En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
Commissioner Borg nominated for the Swedish Seafood Award for his work on sustainable fisheries
New EU-US Energy Council to boost transatlantic energy cooperation
Thank you for bringing the Midday Express to our attention. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
The Midday Express for a given date is not updated, and the most recent one summarizes the press briefing given each midday in Brussels. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
EU leaders upped the pressure on the US at what turned out to be a fairly colourless summit in Washington to show leadership in the battle against climate change. In the US capital on Tuesday (3 November) for the first EU-US summit since the June European elections and the election of President Barack Obama a year ago to the day, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, Swedish Prime Minister Frederick Reinfeldt, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, and foreign policy chief Javier Solana pushed the White House to take greater action on global warming amid growing fears that an agreement at UN talks in Copenhagen in December will be unsuccessful. "All of us agreed that it is imperative for us to redouble our efforts in the weeks between now and the Copenhagen meeting to assure that we create a framework for progress in dealing with potential ecological disaster," was the boilerplate message Mr Obama gave after meeting with his manifold European counterparts.
EU leaders upped the pressure on the US at what turned out to be a fairly colourless summit in Washington to show leadership in the battle against climate change.
In the US capital on Tuesday (3 November) for the first EU-US summit since the June European elections and the election of President Barack Obama a year ago to the day, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, Swedish Prime Minister Frederick Reinfeldt, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, and foreign policy chief Javier Solana pushed the White House to take greater action on global warming amid growing fears that an agreement at UN talks in Copenhagen in December will be unsuccessful.
"All of us agreed that it is imperative for us to redouble our efforts in the weeks between now and the Copenhagen meeting to assure that we create a framework for progress in dealing with potential ecological disaster," was the boilerplate message Mr Obama gave after meeting with his manifold European counterparts.
All of us agreed that it is imperative for us to redouble our efforts in the weeks between now and the Copenhagen meeting to assure that we create a framework for progress in dealing with potential ecological disaster
World-renowned ice caps may disappear by the 2020s
The famed snows of Kilimanjaro may soon appear only in old tourist photos and a short story by Ernest Hemingway if current rates of melting persist, a new study suggests. The warming climate of recent decades has caused high-altitude glaciers worldwide, and especially those in tropical areas, to shrink substantially (SN: 10/4/03, p. 215). Recent field studies conducted atop Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro show that ice loss is proceeding apace on the African peak: More than a quarter of the ice cover present in the year 2000 had disappeared by late 2007, says Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center in Columbus. He and his colleagues report their findings online November 2 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Data from aerial surveys supplement the team's field studies, which show that Kilimanjaro's melting has dramatically accelerated in recent decades, says Thompson. From 1912 to 1953, ice coverage declined by 1.1 percent per year. Between 1953 and 1989, the annual rate of ice loss jumped to 1.4 percent. From 1989 to the most recent survey in 2007, the ice-covered area dropped, on average, a whopping 2.4 percent per year, the researchers report. Not only are the ice masses of Kilimanjaro receding farther up the peak, they're thinning considerably -- a trend detectable only by improved ground observations made in recent years. The thickest part of the peak's 50-meter-thick Northern Ice Field thinned by 1.9 meters between 2000 and 2007, Thompson says. During the same period, Kilimanjaro's Southern Ice Field -- which was approximately 21 meters thick in 2000 -- lost about 5.1 meters of ice thickness by 2007. As Kilimanjaro's glaciers thin, retreat and break into smaller pieces, the dark rocks surrounding the remaining ice will absorb more sunlight and heat up, accelerating the melting trend, says Thompson. "These ice bodies are remnants of a former climate," he notes. At current rates of melting, permanent ice fields will disappear from Kilimanjaro by 2022, the researchers estimate.
The warming climate of recent decades has caused high-altitude glaciers worldwide, and especially those in tropical areas, to shrink substantially (SN: 10/4/03, p. 215). Recent field studies conducted atop Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro show that ice loss is proceeding apace on the African peak: More than a quarter of the ice cover present in the year 2000 had disappeared by late 2007, says Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center in Columbus. He and his colleagues report their findings online November 2 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Data from aerial surveys supplement the team's field studies, which show that Kilimanjaro's melting has dramatically accelerated in recent decades, says Thompson. From 1912 to 1953, ice coverage declined by 1.1 percent per year. Between 1953 and 1989, the annual rate of ice loss jumped to 1.4 percent. From 1989 to the most recent survey in 2007, the ice-covered area dropped, on average, a whopping 2.4 percent per year, the researchers report.
Not only are the ice masses of Kilimanjaro receding farther up the peak, they're thinning considerably -- a trend detectable only by improved ground observations made in recent years. The thickest part of the peak's 50-meter-thick Northern Ice Field thinned by 1.9 meters between 2000 and 2007, Thompson says. During the same period, Kilimanjaro's Southern Ice Field -- which was approximately 21 meters thick in 2000 -- lost about 5.1 meters of ice thickness by 2007.
As Kilimanjaro's glaciers thin, retreat and break into smaller pieces, the dark rocks surrounding the remaining ice will absorb more sunlight and heat up, accelerating the melting trend, says Thompson. "These ice bodies are remnants of a former climate," he notes. At current rates of melting, permanent ice fields will disappear from Kilimanjaro by 2022, the researchers estimate.
