World-News

https://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1931068,00.html


Informant: Teresa Binstock

Scientists warn that 60 percent of the world's coral reefs could die in less than 25 years. "Think of it as a high school chemistry class," said Billy Causey of NOAA. "You mix some chemicals together and nothing happens. You crank up the Bunsen burner and all of a sudden things start bubbling around. That's what's happening. That global Bunsen burner is cranking up."

https://www.truthout.org/issues_06/102506EA.shtml



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Coral+Reef

While rich nations tinker with policies that may shave their carbon dioxide emissions, low-lying South Pacific nations such as Kiribati are sinking beneath the waves.

https://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1927131.ece


From Information Clearing House

ALERT: Severe Australian Drought Caused by Climate Change, Leave Your Coal in the Ground!

TAKE ACTION https://www.climateark.org/alerts/send.asp?id=australia_climate

Australia is currently experiencing extreme drought as a result of abrupt climate change, and the nation is undergoing unprecedented discussion of global heating reminiscent of America's own post-Katrina reckoning. Australia's per capita greenhouse gas emissions are among the highest in the world, and Australia's economy is based heavily upon the deadly coal fossil fuel industry which exerts undue political influence. Temperatures in Australia are now expected to rise by as much as
8°C (15°F) in the next century with cataclysmic results. Over the coming decades these soaring temperatures will result in water supplies for millions failing, agriculture becoming unviable over huge areas, rising sea levels destroying substantial coastal areas, powerful extreme weather events including super cyclones and bushfires, and countless environmental refugees overwhelming Australia's ability to cope. To address their current climate caused drought emergency, Australia simply must ratify the Kyoto Protocol immediately and engage seriously in negotiations to further establish global mandatory emissions cuts for all nations that are equitable and adequate to achieve what climate science indicates is necessary to conserve the global climatic system. The best estimate is that emissions must be cut as soon as possible by 60-75%, a level which requires Australia forgoing the burning of their coal resources. Australia must stop its obstruction of international climate policies.

Tell them by taking action now: https://www.climateark.org/alerts/send.asp?id=australia_climate

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More Than Half Australia's Farmland Drought-Stricken
https://freepage.twoday.net/stories/2850031/

Government Says

More than half of Australia's farm and ranch land is now drought-stricken and an additional 10,000 farmers are eligible for special federal relief. "We are in uncharted waters, if you like, as far as this drought is concerned," said acting Prime Minister Mark Vaile.

https://www.truthout.org/issues_06/102406EC.shtml

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Dramatic Efforts Required to Ensure Australia's Well-Being and Planetary Survival
https://freepage.twoday.net/stories/2850070/

https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6077798.stm


Informant: Andy

From Mast Sanity/Mast Network

October 24, 2006

By JOHN TAGLIABUE

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/world/europe/24swiss.html

[foto] Dominic Buettner for The New York Times - An 1870 postcard view of the Rhone glacier in Gletsch, Switzerland, contrasted dramatically with the shrinking 21st-century version of it.

GLETSCH, Switzerland — To hear the locals tell it, you would think they were referring to a loved family member declining in old age.

“It hurts, it hurts,” Philipp Carlen said of his feeling toward the vast Rhone glacier, which once came to the edge of his hotel, but now has receded several hundred yards. The glacier, whose soft contours and dirty gray surface make it resemble some huge sea creature, a whale perhaps, is rapidly shrinking, in the mild autumn weather, by 12 to 15 feet a day.

Eight thousand years ago, Mr. Carlen said, the glacier was the largest in Europe, with arms that reached all the way to Lyon, in France. Indeed, it remains the source of the Rhone River, which flows westward into France and from there into the Mediterranean. Now, however, it is only the fifth largest glacier in Switzerland, and experts foresee the day, probably in this century, when the glacier, all six miles of it, will melt away to nothing.

The shrinkage has consequences for the little village that owes its name — Gletsch means glacier in Swiss German — and its very existence to the icy behemoth.

Like most of the people in Gletsch, Mr. Carlen, 45, spends only the summer in the village; in the winter he practices law in the nearby town of Brig. Gletsch began its role as a summer residence in the mid-19th century, Mr. Carlen said, when the family of a soap maker named Joseph Seiler opened a small hotel here that grew over the years into an establishment consisting of two wings, with accommodations for 150 guests and a pampering staff of 300.

The first tourists were British aristocrats and their families. The Seilers’ hotel had its own butcher shop, bake shop, post office, and even a chapel that still stands, with its slender belfry, for services in the Anglican rite. The family later built a second hotel, up the mountain nearer to the glacier, that Mr. Carlen now owns.

In those days, Mr. Carlen said, the glacier spilled down into the valley below, almost reaching the edge of the village. But as the glacier shrank, so did the number of visitors to the hotel; the automobile challenged a little steam railway as a means of access to Gletsch and made day trips possible, and the number of guests fell further.

“It was not necessarily the shrinking glacier, but today people come by car, and don’t stay overnight,” said Armin Jost, standing in the shadow of Gletsch’s large post office, now boarded up. Mr. Jost, 31, takes care of the roads, in the season when Gletsch is accessible to traffic, and keeps an eye on the buildings.

The hotels, he said, now stay open only from May to October. In winter, snowfalls accumulating to the hotel’s second story, and with drifts even higher, cut Gletsch off from the world. “In the old days, two or three hotel employees would spend the winter in the hotel to look after it, only emerging in the spring,” he said.

First the Seilers sold the hotel in the village to the local government; in the 1980’s they sold the second hotel to Mr. Carlen’s family.

The glacier’s suffering is not unique. All of Switzerland’s glaciers — and there are more than a hundred, large and small, experts say — have lost about 15 percent of their surface in just the past two decades. The experts say global warming is the reason, though particularly hot summers, which might have happened anyway, also played a role.

“This year was a terrible year for the glaciers,” said Max Maisch, an expert on the topic at the University of Zurich. “July was very hot, though August was cool; but September was the warmest in 140 years. Many glaciers are collapsing on the edges.”

In recent years, to help the Rhone glacier over the hottest months, Mr. Carlen has taken a lesson from the care of stranded dolphins and whales, and has spread large tarpaulins of special fleece on the glacier’s edges during the hottest months. “It helps a little,” he said, explaining that it has reduced the shrinkage to about five feet a day.

The diminution is painful for Mr. Carlen because for four generations his family has been boring a tunnel each year into the glacier, so tourists could enter its icy confines. But with the shrinkage, the tunnel, 120 yards long, must be dug and redug, farther up the mountain, by chain saw.

Now a zig-zagging lace of paths and planks covers the side of the mountain that visitors must climb to get to the mouth of the tunnel. In winter, the tunnel has other uses; Mr. Carlen stores barrels of wine there.

Walther Meier, a retired pharmaceutical employee, and his wife stood near the chapel gazing up the mountain where the tongue of the glacier was just barely visible. They had hiked up the valley toward the mountain and had passed stone markers, with the years 1818 or 1856, that showed how far down the valley the glacier once stretched.

Mr. Meier recalled his last visit to Gletsch 15 years ago, when much of the glacier was still visible from the village. “Every year it recedes quite a bit,” he said, shaking his head.

Mr. Carlen is philosophical, reflecting that things could have been worse. In the early 1980’s, he said, the Swiss government drew up plans for a dam and a power station at the end of the valley that would have submerged Gletsch. “Those plans remain in a drawer in the government building,” he said. “And I hope that’s where they stay.”


Informant: binstock

October 24, 2006

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

By Lewis Smith

https://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