Canary Watch is born

I've started a new blog, Canary Watch, which aims at documenting two kinds of claim about climate, ecology or environment. First, the "canary in the coal mine" familiar to most readers, as in "the Arctic is the canary in the coal mine" for "global warming" or its recent morph "climate change", intended to focus on changes in that area as a prime example indicator of the effects of GW or CC (or both). The metaphor refers of course, to the now outdated and abandoned practice of using canaries whose metabolic rates are high, to give early warning of higher-than desirable levels of methane or carbon dioxide in mines. The canaries didn't die or even collapse as a result of the gases, of course - their obvious stress was an indication to the miners that one or other gas was present in an area in the mine and they'd have been removed to safety immediately.

The second category is the "warming faster than anywhere else" theme. As in "the Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else" - yes, that area falls into both categories. Accordingly, my first post concerns the Arctic, long touted as "the canary in the coal mine" for the effects of global warming. Have a look at Canary Watch, and feel free to nominate blog posts, comments or 'net articles which fall into the "canary" or "faster" categories, and anything else you think I might be interested in. I might start a new category as a result.