Two wonderful commentaries today are worthy of merit for communicating well the urgency of climate and global ecological change, while proposing sufficient solutions (both of which Ecological Internet is committed). The Yale Environment360 site notes the "urgency of the current situation cannot be overemphasized" and thus urges the next President of the United States to immediately wield powers under the clean air act [ark] to regulate carbon dioxide [search].
And environment heavy-hitters including Thomas E. Lovejoy and Tim Flannery note that while atmospheric carbon levels at 387 are already past the dangerous level [ark] of 350, that tremendous potential exists to ecologically restore degraded lands [search], returning carbon to safe levels while staunching hemorrhaging of...
FEATURE ARTICLE
New ecological science increases calls for forest protection movement to unite in campaign to protect all ancient forests
By Earth's Newsdesk, a project of Ecological Internet (EI)
A new study in the journal Nature [ark] finds old-growth forests are "carbon sinks" [search] and continually absorb carbon dioxide [1]. Australian researchers recently found logging primary forests releases 40 percent of their carbon [2]. These findings discredit decades of thought that primary forests are carbon neutral, they can or should be "sustainably" logged, and only young forests continue to remove carbon.
The Earth's remaining ancient forests need to be fully protected not just because destroying them will release huge stores of greenhouse gases while destroying...
We learned today that birds in France are unable to migrate [ark] fast enough to keep up with their habitat. And the Arctic tundra is being invaded by trees [ark]. Humans too are animals with specific heat, moisture and food requirements. Where will we run as we lose our habitat?
Climate change -- and the host of attendant ecological crises associated with too many humans consuming too many resources at the expense of life giving ecosystems -- will together not be some minor irritant. Climate-mediated global ecological collapse [search] will be gut-wrenching biological murder as conditions where you live become unable to sustain life.
Meanwhile the best the brightest can do is ramping up huge biomass burners for energy [ark], as if the world's forests do not face enough...
It is time for the international community led by Europe to step up and finance large-scale Amazon rainforest preservation to protect the Earth's atmosphere, biodiversity, and life-giving ecosystems; while helping meet needs for national advancement
TAKE ACTION! The Western Amazon -- home to some of the most biodiverse and intact rainforest left on Earth, which are critical for driving regional and global ecosystems and climatic patterns necessary for life -- may soon be decimated by oil rigs and pipelines. According to a new study in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, over 180 oil and gas "blocks" areas zoned for exploration and development now cover the Western Amazon, which includes Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and western Brazil. These oil and gas blocks stretch...
Continued industrial forestry [search] in combination with surging greenhouse gas emissions [search] are forming a vicious cycle, whose climate/ecosystem positive feedbacks [search] are destroying more forests while releasing carbon. We know deforestation changes climate [ark | search], yet modern forest management techniques treat forests like tree plantations, and have decimated forest structure and dynamics making them more fire prone. Overlaid upon this has been climate change caused drought and heat which makes damaged canopies all the more prone to cataclysmic crown fires.
California has been hit by 2,000 fires this year [ark] and things will get worse. We simply must allow much more forest landscapes there and globally to regenerate old-growth features and prohibit...
The extent to which wetlands are responsible for climate change [ark] is becoming dreadfully clear. A recent international conference reveals wetlands [search] contain 771 billion tons of greenhouse gases, one-fifth of all the carbon on Earth, equal to the amount of carbon now in the atmosphere. And now we learn that should wetlands continue to be casually destroyed, it may well release a carbon bomb that dramatically amplifies climate change and general ecological collapse.
Wetlands are required for a livable Earth. They account for 6 percent of Earth's land surface, yet produce 25 percent of the world's food, purify water, recharge aquifers and act as buffers against violent coastal storms. About 60 percent of the Earth's wetlands have been destroyed in the past century,...
Australian media reports "Plans for Tasmania's controversial $2 billion pulp mill are dead [ark]... following reports the ANZ bank will pull out of funding the project." ANZ has not yet publicly confimred the decision, yet should they do so this would be a tremendous victory for the ancient forest protection mvoement.
Clearly the Gunns' much maligned Tasmanian pulp mill proposal [alert] -- the focus of protest by many including Ecological Internet's Earth Action Network -- is facing troubles as its construction is much delayed. We have protested the mill on half a dozen occasions over past years, most lately targeting ANZ funding apparently with some impact.
Ancient forest logging releases vast carbon stores [search] at great expense to the climate. The Australian government...
Land use's relationship to global warming is gaining prominence within climate change policy-making. Oregon is studying how to reduce vehicle miles and thus emissions by reducing urban sprawl [arksearch]. And the biofuel debate rages as food and forests [search] pay a high price from growing and burning plant materials for energy.
It is relatively easy to see how burning fossil fuels causes climate change. What is more inscrutable and often given short thrift is the extent to which the condition of terrestrial ecosystems is coupled to the atmosphere [search]. Humanity is already using nearly half of both the energy captured by plants and the Earth's surface for agriculture. I am certain that a full-accounting of the matter would millenia of human caused land cover changes to be...
The world's glaciers are melting faster [ark | moreark] than any time in the past 5,000 years as a result of global heating. Huge population centers, particularly in South Asia and Latin America, depend upon glacial fed water sources [search]. As these glaciers melt we can expect hundreds of millions of people to be threatened with drying water sources, rising seas, failing crops, mass migration and resulting conflict.
Ecosystems [search] matter. To speak of economics, energy policy or other aspect of human endeavour is totally meaningless without them. Natural habitats and their ecosystems [search] provide not only water -- but also soil, pollinators, carbon storage and many other processes -- upon which life depends.
Loss of glaciers as a result of climate change is going...
A major new study warns that continued rise of global average temperatures from emissions of man-made greenhouse gases is likely to result in sudden, dramatic, out of control changes to major geophysical elements of the Earth. The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identifies nine manners in which climate change could cross "tipping point" thresholds [ark | search] and lead to abrupt, non-linear ecosystem change.Global warming crossing tipping points [ark] could trigger a runaway thaw of Greenland's ice sheet [search], dieback of Amazon rainforests [search], and failures of the Indian and West African Monsoons [search]. The report rejects complacency based upon smooth projections of global change, calling upon governments to note potential for small change to...
TAKE ACTION! Oil shale deposits across 17,000 square miles of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming hold an estimated 800 billion barrels of oil, more than three times Saudi Arabia's stated reserves. Both mining and processing of oil shale involve a variety of environmental impacts. The process produces four times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions compared to normal oil production. Vast amounts of water are required in the mining process, up to 4 barrels of water for every barrel of oil.It would be a reckless and short-sighted to allow full-scale commercial production of synthetic crude oils from oil shale and other non-conventional sources. Wide scale use of such oil will result in decades of further carbon emissions from dependence upon fossil fuels, making it impossible to stop...
Paying nations to be green diverts attention from necessary resolute actions based upon what is right and sufficient to minimize climate change
I have been an obstinate supporter of the Kyoto process; whose weaknesses, including non-universal participation and inadequate emission targets, are well known. Short of revolution, I do not believe alternative international political processes exist at this late date to enable nations to cooperatively and successfully reduce emissions. Kyoto and a possible successor beginning to be negotiated now in Bali provide the basis and mechanisms for binding emission cuts that can be tightened.
I do not see how emissions can be cut by the necessary amount (> 80%) in the requisite period of time (ASAP, for sure by 2050) other than through...
I have resisted as long as I could pointing out the fact that Western forest fires are precisely in line with long-standing predictions regarding regional impacts of climate change [ark] [moreark] expected in West/Southwestern United States. Ecological truth must be spoken often and loudly. Of course there are other exacerbating factors that interact with global heating including poorly planned urban sprawl [search], fire suppression in wildlands [search] evolved to burn, and over use of ecosystem water [search].
But these all are exacerbated by, and pale in comparison to, well known overwhelming implications of regional climatic shifts: "The catastrophic fires that are sweeping Southern California are consistent with what climate change models have been predicting for...
Major new research from Queensland, Australia "has found a direct link between land-clearing and climate change" [ark | moreark] . Areas throughout southern Queensland that had been cleared of native vegetation were found to have lost 12 percent of their summer rainfall and to have experienced an average 2C rise in temperatures. The study found that land clearing was just as significant in terms of climate change [search] as greenhouse gas production.Should these findings hold up and be found to be generalized throughtout Australia and other areas globally where remaining natural vegetation is being cleared, it would suggest a major revision in climate change policy-making is due. It is not enough to just focus upon greenhouse gases, but maintaining natural vegetation through...
I have resisted as long as I could pointing out the fact that Western forest fires are precisely in line with long-standing predictions regarding regional impacts of climate change [ark] expected in West/Southwestern United States. Ecological truth must be spoken often and loudly. Of course there are other exacerbating factors that interact with global heating including poorly planned urban sprawl [search], fire suppression in wildlands [search] evolved to burn, and over use of ecosystem water [search].
But these all are exacerbated by, and pale in comparison to, well known overwhelming implications of regional climatic shifts: "The catastrophic fires that are sweeping Southern California are consistent with what climate change models have been predicting for years... and they...
I have resisted as long as I could pointing out the fact that Western forest fires are precisely in line with long-standing predictions regarding regional impacts of climate change [ark] expected in West/Southwestern United States. Ecological truth must be spoken often and loudly. Of course there are other exacerbating factors that interact with global heating including poorly planned urban sprawl [search], fire suppression in wildlands [search] evolved to burn, and over use of ecosystem water [search].
But these all are exacerbated by, and pale in comparison to, well known overwhelming implications of regional climatic shifts: "The catastrophic fires that are sweeping Southern California are consistent with what climate change models have been predicting for years... and they...
Scientists at Britain's MetOffice Hadley Centre have confirmed what many of us suspected. Given continuing delays in real efforts to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, the world will almost certainly exceed two degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels, the point near where it is generally considered global heating will become particularly dangerous. And this does not fully factor in the potential for high impact events with greater levels of current uncertainty such as the melting of Greenland's ice [search], melting permafrost [search], rainforest die-back [search] and/or melting ocean methane [search] to cause abrupt, run-away climate changes [search].
Global warming's impact is expected to be like a nuclear war, yet where is the urgent policy response? The world...
Shockingly, a new scientific study finds that two prominent biofuels release more total greenhouse gases (GHG) [more] than burning comparable amounts of oil and petroleum. This is because their release of nitrous oxide -- a particularly potent GHG -- has been vastly underestimated. Corn based biofuel [search], prevelant in the United States, was found to release up to 50% more GHGs than oil; and rapeseed based biofuel [search] which is the norm in Europe was found to release as much as 70% more GHGs. This finding highlights the fact that carbon is not the only GHG to be considered in fuel emissions.
Agrofuels produced by burning food crops have been tauted as a climate change solution with great economic benefits. In fact they have intensified deadly climate change and terrestrial...
A new BBC poll finds 2 out of 3 respondents from 21 countries including big polluters such as the U.S., India and China believe "major steps starting very soon" need to be taken to combat global warming. Further, 8 in 10 accept that "human activity... is a significant cause of climate change." What is needed is not simply action, but radical action; policy adequate to save the climatic system and heal the biosphere. This will require massive reductions in energy use and emissions, achievable only by shrinking human populations and total consumption (but more equitable); as well as an end to coal burning, primary forest logging and reductions in aviation. The UN climate change conference [news search] being held in New York is rife with calls for action [news search]; but of the...
Climate change is not some future abstraction that can be put off with a bit of piddling about now, it is here and killing now. Australia is undergoing one of its most severe droughts ever [search]; as agriculture is failing, whole towns are abandoned, and the government pays farmers to leave their land. Meanwhile in Africa, massive floods are washing away crops and entire villages [more], as the poor pay the price for over-development by others as basic needs go unmet.
Both are almost certainly exacerbated, if not caused, by climate change and a whole host of other environmental crises including deforestation and poor water management. In one case it is too much water, and the other not enough, precisely the type of extreme weather events [search] predicted for decades to...
Australia, already suffering some of the most evident impacts of climate change anywhere [search] and ravaged by a monumental climate change enhanced drought [search], has this week been further buffeted by scientific predictions regarding climate change [more | more2 | news search] from its own government scientists that border upon apocalyptic. The first comprehensive climate projections since 2001 from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, presented dire new evidence that Australia faces a sharp rise in temperatures, danger from bushfires, and severe drought if greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed.
Sydney's temperature is predicted to rise by an average 4.3C by 2070, drought months are expected to...
We are assured by Florida's Governor Crist that the American lifestyle is not incompatible with the need to address climate change [search] and reduce fossil fuel consumption. As paraphrased by Reuters, "Americans do not need to pare back their lifestyles to help protect the global environment but may need to use sugar or orange peel to power their energy-guzzling Hummers and Cigarette boats. " It was awfully decent of Mr. Crist, a Republican, to unlike his compatriots, even acknowledge global heating is occurring, and introduce very modest efforts in Florida to reduce emissions. Yet he is dead wrong about what will be required to address climate change.
The crazily consumptive, super size, sexily scintillating, over the top American lifestyle is precisely the reason global...