Eora Borealis

Unless we halt completely the emission of carbon dioxide from the world’s energy systems, we risk an oceanic catastrophe worse than the one associated with the disappearance of the dinosaurs. That’s the message a chemical oceanographer and environmental scientist intends to deliver to a conference on the future of the world’s oceans today at the University of Victoria.

Ken Caldeira, who teaches out of the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University in California, says the level of acidification caused by dumping hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the world’s oceans is so great that it could cause a major disruption on par with, or worse than, the sudden dumping of sulphuric acid into the oceans 65 million years ago when an asteroid slammed into the Earth’s surface.

When that happened, he said, it took 500,000 years for plankton to reappear, two million years for corals to redevelop, and 10 million years for the current level of oceanic biodiversity to re-emerge. And unless drastic steps are taken now, Caldeira says, a similar marine disaster could occur within the next few decades.

“We risk a catastrophic event that’s on the scale of what happened in the ocean when the dinosaurs became extinct.”

Read the whole article: Signs of life out there, disaster back here

Poland will hold a referendum in its north-eastern region on whether to build a controversial road through an environmentally protected area. Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said the dispute between the government and environmentalists had become a “national problem“.

The European Union has warned Poland not to build the road through the Rospuda Valley. The area of almost untouched peat bogs and woods borders on Lithuania.

The project to build a trans-European highway through the area predates Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004. The EU Environment Commissioner, Stavros Dimas, said the project would mean a “major catastrophe in this precious area of Poland”.

Read the whole article: Polish vote on controversial road

Scientists have discovered four giant lakes under the Antarctic ice. Together the four are as big as Lake Vostok, the biggest body of water so far discovered in Antarctica.

Researchers say the newly found lakes appear to affect how rapidly ice is transported from the interior of the continent to the sea.

Writing in the journal Nature, they say that understanding the interaction of lakes and ice is crucial to forecasting the impacts of climate change…

Read the whole article: New lakes beneath Antarctic ice

Nearly half of the carbon that exists on land is contained in the sweeping boreal forests, which gird the Earth in the northern reaches of Canada, Alaska, Scandinavia and Russia. Scientists now fear that the steady rise in the temperature of the atmosphere and the increasing human activity in those lands are releasing that carbon, a process that could trigger a vicious cycle of even more warming.

The prospect of the land itself accelerating climate change staggers scientists, as well as woodsmen such as Bob Austman, who stopped recently in a quiet stand of birch on the edge of the boreal forest to examine a jack rabbit’s tracks.

“There are big forces out there,” he said succinctly…

Read the whole article: Great forests hold fateful role in climate change

The Inuit of Arctic Canada and Alaska are bearing the brunt of global warming and their way of life is in peril, an international human rights body will be told next month.

Inuit activists hope a hearing on Arctic climate change by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will lead to reduced emissions and will help to protect the culture of the northern native people.

“In the Arctic, things are happening first and fastest and it’s a way of life that’s being jeopardized here,” said Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier, who submitted a petition for a hearing on how climate change infringes on Inuit human rights to the commission in 2005 on behalf of Inuit in Canada and Alaska.

The commission, which is an arm of the Organization of American States, rejected Cloutier’s request to rule on the rights violations caused specifically by U.S. emissions, deciding instead to hold a general hearing on March 1 to investigate the broad relationship between climate change and human rights.

Officials at the Washington-based commission said it will be the body’s first such hearing…

Read the whole article: Hearing to probe climate change and Inuit rights

Nearly 100 corporations, international organizations and experts agreed to a plan on Tuesday to cut greenhouse gas emissions, calling on governments to act urgently against global warming.

“The politicians are lagging behind the business community,” said Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs at a press conference for the Global Roundtable on Climate Change. The organization presented its first major agreement since beginning talks in 2004.

The agreement seeks to lay out a framework for all countries to address the issue of climate change, said Sachs, adding “there is no way to solve this problem without China taking a role.”

Sachs, who heads Columbia’s Earth Institute, which is dedicated to achieving sustainable development, said he was confident that fast-growing economies like China and India would join in the effort to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. The round-table, which includes executives from a range of industries including air transport, energy, and technology, called on governments to set targets for greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide emissions.

Its agreement, however, does not detail how those targets will be allocated among countries and how it would differentiate between highly industrialized and developing nations.

Read the whole article: International group sets plan to curb global warming

European Union states voiced initial backing on Tuesday for a plan to include airlines in the bloc’s emissions trading scheme, though they differed on when international carriers should be required to join. The European Commission proposed in December that intra-EU flights be added to the scheme in 2011, while flights into and out of the bloc should be added in 2012.

The United States has objected to the proposal, threatening legal action and accusing the EU of circumventing the International Civil Avitiation Organization with its plans.

Link to the article: EU states support airlines joining emissions trade

Sweden’s IKEA will charge U.S. customers five cents for disposable plastic shopping bags in what the international furniture giant said Wednesday was a first step to ending their use altogether. IKEA said the decision to stop giving away free bags to customers aimed to reduce the estimated 100 billion bags thrown away by all U.S. consumers each year.

IKEA is believed to be first retailer in the United States to undertake such a program, according to National Retail Federation spokesman Scott Krugman.

Last June, IKEA began charging its U.K. customers for plastic bags, and has reduced its bag consumption by 95 percent, said spokeswoman Mona Astra Liss.

The average American family of four throws away about 1,500 single-use polyethylene bags, which do not degrade for around 1,000 years, IKEA said. Less than 1 percent are recycled.

Read the whole article:  IKEA to charge U.S. customers for plastic bags

Satellite images of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef show that sediment from river run-off is threatening the reef at a greater rate than previously realised, Australia’s peak scientific body said on Wednesday.

The images, taken this month by NASA and U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellites, show sediment creating a hazy cloud over the reef, blocking sunlight and hindering photosynthesis, the process that keeps coral alive.

“The run-off from torrential rainfall goes into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon and straight into the ocean at speeds which were not thought to occur before we saw the images,” said Arnold Dekker, from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

Read the whole article: River run-off threatens Great Barrier Reef

Why recycle? It is costly, time-consuming and takes more effort than simply chucking all the waste into a single bin.

Nonetheless, over the last two decades, recycling has become the norm in the Western world. Citizens pay higher taxes to cover the costs; municipalities enforce recycling regulations and refuse to pick up the garbage of households that do not comply. Even in France, where recycling got off to a slower start than in pioneering places like Germany and California, people have now come to accept it.

“A few years ago we had a hard time making people understand the need for recycling,” said Reynald Gilleron, chief of sanitation for Paris’s wealthy 16th district. “Now, given the importance that ecology and sustainable development have taken on in political life, it’s become a no-brainer. There has been a collective wake-up call.”

Still, there are issues…

Read the whole article: Recycling: A global work in progress