In another review of recent reports from scientists studying global warming, we find disturbing evidence of warming in the northern and southern latitudes, an uncomfortable study on algal blooms in warmer conditions, suggestions that solar energy is still some way off large scale viability and the debunking of a favored argument of climate change skeptics.

Joanne Johnson is a geologist working with the British Antarctic Survey in West Antarctica. Putting life and limb at risk for the sake of climate science, Joanne traveled for many months to reach the inhospitable Antarctic glaciers to study whether they are expanding or thinning.

The recently published analyses (Geology 36, 223–226; 2008) show that the glaciers have been thinning for at least 14.5 thousand years at approximately 2.3–3.8 centimetres per year, on average. Contrasted with the 1.6-metre-per-year deglaciation detected by satellite from 1992 to 1996, Johnson's results support fears that global warming is pushing the glaciers toward collapse. The sparse initial measurements will be filled in by forthcoming data, including some from Johnson's colleagues, who have just returned to find the sea ice much tamer.

After five years of virtually impassable sea ice in Pine Island Bay, says Johnson, "Ironically, at the moment it's quite open." -- Nature Reports Climate Change

Meanwhile, a center based at the University of Kansas has been measuring the thickness of the great ice sheets using remote sensing. Detailed measurements of the Greenland Ice sheet have been taken since 1993 and this body of data leads them to believe that there may be a

... real possibility that the contribution of great ice sheets to global sea level rise over the next century may be greater than the models employed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predict -- Earthzine

Taken together, these are pretty scary reports. A geologist, used to working in geological time scales, concludes that the antarctic glaciers were melting at a rate of a few millimeters per year over thousands of years but suggests that this supports the conclusion that they are nearing collapse. And the remote sensing team suggest that the Greenland Ice sheet may be melting more quickly than the IPPC models allow.

Meanwhile, aquatic microbiologists have been trying to establish the effect of warming on the ecosystem. It isn't good. According to a paper in the journal Science, the warming will encourage cyanobacterial and algal blooms with several biological effects:

These blooms increase the turbidity of aquatic ecosystems, smothering aquatic plants and thereby suppressing important invertebrate and fish habitats. Die-off of blooms may deplete oxygen, killing fish. Some cyanobacteria produce toxins, which can cause serious and occasionally fatal human liver, digestive, neurological, and skin diseases. Cyanobacterial blooms thus threaten many aquatic ecosystems, including Lake Victoria in Africa, Lake Erie in North America, Lake Taihu in China, and the Baltic Sea in Europe. -- Blooms like it hot, H W Paerl and J Huisman Science 4 April 2008: 57-58 quoted by Resilience Science

In a disturbing conclusion given the recent massive hike in prices of petroleum based fuel, an academic at the California Institute of Technology claims that we are still more than a decade off viable solar alternatives.

The single biggest challenge, Gray said, is reducing costs so that a large-scale shift away from coal, natural gas and other non-renewable sources of electricity makes economic sense. Gray estimated the average cost of photovoltaic energy at 35 to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour. By comparison, other sources are considerably less expensive, with coal and natural gas hovering around 5-6 cents per kilowatt-hour. -- Science Daily

In an attempt to rebuff skeptics who claim that observed global warming is caused by cosmic radiation, a couple of British physicists crunched the numbers. They conclude:

In conclusion, no corroboration of the claim of a causal connection between the changes in ionization and low cloud cover, made in [previous published papers], could be found in this investigation. From the distribution of the depth of the dip in solar cycle 22 with geomagnetic latitude (the VRCO) we find that, averaged over the whole Earth, less than 23% of the dip comes from the solar modulation of the cosmic ray intensity, at the 95% confidence level. This implies that, if the dip represents a real correlation, more than 77% of it is caused by a source other than ionization and this source must be correlated with solar activity. -- Testing the proposed causal link between cosmic rays and cloud cover T Sloan et al 2008 Environmental Research Letters

I am not entirely sure, but I think they are saying that the cosmic radiation theory is nonsense.