GLOBAL WARMING LATEST FACTS AND FIGURES

As I write this the Police in Scotland have told people not to travel, as winds of up to 165mph have hit the country, and have left more than 30,000 people without power. Hundreds of schools have shut and bridge and road closures are causing disruption.
England, Wales and Northern Ireland are also being hit by wind and rain as in Cumbria, heavy rain caused flooding in the Windermere area, roads were closed, vehicles stranded in water and over 300 passengers are stranded on the Rotterdam-Hull ferry off the East Yorkshire coast. But that’s enough of the UK, let’s see what has happened to the world over the last 10 years.

2001: End of long-running La Niña episode which influenced temperature and precipitation in many parts of the world. There were extreme cold temperatures in Mongolia and the Russian federation, with minimum temperatures of near -60°C across central and southern Siberia for two weeks in January. Alaska recorded warmest winter on record. Canada recorded the eighteenth straight warmer-than-average season.

2002: Return of El Niño. Exceptionally heavy rains in central Europe (including Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Romania, and Slovakia) caused flooding of historic proportions, killing more than 100 people and forcing the evacuation of more than 450 000 people. Damage was estimated at US$ 9 billion in Germany alone.

2003: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh witnessed exceptionally harsh pre-monsoonal heat waves. Continental Europe had the hottest summer since at least 1540. Europe recorded in august 2003 its worst heat wave. In many locations, temperatures rose above 40°C. In Belgium, France, German, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, 40 000 to 70 000 deaths were attributed to the heat waves. In the European Alps, the average thickness loss of glaciers reached the equivalent of about three metres of water, nearly twice as much as during the previous record year of 1998. The heat waves resulted from strong high pressure over Western Europe related to a marked ridge of high pressure in the large-scale upper atmospheric wind flow.

2004: Widespread winter storms in the Mediterranean region. Extreme hot conditions persisted in Japan during the summer, with record-breaking temperatures. a record number of 10 tropical cyclones made landfall in Japan (the previous record was six), including Typhoon Tokage, the deadliest to hit Japan since 1979. In March, the first tropical cyclone since the start of satellite records made landfall on the southern coast of Brazil. In Afghanistan, drought conditions that had plagued the country for the past four years continued in
2004. In spring, parts of the north-east People’s Republic of China experienced the worst drought conditions since 1951, and southern China received the lowest autumn rainfall since 1951.

2005: 2005 ranked in the top two warmest years along with 1998. The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was the most active season on record with an unprecedented 27 named tropical storms, including 14 hurricanes, which caused devastating losses across Central America, the Caribbean and the United States of America. Seven of these were classed as “major” hurricanes. In Central America and the Caribbean region, the most damage occurred from Hurricanes Dennis, Emily, Stan, Wilma and Beta. In the United States, Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest hurricane to hit the country since 1928, killing over 1,300 people, mostly in the southern states of Louisiana and Mississippi. Hurricane Wilma was the most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. Long-term drought continued in parts of the Greater Horn of Africa, including southern Somalia, eastern Kenya, south-eastern Ethiopia, and north-eastern United Republic of Tanzania and Djibouti, with 11 million people at risk of starvation. In Brazil, the state of Amazonas experienced the worst drought in nearly 60 years, resulting in record low water levels in the Amazon River. In October, drought conditions extended further south into neighbouring Paraguay. By the end of the year, drought affected much of the central United States from the southern Great Plains to the western Great Lakes. Australia officially recorded its warmest year on record, with data indicating that the annual mean temperature was 1.09°C above the standard 1961–1990 average.

2006: Heavy rains ended prolonged drought in the Greater Horn of Africa, leading to the worst flooding in October/November in 50 years. Drought in many parts of the United States led to the worst wildfire season on record. Disastrous tropical cyclones hit some south East Asian nations, including Typhoon Durian which killed nearly 1 200 people in the Philippines.

2007: Nome in Alaska was frost-free from June to September – its second longest frost-free season on record. Exceptionally heavy rains in a number of African countries (Burkina Faso, Sudan, and Uganda) caused widespread flooding. Mexico suffered the worst flooding in five decades in November, causing the worst weather-related disaster in its history. Severe to exceptional drought continued in the south-east United States, with the driest spring on record and the second worst fire season after 2006. Australia suffered a sixth straight year of drought in Murray-Darling Basin. In 2007 sea ice extent reached its lowest September value since the beginning of measurement in 1979.

2008: China witnessed the worst severe winter weather in five decades in January, with over 78 million people affected by the freezing temperatures and heavy snow. The exceptional cold extended westwards across Asia as far as Turkey, there was an unusually mild winter over most parts of Scandinavia; with monthly anomalies exceeding 7°C for much of Norway, Sweden and Finland, it was the warmest winter ever recorded. Tropical Cyclone Nargis with maximum winds of 215 km/hour was the most devastating cyclone to strike Asia since 1991, causing Myanmar’s worst natural disaster ever. Heavy rain and flooding in Brazil in November affected 1.5 million people and resulted in 84 fatalities. Severe prolonged drought hit Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, where large areas reported one of the driest years on record.

2009: Australia was marked by exceptional heat waves, which affected the south-eastern part of the country in January/February. This was associated with disastrous bushfires that caused more than 170 fatalities. Victoria recorded its highest temperature with 48.8°C at Hopetown, the highest temperature ever recorded so far south in the world.

2010: The year 2010 ranked as the warmest year on record, along with 1998 and 2005. (The difference in global surface temperature between the three warmest years 1998, 2005 and 2010 is within a small range of 0.02°C, making the difference statistically indistinguishable.) The 2009/2010 winter was characterized by extremely cold temperatures over large parts of the northern hemisphere, including parts of Europe, Asia and North America. Hundreds of records for daily minimum temperatures were broken in the United States. Heavy snowfall disrupted air and road traffic in Europe, the United States and China. By contrast there were very mild conditions over the arctic and Canada. These conditions were associated with large-scale atmospheric disturbances connected to the arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations and the El Niño event. The summer of 2010 witnessed a sequence of devastating extreme events, frequently associated with unprecedented impacts. Over the course of the 2010 monsoon season, Pakistan experienced the worst floods in its history. Heavy rainfall, flash floods and river floods combined to create a moving body of water equal in dimension to the land mass of the United Kingdom. The floods affected 84 of 121 districts in Pakistan, and more than 20 million people – one-tenth of Pakistan’s population – devastating villages from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea. More than 1 700 people were killed, and at least 1.8 million homes damaged or destroyed. July 2010 was the warmest month ever in Moscow since the beginning of modern meteorological records. Temperature exceeded the long-term average by 7.8°C (the previous record in July 1938 was 5.3°C above average). More than 20 daily temperature records were broken, including the absolute maximum temperature in Moscow and the high temperatures which extended from July to the first half of august triggered massive forest and peat fires in the European part of the country, with smoke and smog adversely affecting tens of millions of people. The devastating heat wave in the Russian federation and floods in Pakistan were associated with a “blocking event” in the northern hemisphere jet stream, which kept weather patterns stationary over certain countries. La Niña conditions, which prevailed during summer 2010 and subsequently, have been associated historically with increased likelihood of wetter-than-average conditions over the Indian subcontinent. In many parts of China, high temperatures broke historical extremes. Floods, landslides and mud-rock flows also caused serious economic damage. In August, Zhouqu County, Gansu Province was hit by the most devastating flood and mud-rock flow in the country’s history of the China, killing more than 1 500 people. Greenland recorded its warmest decade (2001–2010) since modern measurements. Most stations in West Greenland, especially in the southwest, recorded their warmest ever year in 2010. In august, ice measuring more than 200 km2 calved from the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland – the largest chunk in the past 50 years of observations and data (since 1962). Tens of thousands of icebergs calve yearly from the glaciers of Greenland, but this one was exceptionally large; because of its size, it more typically resembled icebergs in the Antarctic. The Sahel region and West Africa were hit by extreme precipitation events. Niger, which had been gripped by prolonged drought, suffered devastation from flash floods in July. Hundreds of thousands were made homeless in Benin by flooding. Australia faced its worst flooding in about 50 years. The year 2010 was the third wettest year for Australia as a whole and the wettest for the state of Queensland, where the floods were the most devastating.

And still many think that it's a hoax, so for all of them, the words of Jeremiah 5:21. Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not:

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need but not every man's greed” (Ghandi)

With more than 13 million people in dire need of food in the Horn of Africa, food prices set to remain high and volatile, and almost a billion people going to bed hungry every day, it is clear that existing policies and responses are inadequate to solve the problem.
It is possible to reduce hunger dramatically – countries like Brazil and Vietnam have shown how it can be done, what is lacking is the political will by world governments to take the decision to address the causes of hunger. Such as scrapping harmful biofuels targets, subsidies and tariffs which are turning food into fuel, the regulating of commodities markets to curb excessive speculation and increasing the food reserves in poor countries so they can cope with shocks and extremes in prices. In addition the stopping of land grabs by Western and Far East countries and a commitment to increase gender equality in agriculture is needed.

The World Bank estimates that 44 million people fell below the poverty line in the second half of 2010 due to high food prices, and research for Christian Aid’s East Africa Appeal and Oxfam’s GROW campaign indicates that the price of staple foods such as maize could more than double in the next 20 years. Poor households, which spend up to three-quarters of their income on food, are worst affected by the crippling price hikes. The world does have the capacity to produce the food, the groaning supermarket shelves in the 'developed' world scream this out, what is lacking is the will for the 'developed' world to share it.

Prov. 28:27 If you give to the poor, your needs will be supplied! But a curse upon those who close their eyes to poverty.

Do you want to know why there is a protest outside St Paul's?

It's simple! When the failed banks need money, they get it, lots and lots and lots of it, more than enough so they can even pay out huge bonus payments and it's our money.

The Euro presently has huge problems, so it gets propped up by austerity measure and with lots and lots our money.

If finance is needed to cover the cost of wars in, just by coincidence, oil producing states, money is available, lots and lots of it, and it's our money.

When there is a massive oil spill disaster it get paid for in the end by our money, lots and lots of it.

So here in the UK we are obviously not a country that is broke, enough money is available for all the above, so what is it that there is not enough money available for?

When finance is needed to cover the cost of green energy this has to be funded by additional taxes, despite the fact that here in the UK we spend billions of pounds year after never ending year looking after spent nuclear fuel.

And when finance is needed for schools, hospitals, adult social care, children's hospices, for community projects for more nurses and teachers and police, for the fire and ambulance services or for those that have lost homes or jobs or those now living on the streets it's either in very short supply indeed or completely unavailable.

That's why there is a protest outside St. Paul's and in Wall Street and all the other places... that's why, because it's not the banks or big business that should be bailed out, it is those that really need the cash, like those in the last paragraph.

What we all need to protest about is the same as Jesus did, and that is greed and economic inequality.

As Jesus said “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” (Luke 12:15)

"If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?" (John 1:17-18) A good question indeed...

So, where does YOUR money go?

It was when I was at theological college that I first met my fellow student and now friend and fellow minister Angela Steele. One of our tasks was to preach at a combined staff and student’s service. Her first line when she did is still with me. “Do you know where your pension funds are invested and how that money is used? Is it invested in ethical companies or those that abuse others in some way for your future income?” The point she made was that where we spend and invest our money is actually a large part of our faith.

It was a lesson that I have tried to live up to, so... do YOU know what the organisations YOU spend or invest your money with do with it, are they involved in exploitation and are they as environmentally sound as they claim?

Is it invested in companies such as Caterpillar Inc? They are a multinational company involved in earth moving equipment, they also make the large armoured bulldozers that the Israelis use to bulldoze homes in the Palestinian areas, and they made the one that killed US peace activist Rachel Corrie. OK, so perhaps you do not have any investments in Caterpillar Inc, but Sainsbury’s, Tesco, and Waitrose all openly sell settlement produce from land the Palestinians’ were forcibly removed from, the very thing that Rachel was trying to stop.

How about buying that chocolate bar with the ‘Fairtrade’ mark? Think first, because ‘Greenwash’ abounds! For example That Kit-Kat bar with the Fairtrade logo is a Nestle production; a company that is supplied by companies involved in Rain Forest destruction, operates in several tax havens and with several oppressive regimes and is involved in political lobbying and mis-promotes baby milk.

The Canadian Tar Sands project is an environmental disaster in the making, This huge project has investors from many countries, including a large stake, invested by a company called Husky Energy. They posses around 511,000 acres of tar sands leases and have a 50/50 partnership agreement with BP for a 50/50 to develop the tar sands project.

Husky Energy is owned by Hong Kong based Hutchison Whampoa, a multi-national company with operations in 55 countries across the globe and a turnover of around £31,034.9 million per year. In the UK Hutchison Whampoa own Superdrug!

VW... Now they make environmentally sound car... or do they? The latest UK TV ads show a range of cars (at times informing the viewer that at the bottom of the screen that some of these are only available in left-hand drive, we use right-hand drive in the UK!) including concept cars with images of wind farms in the background and saying that an electric car is planned for production in the near future. What VW don’t tell you is that it's lobbying against climate change laws, funding lobbying groups to the tune of millions of Euros to stop Europe reducing its Greenhouse Gas emissions from 20% to 30% by 2020.

Do you spread Flora on your bread? If so then remember that the company that produces it, Unilever, test products on animals, lobbies politically, promotes Geneticall Modified food, uses factory farmed eggs and meat and operates in several tax havens and with several oppressive regimes.

The safest way to make sure that others do not profit from your spendong power is to buy locally produced items whenever possible and check where your pension funds are being invested. Someone some where profited from the death of my fellow Christian Rachel Corrie.

"Why are you an Environmentalist?" is a question I am often asked

It really is simple; God made creation for all to share and I am working for those yet to be born to ensure that the generations to come will learn to love, enjoy and share the work of God's hands just as I do.

It is our responsibility as His hands, feet, eyes and ears to ensure that our generation is looked back upon as the one that, when aware of the environmental problem, acted.

We live in a generation where things are loved and people used, it should be the other way round, we should love those in our families yet to be born and leave them an environmental legacy to be proud of.



"Ecclesiastes 3:11 Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end."

I will go with that!

(CARBON) FOOTPRINTS

Last night I dreamed a dream.

I was walking along the beach with My Lord. Across the dark sky flashed all the scenes from my life, for each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand; I asked The Lord “Why do I see two sets of footprints?”

The Lord said to me “Those are your very own personal carbon footprints, and despite your efforts they are still over twice the global average

Our journey continued on and when the last scene of my life flashed before me I looked back at the many footprints in the sand, but noticed that at times there were only one set. I realized that this occurred at the very lowest and saddest times of my life. This bothered me greatly and I questioned The Lord about my dilemma.

"Lord” I said, “You told me, when I decided to follow you, that you would be with me and talk with me all the way, but I'm aware that during the most troublesome and problematical times of my life I must surely have been alone. I just don't understand it, why it was that when I needed you most you left me?" But why are there only one set of footprints?

He whispered, "My son, my precious child, I love you and will never leave you, never, ever, during your trials and testing’s. When you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I arranged for your central heating oil delivery order to be mislaid, your electricity to fail, your car to break down, your flight cancelled or your passport lost."

I was shocked at this and tried to remonstrate with The Lord.

The Lord looked with sadness at the sea gently lapping on the sands and said to me “Well I had to try and do something, this sandy beach was supposed to be a fertile valley”.

Murdoch – News International / News Corporation – World-Wide Lies, Deceit and The Bottom Line.

I have witnessed the Murdoch Media at far to close quarters, the way it expertly wraps lies in half truths and damages lives, so when the facts about the way it works finally emerged I cheered, and when Murdoch said to an MP committee that ‘this is the humblest day of my life’ my heartfelt hope was that it would not be. The video here shows just one aspect of the Murdoch Empire’s influence... but it certainly does not stop there... please, please read on!

Recent revelations have at last uncovered the extent of the Murdoch media's corruption in the UK. His staff hacked the phones of thousands, including grieving widows and murdered schoolgirls. They stole a Prime Minister's bank information, paid huge sums to police officers, and staged a cover up, which included James Murdoch authorizing hush money to victims.

But Murdoch is a global problem, famous for dictating editorial positions to his papers. He has corrupted and controlled democracies by pushing politicians to back his ideas on war, torture and a host of other planetary ills, and destroying careers with smear campaigns unless they do his bidding, or to be more accurate, blackmail.

In the US, he helped elect George W. Bush and now appears to have many Republican presidential candidates on his payroll. His Fox News Network lied to promote the war in Iraq, pushed resentment of Muslims and immigrants and promoted the right-wing tea party. Not only this, he has worked non-stop to block urgent global action on climate change.

Now Murdoch’s political friends, who used to listen avidly and seemingly obey his every word, have dumped him. In the UK his ex CEO Rebekah Brooks faces criminal charges and two of London's most senior police officers, Sir Paul Stephenson and Assistant Commissioner John Yates have resigned and now it is reported that there are US and Australian investigations into the Murdoch News Corp empires.

Since becoming the UK’s Prime Minister sixteen months ago, David Cameron had 26 meetings with Murdoch’s executives. PM Cameron, against the advice of his deputy prime minister, also employed former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his communications director. Coulson, who has been at the centre of the hacking probe, was arrested on July 8.

Rebekah Brooks, who resigned as CEO over the escalating scandal, is the only person Mr Cameron has invited twice to Chequers, a privilege not extended even to the most senior members of his Cabinet.

Fox News is owned by The Murdoch Empire; see the below and read on!



The Mail on Sunday recently suggested that previous UK PM Tony Blair will face scathing criticism of his role in the launch of the Iraq war when the report of the inquiry under Sir John Chilcot is published in the autumn. The Observer newspaper reported that the terms of an oil deal struck between BP and the Baghdad government would provide the company and its Chinese partner with a 'stranglehold' over the Iraqi economy. Secret documents referred to by the Observer reveal that BP and the Chinese National Petroleum Company have been guaranteed full payment at an agreed price for the oil they extract from Iraq's richest oil field at Rumaila. The oil field - about 20 miles from the Kuwait border - is about half as big as the entire North Sea and accounts for more than 40% of Iraqi oil production. Oil, in turn, provides 95% of the country's export earnings. If extraction from the field is curtailed - because of quotas imposed by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, for example - the Iraqi government will pay the partnership for the 'lost' production. Similarly, if natural disaster, terrorist attack, or any of a series of other possible developments, disrupts production for more than 90 days, the administration will compensate the partnership for the 'loss'.

The Observer speculated that news of the arrangement will likely 'increase the prejudice of those who saw the UK's involvement in toppling Saddam as part of a "war for oil"' - a consideration which Tony Blair has always insisted played no part in his decision to support the drive towards invasion.

This raises the question of what Mr Blair and Mr Murdoch were talking about in the conversations we now know they held in the days leading up to the invasion on March 20, 2003, because Murdoch was, from the outset, blunt about his reasons for supporting the war. The reason was not to find weapons of mass destruction, or to overthrow a tyrant, but to secure economic interests through control of the flow and price of oil.

Just weeks before the invasion, Murdoch said that "The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax-cut in any country."

Mr Blair and Mr Murdoch had three conversations in the nine days before March 20. They spoke on March 11, immediately after Jacques Chirac had announced that France would veto any second UN resolution sanctioning invasion.

The next day, Murdoch’s Sun Newspaper proclaimed: 'Like a cheap tart who puts price before principle, money before honour, Jacques Chirac struts the streets of shame. The French President's vow to veto the second resolution ... puts him right in the gutter."

On March 13, as conflict over a second resolution intensified, the two men talked again. On March 14, The Sun returned to the theme: 'Charlatan Jacques Chirac is basking in cheap applause for his "Save Saddam" campaign - but his treachery will cost his people dear ... This grandstanding egomaniac has inflicted irreparable damage."

On the evening of March 19, as tanks prepared to cross the border, PM Blair and Murdoch talked again; as they did every single one of Mr Murdoch's 127 newspapers around the world, with a combined circulation more than 40 million, urged its readers to back the war, a war that has resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands so far and will result in the death of many, many more in the future. This is because more than 1,820 tons of radioactive nuclear waste (i.e. depleted uranium) has exploded in Iraq so far in the form of armour piercing rounds and bunker busters. 64 kg of uranium were used in the Hiroshima bomb so the U.S. Iraq Nuclear Holocaust represents far more than fourteen thousand Hiroshima's.

The nuclear waste the U.S. has exploded in the Middle East will continue killing for hundreds of years because that's how long these particles of radioactive dust will continue to blow around to be lodged in an individual’s lungs or be ingested.

No WMD's (Weapons of Mass Destruction) were found in Iraq, they were however imported to that country. Reported birth defects among Iraqi newborns are up 600% from before the war, the defects are typical of the kind produced by exposure to radioactive poisons.

The civilian population of Iraq were ‘liberated’, liberated for Murdoch’s desire for cheap oil, aided and abetted by the Western World’s addiction to oil, and at last, the truth is about to emerge!

Sources; the newspapers and media quoted and www.abovetopsecret.com

UK Farms In Crisis; Is it the same where you are?

We have been lucky to live in a farming area for some 34 years now; it once was a farming community but then the supermarkets with their values of the bottom line and sourcing from the cheapest producers from any part of the world closed down many local small farmers and growers. Growers’ in the UK could not compete with, for example tomatoes grown in Africa where the cost of labour and production is low even though the cost of shipping, and the carbon footprint, is high. Our two village market gardens closed down as the majority of our counties grocers shops, unable to compete with the supermarkets closed. One of the market garden owners committed suicide.

The same supermarket pressure has been applied over the last few years to our milk producers, and many are going out of business on a weekly basis. When Pam and I were at the recent South of England Show I took this picture of a milk producer's stall. The most important words read;

Supermarket price approx 85p per litre
Cost of production approx 29p per litre
Farmer paid approx 25p per litre
Outcome 3-4p loss on every litre of milk produced. Thousands of British farms going out of business every year.

The supermarkets focus on buying at the cheapest price and then selling at the highest possible margin. Forget their claims of ‘giving you more’ or even ‘every little helps’ just look at their end of financial year profits to see where their focus really is.

What has happened to the UK farming industry is the equivalent of “selling the family silver”, when the time comes, and it will come soon, that we need the UK’s farmers they will no longer be there... then what?