Our Oceans are Under Attack

hoytedow · Dec 14, 2014

pdwiley said: ↑

Do you actually *read* any of this crap that you post?

"One-quarter of the EU catch is now made outside European waters, much of it in previously rich West African seas, where each trawler can scoop up hundreds of thousands of kilos of fish in a day."

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF KILOS OF FISH IN A DAY?????? Really?

Just how big are these trawlers? I didn't realise people were building trawlers bigger than supertankers.

IOW, this article is rubbish if that's the standard of accuracy. And your credibility for posting it is about the same.

Pity because the basic thrust is spot-on. The oceans are over-fished and fish farming is generally highly polluting.

PDW
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A blue whale eats 3,600 kg per day and nobody complains, except maybe the krill.

myark · Dec 14, 2014

107 million tonnes of fish available for human consumption in 2005, that's not counting fish fed to animals or thrown back dead or the other life forms destroyed catching fish including pollution that kills fish and reefs.

Entire species of marine life will never be seen in the Anthropocene (the Age of Man), let alone tasted, if we do not curb our insatiable voracity for fish. Last year, global fish consumption hit a record high of 17 kg (37 pounds) per person per year, even though global fish stocks have continued to decline. On average, people eat four times as much fish now than they did in 1950.

Humans ate 130.8 million tons of fish in 2011

myark · Dec 14, 2014

http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...pact-with-carbon-emission-limits-9923463.html

Environmental groups slam watered-down climate pact drafted by UN in Lima

Historically, Western nations are the biggest emitters. Currently, most CO2 emissions are coming from developing countries as they grow their economies and lift millions of people out of poverty.

During a brief stop in Lima on Thursday, US secretary of state John Kerry said fixing the problem was “everyone’s responsibility, because it's the net amount of carbon that matters, not each country's share.”

According to the UN’s scientific panel on climate change, the world can pump out no more than about 1 trillion tons of carbon to have a likely chance of avoiding dangerous levels of warming. It already has spent more than half of that carbon budget as emissions continue to rise, driven by growth in China and other emerging economies.

Global warming is said by scientists to be caused by the burning of oil, coal and natural gas and climate impacts already happening include rising sea levels, intensifying heat waves and shifts in weather patterns causing floods in some areas and droughts in others.

The UN weather agency said last week that 2014 could become the hottest year on record.

ImaginaryNumber · Dec 15, 2014

The Chinese scientific revolution aims to tackle climate change | The Guardian

...XBTs are devices that are used to measure ocean temperatures. They were developed many decades ago to help navies determine the depth of the thermocline...

Each year, hundreds of thousands of these devices are dropped into the world’s oceans...

...understanding the accuracy of XBT fall rates (the rate that they descend in the water) is one of the most important and difficult issues in all of climate science...

...only a small handful of scientists are actively working to improve XBT accuracy, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences decided to bring them all together...

While in many parts of the world, like Australia and the USA in particular, funding for basic research is decreasing, in China things are different. Funding is increasing in critical scientific areas. Perhaps more importantly, in China, scientists are respected. In my country, as well as in Canada, and Australia, whenever you tell people you are a scientist, you must prepare for a negative reaction...

I spoke to Dr. Jiang Zhu, the director of Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He told me,

Recently the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) rolled out a complete restructuring program in order to improve its management and efficiency of research. For example, CAS will establish 20-30 centers of excellence focused on world-leading basic research. This is an ambitious reform and moves in the right direction to produce more breakthroughs that are changing the world.
I work on clean and renewable energy solutions in the developing world, especially Africa. All the solar and wind products you buy in that continent come from China. This is just one example how vision in China has turned to progress outside of China. China is creating the energy economy of the future. They are also developing a reputation for technical quality and human ingenuity...
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ImaginaryNumber · Dec 15, 2014

International law stays silent on the responsibility for climate change | The Guardian

...the law has had nothing to say on this important issue [of responsibility for climate change]. The global economy is underpinned by law, but you would think it had nothing to do with climate change. Climate-related cases have been absent from international courts – even from disputes involving human rights, investment or the environment. While there have been cases heard in some national courts, particularly in the US, they do not progress far.

The weak legal response to climate change means that big polluters are getting off lightly. It is clear that 60% of proven oil reserves must be left in the ground if we are to have even a remote chance of limiting global warming to two degrees. Yet oil companies and exporters continue to drill and explore, to enjoy their assets and hedge against future losses, as though climate change were a mere financial risk rather than an existential threat to peoples’ lives and livelihoods...

...One obvious policy for any state serious about addressing climate change would be to impose low carbon standards on the production of ordinary everyday goods such as meat, mobile phones, and plastics. But if you impose standards on goods at home, you must also impose them on imports or domestic industry will become uncompetitive and suffer.

Does international trade law allow states to impose low-carbon standards on imported goods? The answer is yes and no. A low or zero-carbon import policy is almost certain to violate World Trade Organization (WTO) law. There may be viable policies but they will be time consuming and expensive to design, and there is no guarantee the WTO’s principal court won’t slap down any such policy on a technicality. No country has yet tried.

Why has the WTO not taken more proactive steps to tackle climate change? And why has the estimated $600bn (£382bn) in annual subsidies to fossil fuels never been challenged, while paltry subsidies to support renewable energy technologies have been stopped?...

Given the self-evident harms inflicted by climate change on internationally protected human rights to health, food, water, shelter and to life itself, one might expect human rights law to provide a viable route to mount a challenge. But this has proved complicated. Many of the principal victims of climate change do not live in the countries where emissions are highest, a key feature of climate injustice. This makes it difficult or impossible to sue...
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myark · Dec 15, 2014

Top chef fears for the future of sushi

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11374955

The world's most renowned sushi chef, Jiro Ono, predicts a bleak future for the Japanese speciality because of increasing difficulties in sourcing ingredients, because of overfishing.

"The future is so bad," the Michelin three-starred chef, 89, who still works night and day in his restaurant in Tokyo's Ginza district, said.

"Even now I can't get the ingredients that I really want. I have a negative view of the future. It is getting harder to find fish of a decent quality."

myark · Dec 15, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/dec/15/lima-deal-global-climate-justice

As it stands, 21 years of tortuous negotiations may have actually taken developing countries backwards on tackling climate change. From an imperfect but legally binding UN treaty struck in 1992, in which industrialised countries accepted responsibility and agreed to make modest but specific cuts over a defined period, we now have the prospect of a less than legally binding global deal where everyone is obliged to do something but where the poor may have to do the most and the rich will be free to do little.

Given that rich countries have so far pledged only about $10bn to run over the next five years, the gap may be too great and the likelihood of failure in Paris is high.

Between 1940 and 1996, the U.S. spent at least $8.75 trillion in present-day terms on nuclear weapons development. Over half was spent on building delivery mechanisms for the weapon. $549 billion in present day terms was spent on nuclear waste management and environmental remediation.

The United States maintains a large and diverse nuclear arsenal to deter potential adversaries and to assure U.S. allies and other security partners. The United States will spend at least $179 billion over the nine fiscal years of 2010-2018 on its nuclear arsenal, averaging $20 billion per year, with costs increasing from $16 billion to $25 billion per year over that timeframe. This estimate by no means, however, includes the full costs of maintaining America's nuclear deterrent. The $179 billion includes most of the direct costs of nuclear weapons and strategic launchers, such as missiles and submarines, as well as a majority of the costs of military personnel responsible for maintaining, operating, and executing nuclear missions. This estimate, however, excludes many other essential functions directly related to nuclear operations, because those numbers are not readily identified in current budget documents. Moreover, these costs include no money for the eventual retirement of these systems, or support for veteran pensions or healthcare.

Due to the aging of the current force and plans to replace each leg of the nuclear triad – land and submarine-based missiles and bomber delivered nuclear weapons - costs for the nuclear mission are expected to grow substantially to approximately $500 billion over the next 20 years.

The United States Does Not Provide Information on the Costs of Maintaining Its Nuclear Deterrent

ImaginaryNumber · Dec 16, 2014

Recent burning of boreal forests exceeds ﬁre regime limits of the past 10,000 years – ‘This suggests a transition to a unique regime of unprecedented fire activity’ | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Abstract

Wildfire activity in boreal forests is anticipated to increase dramatically, with far-reaching ecological and socioeconomic consequences. Paleorecords are indispensible for elucidating boreal fire regime dynamics under changing climate, because fire return intervals and successional cycles in these ecosystems occur over decadal to centennial timescales. We present charcoal records from 14 lakes in the Yukon Flats of interior Alaska, one of the most flammable ecoregions of the boreal forest biome, to infer causes and consequences of fire regime change over the past 10,000 y. Strong correspondence between charcoal-inferred and observational fire records shows the fidelity of sedimentary charcoal records as archives of past fire regimes. Fire frequency and area burned increased ∼6,000–3,000 y ago, probably as a result of elevated landscape flammability associated with increased Picea mariana in the regional vegetation. During the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA; ∼1,000–500 cal B.P.), the period most similar to recent decades, warm and dry climatic conditions resulted in peak biomass burning, but severe fires favored less-flammable deciduous vegetation, such that fire frequency remained relatively stationary. These results suggest that boreal forests can sustain high-severity fire regimes for centuries under warm and dry conditions, with vegetation feedbacks modulating climate–fire linkages. The apparent limit to MCA burning has been surpassed by the regional fire regime of recent decades, which is characterized by exceptionally high fire frequency and biomass burning. This extreme combination suggests a transition to a unique regime of unprecedented fire activity. However, vegetation dynamics similar to feedbacks that occurred during the MCA may stabilize the fire regime, despite additional warming.

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ImaginaryNumber · Dec 16, 2014

Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance With Attorneys General | New York Times

The letter to the Environmental Protection Agency from Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma carried a blunt accusation: Federal regulators were grossly overestimating the amount of air pollution caused by energy companies drilling new natural gas wells in his state.

But Mr. Pruitt left out one critical point. The three-page letter was written by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma’s biggest oil and gas companies, and was delivered to him by Devon’s chief of lobbying.

“Outstanding!” William F. Whitsitt, who at the time directed government relations at the company, said in a note to Mr. Pruitt’s office. The attorney general’s staff had taken Devon’s draft, copied it onto state government stationery with only a few word changes, and sent it to Washington with the attorney general’s signature. “The timing of the letter is great, given our meeting this Friday with both E.P.A. and the White House.”

Mr. Whitsitt then added, “Please pass along Devon’s thanks to Attorney General Pruitt.”...

Attorneys general in at least a dozen states are working with energy companies and other corporate interests, which in turn are providing them with record amounts of money for their political campaigns, including at least $16 million this year...

That campaign, in which attorneys general band together to operate like a large national law firm, has been used to back lawsuits and other challenges against the Obama administration on environmental issues, the Affordable Care Act and securities regulation. The most recent target is the president’s executive action on immigration...

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myark · Dec 16, 2014

UN Climate Summit Poem "Dear Matafele Peinem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJuRjy9k7GA#t=157

ImaginaryNumber · Dec 17, 2014

The New Climate Denialism: More Carbon Dioxide Is A Good Thing | Washington Post

For years, the fossil-fuel industries have been telling us that global warming is a hoax based on junk science.

But now these industries are floating an intriguing new argument: They’re admitting that human use of coal, oil and gas is causing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to rise — but they’re saying this is a good thing. We need more CO2 in our lives, not less.

“CO2 is basically plant food, and the more CO2 in the environment the better plants do,” proclaimed Roger Bezdek, a consultant to energy companies, at an event hosted Monday by the United States Energy Association, an industry trade group...

Another questioner at the event asked Bezdek if he had considered ocean acidification, the release of methane gases, pollution and other side effects of rising CO2. This did not trouble him. “As you develop and you become wealthier,” he explained, “you have the wealth to clean up the mess.” He went on to point out that “35,000 people every year in the United States die in automobile accidents, but the solution is not to ban automobiles. You try to make them safer.”...

But then Bezdek pivoted into a robust defense of carbon dioxide’s benefits. “These days, CO2 seems to be blamed for everything,” he lamented, but the much-maligned gas is what’s keeping the world from an economic collapse so deep “you’d look upon North Korea as an economic consumer’s paradise, literally.” He mocked European efforts to use renewable fuels (“You can’t check your e-mail today because the wind isn’t blowing”) and he said that in the United States, “inability to pay utility bills is the second-leading cause of homelessness.”...
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ImaginaryNumber · Dec 17, 2014

Tropical forests may not combat climate change | Science Magazine

Tropical forests may not save us from global warming. Scientists have long believed that as atmospheric carbon dioxide rises, the greenhouse gas could boost photosynthesis, enabling tropical and other forests to take up more carbon and store it as wood. Some data suggest this “carbon fertilization” effect is already happening, and many climate models assume it will help slow the rise in CO2. But a new analysis of tree ring samples collected in Bolivia, Cameroon, and Thailand finds no sign of increasing growth over the past 150 years.

“Our study says that these models are too optimistic,” says Peter van der Sleen, a tropical ecologist at Wageningen University and Research Centre (Wageningen UR) in the Netherlands. “We should not expect the tropical forests to help us much with mitigating climate change.”

At the scale of a leaf, the carbon dioxide fertilization effect is well-documented. Under higher CO2, plants in greenhouses not only grow faster but also need less water. Higher CO2 lets them cut water losses because they can take in enough of the gas without opening their pores, or stomata, as widely. At ecosystem scales, however, things are more complicated, especially in the tropics, where thousands of species interact and other factors—such as nutrients and rainfall—can also affect plant growth...

Analyzing tree rings offers a way to track long-term tree growth over many decades, when CO2 was steadily rising. By examining carbon isotopes in the wood of 1100 trees, the researchers found evidence that over time these trees were indeed using water more efficiently. But increased growth was nowhere to be seen, they report online today in Nature Geoscience. Perhaps carbon fertilization was taking place, but instead of laying down extra wood the trees might be wasting energy with a higher metabolism or putting carbon into short-lived fruits and flowers, says study co-author Pieter Zuidema, also a tropical ecologist at Wageningen UR. “Trees can do all sorts of things with their extra sugars.”

Scientists studying forest plots, who have seen hints that growth is increasing, are critical of the tree ring study. “This is a really troubling paper from my point of view,” says Stuart Davies, director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s Forest Global Earth Observatory in Panama City, which maintains a network of 61 plot studies in 24 countries. Davies says that the 12 tree species in the tree ring study, drawn from the seasonally dry peripheries of the rainforests in South America, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia, are not representative of the rainforest itself (though the species were necessary to do the study, because many rainforest species don’t have annual growth rings).
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myark · Dec 17, 2014

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...er-from-continuing-drought--nasa-9931033.html

California needs 11 trillion gallons of water to recover from its continuing drought, according to Nasa scientists.
The space agency analysed its satellite data to discover that the entire contents of the largest reservoir in the US would not be anywhere near enough to replenish water levels in the state.
A state of emergency was declared almost a year ago as one of the worst droughts on record caused water shortages and devastated farms.
Jay Famiglietti, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said that without extreme weather, the crisis will continue for years to come.
“It takes years to get into a drought of this severity, and it will likely take many more big storms, and years, to crawl out of it,” he added.

ImaginaryNumber · Dec 18, 2014

Faith groups divided over God’s role in climate change, natural disasters | Washington Post

Americans largely concur that God created the Earth. But when it comes to how he wants its environment treated, and how much he’s willing to intercede — the agreement ends.

A new poll released Friday shows major differences between faith groups on topics including concern over climate change, whether natural disasters are a sign of biblical end times and how deeply connected they feel to nature.

White evangelicals are the most skeptical of climate change and the most likely to say recent natural disasters are a sign of “biblical end times.” Hispanic Catholics are, by faith affiliation, the most concerned about climate change, along with religiously unaffiliated Americans and black Protestants...

But the biggest predictor of someone’s views on climate and God’s role, said PRRI chief executive Robert Jones, is his or her partisan affiliation.

“There is a stronger correlation between partisanship here than among many religious variables,” Jones said. “If I didn’t tell you what the question is, and you just saw the data, you’d think I was talking about the midterm elections.”...

“While there is a growing consensus among scientists about the urgency of addressing climate change, this landmark survey shows that many in faith communities have not yet heard or understood that message,” she said...
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ImaginaryNumber · Dec 18, 2014

Massive study provides first detailed look at how Greenland's ice is vanishing | PHYS.org

The Greenland Ice Sheet is the second-largest body of ice on Earth. It covers an area about five times the size of New York State and Kansas combined, and if it melts completely, oceans could rise by 20 feet. Coastal communities from Florida to Bangladesh would suffer extensive damage.

Now, a new study is revealing just how little we understand this northern behemoth.

Led by geophysicist Beata Csatho, PhD, an associate professor of geology at the University at Buffalo, the research provides what the authors think is the first comprehensive picture of how Greenland's ice is vanishing. It suggests that current ice sheet modeling studies are too simplistic to accurately predict future sea level rise, and that Greenland may lose ice more rapidly in the near future than previously thought...

Ice loss takes place in a complex manner, with the ice sheet both melting and calving ice into the ocean. The study had two major findings:

First, the scientists were able to provide new estimates of annual ice loss at high spatial resolution (see below).

Second, the research revealed that current models fail to accurately capture how Greenland's glaciers are changing and contributing to rising oceans.

The team identified areas of rapid shrinkage in southeast Greenland that today's models don't acknowledge. This leads Csatho to believe that the ice sheet could lose ice faster in the future than today's simulations would suggest...

In the study, scientists found that some of Greenland's glaciers thickened even when the temperature rose. Others exhibited accelerated thinning. Some displayed both thinning and thickening, with sudden reversals...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S4T2Q8sBW8
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Our Oceans are Under Attack

hoytedow Carbon Based Life Form

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