World-News

October 24, 2006

A WWF study says that we have been living beyond the environment's means for two decades

By Lewis Smith

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2418083,00.html

THE Earth’s natural resources are being used 25 per cent faster than the planet can renew them, analysis by WWF indicates.

Measurements of crop yields, carbon-dioxide emissions, fishing and the use of forests suggest that Mankind’s ecological footprint is too big to be sustained.

Since 1961 it has more than tripled in size and, for the past 20 years, mankind has been living beyond its ecological means, a WWF report said. It is the equivalent, in banking terms, of living off capital rather than interest.

Using United Nations projections of the worldwide growth of the human population and economies, the report predicts that by the middle of the century “large-scale ecosystem collapse” is likely.

The world’s average footprint is calculated to be 2.2 hectares per capita but only 1.8 hectares of each person’s consumption can be regenerated by the planet each year.

Carbon-dioxide emissions are the biggest single factor within the footprint, accounting for up to 48 per cent of man’s impact on the globe, according to the WWF Living Planet Report.

The speed at which resources are being used has had the effect of destroying biodiversity at an unprecedented rate.

By tracking the fortunes of 1,313 species of vertebrates from around the world, the report indicated that there had been a 30 per cent slump in wildlife since 1970.

Tropical species, including mammals, reptiles and birds, were the most badly hit of the 695 land-based animals monitored. They declined by an average of 55 per cent, while the populations of temperate creatures have, overall, remained stable since 1970.

Marine species declined by an average of 25 per cent in the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian and Southern Oceans. The index monitored 274 species and there was particular concern about the loss of cod, tuna and turtles.

Late last century the land habitat that vanished fastest were tropical grassland, flooded grasslands and savannas, and tropical dry forests. They were replaced with either crops or grazing land for livestock.

Mangroves were highlighted as the most endangered habitat, with more than a third being lost to developments between 1990 and 2000, twice the rate at which tropical forests are being destroyed.

Jonathan Loh, of the Zoological Society of London, one of the authors of the report, said: “The Living Planet Index is a stark indication of the rapid and ongoing loss of biodiversity worldwide.

“Populations of species in terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems have declined by more than 30 per cent since 1970, a rate that is unprecedented in human history. In the tropics the declines are even more dramatic, as natural resources are being intensively exploited for human use.”

His colleague, Ben Collen, added: “It makes depressing reading. It’s another stark indication that we are losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate. But one of the messages is we do have a choice at this point. We can moderate our consumption and become a less throwaway society.”

The ecological footprint is designed to measure the extent of human demand on the land and seas, and the report concludes that, for the past two decades, people have been turning resources into waste faster than the planet can turn waste back into plants and creatures. “Humanity is no longer living off Nature’s interest but drawing down its capital,” the authors said.

“This growing pressure on ecosystems is causing habitat destruction or degredation and permanent loss of productivity, threatening both biodiversity and human wellbeing.”

They called for radical changes in human consumption, and said that a 50 per cent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions and fish catches would make it possible to close the gap between resource use and replacement by 2080.

The report added: “Moving towards sustainability depends on significant action now. Population size changes slowly, and human-made capital — homes, cars, roads, factories or power plants — can last for many decades.

“Given the slow response of many biological systems, there is likely to be a considerable time lag before ecosystems benefit significantly from people’s positive actions.

“We share the Earth with five to ten million species or more. By choosing how much of the planet’s biocapacity we appropriate, we determine how much is left for their use.

“To maintain biodiversity it is essential that a part of the biospehere’s productive capacity is reserved for the survival of other species.”

James Leape, WWF’s director-general said: “We are using the planet’s resources faster than they can be renewed. We need to stop. We must balance our consumption with the natural world’s capacity to regenerate and absorb our wastes. If we do not, we risk irreversible damage. As countries improve the wellbeing of their people they are bypassing the goal of sustainability and going into what we call ‘overshoot’ — using far more resources than the planet can sustain.”

The calculations for the report are based on figures up to 2003. In 2003 the global ecological footprint was calculated to total 14.1 hectares. Only 11.2 hectares of the world’s productive surface was restored to previous levels.

Among the animals to have suffered the largest declines is the saiga antelope, whose numbers have dropped by 90 per cent in the past decade because of hunting in Mongolia.

Wildebeest have declined by 20 per cent in the past 30 years because of encroachments on their migration routes by farmers. Polar bears have suffered population falls of up to 30 per cent, mainly because of the loss of sea ice, which is attributed to global warming.

In Britain, the corncrake was one of the animals monitored. From 1970 to
1993 there was a fall from 3,250 calling males to 478, a reduction of 80 per cent. But since then conservation programmes have halted the decline and helped the species to recover slightly.

In the marine environment, the creatures that are among the worst affected include the endangered fin whale, the jackass penguin and the dugong.


Informant: binstock

War Climates
http://ga3.org/ct/P720pgF1MRU2/

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1919117.ece


Informant: Alan Dicey

STUDY SAYS
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/10/20/D8KSL7R00.html


Informant: NHNE

Sat 21 Oct 2006

ALEX MASSIE IN WASHINGTON

http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1559032006

THE hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica has grown to the biggest recorded size - larger than the North American continent - say NASA scientists, who yesterday released dramatic images documenting its changes.

The hole is a region where there is severe depletion of the layer of ozone - a form of oxygen - in the upper atmosphere that protects life by blocking ultraviolet rays from the sun. Scientists say made-man gases such as bromine and chlorine cause the hole by damaging the layer.

Paul Newman, atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, said: "From September 21 to 30, the average area of the ozone hole was the largest ever observed, at 10.6 million square miles."

The increased size of the hole was blamed on unusual weather patterns. If the stratospheric weather conditions had been normal, the ozone hole would be expected to reach about 8.9 to 9.3 million square miles.

However, colder temperatures result in larger and deeper ozone holes, while warmer temperatures lead to smaller ones.

And this year, the lower stratosphere was about nine degrees Celsius cooler than average. In addition to the vast area covered by the hole, what ozone there is in the skies above Antarctica is thinner than usual this year.

The ozone hole is considered to be the area with total column ozone below
220 "Dobson Units". A reading of 100 Dobson Units means that if all the ozone in the air above a point were brought down to sea-level pressure and cooled to freezing, it would form a layer 1cm thick. A reading of 250 Dobson Units translates to a layer about 2.5cm thick (about an inch).

Satellite measurements observed a low reading of 85 Dobson units of ozone earlier this month. In July, by contrast, the ozone layer had a thickness of 300 Dobson units.

"These numbers mean the ozone is virtually gone in this layer of the atmosphere," said David Hofmann, the director of the global monitoring division at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory. "The depleted layer has an unusual vertical extent this year, so it appears the 2006 ozone hole will go down as a record-setter."

However, despite the dramatic size of the hole, the long-term prognosis for the ozone layer is healthy.

While there are and will continue to be year-to-year variations in the extent of its coverage, scientists expect a slow but complete recovery by the year 2065.

"I don't think there's a risk of the ozone hole growing and destroying the world," said Ken Caldeira, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's department of global ecology.

Although CFCs and other dangerous gases that damage the ozone layer can linger in the atmosphere for as long as two generations, the amount of such damaging gases released into the atmosphere peaked in 1995 and has been declining ever since.

This means that, in theory, the ozone layer will have a chance to recover, although at an extremely slow and gradual pace for the next decade. Scientists expect the hole to reduce by just 0.1 to 0.2 per cent a year for the next ten years, before bouncing back more swiftly in later years. NASA also reported that ice was melting in Greenland more quickly than it was being replaced and more rapidly than scientists had believed.

"The results show a dramatic speed-up in the rate of ice-mass loss since the 1990s," said NASA researcher Jay Zwally. "A very large change in a very short time."

In a report published in Science magazine, researchers concluded that Greenland has lost 41 cubic miles of ice along its coast and gained only
14 miles from snowfall in its interior. Sea levels would rise 20ft if Greenland's icecap melted totally. Invisible barrier that protects planet from harmful solar rays

OZONE forms a protective layer high in the Earth's atmosphere, helping to reflect harmful rays from the sun.

Particles of ozone normally exist at levels of about 10 parts per million in a layer between nine to 30 miles above the ground.

However without this thin protective barrier virtually all forms of life from penguins to plants would be affected by ultraviolet radiation, which can cause skin cancer in humans and generally damages DNA, the fundamental building block of life.

Normally, there is a natural cycle of creation and destruction of ozone, a pale-blue gas with a pungent odour, but pollution can adversely effect this process. Warm temperatures on the ground tend to mean colder temperatures in the upper atmosphere, which exacerbates the problem.

Many of the ozone-damaging CFCs - once commonly used in refrigeration, air conditioning and industrial cleaning - were banned in 1985 by the Vienna Convention and in 1987 by the Montreal Protocol.

Related topic

* Climate change http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=52


Informant: binstock

--------

Ozone Hole, Double Record Breaker

NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists report this year's ozone hole in the polar region of the Southern Hemisphere has broken records for area and depth.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/102306EC.shtml

NASA
October 19, 2006

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/greenland_slide.html

For the first time NASA scientists have analyzed data from direct, detailed satellite measurements to show that ice losses now far surpass ice gains in the shrinking Greenland ice sheet.

Using a novel technique that reveals regional changes in the weight of the massive ice sheet across the entire continent, scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., report that Greenland's low coastal regions lost 155 gigatons (41 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2003 and 2005 from excess melting and icebergs, while the high-elevation interior gained 54 gigatons (14 cubic miles) annually from excess snowfall.

"With this new analysis we observe dramatic ice mass losses concentrated in the low-elevation coastal regions, with nearly half of the loss coming from southeast Greenland," said lead author Scott Luthcke of NASA Goddard's Planetary Geodynamics Laboratory. "In the 1990's the ice was very close to balance with gains at about the same level as losses. That situation has now changed significantly, with an annual net loss of ice equal to nearly six years of average water flow from the Colorado River."

The study is based on an innovative use of data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite that reveals detailed information about where and when the Greenland ice mass has changed. Other recent studies using GRACE observations have reported continent-wide ice mass declines, but none has shown these changes in enough detail for scientists to investigate how much different areas of the ice sheet are losing.

To achieve this more-detailed view of the ice sheet's behavior, Luthcke and his colleagues used a technique that brings GRACE's global view of the Earth down to a more local and frequent view. The pair of GRACE satellites orbiting in close formation detect changes in the Earth's mass directly below them by measuring changes in the distance between the two satellites as the gravitational force of the mass causes each to speed up or slow down.

To achieve this more-detailed view of the ice sheet's behavior, Luthcke and his colleagues used a technique that brings GRACE's global view of the Earth down to a more local and frequent view. The pair of GRACE satellites orbiting in close formation detect changes in the Earth's mass directly below them by measuring changes in the distance between the two satellites as the gravitational force of the mass causes each to speed up or slow down.

Standard GRACE data products infer local mass changes from a global data set of these satellite measurements. The new study used only data from over the Greenland region.

"With this new detailed view of the Greenland ice sheet, we have come a long way toward resolving the differences among recent observations and what we know about how the ice sheet behaves," said co-author Waleed Abdalati, head of Goddard's Cryospheric Sciences Branch. "A consistent picture from the different data sets is emerging."

"The seasonal cycle of increased mass loss during the summer melt season and growth during winter is clearly captured," said co-author Jay Zwally, ICESat project scientist. The new results also capture more precisely where changes are taking place, showing that the losses of ice mass are occurring in the same three drainage systems where other studies have reported increased glacier flow and ice-quakes in outlet glaciers.

GRACE is a joint partnership between NASA and the German Aerospace Center, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft und Raumfahrt. The satellites, launched in 2002, are managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Continued monitoring in the future is needed to determine whether this ice loss is a long-term trend, the authors point out. The new study appears in Science Express, the advance edition of the journal Science, on Oct. 19.


Informant: NHNE

October 18, 2006

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2006/oct/science/cc_earth.html

Drastic changes are only 1 °C away, a team led by a NASA scientist concludes.

The earth is the warmest it has been in the past 10,000 years, according to a new analysis that warns of serious changes ahead.

Global surface temperature has increased by about 0.2 °C per decade in the past 30 years, researchers note in the September 25 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This warming is larger in the Western Equatorial Pacific than in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific, a change that may have increased the likelihood of strong El Niño events, such as those of 1983 and 1998.

The paper, by James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and colleagues from Columbia University Earth Institute; Sigma Space Partners, Inc.; and the University of California, Santa Barbara, updates an analysis of surface-temperature change based on instrumental data and observed temperature change made in the 1980s.

The team predicts that if temperatures rise 1 °C, changes will occur rapidly and result in a “different” planet. “Given that a large portion of human-made CO2 will remain in the air for many centuries, sensible policies must focus on devising energy strategies that greatly reduce CO2 emissions,” the team concludes.


Informant: binstock