re: “When I was growing up, I felt the dragons were my family,” says 55-year-old Hajji Faisal. “But today the dragons are angry with us, and see us as enemies.” The reason, he and many other villagers believe, is that environmentalists, in the name of preserving nature, have destroyed Komodo’s age-old symbiosis between dragon and man.

Sorry.

"Methane, another greenhouse gas, is less abundant than carbon dioxide but several times more potent as a driver of global warming."

Methane is 23x more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. One would expect the methane to begin to be released long before we reach an increase of 6 degrees celsius in the Arctic. That will be a major factor in causing a negative feedback loop leading to runaway global warming.

On bad days I am tempted to simply give up. I do what I can on an individual basis but how likely is it that we are going to make the 80% cuts in carbon emissions required to stablise CO2 in the atomsphere below levels that set the above-mentioned chain reaction.

How long can we afford to indulge in bread and circuses like the Olympics?

And, Yves, thank you for posting on this issue. Although not immediately relevant to the main focus of the blog it really is the only game in town and serves to puts other "crises" like the credit crunch in perspective.