Todays Independent newspaper had a great review of facts and figures from yesterday’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

To summarise a few…
- best guess global temperature increases over the next century are 1.8C to 4C
- this hides a massive local variation with the most significant increases at the poles
- worst case scenario is for a 6.4C rise
- temparature in the next two decades will rise by 0.2C per decade
- worst case sea level rise is 59cm by 2100
- scientists are 90% certain that humans are responsible for these changes

The impact of such temparature rises is huge
+ 2.4C: the Great Barrier Reef disappears, massive increase in desertification, disappearance of glaciers and extinction of a third of animal species
+ 3.4C: the Amazon rainforests disappear to be replaced by desert, the arctic ice cap disappears in summer months and polar bears, walruses and ringed seals go extinct. The kalahari desert expands accross Southern Africa
+ 4.4C: melting ice caps displace more than 100m people - especially in Bangladesh, the Nile Delta and Shanghai. More than half of the world’s wild species are wiped out.
+ 5.4C: The West Antarctic ice sheet breaks up eventually adding 5 metres to global sea levels. The entire planet becomes ice free. Monsoon floods and global weather chaos.
+ 6.4C: Most of life is exterminated.

This is a bleak picture and convinces me more than ever that now is the time to act.

On a much less noteworthy scale… my training seems to be going well. Today I did a 28km run - 3 laps around both of wandsworth common and tooting common. I made it, but am totally knackered… hopefully I’ll be able to do the last 14km on race day with a bit of extra willpower!