Global warming roundup – Arctic and New Zealand ice melts; will China do more?

WWF says Arctic ice melt continues to speed up

World Wildlife Fund says Greenland and Arctic ice were 39 percent below 1979-80 levels last September, at the end of summer.

“Recently observed changes are happening at rates significantly faster than predicted” by the 2005 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) and last year’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), WWF said. …

“When you look in detail at the science behind the recent Arctic changes it becomes painfully clear how our understanding of climate impacts lags behind the changes that we are already seeing in the Arctic,” said Martin Sommerkorn, one of the authors of the report.

WWF has upped its polar bear extinction worry as a result. Are you listening, Interior Secretary Dick Kempthorne?

New Zealand glacier melts

New Zealand’s largest glacier is retreating at a rate of almost half a mile a year. It’s expected to disappear in not too many years.

U.N. claims China will do more on climate

U.N. officials claim self-interest in Beijing will kick in as Chinese leadership see how much damage global warming is doing to its own environment, and motivate it to do more on carbon emissions. Yvo de Boer says increased Tibetan-area glacial melting will first continue to increase floods on the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, which already are flooding at a rate seven times faster than in the 1950s. Then, as glaciers dry up even more, down go the rivers.

But de Boer cautioned developed nations (i.e., the United States) to not use this as an excuse to foot-drag.