The power of deep frozen fiction - Books - Entertainment - theage.com.au

Stories of the battle to survive extreme cold have great appeal, writes Jane Sullivan.

SF Environmental Policy Examiner: Global warming and Antarctic ice

The objects of fear keep changing for global warming. It seems like only yesterday that we were all so worried about the North Pole being ice free. Now that the ice is back to normal, those concerned with global warming want us to turn our attention to the South Pole, and their fears that Antarctica is warming.

A recent study was conducted by lead scientist Eric Steig and others that seemed to show that Antarctica was warming. This is strange, because prior data said it was cooling, and in fact the cooling was said to be predicted by earlier climate models.

SF Environmental Policy Examiner: Global warming will hit the poor hardest--but it's poverty, not the heat that will kill

Back in 2003, the Milan conference on global warming estimated that 150,000 people died a year from global warming. But they didn't include heat deaths. Why? Because then they would have had to include deaths from cold. As warming would reduce deaths from cold by so much, it would have turned the whole number negative, so they just focused on deaths from malaria, diarrhea and such like. But those are diseases of poverty, not of climate. If the victims of those diseases in the developing world had access to clean water, electricity, micronutrients and education, those 150,000 people would not die.

It is not the climate. It is the poverty.

ONE | Decisions, decisions: Should I sign this petition?

Dear Yvo de Boer , In the negotiations for the Copenhagen Climate Conference, please advocate for sufficient adaptation funding for countries currently suffering from the effects of climate change.