There was a rumour, about a month ago, that the feds had decreed that all references to Kyoto should be removed from publicly accessible websites "effective immediately" - presumably to conform to the federal Conservatives' hostile new approach to Kyoto and the political preference to cozy up instead to the do-nothing crowd in the Asia Pacfic Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.

Although the source of the rumour was "usually reliable," the notion seemed entirely too Orwellian.

But now we have this: The feds' own climate change site once offered a verbose, but realistic analysis of the problem and a high-minded, but unconvincing account of what the government was doing about it (see the full text, appended at the bottom).

Now it says merely:

The Government of Canada is committed to the development and implementation of a Made-in-Canada plan for reducing greenhouse gases and ensuring clean air, water, land and energy for Canadians. The Made-in-Canada approach will be effective, realistic and focus on achieving sustained reductions in emissions in Canada while ensuring a strong economy. The Government will develop solutions that have clear environmental benefits to Canada and improve our ability to market new technologies around the world.

Never mind removing a reference to Kyoto; the words "climate change" have been expunged from everything except the website title. It might be worth checking back in a week or two to see if the (melting) iceberg in the picture is actually getting bigger.

The front page of the UK's Independent asks, "Are you wondering why it's so hot today?"

In the feature, Peter Stott of the Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research states:

"As you get a warming trend in temperatures, which is what we are observing, the risk of exceeding extreme temperatures increases dramatically.”

"This is what we saw with the European heatwave of 2003. When we analysed it, we found that the rise in average temperatures over the previous century of about one degree had doubled the risk of an extreme event like the heatwave of that year.

"And, as we go into the future, the risk of what was quite a rare event rises dramatically. We think by 2040, a summer like 2003 will be a regular event; the chances of it happening will increase from one in 250 all the way to one in two." He added: "We have an increasing amount of confidence that we are observing rising temperatures caused by human-induced rising greenhouse-gas concentrations. Unless the world changes what it is doing, we are going to see these extreme temperatures very much more."

Predictably, this will all be brushed aside by the skeptics as "alarmist" and anecdotal.