Climate change petition

Copenhagen's last-ditch summit to stop catastrophic global warming is failing; world leaders are appealing for massive public pressure to save it. Sign the giant petition below - it may be the largest in history:

With just 2 days left, the historic Copenhagen climate summit is failing.
World leaders have begun the final hours of direct negotiations. The UK Prime Minister has directly appealed to Avaaz to build the tidal wave of public pressure needed to reach a deal that stops catastrophic global warming of 2 degrees.

Sign the petition for a real deal -- the campaign already has a staggering 11 million supporters -- over the next 48 hours let's make it the largest petition in history! The name of every signer is being read out right now in the summit hall.

We are making history in Copenhagen. A group of young people have sat down in the middle of the summit and begun reading the names of every person who signs the petition for a real deal. Another group is doing the same 'petition reading sit-in' in the Canadian Prime Minister's office, and rumours are that more such actions will happen tomorrow. On an emergency conference call with 3000 Avaaz members today, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said:

"What you're doing through the internet around the world is absolutely crucial to setting the agenda. In the next 48 hours, don't underestimate your effect on the leaders here in Copenhagen"

Earlier, millions watched the Avaaz vigil inside the summit on TV, where Archbishop Desmond Tutu told hundreds of delegates and assembled children:
“We marched in Berlin, and the wall fell.
"We marched for South Africa, and apartheid fell.
"We marched at Copenhagen -- and we WILL get a Real Deal.”
Copenhagen is seeking the biggest mandate in history to stop the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. History will be made in the next 48 hours. How will our children remember this moment? Let's tell them we did all we could.

Doggerland

Europe’s Lost World: The rediscovery of Doggerland
by Vincent Gaffney, Simon Fitch & David Smith

A new book by a team from the University of Birmingham explores the lost world of Doggerland, the land that was submerged when the waters rose at the end of the last Ice Age.

It has always boggled my mind that when Doggerland was dry land, the Thames was a tributary of the Rhine.

The past is sometimes said to be a foreign country, but less than 12,000 years ago Europe was a very different and almost unrecognisable place where Britain did not exist as a separate land. Over several thousand years the climate changed, sea levels rose and the entire coast of Europe morphed into the familiar shape we know today. Britain, formerly a range of hills on the edge of a great plain, gradually separated from continental Europe. This new book concludes a remarkable programme of archaeological research by the University of Birmingham to rediscover Doggerland, the enigmatic country which once linked the Yorkshire coast with a stretch of Continental Europe from Denmark to Normandy but which now lies beneath the North Sea.

Whilst many may associate Doggerland with the area of sea described memorably each night in the BBC Shipping Forecast, 10,000 years ago Doggerland was an inhabited land where communities of hunter-gatherers lived and roamed, hunting and gathering resources, just as they did in many other areas of northern Europe. Previously interpreted by archaeologists simply as a ‘land bridge’, this project has described this amazing landscape in detail for the first time and revealed the valleys, hills, rivers and plains which lie beneath the North sea and which were home to unique cultures, tribes and, perhaps, thousands of people.

This CBA book documents the terrible events which brought an end to this landscape. Sometimes slowly, but sometimes with a rapidity which brings to mind Noah’s Flood, sea levels rose due to a rise in temperature and melting glaciers. Doggerland was drowned, its people lost or driven to higher ground.

Does this scenario sound familiar? The project accurately reconstructs the story for us, the tragic conclusions of which cast a chilling light on our situation today. With another potentially catastrophic climate change event looming, there is a real possibility that we will lose more land to the North Sea. The submersion of Doggerland was the last time this happened, and reminds us of our obligations to future generations who may lose the plains, valleys and rivers familiar to our land surface today if global warming is not arrested.

The project team, headed by Professor Vince Gaffney, a specialist in landscape archaeology at the University of Birmingham, conducted the research using ground-breaking oil industry technology and 3D seismic reflection data, donated by PGS Ltd, to scan the seabed. Using millions of data points across 23,000km² of the sea bed, a reconstruction was created of the old land surface, now submerged beneath metres of marine sediment and tens of metres of sea water.

Alpine archaeology

Due to the shrinkage of glaciers caused by climate change, archaeologists have found the remains of Neolithic weapons and clothing in the high Alps, including shoes, trousers and bows and arrows.

This implies that the shrinkage of glaciers over the last five years is greater than at any time since the Neolithic, which is rather worrying. But the archaeological finds are fascinating, as they show what Neolithic life was like, and that Neolithic people regularly went up into the mountains.