North not immune from climate change: WWF

Scientists have ranked it as one of the last remaining natural wonders of the world, alongside the Amazon rainforests and the icy wilderness of the South Pole.
But a new report warns that vast areas of Australia's northern tropics are now at high to medium risk from climate change.
Dr Stuart Blanch heads the northern landscapes division of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which commissioned the study.
"Climate change is not a southern Australian phenomenon," he said.
"Some of the stronger impacts on river flows might be felt in the Murray-Darling Basin, but the best science we have at the moment shows that rivers in the north may be dealing with less water in the future too."
It is the first time scientists have assessed the full impact of climate change on all the major ecosystems in the north, from tropical rivers to coral reefs, wetlands, rainforests, woodland savannah and low islands.
Dr Blanch says the report shows even the most pristine environment is at risk from global warming.
"All aspects of climate change are going to come to bear in northern Australia," he said.
"Hotter temperatures, more variable rainfall, potentially much longer droughts, rising sea levels, much bigger or more intense cyclones."
One of the report authors, Mikila Lawrence, says she hopes the report will curb the rush to exploit water and land in northern Australia as an ill-considered solution to climate change in the south.
"The recommendations were to stop this gut reaction which is happening which is to look at northern Australia as a solution to some of the problems which are already being experienced in the south," she said.
"These are pristine landscapes, that doesn't mean they're not susceptible themselves."
And Dr Blanch says there are clear lessons for politicians and farmers seeking to establish the tropics as the food bowl of Asia.
"If we do try to develop these for farming or intensification for cattle, we risk damaging them," he said.
"With climate change on top of that we might get the double-whammy of climate change and society's response to climate change in the south by sending more farmers north, and that's a real risk."
A prime ministerial task force meets in the remote Kimberley region next week as part of a broad-ranging review of the potential to boost farming in the tropics, to take advantage of the abundant land and rainfall.
But its chairman, Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan, says his task force is every bit as environmentally conscious as groups like WWF.
"The notion that there's some great mass migration of farmers and the creation of a huge food bowl is some sort of mythical notion," he said.

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Climate change campaigners strip naked on melting glacier

Nearly 600 volunteers have stripped for the camera on a melting Swiss glacier high in the Alps for a publicity campaign to expose the impact of climate change.
The environmental group Greenpeace, which commissioned the photo shoot by world-renowned photographer Spencer Tunick, says the volunteers turned up under blue skies near the foot of the Aletsch glacier, a protected UNESCO World Heritage site.
Nicolas de Roten of Greenpeace Switzerland says there are almost 600 people there.
"It's relatively chilly but that doesn't seem to be disturbing them," he said.
The campaign is aimed at drawing attention to melting Alpine glaciers, one clear sign of global warming and of man-made climate change, Greenpeace says.
Greenpeace says the human body is as vulnerable as glaciers like the Aletsch in southern Switzerland - which is shrinking by more than 100 metres a year - and the world's environment.
The group hopes its billboard and poster campaign showing people exposed to the cold will send a shiver down the spines of the public and politicians, and convince them to do more to tackle pollution and climate change.
"They'll be used at the right moment for our campaign, in Switzerland first and then worldwide," Mr de Roten says.
Tunick split the volunteers into two groups of about 300 for separate shots on or around the lower end of the spectacular 23 kilometre long sweeping ice floe, at an altitude of about 2,300 metres and about an hour's hike away from the village of Bettmeralp.
Temperatures were well above freezing - about 10 to 15 degrees Celsius - unlike the riskier snowbound section higher up in the mountains.
The US-born photographer is renowned for his spectacular art photos of hundreds if not thousands of naked people grouped in carefully chosen poses around landmarks.
Tunick calls them "living sculptures" or "body landscapes" and these days he works mainly to order for contemporary galleries.
About 18,000 nudes posed for the US-born photographer in Mexico City's Zocalo Square in May.
Other backdrops have included the Gateshead Centre for Contemporary Art in Britain (2005), the Biennale in Lyon, France (2005), and Grand Central Station in New York (2003).

link ABC.net

Power giants snub marchers
Two of the UK’s biggest greenhouse polluters have declined to meet Christian Aid campaigners who are walking 1,000 miles to draw attention to climate change.
Drax Group and Scottish and Southern Energy have both turned down Christian Aid’s requests to meet with the marchers as they passed the companies’ power stations on Friday, 10 August 2007.
Drax Group owns the UK’s largest coal-fired power station, Drax, which is in Selby, North Yorkshire, and has an output capacity of 4,000 megawatts (MW).
The company says Drax is the “cleanest” coal-fired power station in the UK.
However, coal is inherently dirty, producing more carbon dioxide than any other fuel. The giant power station emits 21 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year – more than countries such as Chad, Mozambique and Senegal.
Scottish and Southern Energy meanwhile owns the Ferrybridge power station in Knottingley, West Yorkshire, which the climate change marchers also hoped to visit.
Ferrybridge is coal-fired, although it also burns some biomass, and has a capacity of 2,000 MW. Scottish and Southern emits almost 26 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year which is more than the annual emissions of countries including Sri Lanka, Jordan, Ghana, Uruguay and Burkina Faso.
Electricity generation is by far the most carbon-intensive of all industrial sectors in the UK because it is done mainly by burning coal and gas in a process which is highly inefficient.
‘They are hurting us’
One of the climate change marchers, Mohamed Adow from Kenya, said he was disappointed by the two companies’ rejections. ‘It is quite disheartening that the major emitters of carbon in the UK will not meet us,’ he said.
‘Their actions, their emissions, are hurting us. Kenya has been ravaged by climate shocks, shocks that emanate from climate change. Part of it is due to the burning of fossil fuels. Countless people have lost their lives and their livelihoods, had their lives devastated.’
Mohamed Adow works with poor farmers in Kenya, helping them to adapt to the drying effects of climate change.
He added that he hoped consumer power would force Drax and Scottish and Southern to work to reduce their climate impact, as people increasingly demand power from renewable sources.
‘People in poor countries are the first and the worst affected by your actions and God in his grace, through the actions of your clients, will make you do justice,’ he said.
‘The world has enough to satisfy our energy needs but nothing to satisfy your greed.’
Christian Aid’s marchers want to meet major companies along the route of their trans-UK walk, to draw their attention to the severe damage that climate change is already doing in countries where the aid agency works.
Half the core team of 20 marchers are themselves from developing countries, including Brazil, Kenya, Tajikistan, India and Bangladesh. The marchers are also asking firms about what they are doing to reduce their contribution to climate change.

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