People and Planet: World Water Week in Stockholm concluded today with a warning that slow progress on sanitation will cause the world to badly fail the Global Millennium Development Goals. It also agreed that weak policy, poor management, increasing waste and exploding water demands are pushing the planet towards the tipping point of a global water crisis. The gathering of 2,400 scientists, leaders from governments and civil society, were presented with new research showing that half of the world’s food …

LA Times: Federal wildlife monitors spotted nine polar bears in one day swimming in open ocean off Alaska’s northwest coast, and environmental groups say the event is a strong signal that diminished sea ice brought on by warming has put U.S. bears at risk of drowning or dying from effects of fatigue. "The impact of global warming is brutal and tragic for polar bears," said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. "The only way to limit the number of bears that will drown and starve …

Reuters: A 160-nation U.N. climate conference in Ghana split on Friday over ways to pay poor countries to slow deforestation, blamed for producing up to 20 percent of the greenhouse gases caused by human activities. Options suggested for raising billions of dollars in incentives include markets that would allow trading in the carbon dioxide locked up in trees, higher aid from rich nations and levies on airline tickets or on international shipping. "It’s important that we get to grips …

New Zealand Herald: For a nation that has shown a marked reluctance to engage with the campaigns to mitigate climate change, at least at the highest political levels, the endorsement of Tim Flannery as Australian of the Year last year is a remarkable personal tribute. But no one has done more to bring the issues to the top of the national agenda than this scientist-turned-polemicist. Flannery has also chilled the blood of Australians by pointing out their country’s environmental fragility is so extreme …

We learned today that birds in France are unable to migrate [ark] fast enough to keep up with their habitat. And the Arctic tundra is being invaded by trees [ark]. Humans too are animals with specific heat, moisture and food requirements. Where will we run as we lose our habitat?

Climate change — and the host of attendant ecological crises associated with too many humans consuming too many resources at the expense of life giving ecosystems — together will not be some minor irritant. Climate-mediated global ecological collapse [search] will be gut-wrenching biological murder as conditions where you live become unable to sustain life.

Recently climate skeptics [search] and sympathetic press have claimed there has been no global warming for a decade. New Scientist does a marvelous job of debunking [ark] this selective misreading of climate data by lay skeptics. Using a powerful yet simple analogy, they illustrate that surface temperatures are only one measure of global heat increases.

Surface temperatures only reflect what is happening to the very thin layer where air meets the land and sea. But long-term how much heat is gained or lost by the entire planet, called the “top of the atmosphere” radiation budget, is what matters. Claims that global warming is non-existent is further confounded by the fact surface temperatures in the Arctic, the place on Earth where the greatest warming is occurring, is not measured by a permanent base. And 1998 was unusually warm due to El Nino conditions.

Findings that oxygen-starved ocean “dead zones” have doubled every decade [ark | moreark] since the 1960s, killing massive amounts of marine life at the base of the food chain, demonstrate just how sick the Earth has become. The new study in the journal Science found there are now some 400 ocean areas that are devoid of life with new ones popping up continuously. Ocean dead zones [search] most often result from nutrient rich river run-off — particularly containing nitrogen from fertilizers and pesticides associated with industrial agriculture — which cause algae blooms and low oxygen levels unable to support life. Climate change frequently exacerbates the condition.

Chaos in the planet’s nitrogen cycle [search] is second perhaps only to climate change in threatening the biosphere’s life support systems. The Earth’s ability to provide habitat for humans and all life forms is deteriorating, as economic activities have overshot the carrying capacity of ecosystems. Dead zones show human activities can destroy all life in given area, and given continuation of current trends, the possibility of this occurring globally cannot be dismissed.

Daily Green:

A major challenge in production of solar and other renewable energies [search] with the optimal environmental benefit is manufacture of equipment without using fossil fuels. Indeed, there is some question whether there exists enough materials and energy to construct a global renewable energy infrastructure. Scientific American reports on a new method [ark] to produce solar photovoltaics without petroleum [search] productions using cotton and castor beans. It is noted most cotton has been genetically modified and depends upon petroleum based fertilizers. If solar cells and wind turbines are created using large amounts of polluting energy, the entire life cycle carbon benefits of these “renewable energies” is significantly reduced. It is important that the full lifetime costs of renewable energy infrastructure are getting more attention — other examples will include recycling of components and allowing for modular design.

Bloomberg: Ross Garnaut, the government’s adviser on global warming, will release emissions reduction trajectories and targets next month. Garnaut in July proposed a cap-and-trade system starting with a two-year “transition period” in 2010 to address climate impacts on the economy in a draft report. He will release a supplementary report on Sept. 5, according to an e-mailed statement. “The Supplementary Draft Report will provide the Review’s proposals for emissions reduction …