A round-up of climate and energy news. Please post other stories below.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is the planet’s largest reef system and one of the seven natural wonders of the world, but it may not survive the century.
Coral reefs ‘will be gone by end of the century’
Coral reefs are on course to become the first ecosystem that human activity will eliminate entirely from the Earth, a leading United Nations scientist claims. He says this event will occur before the end of the present century, which means that there are children already born who will live to see a world without coral.
The claim is made in a book published tomorrow, which says coral reef ecosystems are very likely to disappear this century in what would be “a new first for mankind – the ‘extinction’ of an entire ecosystem”. Its author, Professor Peter Sale, studied the Great Barrier Reef for 20 years at the University of Sydney. He currently leads a team at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
The predicted decline is mainly down to climate change and ocean acidification, though local activities such as overfishing, pollution and coastal development have also harmed the reefs. The book, Our Dying Planet, published by University of California Press, contains further alarming predictions, such as the prospect that “we risk having no reefs that resemble those of today in as little as 30 or 40 more years”.
“We’re creating a situation where the organisms that make coral reefs are becoming so compromised by what we’re doing that many of them are going to be extinct, and the others are going to be very, very rare,” Professor Sale says. “Because of that, they aren’t going to be able to do the construction which leads to the phenomenon we call a reef. We’ve wiped out a lot of species over the years. This will be the first time we’ve actually eliminated an entire ecosystem.”
Coral reefs are important for the immense biodiversity of their ecosystems. They contain a quarter of all marine species, despite covering only 0.1 per cent of the world’s oceans by area, and are more diverse even than the rainforests in terms of diversity per acre, or types of different phyla present.
Recent research into coral reefs’ highly diverse and unique chemical composition has found many compounds useful to the medical industry, which could be lost if present trends persist. New means of tackling cancer developed from reef ecosystems have been announced in the past few months, including a radical new treatment for leukaemia derived from a reef-dwelling sponge. Another possible application of compounds found in coral as a powerful sunblock has also been mooted.
And coral reefs are of considerable economic value to humans, both as abundant fishing resources and – often more lucratively – as tourist destinations. About 850 million people live within 100km of a reef, of which some 275 million are likely to depend on the reef ecosystems for nutrition or livelihood. Fringing reefs can also help to protect low-lying islands and coastal regions from extreme weather, absorbing waves before they reach vulnerable populations.
Carbon emissions generated by human activity, especially our heavy use of fossils fuels, are the biggest cause of the anticipated rapid decline, impacting on coral reefs in two main ways. Climate change increases ocean surface temperatures, which have already risen by 0.67C in the past century. This puts corals under enormous stress and leads to coral bleaching, where the photosynthesising algae on which the reef-building creatures depend for energy disappear. Deprived of these for even a few weeks, the corals die.
On top of this comes ocean acidification. Roughly one-third of the extra carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere is absorbed through the ocean surface, acidifying shallower waters. A more recently recognised problem in tropical reef systems, the imbalance created makes it harder for reef organisms to retrieve the minerals needed to build their carbonaceous skeletons. “If they can’t build their skeletons – or they have to put a lot more energy into building them relative to all the other things they need to do, like reproduce – it has a detrimental effect on the coral reefs,” says Paul Johnston of the University of Exeter, and founder of the UK’s Greenpeace Research Laboratories.
For more background on the fate of coral reefs, see:
- Globe’s coral reefs suffer second worst bleaching on record during 2010 (1/11)
- “The end is in sight for the world’s coral reefs,” explains the former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (12/10)
- Nature Geoscience study: Oceans are acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred
- Nature Geoscience study concludes ocean dead zones “devoid of fish and seafood” are poised to expand and “remain for thousands of years.”
- Geological Society: Acidifying oceans spell marine biological meltdown “by end of century” — Co-author: “Unless we curb carbon emissions we risk mass extinctions, degrading coastal waters and encouraging outbreaks of toxic jellyfish and algae.”
10 years after Sept. 11, ‘business as usual’ on energy
The day that changed everything had surprisingly little impact on U.S. energy policy.
A decade after Sept. 11, 2001, the United States is still importing as much as 60 percent of its petroleum supply, much of it from the unstable Middle East. And many experts’ predictions for how the U.S. would respond to the attacks have fallen flat: We didn’t open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, for example, or launch an all-out effort to lessen reliance on foreign oil through conservation and alternative fuels.
An even bigger casualty, perhaps, was the expectation that a nation at war would put aside its ideological differences and unite behind a common energy strategy.
“It didn’t take too long to get back to business as usual on energy policy,” said Adam Sieminski, the chief energy economist for Deutsche Bank — who, like many experts, had expected the attacks to aid the push for energy independence, on both the supply and demand sides.
Solar power has been flourishing in nations from Spain to China thanks to government subsidies.
Now, proponents of a technology to bury carbon underground say they should get similar public financial support. Projects to capture greenhouse gas emissions before they hit the atmosphere require big up-front investments, which industry executives say they should not have to make alone.
“You really need incentives of the kind that are applied to renewable energy at the moment,” says Jeff Chapman, the chief executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association in London. Carbon capture and storage “is no more expensive than renewable sources of energy.”
While solar panels and windmills have captured the public imagination, discussions of carbon capture – a technology that relies on solvents, pipelines and reservoirs – remain largely confined to oil industry conferences and academic papers.
An Oily Tide Washes in With Gulf Storms
When Tropical Storm Lee pummeled the Gulf coast with wind and rain last week, it left more than local floods and wind damage in its wake. Residents from Florida to Louisiana report the slow-moving gale blew in oily residues, thick tar mats and tar balls, confirming fears that the crude from BP’s historic blowout is far from gone.
Charles Taylor of Bay St Louis, MS, said he went out to investigate right after the storm hit to photograph the beach, taking samples of oily crude and tar with a spoon. Taylor said he offered them to the US Coast Guard at a meeting in Biloxi but no one would take them. “I getting fed up with their ways,” he wrote me in an email.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Climate Progress readers are aware of this, and it’s heartbreaking. As bad as the carbon footprint is, I suggest that anyone who can should bring his kids and go to the Tuamotos or Indonesia, and snorkel in a coral reef up close. It will fill you with wonder, and energize you to save them.
You just suggested adding tons of extra CO2 to the atmosphere so that people can see the coral reefs they’re killing by flying to see the coral reefs.
That’s like going to the pet store, buying the most expensive beautiful fish there and dropping it on a hot sidewalk in the sun.
You don’t have to travel that far to see a coral reef. But everyone should see one once in their lives at least.
Pangolin, I hate to say it but I burn more fossil fuel per km driving to and from work (solitary) than one plane trip’s share for a few passengers. While those of us in the know are doing well when supporting greener processes (sustainable agriculture, electric cars, mass transit, etc.) the only real solution will be found in policies set by the major countries.
If those policies are insane, as they are currently, then any gas I don’t buy will be burned by some Rick Perry fanboy riding his SUV through the meadows – or some head of household desperately trying to support his family.
My wife and I looked at electric cars two and three years ago when we bought new cars, but we couldn’t afford them, and the pure electrics didn’t have sufficient range. I can’t car pool because there is nobody from my small town traveling to the small farm town where I work.
What we need are the right people in charge.
Can we really justify dumping about 50 tonnes of GHG to take our family to the other side of the world on a snorkling vacation? Aren’t we entering the realm of “we had to destroy the reef to care enough to save it” territory? Isn’t there a less damaging way (IMAX?) way to experience the beauty and learn to care about coral reefs?
(notes: atmosfair.de says NYC-London-Jakarta = 13+ tons GHG per person. Double that for first class. Average annual transport footprint (not counting flying) for person in EU today = 1.2 tonnes.)
Right now in the U.S. ocean capable sailboats can be had for free or very little. With the bad economy many people simply abandoned their boats at the marinas and quit paying dock fees.
If anybody wants to sail around the world nows the time to do it. Well, except for the hurricanes and super-typhoons that is.
Ocean sailing is my dream. How would you suggest locating these abandoned yachts? Is there a legal process to transferring property of this value?
The NRDC video with Sigourney Weaver, “Acid Test”, does a great job of explaining the issue of ocean acidification, and with fantastic footage. This video can be used in classrooms, groups, ect.
http://vimeo.com/9431503
New evidence from fossilized reefs suggest large sea-level changes during interglacial warm period,.
summitcountyvoice.com
Findings will help model future sea-level changes By Summit Voice SUMMIT COUNTY — New evidence gathered from coral reef fossils suggests that sea levels fluctuated by 13 to 20 feet within t…
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=260422840657470&id=139434822741700
“Another possible application of compounds found in coral as a powerful sunblock has also been mooted.”
Well, it will be moot if the coral reefs are destroyed, but presently it has just been noted.
A planet that cannot support coral reefs after several million years of evolution is probably not going to support seven billion humans. Or five billion or one billion.
The human race may have already committed suicide.
A re-post that Spike linked this weekend -
Russian, U.S. scientists set to study methane release in Arctic
“This expedition was organized on a short notice by the Russian Fund of Fundamental Research and the U.S. National Science Foundation following the discovery of a dramatic increase in the leakage of methane gas from the seabed in the eastern part of the Arctic, said Professor Igor Semiletov, the head of the expedition.
http://en.rian.ru/science/20110902/166364635.html
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I don’t like the tone of this at all.
You’re correct, Bob. This has the whiff of ‘Game over’ about it, and, if not now, it will not be long delayed. The collapse has been staggeringly rapid, exceeding even the most pessimistic prognostications even of as little as ten years ago. And, in inverse ratio, as the truth grows dreader, the denialist lies grow ever more hysterical and histrionic.
Editor’s Note: S. Julio Friedmann is leader of the Carbon Management Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
In 2010, roughly 35 billion tons of man-made CO2 entered the atmosphere – about 70 times the weight of all human beings on earth. That annual volume is about seven billion tons more than it was in 2004, largely because of rapid economic growth in developing countries.
http://coloradobob1.newsvine.com/_news/2011/09/13/7736369-why-green-carbon-technologies-cant-keep-up?threadId=3220971&commentId=57972097#c57972097
* Six of the 10 largest wildfires in Texas history occurred in 2011.
* Texas has been fighting wildfires since Nov. 15, 2010.
* The damages from this year’s wildfires are estimated at more that $5 billion, according to news reports.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44463295/
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The damage bill for the fires is in addition to the $5.2 Billion in agriculture.
The Texas drought bill for far :
$10.2 Billion.
This spring, farmers planted the second-largest crop since World War II. But high temperatures stunted the plants.
“We just didn’t have a good growing year,” said Jason Ward, an analyst with Northstar Commodity in Minneapolis. “It was too hot, too warm, too dry at the wrong time.”
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/09/12/3903399/smaller-corn-surplus-could-push.html#ixzz1XlqqlzsU
The chocolate ration has now been decreased to 30 grams per week!!
I saw that this morning and thought that was the weirdest way of saying we’ve had a failed crop ever. Huge numbers of people around the world depend upon U.S. grain crops to stay alive. Our “lower surplus” means they might starve..
Nothing to worry about, really. Murdoch’s local flag-ship, ‘The Fundament’ (The Fundamental Orifice of the Nation) has run a relentless campaign for years, of disinformation, character assassination of eminent reef scientists and outright fabrication, to deny that the reefs here are in any danger whatsoever. As is the News Corpse norm, they start from the ideological position that environmental concern is a project of the diabolical ‘water-melons’ of the Left, Communists with a Green veneer, designed to destroy capitalism and Rupert and the other pluto-pathocrats’ billions. The rest of the process is, by now, second nature. And the MSM is totally dominated by this process, with the ABC and Fairfax, the two other main sources of information, not far behind News Corpse these days in Rightwing disinformation, and clearly becoming more extreme as time goes by. The bosses are exerting greater and greater control as time goes by and the evidence of ecological collapse piles up.
Is this prediction published in a peer-reviewed journal or merely this scientist’s book?
I’d hate to think we’d be publishing assertions not vetted by the scientific process as if they were equivalent, that’s what denialists and creationists do.
[JR: Not correct. We publish science-based assertions, the deniers make up crap. Not every statement uttered has to be from a peer-reviewed journal. I have published many warnings from marine scientists here that the corals are gravely threatened. The literature is clear that BAU will be catastrophic for corals.]
The district now #2 in wheat production in the US:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2016016132_wheat26.html
scary
DB -
I drove out of a Lewiston , Idaho big truck terminal , I have see the wheat country of eastern Washington. It is like a French painting.
This is the first good crop report in several seasons. I’m glad to see these people made a crop, God Bless em’.
The latest out of south Asia says 1.7 acres flooded in southern Pakistan, we need every kernel of that Washington wheat.
1.7 million acres.
Floods worsen, 270 killed: officials
Pakistan called on the world Tuesday to speed up relief efforts after torrential rains exacerbated major floods, killing 270 people and making another 200,000 homeless in the south of the country.
Local officials say devastation in parts of the country’s main breadbasket is worse than last year, when a fifth of the country was left under water by the country’s worst ever floods that affected a total of 21 million people.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/251425/floods-worsen-270-killed-officials/
So if the billion people who can afford to fly all get “one last trip” and “one last year of driving” a fossil fueled car every year until whenever; what happens? We drive the whole planet into James Lovelock’s runaway global warming.
Meanwhile the politicos look at all us supposed “greens” flying and driving around and reasonably presume we’re not really serious or worried about climate change.
This is like people who keep smoking because they already have cancer. Why go through the hassle of quitting? We know what the result will be we just don’t know the date it happens.
“A Reef in Time” written by former Chief Scientist with the Australian Institute of Marine Science, J.E.N. Veron, is an authoritative, accessible book on what coral reefs are, and how they have evolved and survived on Earth since the beginning.
Veron is a guy who had his mind in the ocean, who thought climate change wasn’t going to threaten the existence of coral worldwide, until it dawned on him that the oceans were acidifying.
Its people who know the oceans who seem to be the most emphatic about calling out to the rest of us that the composition of the atmosphere must be stabilized as soon as possible, and if possible, returned to something more like the pre-industrial composition.
This is Veron’s call: “production of greenhouse gases must be curbed as a matter of great urgency if we are to have any chance of avoiding another coral reef-led marine extinction. And this will not be just a coral reef extinction – it will be an extinction event the likes of which the Earth has not experienced for many tens of millions of years.”
I guess I knew how serious changing the composition of Earth’s atmosphere was from the first moment I examined the data from the Vostok core at a climate conference I attended as a delegate, i.e. The Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security, which was held in Toronto in 1988.
The conference statement, which I remain proud of helping to hammer out along with 400 other delegates from more than 40 countries, is here http://www.cmos.ca/ChangingAtmosphere1988e.pdf
The wording in that document was the subject of intense discussion and dispute, for four days. You had to be at the final plenary session to experience and understand the full intensity. Afterward, distinguished climatologists such as Canada’s Dr. Kenneth Hare said “a new consciousness was born”, about climate, there in Toronto. The conference ended a few days after Hansen’s testimony was given to Congress. He wasn’t the only one back then making front page news worldwide that civilization must face this new issue.
I immediately went out into politics calling for stabilization of the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere at the preindustrial level, i.e. 280 ppm CO2. Most people, including my family, thought I might be insane. Obviously, my political career went nowhere.
Note the first sentence in the Toronto conference statement: “Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to global nuclear war.”
Its hard to face the increasing level of clarity we all have now about exactly what form those consequences are going to take.
Back then many regarded it as fortunate that it appeared that as much as 1/2 of the fossil fuel emissions were being taken up by the global ocean.
David –
It is refreshing to recall just how much was achieved over two decades ago, and pretty harrowing to see how little notice the great powers have taken of the information they were given.
Yet in this context it is worth noting that real progress has been made, for all it has yet to bear fruit in the form of a commensurate “Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons”.
Another seed that was planted back in 1988 was the origination of the global climate policy framework of “Contraction & Convergence” [C&C] which proposes both an annually contracting global budget for GHG outputs to a minimal level by an agreed year, and the allocation of national tradeable emission rights under that budget – converging from the present de facto GDP-based outputs towards an international per capita parity of outputs by an agreed year.
In this manner it expressed the principles of ‘Precaution and Equity’ that were soon after formally adopted as the operating principles of the UN.FCCC by its signatories, including, of course, the US.
The progress I referred to has been in the the adoption of C&C around the world as the proper basis of the treaty. Along with many minor nations, adopters include the EU, the African Nations’ Group, Brazil, Australia, India, and (according to the now-former Indian environment secretary) China.
That Obama has chosen to pursue the Bush policy of a standoff with China, rather than a mutually beneficial resolution via C&C, seems just one of a number of reasons why we appear to need a different democrat presidential candidate for the 2012 US election.
So I wonder if you may agree that IF we can get the treaty signed and operational soon, there is still a fair chance of applying the necessary Carbon Recovery (backed by sufficient interim Albedo Restoration) to conserving a good part of the present marine biodiversity ?
Regards,
Lewis
PS: For those who’ve not seen it before, the Global Commons Institute (who originated C&C) have a site detailing the framework and its progress to date at:
http://www.gci.org.uk
David – a necessary clarification to the above:
“. . . under that budget – converging from the present de facto GDP-based outputs towards an international per capita parity of outputs by an agreed year.”
should have stated:
“. . . under that budget – converging from the present de facto GDP-based emission entitlements towards an international per capita parity of tradeable emission entitlements by an agreed year.”
An edit button would be a boon.
Regards,
Lewis
Treaties without public will behind them will prove to be ineffective.
Hansen still expresses public optimism about the conceivable future even though in his opinion there is too much GHG in the atmosphere already. Presumably, because it is not known how long the Earth system can stand being subject to this ‘overshoot’ of GHG, hope remains that civilization might wake up while it is still possible to stabilize the composition of the atmosphere and start to remove some of those gases. Hansen is trying to get people to realize that the tiny Milankovich forcing that drove the ice age cycles was far smaller than todays net GHG forcing after the estimated aerosol counter-effect is subtracted – i.e. changes larger than Canada changing from being covered with one mile thick of ice to what it is now are already in the cards, and the “Faustian bargain” he fears is the end of life on Earth.
An example of what I mean by the role of public will at a time of global crisis is in the following brief analysis of British historian Dan Todman. In the following quote he discusses the period after Britain declared war on Germany signalling the start of WWII but before Britain really woke up to its peril and pulled out all the stops to try to prosecute that war. He’s talking about the period up to just after the Fall of France, about the constraints Chamberlain and even Churchill faced:
Todman: “So they misjudge how the war is going to be fought. But they’re not alone in doing that. I mean there’s a widespread misconception amongst the whole population. And the limits on their freedom of action are not just conceptual. Its not that Chamberlain and members of his Cabinet want to continue with business as usual because they are somehow bad people, or that because they believe that always, business must come before national survival. Its really more that they are trapped in a situation, where they can’t gain compliance on the part of the population…. So really the Chamberlain government is trapped in a circumstance where it can’t generate the national will that’s necessary to fight a more total war, even as it becomes more and more convinced as it gets into the spring of 1940 that that is what it has to do. And really it is not until the circumstances change, until the fall of France, and this great threat to Britain that emotionally mobilizes the population, that ANY government can start to do that. And it has to be said that even when the Churchill government comes in in 1940 it takes a far more hesitant approach to the mobilization of domestic efforts than is often assumed. May to June 1940 is not as great and decisive a shift as we sometimes think in terms of things like rationing, and the conscription of women, those are events that take place much later in the war. And they’re very concerned, the Churchill coalition, to stay behind the demand curve, really, they’re operating inside the same set of limits as their predecessors, but they’re doing so in a drastically changed international circumstance.”
I got into further discussion along these lines under a Michael Tobis post at The Energy Collective. This would be the second comment on the page with my name on it, the one with the Vostok core data embedded in it as a chart: http://theenergycollective.com/mtobis/48337/eye-opening-videos
I think it is a great mistake to attack Obama at this time.
Does anyone think any potential Republican President is what anyone concerned about climate action wants to see in the White House after the next election?