h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6269046.stm

..and nor a drop to drink.

One swallow doesn't make a summer, and by the same reckoning one soggy summer doesn't make a global warming catastrophe. Yet this is but one drop in a steadily swelling ocean of evidence that bolsters the view of the IPCC.

I'm now *itching* for a scrap with the right-wing ideologues and climate change naysayers on this subject. And, if I have any sense of self-respect, they will walk away with the equivalent of bloody noses. To maintain it's all an environmentalist fiction or left-wing conspiracy by quiche eaters is not just disingenuous, it's glib to the point of being foolhardy.

My door is open. Do feel free to come in, denialists, and we'll have a nice little chat...

After 4 hours not one denialist has appeared! Amazing, eh?
We've just had 40 oC (ok, it was 39.8 oC), a new record temperature. Here I'm talking Austria not Kuwait! The 0 oC line is currently somewhere in the air above the Alps at 4,300 mtrs. The remnants of the glaciers are at 3,000 mtrs. Mindboggling but even as we speak in broad daylight in blazing heatwave sunshine people are driving round on all the roads, big and small, in this Alpine Republic in their 2,000,000 cars with headlights blazing and using between 3% & 10% more fuel and causing an equal amount of greenhouse gas by government order! Incredible BUT true!

*pauses to skewer another maggot on the hook*

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6912527.stm

Yesterday was a scary but true news item on the goggle-box about a man actually swimming in the sea at the North Pole to draw attention to the problems. I remember the North Pole being permanently frozen in Buster Keaton days.

Russia wants to claim a piece of the rapidly thawing Arctic as its territory, presumably for future gas and mineral deposits - a survey submarine is presently checking-out the undersea land connection.

I fear for the demise of the endangered Polar Bear. A Fox's glacier mint may outlive this species in the wild.