested in acting at the moment.

So does that mean Rudd should take Brendan Nelson's advice and not even start the emissions trading scheme he has pledged to begin from 2010?
Rudd's thinking is that he will proceed with the program. How is this good politics? With the Greens and the environmental movement clamouring for more action from Rudd, and the Liberal Party urging less, Rudd will position himself in between these voices of the Left and the Right at what he calls the responsible reforming centre of Australian politics.
The emissions trading system can start off assigning a low price to the right to emit a tonne of carbon. The Government can set out on a gently-sloping upward trajectory of carbon-curbing. This would keep all Australia's options open as international negotiations proceed.
The Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change, including firms such as BP, Westpac, Origin Energy and Visy, has urged the Government to act swiftly because "the longer we delay acting, the more expensive it becomes for business and for the wider Australian economy".
Similarly, an impressive group of 1700 US scientists and economists, including six Nobel laureates, has told the US Government that "the longer we wait, the harder and more costly it will be" to curb carbon emissions.
"The most risky thing we can do is nothing," they wrote.
This is true, but, as Garnaut points out, "only if other countries act eventually". And if not, we should forget unilaterally cutting carbon emissions and start unilaterally building seawalls.
Peter Hartcher is the Herald's political editor.