Scientists can have a heart, too. | Biodiversity loss. Land use. Freshwater use. Nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. Stratospheric ozone. Ocean acidification. Climate change. Chemical Pollution. Aerosol loading in the atmosphere. |
Foley’s team was so moved by the research effort that it put together a compelling video (see below) dramatizing the situation, generated entirely with typography, graphics and energizing music. You can learn more about the team’s work at its research site, too. |
Jon Foley, director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, and a leader of the group, lays out the limits and their implications for human action in an article in Scientific American’s April issue. |
| Amid some controversy, the group has set numeric limits for seven of the nine so far (chemical pollution and aerosol loading are still being pinned down). And the researchers have determined that the world has already crossed the boundary in three cases: biodiversity loss, the nitrogen cycle and climate change.Read more at www.scientificamerican.com |
The economy works by making people selfish. Mass extinction is merely collateral damage.
Species are going extinct because humans can’t see it happening, and therefore
we can’t believe it is happening. It is as simple as that.
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Believing that the elephant will no longer be around is like believing that
one day the sun will rise in the west and the stars will fall as rain.
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We can only really get a handle on the short-term. A generation at most.
Long-term planning means the next year or two. Our minds can’t cope with
anything longer. That’s why we choose to govern ourselves by means of a
comfortable timescale. Four years, five years: that’s Politician’s Time.
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| Extinction is a happening thing, as I have pointed out more than once before.
But it is happening in slow motion: you don’t see a monkey turn into a man,
and you don’t see an animal go extinct. It’s just that one day you notice
that they haven’t been about for a few years. The current rate of extinction
is one species an hour, |
Millions of years of evolution and experience are being wiped out. The only way it will stop is if internationally traded currencies lose their value, and the global economy comes to a halt. So there may yet be a chance the slaughter could end.
Proposals to ban trade in bluefin tuna and polar bears were overwhelmingly
rejected yesterday at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species (Cites), meeting in Doha, Qatar.
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| A plan for a 20-year ban on ivory sales, to protect African elephants, is also
likely to fail in the coming days — partly because Britain and other members
of the EU are refusing to support it. |
| Only 20 of the 120 countries at the meeting voted to ban
trade in the bluefin. |
| The Cites process, which requires a two-thirds majority for a proposal to be
adopted, is vulnerable to well-funded lobbying by countries and industries
that depend on trade in a species. The vested interests exploit
uncertainties in the estimates of population numbers, and strike backroom
deals to secure the votes of developing countries where endangered species
are far down the list of political priorities.
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it will consider ways the states can address rising acidity levels in oceans, which pose a serious threat to shellfish and other marine life. |
| Oceans are becoming more acidic as they absorb excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — a problem Sakashita referred to as “global warming’s evil twin.” |
| this is the first time the EPA has agreed to consider ocean acidity. |
The changing chemistry of the waters affects many types of sea life, but especially anything that grows a shell or hard covering. Some scientists believe it is likely to blame for die-offs in Northwest oyster stocks over the past several years. Read more at oceanacidification.wordpress.com |
Alongside increasing CO2 levels one will also find rising ocean acidity. For sea creatures this is a very bad deal. The oceans are absorbing more CO2 and getting more acidic and thus, more hot. Coral reef based eco-systems are intertwined with our own local food chains, and it is of my opinion, there are sound reasons to be concerned. Global warming tends to receive the bulk of attention these days, but it’s worth remembering that hotter temperatures aren’t the only consequence of putting more carbon-dioxide into the air. As the oceans keep absorbing more CO2, the chemistry of seawater is changing at a fairly rapid clip—steadily becoming more acidic. |
| Some of the effects of ocean acidification are fairly well understood. Species that rely on calcium carbonate to make their skeletons, such as coral or some types of shellfish, will find it much harder to build their shells as the ocean becomes more acidic. |
| About 55 million years ago |
| feedback effects like the release of methane trapped in ice |
| CO2 had a devastating effect—temperatures rose between 5°C and 9°C, and a large number of deep-water species went extinct. |
| “We can’t say things for sure about impacts on ecosystems, but there is a lot of cause for concern,” |
| we’re conducting an unprecedented experiment on the oceans—one we can’t, alas, reverse if it goes badly.Read more at www.tnr.com |
The tar sands oil mining and giant hydro dams in Canada are making what is obviously a very dangerous situation for the whole world very, very much worse. The process is being aided and abetted by the US federal government which is keen to import oil from the tar sands, although some State governments want to ban it. | Surface temperatures over much of the Arctic landscape and the Siberian landscape, particularly in summer, have jumped six to 10 degrees C above normal in recent years. That has lead to a massive increase in the flows of the many rivers that terminate in the Arctic Ocean. |
| Shakhova and colleagues believe this substantial increase of warmer water into the shallow East Siberian Shelf has accelerated the melting of the subsea permafrost, in effect fracturing the frozen cap and allowing methane to escape into the atmosphere. “ |
| Shakhova´s study is just one of at least a dozen others that clearly show the Arctic region is not only melting but also emitting more carbon and methane. |
| Another Canadian study released last year showed that the region was getting darker and absorbing more heat in the summer because of a significant shift in plant growth from grasses and lichen to larger shrubs |
| the top two to three metres of permafrost across the entire Arctic region could thaw by the end of this centuryRead more at www.galdu.org |
Rising temperatures in the oceans around Antarctica could lead to the
continent’s penguins being replaced by jellyfish, scientists have warned.
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The results of the largest ever survey of Antarctic marine life reveal melting
sea ice is decimating krill populations, which form an integral part of
penguins’ diets.
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The six-inch-long invertebrates, also eaten by other higher Southern Ocean
predators such as whales and seals, are being replaced by smaller
crustaceans known as copepods.
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These miniscule copepods, measuring just half a millimetre long, are too small
for penguins but ideal for jellyfish and other similarly tentacled
predators.
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Mr Griffiths, of British Antarctic Survey (BAS), said: ”Marine animals spent
millions of years adapting to the freezing, stable conditions of the
Antarctic waters and they are highly sensitive to change.
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There should at be ceremonies, akin to funerals, when whole species die. They would provide a way for people to focus on the meaning of what they are doing. Now, they are just forgotten when the headlines move on to the next thing. The World Wildlife Fund currently estimates that fewer than 3,200 tigers remain in the wild. The number of great white sharks may now be fewer |
| New research has suggested that population numbers for the ocean’s most feared
predator have been overestimated because many great whites have been
double-counted |
“People see a great white shark on the South California coast, and another
hundreds of miles away. We are now understanding that they are more mobile
than we thought and, actually, it’s the same shark appearing in different
places.”
Read more at www.timesonline.co.uk |
My heart aches … and aches every time I think of it. We have already gone beyond any hope of redemption.
Seldom seen species of lemur, monkey and gorilla are among 25 primates facing near-certain extinction unless urgent measures are taken to protect them, according to a report released Thursday.
All told, close to half of the planet’s 634 known primate species are to some degree threatened with dying out, said the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and other conservation and research groups.
That percentage has risen quickly — only three years ago the IUCN put the ratio of vulnerable primates at one third. |
How well governments protect dwindling animal populations against deforestation and hunting is at least as critical. |
Globally, habitat destruction, especially through the burning and clearing of tropical forests for agriculture, has been the main driver toward extinction. |
But in Southeast Asia, hunting for food and traditional medicines made from animal parts — fueled by an illegal trade in wildlife — is an even greater threat. Read more at news.yahoo.com |
It’s an obscene argument on which to base a policy, but achieving some kind of perceived mutual interest between humans and the rest of creation is always worth a try, I guess. | Losses of animal and plant species are an increasing economic threat and the world needs new goals for protecting nature after failing to achieve a 2010 U.N. target of slowing extinctions, experts said Friday. |
Losses of biodiversity “have increasingly dangerous consequences for human well-being, even survival for some societies,” according to a summary of a 90-nation U.N. backed conference in Norway from February 1-5. |
Damage to coral reefs in the tropics, creeping desertification in Africa or felling of the Amazon rainforest were among threats to wildlife and so to human livelihoods. |
A U.N. summit in 2002 set a goal of a “significant reduction in the current rate of loss of biological diversity” by 2010. The United Nations says the world has failed. |
| “Urgent action is needed to address the loss of biodiversity, especially to avoid tipping points,” |
| human activities had raised the pace of extinctions to 100-1,000 times the background rate over the Earth’s history.Read more at www.reuters.com |
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Three down six to go - Is Earth past the tipping point?
