CBC News‘

There’s an upside to the extreme cold temperatures northern Canadians have endured in the last few weeks: scientists say it’s been helping winter sea ice grow across the Arctic, where the ice shrank to record-low levels last year. Temperatures have stayed well in the -30s C and -40s C range since late January throughout the North, with the mercury dipping past -50 C in some areas. Satellite images are showing that the cold spell is helping the sea ice expand in coverage by about 2 million square kilometres, compared to the average winter coverage in the previous three years.

“It’s nice to know that the ice is recovering,” Josefino Comiso, a senior research scientist with the Cryospheric Sciences Branch of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, told CBC News on Thursday. “That means that maybe the perennial ice would not go down as low as last year.” Canadian scientists are also noticing growing ice coverage in most areas of the Arctic, including the southern Davis Strait and the Beaufort Sea.

The cold is also making the ice thicker in some areas, compared to recorded thicknesses last year, Lagnis added. “The ice is about 10 to 20 centimetres thicker than last year, so that’s a significant increase,” he said. If temperatures remain cold this winter, Langis said winter sea ice coverage will continue to expand. See more here.

Telegraph UK

Drinking bottled water should be made as unfashionable as smoking, according to a government adviser. “We have to make people think that it’s unfashionable just as we have with smoking. We need a similar campaign to convince people that this is wrong,” said Tim Lang, the Government’s naural resources commissioner. Bottled water generates upto 600 times more CO2 than tap water

Phil Woolas, the environment minister, added that the amount of money spent on mineral water “borders on being morally unacceptable”. Their comments come as new research shows that drinking a bottle of water has the same impact on the environment as driving a car for a kilometre. Conservation groups and water providers have started a campaign against the 2 billion pound industry. A BBC Panorama documentary, “Bottled Water: Who Needs It?”, to be broadcast tomorrow says that in terms of production, a litre bottle of Evian or Volvic generates up to 600 times more CO2 than a litre of tap water. Read more here.

By Paul Rogers, Mercury News

Reading, writing and global warming? Silicon Valley lawmaker is gaining momentum with a bill that would require “climate change” to be among the science topics that all California public school students are taught. The measure, by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, also would mandate that future science textbooks approved for California public schools include climate change. “You can’t have a science curriculum that is relevant and current if it doesn’t deal with the science behind climate change,” Simitian said. “This is a phenomenon of global importance and our kids ought to understand the science behind that phenomenon.”

The state Senate approved the bill, SB 908, Jan. 30 by a 26-13 vote. It heads now to the state Assembly. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken numerous actions to reduce global warming, but he has yet to weigh in on Simitian’s bill. Other Republicans in the Capitol, however, are not happy about the proposal. Some say the science on global warming isn’t clear, while others worry the bill would inject environmental propaganda into classrooms. “I find it disturbing that this mandate to teach this theory is not accompanied by a requirement that the discussion be science-based and include a critical analysis of all sides of the subject,” said Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, during the Senate debate. One of the opponents, Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Modesto, said he wants guarantees that the views of global warming skeptics will be taught. “Some wouldn’t view them as skeptics. Some would view them as the right side of the issue,” said Denham, an Atwater almond farmer who also runs a plastics recycling business. Read more here.