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One hundred and thirty-five leading ocean scientists have released [ark | more] the Monaco Declaration to draw attention to the “other CO2 problem [search]”. Carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas responsible for increases in global temperature and climate change, also causes ocean acidification [search]. Oceans have buffered the climate by absorbing some 25% of [...]
Conventional wisdom has it that if the leaders of the world can’t agree on a round of negotiations to liberalise world trade then there’s no chance they will agree on measures to tackle climate change.
After all, a pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions will involve re-tooling vast swathes of industry and impact [...]
Though a financial crisis and global recession have left many of the world’s biggest companies uncharacteristically humbled, that didn’t stop NGOs from taking shots at a few of them at the World Economic Forum.
U.S. gold company Newmont Mining and Swiss utility Bernische Kraftwerke picked up a couple of pretty dubious honors from Greenpeace Switzerland and the Berne Declaration.
[...]
Yesterday, President Obama granted California and 13 other states a waiver to set strict vehicle emissions standards on their own. The administration is actually going to let states move forward and pass emission standards that might be even tougher than federal standards. Finally! Something resembling sense on environmental issues is coming from the administration [...]
On March 2nd Power Shift 2009 protesters will gather at the Capital Power Plant in Washington for long overdue civil disobedience against coal and climate change [ark]. The plant is the source of heat and refrigeration for the entire Capitol Hill. They will walk on to the property, sit down and thereby break the [...]
U.S. Department of Energy environmental researchers warn many effects of climate change are irreversible [ark | more\ark], and even if carbon emissions are halted, global temperatures will remain high for 1,000 years. Average global temperature increases are one small aspect of what we can expect — it is the ecosystem collapse [search] including failed [...]
By JOE McDONALD and CHARLES J. HANLEY, Associated Press
XIAOXI, China – The hydroelectric dam, a low wall of concrete slicing across an old farming valley, is supposed to help a power company in distant Germany contribute to saving the climate — while putting lucrative “carbon credits” into the pockets of Chinese developers.
But in the end the new Xiaoxi dam may do nothing to lower global-warming emissions as advertised. And many of the 7,500 people displaced by the project still seethe over losing their homes and farmland.
“Nobody asked if we wanted to move,” said a 38-year-old man whose family lost a small brick house. “The government just posted a notice that said, ‘Your home will be demolished.’”
The dam will shortchange German consumers, Chinese villagers and the climate itself, if critics are right. And Xiaoxi is not alone.
Similar stories are repeated across China and elsewhere around the world, as hundreds of hydro projects line up for carbon credits, at a potential cost of billions to Europeans, Japanese and soon perhaps Americans, in a trading system a new U.S. government review concludes has “uncertain effects” on greenhouse-gas emissions.
Continue reading China dams reveal flaws in climate-change weapon
Global warming may create “dead zones” in the ocean that would be devoid of fish and seafood and endure for up to two millennia, according to a study published on Sunday.
Its authors say deep cuts in the world’s carbon emissions are needed to brake a trend capable of wrecking the marine ecosystem and depriving future generations of the harvest of the seas.
In a study published online by the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists in Denmark built a computer model to simulate climate change over the next 100,000 years.
At the heart of their model are two well-used scenarios which use atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, as an indicator of temperature rise.
Under the worst scenario, CO2 concentrations would rise to 1,168 parts per million (ppm) by 2100, or about triple today’s level.
Under the more optimistic model, CO2 would reach 549 ppm by 2100, or roughly 50 percent more than today.
The temperature rise that either would yield depends on several factors: when the peak in carbon emissions is reached and how quickly it falls, and whether the warming unleashes natural triggers, or tipping points, that enhance or prolong the warming in turn.
Taking such factors into account, the scientists predict a possible rise of around five to seven degrees Celsius (nine to 16 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times under the worst scenario. Under the other scenario, there would be warming of roughly between two to four C (3.7-7.2 F).
Either scenario spells bad news for the ocean, said Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen, a physicist at the Technical University of Denmark.
Under the worst scenario, warmer seas and a slowdown of ocean circulation would lower marine oxygen levels, creating “dead zones” that could not support fish, shellfish and other higher forms of marine life — and may not revive for 1,500 to 2,000 years.
“They would start slowly by the end of this century, it’s not something that would happen tomorrow or in the near future but over the next few generations,” Pedersen told AFP.
“But because of the inertia in the ocean, once you have the process going, it’s not feasible to reverse it again just like that, so it would continue for hundreds of years.
“Even if after a hundred years, if you stopped all carbon emissions, the ocean would still need hundreds of more years to cool. These low-oxygen areas would continue to expand and they would peak around 2,000 years from now. The ocean would then slowly recover as it cools.”
Even under the less gloomy scenario, there would still be significant, long-term expansion of oxygen-starved zones.
Marine “dead zones” already exist today, in shallow areas next to the coast, where runoff from agricultural fertiliser causes an explosion in oxygen-gobbling algae.
Wide oxygen depletion of the ocean, though, poses a far greater threat, touching at the heart of biodiversity, the paper warns.
Around 250 million years ago, a chemical change of the seas led to a massive wipeout of marine species.
Lead scientist Gary Shaffer of the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen said it was unclear, in the grim light of this study, whether future generations could look to the oceans as a major reserve of food.
“Reduced fossil-fuel emissions are needed over the next few generations to limit ongoing ocean oxygen depletion and acidification and their long-term adverse effects,” he said.
Continue reading Global warming could unleash ocean ‘dead zones’: study
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