Since the days of Alexander the Great, binge drinking has been a very popular past time - leading to him apparently killing a friend and burning down Persepolis while drunk.

Those are some Great shoes to fill.

Yet, governments, schools and the media have repeatedly tried to teach us of binge drinking's dangers. 

Dartmouth University has taken the lead, instigating a new nationwide policy to curb heavy drinking by their students.

Pour me another glass.

Binge drinking is defined as "the consumption of five or more drinks in a row by men — or four or more drinks in a row by women — at least once in the previous 2 weeks. Heavy binge drinking includes three or more such episodes in 2 weeks."

Seems I don't know anyone who isn't a heavy binge drinker.

Do you think this definition should be changed or should we change people's attitudes? Or should you follow HPD's no fools guide to drinking a lot but not dying?  . . read more

A year ago, I wrote to Gordon Brown asking him to place a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants in Britain. I have asked the same of Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd and other leaders. The reason is this - coal is the single greatest threat to civilisation and all life on our planet.

The climate is nearing tipping points. Changes are beginning to appear and there is a potential for explosive changes, effects that would be irreversible, if we do not rapidly slow fossil-fuel emissions over the next few decades. As Arctic sea ice melts, the darker ocean absorbs more sunlight and speeds melting. As the tundra melts, methane, a strong greenhouse gas, is released, causing more warming. As species are exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.

The public, buffeted by weather fluctuations and economic turmoil, has little time to analyse decadal changes. How can people be expected to evaluate and filter out advice emanating from those pushing special interests? How can people distinguish between top-notch science and pseudo-science?

Those who lead us have no excuse - they are elected to guide, to protect the public and its best interests. They have at their disposal the best scientific organisations in the world, such as the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences. Only in the past few years did the science crystallise, revealing the urgency. Our planet is in peril. If we do not change course, we'll hand our children a situation that is out of their control. One ecological collapse will lead to another, in amplifying feedbacks.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air has already risen to a dangerous level. The pre-industrial carbon dioxide amount was 280 parts per million (ppm). Humans, by burning coal, oil and gas, have increased this to 385 ppm; it continues to grow by about 2 ppm per year.

Earth, with its four-kilometre-deep oceans, responds only slowly to changes of carbon dioxide. So the climate will continue to change, even if we make maximum effort to slow the growth of carbon dioxide. Arctic sea ice will melt away in the summer season within the next few decades. Mountain glaciers, providing fresh water for rivers that supply hundreds of millions of people, will disappear - practically all of the glaciers could be gone within 50 years - if carbon dioxide continues to increase at current rates. Coral reefs, harbouring a quarter of ocean species, are threatened.

The greatest danger hanging over our children and grandchildren is initiation of changes that will be irreversible on any time scale that humans can imagine. If coastal ice shelves buttressing the west Antarctic ice sheet continue to disintegrate, the sheet could disgorge into the ocean, raising sea levels by several metres in a century. Such rates of sea level change have occurred many times in Earth's history in response to global warming rates no higher than those of the past 30 years. Almost half of the world's great cities are located on coastlines.

The most threatening change, from my perspective, is extermination of species. Several times in Earth's history, rapid global warming occurred, apparently spurred by amplifying feedbacks. In each case, more than half of plant and animal species became extinct. New species came into being over tens and hundreds of thousands of years. But these are time scales and generations that we cannot imagine. If we drive our fellow species to extinction, we will leave a far more desolate planet for our descendants than the world we inherited from our elders.

Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. Carbon dioxide would increase to 500 ppm or more. We would set the planet on a course to the ice-free state, with sea level 75 metres higher. Climatic disasters would occur continually. The tragedy of the situation, if we do not wake up in time, is that the changes that must be made to stabilise the atmosphere and climate make sense for other reasons. They would produce a healthier atmosphere, improved agricultural productivity, clean water and an ocean providing fish that are safe to eat.

Fossil-fuel reservoirs will dictate the actions needed to solve the problem. Oil, of which half the readily accessible reserves have already been burnt, is used in vehicles, so it's impractical to capture the carbon dioxide. This is likely to drive carbon dioxide levels to at least 400 ppm. But if we cut off the largest source of carbon dioxide - coal - it will be practical to bring carbon dioxide back to 350 ppm, lower still if we improve agricultural and forestry practices, increasing carbon storage in trees and soil.

The German and Australian governments pretend to be green. When I show German officials the evidence that the coal source must be cut off, they say they will tighten the "carbon cap". But a cap only slows the use of a fuel - it does not leave it in the ground. When I point out that their new coal plants require that they convince Russia to leave its oil in the ground, they are silent. The Australian government was elected on a platform of solving the climate problem, but then, with the help of industry, it set emission targets so high as to guarantee untold disasters for the young, let alone the unborn. These governments are not green. They are black - coal black.

The three countries most responsible, per capita, for filling the air with carbon dioxide from fossil fuels are the UK, the US and Germany, in that order. Politicians here have asked me why am I speaking to them. Surely the US must lead? But coal interests have great power in the US; the essential moratorium and phase-out of coal requires a growing public demand and a political will yet to be demonstrated.

The Prime Minister should not underestimate his potential to transform the situation. And he must not pretend to be ignorant of the consequences of continuing to burn coal or take refuge in a "carbon cap" or some "target" for future emission reductions. My message to Gordon Brown is that young people are beginning to understand the situation. They want to know: will you join their side? Remember that history, and your children, will judge you.

James Hansen is director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. He was the first scientist to warn the US Congress of the dangers of climate change . . read more

You might remember Lord Monckton, he was the climate change denier that was seemingly everywhere around the the Copenhagen climate change conference; spouting off talk about how a global agreement would destory US sovereignty and that global warming was a myth. Not surprisingly he was picked up by conservative news programs all over the world as his peerage and 'scientific' credentials gave him a weight that other deniers failed to match. . . read more

The sea change is an outward sign of a tumult taking place beneath our normal radar; deep change for which these are early warnings. Human intervention will not markedly alter its outcome. The challenge we face is more than adapting to new circumstances; it's to change the way we live. . . read more

The climate change debate has slowed in recent days, but it will soon rear its ugly head once again. However this time rather than breaking into old arguments, there should be a more pragmatic approach. 

There has been a general mutual consensus reached about the implementation of REDD schemes in developing areas, however there has not been enough money or effort thrust in their direction. 

COP15 is about to rear its head, and when everyone arrives at that table they should come prepared with options to tackle climate change. These options should centre around sustainable development in rural communities and the eradication of forest reliant localities.

Lets paint this town Redd!

  . . read more

The American Neo-cons oppressing the world through bellbottoms and boot-cut.

A new group shall soon come forward. We are talking of the real hardcore fundamentalist eco-warrior, or eco-terrorist. The hippies, emerging from their solstice in hemp woven wigwams, smelling of bud and cloves, pick up a bag of fertilizer and blow up the head offices of Petrobras.

Not exactly.

These are savvy angry men and women who truly believe in radicalising the push to preserve our world. It is only natural that extreme situations shall breed extremists. They don’t like Levi's because of the way that certain threads appear to come from a rare cotton type picked only during the full moon on the rarest part of the Appalachian Trail.

They are already present, but their numbers shall grow in the ensuing years of increased environmental focus. The most serious group that is publically known is ELF, the Environmental Liberation Front, who refers to themselves as the Elves (really? I mean, you want to be taken seriously then you describe yourself as short, felt covered, pointy eared, mythical creatures?).

While we all have a good chuckle at the name, these guys are fucking serious. Their most recent claim was the burning of a Mexican excavator in Guadalajara, Mexico. It appears that dangerous times are ahead for the polluters of our world.

I suppose it begs the question, what can we do? We sit them down and tell them that burning people is no way to demonstrate against imperialism and ignorance. Though I must say, I don’t mind the idea of a few petrol companies going up in smoke (economically of course). As long as its non lethal, go for your life and maybe someone will get the message, that enough is enough, ignorance is no excuse and it is well past the time we should have started changing.  . . read more

Our politicians suffer from ‘bifurcation blindness’ born of over-exposure to adversarial ways of thinking. It’s either this or that; them or us; good or evil; alive or dead; black or white. Traditional economics has similar preoccupations. Plus or minus; demand or supply; perfect or imperfect. Yet the most important word in the political lexicon is ‘AND’. Let’s think about saving the planet AND promoting economic growth. Let’s put the ‘plan it’ into ‘planet’.  . . read more

The emails could prove to be extremely damaging to the reputation of the scientists and the robustness of their research if they are revealed to be authentic.

A UEA spokesman said: "We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites. Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all of this material is genuine."

The authors of the emails include Philip Jones, the Director of the CRU, Keith Briffa, also at the CRU, and Michael Mann at the University of Virginia.

An anonymous link to an FTP server where the data was posted by the hacker first appeared on the blog The Air Vent yesterday.

According to Dave Britton, a press officer at the Met Office, the security breach occurred a couple of days ago. "We don't know yet whether the data that was stolen is authentic, but a thorough investigation is underway," he says.

Mann declined to comment on the content of the emails, but added, "However, I will say this: both their theft and, I believe, any reproduction on public web sites, etc. of individuals emails that were obtained, constitutes serious criminal activity. I'm hoping that the perpetrators and their faciliators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows."

Published at New Scientist, click view for more information  . . read more

Without a single day of talks, the vast majority of pundits have already set the bar of expectations so low that it seems we should be popping the champagne if the most anodyne of political agreements is reached.

Not to fall into the trap of optimism, but shouldn't we be a little bit hopeful and a little bit proud of the victories this fight has already won?

For instance, there cannot be a single sane leader on this planet who can realistically ignore this issue.

Yes, so far most of the world's responses have bordered on the tokenistic, but the sheer awareness and the fear of backlash, is a sign that the movers and shakers are getting scared.

Not to exaggerate but there could also be a dangerous connotation to this wide-spread cynicism-that connotation being that the most modest of successes will cause surprise and a spark of hope amongst a grey and apathetic public.

Sort of takes the heat off government leaders who thought they'd have to thrash it out in debates and eventually return to their countries exhausted, treaty in hand proclaiming that the problem was finally solved.

Instead, with the contour-less global media poised with their fingers quivering over keyboards (and the letters that spell 'failure'), an undue amount of column inches will be written for the promised funds for developing nations, as renewable technolgies are extolled and the great demon coal is exorcised. 

My point?

Well we really have to keep our collective critical thinking cap on, because this about to become a no-holds barred grudge match where everything will be too little, too late, too much, too weak etc.

Just don't be too pessimistic because fatalism never fixed anything.   . . read more

During the day foresters, scientists and enviro-kids of all shapes and sizes shall sit and listen to keynote speakers droning on about their favourite trees.

Where it really gets interesting however, is after hours, where we shall see the serious tree people enjoy some fantastic Argentinean cuisine and sort out these climate issues. What is for sure is that the wheeling and dealing done in Buenos Aires, along with the handshakes and laughs exchanged, shall actually do a lot more good for the environment than the stubborn loggerheads shall, at COP15.

Do I hear distant indignant cries? Come on then, prove me wrong, I dare you.  . . read more