General news – Page 575

Category: General news

Managing director of Ebono Institute and major sponsor of The Generator, Geoff Ebbs, is running against Kevin Rudd in the seat of Griffith at the next Federal election. By the expression on their faces in this candid shot it looks like a pretty dull campaign. Read on

Plants and animals race for survival as climate change creeps across the globe

“These are the conditions that will set the stage, whether species move or cope in place,” said Chris Field, director of the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution in the US, who worked on the project. “Expressed as velocities, climate change projections connect directly to survival prospects for plants and animals.”

The study, by scientists at the Carnegie Institution, Stanford University, the California Academy of Sciences, and the University of California, Berkeley, combined information on current and projected future climate to calculate a “temperature velocity” for different parts of the world.

They found that mountainous areas will have the lowest velocity of temperature change, meaning that animals will not need to move very far to stay in the temperature range of their natural habitat. However, much larger geographic displacements are required in flatter areas such as flooded grasslands, mangroves and deserts, in order for animals to keep pace with their climate zone. The researchers also found that most currently protected areas are not big enough to accommodate the displacements required.

Healy Hamilton, director of the centre for applied biodiversity informatics at the California Academy of Sciences, said: “One of the most powerful aspects of this data is that it allows us to evaluate how our current protected area network will perform as we attempt to conserve biodiversity in the face of global climate change.”

He added: “When we look at residence times for protected areas, which we define as the amount of time it will take current climate conditions to move across and out of a given protected area, only 8% of our current protected areas have residence times of more than 100 years. If we want to improve these numbers, we need to both reduce our carbon emissions and work quickly towards expanding and connecting our global network of protected areas.”

The study found that global warming would have the lowest velocities in tropical and subtropical coniferous forests, where it would move at about 80 metres a year, and montane grasslands and shrublands – a biome with grass and shrubs at high elevations – with a projected velocity of about 110 metres each year.

Global warming is expected to sweep more quickly across flatter areas, such as mangrove swamps and flooded grasslands and savannas, where it could have velocities above 1km a year. Across the world, the average velocity is 420 metres each year. The results are published in the journal Nature.

Wildlife in areas with low projected climate change velocities are not necessarily better protected, the scientists point out. Habitats such as broadleaf forests are often small and fragmented, which makes it harder for species to move.

The study examines the movement of climate zones, not species, the scientists stress, which means it is difficult to predict what the impacts may be on individual trees, insects and animals. Some are more tolerant to changing temperature than others, and the movement of species can be difficult to track. While trees are estimated to have spread northwards through a warming Europe after the end of the last ice age at a speed of about 1km per year, this could be down to dormant seeds reseeding the landscape, which would not be possible if species are forced to shift to new territories.

The scientists say that global warming will cause temperatures to change so rapidly that almost a third of the globe could see climate velocities higher than even the most optimistic estimates of plant migration speeds.

Some plants and animals may have to be physically moved by humans to help them cope, the scientists say, while protected areas must also be enlarged and joined together.

Marine mammals under threat from ocean noise pollution

The findings, published by scientists from the University of Hawaii and the University of California, provide more evidence of the damage caused by ocean acidification.

‘This is a highly significant paper because attention has focused on the effects of ocean acidification on calcification [such as the dissolving of shellfish shells], but not on how it will completely change the acoustics of the oceans,’ said Dr Jason Hall-Spencer, a Lecturer in Marine Science and Engineering at the University of Plymouth.

Noisier oceans

According to data modelling by the lead author of the study, Dr Tatiana Ilyina from the University of Hawaii, sound absorption for low-frequency noise could fall by up to 60 per cent by 2100 in high-latitude, deep oceans if we do not significantly cut back carbon emissions. 

Whales and dolphins were likely to be affected worst, principally by being frightened away.

This is a particular problem for specific species of dolphin or whale that are endemic to certain habitats. Dr Hall-Spencer said that the construction of an airport in Hong Kong had had a negative impact on the pink dolphins there that were specific to that region. 

However, in some cases the damage to mammals could be worse. 
‘The most extreme effects reported are tissue damage or mass stranding of whales associated with military tests of active acoustic systems,’ said Dr Ilyina.

Marine species have been known to adapt to low-level manmade noise such as from shipping, which are dominated by natural sources of sound such as breaking waves and rain. But Dr Ilyina said more research was needed on the impacts of noisier seas on marine mammals.

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Amazon Forest in Critical Danger

By the end of the third year the trees had released more than two-thirds of the carbon dioxide they had stored during the whole of their lives, accelerating climate change. This study shows that Amazonia cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down.

This immense forest contains 90 billion tons of carbon, enough to increase
the rate of global warming by 50 per cent.

In 2006 the Amazon appears to be entering its second successive year of drought, raising the possibility that if the drought continues it could start dying next year. Mega-fires are expected to rapidly sweep across the drying jungle. With the trees gone, the soil will bake in the sun and the rainforest could turn into desert. This would spread drought into the northern hemisphere, including Britain, and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences. Spinning out of control this process could end in the world becoming uninhabitable – for the Amazon is the earth’s largest CO2 sink.

Dr Deborah Clark from the University of Missouri, one of the world’s top forest ecologists, says that “the lock has broken” on the Amazon ecosystem. She adds: the Amazon is “headed in a terrible direction”.

In the current drought the Amazon rainforest has begun releasing more carbon than it is absorbing. As in Europe after the 2003 heat wave that killed 35,000 people, the woodlands are being damaged. This causes them to release more carbon dioxide than they sequester – exactly the opposite of the assumptions built into most climate computer models, which treat forests as sponges that sop up excess carbon.

After carbon emissions caused by humans, deforestation is the second principle cause of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Deforestation is responsible for 25% of all carbon emissions entering the atmosphere, by the burning and cutting of about 34 million acres of trees each year, equivalent to the area of Italy.

YOU can prevent further warming NOW
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Every item of information comes from the most recent and reputable scientific sources and published dialogues. As citations would impede the text, and as most may be looked up on the web, we decided not to fill the text with them.

Gulf Stream Collapse

One scenario presented recently to the Pentagon posits that a Gulf Stream collapse could begin in a few years. That massive current of warm water would no longer reach far into the North Atlantic. This would seriously disrupt the temperate climate of Europe and the east coast of North America. The probable outcome would be that the climate of the UK that is now 8°C warmer than the same latitudes in other parts of the world would become closer to that in Russia.

The lesser impact would be a 500mm ocean rise as water heats up.

It is not clear what type of weather would follow a collapse. Some forecasters believe the globe would continue to heat, others predict a new ice age or a global drought. The best models suggest there would be a 5°F drop over Asia and North America and up to 6°F in Europe. On the other hand there would be an increase by up to 4°F in Australia, South America, and south Africa.

Winter storms and cyclonic winds would intensify, amplifying the impact of the changes. Average annual rainfall in Europe and China could decrease by nearly 30%. Europe’s climate would then become more like Siberia’s bringing harsh conditions for agriculture.

No chance then for a reduction in heating loads, and so
CO2 emissions would increase further.

YOU can prevent further warming NOW
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Behind The Scenes At Cop 15

Day 1

On arrival, the sheer scale of the task facing delegates becomes apparent. It’s hard to imagine this many people getting decent food, rooms and transport each and every day. If we aren’t looked after, then how can we look after the rest of the world? World-changing decisions aren’t made on an unsatisfied stomach: just ask Winston Churchill.

Aside from catering challenges, there’s the daunting political reality of getting so many countries to agree. Not surprisingly, the larger economies have different agendas to the small island nations staring down the barrel of enforced waterbeds in every house. On top of that, you have the large third-world economies (India, Indonesia and the United States) versus the economic superpowers (China and Western Australia), with each bloc having very different perspectives on how best to manage climate change. The only light I can see is the negotiating abilities of those of us with both environmental credibility and the political clout to create what I call “forced consensus” — essentially, the G77 need to fall in line and realise the G20 are more than capable of determining their welfare.

Day 2
Today was looking like a war of attrition where the trenches are the geographic groupings of delegates, and the trench-foot the protesters outside thinking they’re making a difference. The game was changed with the leaking of what’s now called the “Danish text”, a draft of a final agreement nutted out by the Danish PM and a “circle of commitment” which included Kevin Rudd. Not surprisingly, Kevin asked me to write the bulk of the Australian contribution, and from an objective viewpoint it’s a substantive, rigorous effort worthy of international praise and outright adoption.

Days 3–7
Groundhog Days from hell: US or Chinese negotiators call a meeting with me to ensure backing for their proposed targets. Then, the G77 nations ask my staff if I can meet with them so they can ensure I’m backing their desire to not drown. I then attempt to get them all in the same room together, but usually by then it’s lunch-time and the momentum is lost as we move to our respective dining areas (G20 in main dining suite, G77 in the staff cafeteria and the rest to Subway). Same process starts in the afternoon and suddenly it’s dinner time.

A really predictable aspect of the negotiations is the walk-out. There’s been a few dozen to date and they are now factored in to the negotiation timeframes, with lunch and dinner moved back 30 minutes.

Day 8
The media tend to get excited about the arrival of each country’s leaders to the summit, in the notion that the addition of 80–100 more suits will provide the perfect circuit-breaker for any deadlocks that have occurred. The reality is more like the head of Australia’s Armed Forces doing a base inspection: the plebs and the officers perform their expected roles for a few hours and then get back to their usual modus operandi of being mates, hazing each other and generally arseing about like they do on It Ain’t Half Hot Mum. The past week has seen some semi-real progress towards an agreement that no number of pontificating leaders is going to change. And for the Obama fans out there: he’ll do the pretty speech while the rest of the delegates clench their sphincters, knowing the US have no credibility in this area. I’ve also spoken to at least a dozen delegates who’ve mixed him up with Tiger Woods and now think he’s an adulterer in semi-retirement.

Day 9
Kevin’s arrived and he’s determined as always to be the game changer. I sat in on his strategy session with his staff and he certainly made it clear that a bunch of them would be demonstrating their environmental credentials by swimming home if they didn’t put in the level of effort required. Jointly we’ve played down expectations of an agreement. The cynics say it’s to ensure we don’t come home with egg on our face. The real reason is in fact related to eggs: the meals have remained abominable, hence the total loss of momentum to a substantial agreement. That won’t stop the media running furphies around self-interest, lobby groups and widespread incompetence. Bastards.

Days 10–13
As predicted, the summit hasn’t come to a climax, more a stale fart. The agreement to talk more in the future is a little like agreeing that Bob Brown is a carping arseclown — it’s obvious but it’s not going to achieve anything useful. I’m not going to waste words writing about the behaviour of countries like Venezuela on the last day of the conference. They were the equivalent of Joh’s attendance at premiers’ conferences in the mid-80s — largely unhinged and desperate for attention.

The presentation of little Lego mementos at the final session summed up the conference perfectly for me: blocks, colour and toxic gases. The only consolation is that Kevin and I put our hearts and souls into getting a deal that was right for Australia. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to get much more than some plastic window dressing from the countries present. I particularly feel sorry for our fuzzy-wuzzy neighbours who’ll be refused entry to Australia when the waters keep on rising. It doesn’t seem fair that we’ll cop flak for refusing entry to these people from the same countries who couldn’t agree on targets that would have prevented them trying to come here in the first place.

Summary
The importance of these past few days cannot be overstated. At the very least it’s as important as the Magna Carta or the opening of New Parliament House, and in a lot of ways it far outweighs events like those — given they didn’t have flow-on effects for decades afterwards. The lack of a binding agreement is disappointing, but it also provides a challenge that the Rudd Government won’t be shirking. We’ve already made approaches to the UN to add another climate conference prior to the one scheduled for Mexico City next year. We’ve offered Hobart as a venue for its green credentials, excellent facilities and surety of quantity and quality of food. Who the hell’s going to negotiate a world-changing deal in Mexico City? I spent a week there once and lost seven kilograms, and it sure as hell wasn’t from jogging. Plus, it will be fun to watch Tony Abbott argue that Hobart should miss out on hosting its biggest event ever. When good strategic thinking happens to deliver superior political outcomes, the hardship of the past few weeks recedes. Until the next warm prawn cocktail arrives.

Tipping Points- the Facts

These ten major tipping points are are right at this moment being triggered.

Melting glaciers will raise sea levels so that less heat is reflected out to space
Decline of the flow of fresh water from the Arctic will collapse the Gulf Stream
Forests will no longer absorb carbon, but become a source.
Methane clathrates held in the mud under the sea begin to burp
Melting permafrost releases vast quantities of methane
Drought kills the Amazon forest and its carbon sink is released
The benefits of being shielded by global dimming ceases
Bush fires increase the carbon load and reduce the storage capacity of forests
As oceans warm the seas absorb less carbon
All the above plus disastrous weather and coral bleaching and acidification of the oceans disrupt food production

Triggering any one of these ten carbon sinks would cause
runaway greenhouse warming.
The triggering of any one of them would start off the others.

The earth has over eons stored greenhouse gasses in forests, the soil and in the oceans. Recent scientific research has shown that small rises in temperature can trigger these sinks into becoming sources, and thus tip the scales against our survival.

Only now, in the past five years, has the scientific community begun to pat serious attention to them. We do not know if they will be triggered today or in decades, It seems there is a ten percent possibility that feedback loops from glacial-meltdown, permafrost methane burping and/or rainforest collapse will commence within the next few years.

Only intense and immediate action beyond anything the
world has ever done can stop this.

If all the good intentions from the Kyoto and Montreal meetings were to be executed in full and immediately, they would not alter the outcome. Like Munich, these agreements were set by politicians playing for time. This is discussed in Footprints #2.

The graph shows the range of temperatures possible by the end of the century from computer modeling. The latest ICCC meeting added 50% to these figures.

Taken together, concentrations of CO2 and methane have passed the threshold of 400ppm set as the upper limit of safety by the International Conference on Climate Change. This is of the most enormous significance.

It means we have actually entered the era of dangerous climate change.

We have already reached the point where our children
can no longer count on a safe environment.

The Earth is about to be trapped in a vicious cycle of positive feedback, which is why the issue is so serious and urgent. Any extra heat from any source (especially human activity) is amplified, and as it is added this sets off other processes so that heating is accelerating.

It is the self-regulating mechanism of Gaia itself that, perversely, will make it hard to master global warming – because the system contains feedback mechanisms that in the past have acted in concert to keep the Earth much cooler than it otherwise would be. Now, however, they could easily combine to amplify the warming being caused by our activities.

It is NOT too late to minimise the risks – read what YOU can do
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Tragically, there are no large negative feedbacks that would reverse the heating process – save the weathering of rocks and occasional fierce tropical storms. Neither can compete.

We are interfering with the natural regulating systems of the planet by increasing our own input while limiting the natural systems that would regulate it.

Global warming will submerge many low-lying island nations in an unstoppable process. Increased numbers of cyclones, droughts and floods are making life unviable for the people on the Carteret atolls in Papua New Guinea. Already 980 have had to be evacuated. Many were starving because rising salt water has destroyed their trees and stopped them growing greens and breadfruit. Next may be the small island nation of Kiribati of 33 small atolls, none of which is more than 2 meters above the Pacific. It is only a matter of time before the entire country is submerged by the rising sea. Also the Tuvalu people have had to arrange for the evacuation of the entire 10,000 population to New Zealand.

For these people, the tipping point has already occurred.

YOU can do a great deal to prevent further warming NOW
Personally and Politically