global-warming

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Air New Zealand's "perfect flight" using optimal flying conditions and the co-operation of US, New Zealand and Australian aviation authorities, was hailed as a success in San Francisco on Friday. Using new technologies and procedures on a flight from Auckland, Air New Zealand cut waiting time, trimmed flying time, saved 1,200 gallons of fuel (around 4% less fuel than normally used), eliminated 30,000 pounds of harmful carbon emissions and took a quieter approach on arrival at San Francisco International Airport.

The normal commercial flight NZ8, dubbed ASPIRE 1 (Asia and South Pacific Initiative to Reduce Emissions) is the first tailored test flight on the Pacific using technology and cleared gates at each end, eliminating air traffic congestion to test flight and fuel efficiency. It is part of a worldwide drive to make the aviation industry more environmentally friendly.  read more »

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Facts -

Our planet is choking on plastic and plastic bags are a huge part of the problem. Shoppers worldwide are using 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags per year. This translates to about a million bags every minute across the globe, or 150 bags a year for every person on earth. You can make a difference by pledging to be plastic bag free. Sign this pledge at Leonardo Dicaprio : Eco-Site and learn about how plastic is affecting our planet and how you can make a difference.

Plastic Bags

Shoppers worldwide are using 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags per year. This translates to about a million bags every minute across the globe, or 150 bags a year for every person on earth. And the number is rising.

Plastic bags are made of polyethylene - more commonly known as polythene - they are hazardous to manufacture and are said to take up to 1,000 years to decompose.

Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags.

The energy needed to manufacture and transport disposable bags eats up more resources and creates global warming emissions.  read more »

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Ice sculptures constructed from the spare core samples by the scientists working on the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling project.

The ice samples, which the researchers analyze for clues to the temperature and concentration of greenhouse gases of the ancient atmosphere, are collected using this drill.

The visiting group of scientists, journalists and Danish environmental officials land at NEEM, the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling project. NEEM had arranged for the visitors to examine their research, which focuses on the climatic conditions which shaped the warm geologic period before the earth's last Ice Age, an important clue in understanding global warming. The camp is located approximately 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle.  read more »

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July 10 (Bloomberg) -- A third of the world's corals could be dead within a few years, a shocking new report warns today. The biggest study of its kind has found that 200 out of 700 species of coral are on the brink of extinction - far more than was previously thought. If they die, some of the most beautiful and colourful reefs - home to millions of species of marine life - could be devastated. The speed of decline has shocked the 39 scientists who carried out the survey. Just 10 years ago only 13 species of coral were endangered. Researchers, who published their findings in the journal Science, say they have been badly hit by climate change, coastal development and overfishing.

A team of 39 researchers assessed the state of 704 coral species and found 32.8 percent are threatened with extinction. The study results, published today in the journal Science, are "worse than expected," said co-author Suzanne Livingstone, a marine biologist at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. "When we began this process, we didn't think it would be anywhere near as high as that," Livingstone, also a marine species assessor for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said yesterday in a telephone interview. "Climate change is the overarching threat which comes in on a much larger, global scale," adding to localized disturbances, she said. Death of corals can lead to the collapse of entire ecosystems.

Reefs in the Caribbean are among the most severely at risk. Co-author of the report, Elizabeth Wood, of the UK Marine Conservation Society, said: "The proportion of threatened coral species greatly exceeds that of most terrestrial animal groups apart from amphibians. Coral reefs are some of the planets most incredible and diverse living systems and provide local communities in over 100 countries with food and other natural resources. " The spectacular reefs that lie in the world's shallow, tropical seas are made by tiny organisms only a few millimetres long. These coral polyps live in huge colonies, secreting calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton over millions of years. Only the top layers of a reef are "alive". But the holes and crevices in the reefs provide shelter for thousands of different species of marine life.

The new study looked at 845 tropical reef-building coral species. Of the 704 corals for which detailed information was available, 231 species were at high risk of extinction, while 407 were threatened or near-threatened. Hundreds of millions of people depend on coral reefs for food, livelihoods and coastal defences. Coral reefs are home to around two million species - including a quarter of all sea fish. The fate of corals is crucial to the livelihoods of millions of coastal dwellers around the world. Reefs are worth about $30 billion a year to the global economy, through tourism, fisheries and coastal protection, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a United-Nations supervised study published in 2005.

Higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are warming surface temperatures and making seas more acidic, they said - "bleaching" corals. Sewage, destructive fishing, agricultural chemicals and building on coasts were adding to the destruction. Dr Rogers, senior research fellow at the Zoological Society of London's Institute of Zoology, said it was "death by a thousand cuts". "The resilience of corals to bleaching and ability to recover is heavily influenced by other stresses the corals are under, such as over-fishing or destructive fishing, declining water quality and nutrient loading from agrochemicals," he said. Even if they recover from bleaching events, corals are still more susceptible to disease and other problems.

While the best way to help preserve corals is to cut the emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for rising temperatures, tackling local threats by tightening regulations on fishing, coastal building and marine protection will reduce stress to corals, Livingstone said. "One of the big problems is these localized disturbances from human activities in conjunction with climate change,'' Livingstone said. "They are much more resistant and able to adapt if there are no other stresses acting on them."

Results of the Gland, Switzerland-based IUCN's assessment will be included in the group's Red List of endangered species in October. In addition to the 704 species rated by the scientists, insufficient data existed on a further 141 reef-building corals.

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Photos courtesy of Reuters, PhysOrg.com, Sydney Morning Herald

Original Source: Bloomberg and Daily Mail, UK

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Climate models predicted it wouldn't happen until the end of the century. So Seattle researchers were stunned to discover that vast swaths of acidified sea water are already showing up along the Pacific Coast as carbon dioxide from power plants, cars and factories mixes into the ocean. In some places, including Northern California, the acidified water was as little as four miles from shore.

"What we found ... was truly astonishing," said oceanographer Richard Feely, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. "This means ocean acidification may be seriously impacting marine life on the continental shelf right now." The phenomenon is an aspect of global warming scientists are just beginning to understand.

Acidified ocean water can be fatal to some fish eggs and larvae. It also interferes with the formation of shells and skeletons, harming corals, clams, oysters, mussels and the tiny plankton that are the basis of the marine food web. "Their shells dissolve faster than they are able to rebuild them," said Debby Ianson, an oceanographer at Fisheries and Oceans Canada and a co-author of the study published today in the online journal Science Express.

Since the Industrial Revolution, when humans began pumping massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the oceans have absorbed 525 billion tons of the greenhouse gas, Feely estimates. That's about a third of the man-made emissions during that time. By reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the oceans have blunted the temperature rise due to global warming. But they've suffered for that service, with a more than 30 percent increase in acidity.

"This is another example where what's happening in the natural world seems to be happening much faster than what our climate models predict," said Carnegie Institution climate scientist Ken Caldeira, whose work suggested it would be nearly 100 years before acidified water was common along the West Coast. And there's worse to come, the scientists warn. The acidified water upwelling along the coast today was last exposed to the atmosphere about 50 years ago, when carbon-dioxide levels were much lower than they are now. That means the water that will rise from the depths over the coming decades will have absorbed more carbon dioxide, and will be even more acidic. "We've got 50 years' worth of water that's already left the station and is on our way to us," study co-author Hales said. "Each one of those years is going to be a little bit more corrosive."

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Images courtesy of Dana Greeley & Simone Alin, PMEL, and Daily Mail

Original Source: Seattle Times

Original Source: Washington Post

Original Source: BBC News

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Between a quarter and a third of the world's wildlife has been lost since 1970, according to data compiled by the Zoological Society of London. Populations of land-based species fell by 25%, marine by 28% and freshwater by 29%. Humans are wiping out about 1% of all other species every year, and one of the "great extinction episodes" in the Earth's history is under way, it says. Pollution, farming and urban expansion, over-fishing and hunting are blamed.

The Living Planet Index, compiled by the society in partnership with the wildlife group WWF, tracks the fortunes of more than 1,400 species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, using scientific publications and online databases. It said numbers had declined by 27% in the 35 years from 1970 to 2005. Some of the worst hit are marine species which saw their numbers plummet by 28% in just 10 years, between 1995 and 2005. Populations of ocean birds have fallen by 30% since the mid 1990s, while land-based populations have dropped by 25%.

The WWF said that over the next 30 years, climate change was also expected to become a significant threat to species. Director general James Leape said: "Reduced biodiversity means millions of people face a future where food supplies are more vulnerable to pests and disease and where water is in irregular or short supply. "No-one can escape the impact of biodiversity loss because reduced global diversity translates quite clearly into fewer new medicines, greater vulnerability to natural disasters and greater effects from global warming."

The WWF is calling on governments meeting in Bonn to honour their commitments to put in place effective protected areas for wildlife and to adopt a target to achieve net annual zero deforestation by 2020. The UK's Biodiversity Minister, Joan Ruddock, said the report showed that the international community had to work together to stem the decline. "The fact that human activities have caused more rapid changes in biodiversity in the last 50 years than at any other time in human history should concern us all," she said. "Supporting wildlife is critical to all our futures."

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Images courtesy of BBC News and WWF

Original Source: Scientific American

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The U.S. Department of the Interior Wednesday listed the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 based on evidence that the animal's sea ice habitat is shrinking and is likely to continue to do so over the next several decades. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, however, made clear several times during a press conference announcing the department's decision that, despite his acknowledgement that the polar bear's sea ice habitat is melting due to global warming, the ESA will not be used as a tool for trying to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for creating climate change.

The decision was based on evidence that sea ice is vital for polar bear survival, that this sea ice habitat has been reduced, and that this process is likely to continue; if something is not done to change this situation, the polar bear will be extinct within 45 years, Kempthorne said. He pointed to computer models he and his colleagues studied that project a 30 percent decline in sea ice by 2050.

U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken in Oakland, Calif., on April 29 ordered the Bush administration to stop dragging its feet on the fate of polar bears and decide by May 15 whether declining sea ice in the Arctic threatens their existence. That ruling was a small victory for a coalition of environmentalists?the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace International and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)--which sued to force the Interior Department to decide whether to protect these Arctic predators under the ESA, which it had committed to do by January 9.

Rep. Edward J. Markey (D?Mass.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, accused the Bush administration of not going far enough to protect the polar bear, noting that the Interior Department included exemptions to the decision that do not address the reason the sea ice is melting and allowing oil drilling to continue in a major polar bear habitat. The administration "simultaneously announced a rule aimed at allowing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic to continue unchecked even in the face of the polar bear's threatened extinction," he said in a statement issued Wednesday. "Essentially, the administration is giving a gift to Big Oil, and short shrift to the polar bear."

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Photos courtesy of Steve Amstrup, U.S.G.S., and Susanne Miller, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service