On:

Five years ago, we warned that this might happen and now it has: the Northwest Passage–the direct shipping route from Europe to Asia–is now clear of ice, for the first time since records started being kept 30 years ago.

BBC News reports that "historically, the Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans has been ice-bound through the year." But global warming has changed that.

In LiveScience.com, Andrea Thompson writes that since "the opening of the fabled Northwest Passage and the recent announcement that Arctic Sea ice has reached a new record summer low are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to polar problems."
read more

On:

It was like a scene from Superstorm in England yesterday as tornadoes swept across the center of the country. As we have reported on Unknowncountry before, the most likely cause of the extraordinarily violent weather that has been experienced in the UK this year is that the Gulf Stream is weakening.

Tornado-like winds tore roofs off of houses and uprooted trees. BBC News quotes one resident of an area that was hit by the storms says the sky turned “completely black.” We are familiar with descriptions like these in the US, where tornadoes are not that uncommon and residents of states where they hit are prepared for them, but they are a fairly new phenomenon in the UK and have caught the residents of that country by surprise.

Art credit: gimp-savvy.com
read more

On:

A new study show that by 2050, the United States must cut its emissions by at least 80% below those created in the year 2000 if the world is to avoid potentially dangerous impacts of human-induced climate change.

To avoid the most severe effects of climate change, the world must stabilize the concentration of heat trapping gases in the atmosphere at no more than 450 parts per million. This 450-parts-per-million limit aims to avoid a temperature increase exceeding 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit in a global average temperature above pre-industrial levels?a benchmark which geoscientist Katharine Hayhoe thinks could wreak increasing havoc on the environment as it is exceeded.
read more

On:

As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad landed in New York for a UN meeting and a controversial visit to Columbia University, Senator Charles Liberman (D-Mass) introduced a bill paving the way for an attack on Iran and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski warned that administration statements about Iran were disturbingly similar to statements made about Iraq prior to the invasion of that country.
read more