5 November 2015, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Seafood trade: A contagious tendency. Global marine resource exploitation can spread in similar patterns to disease epidemics. Current high-speed seafood trade leaves consumers blissfully ignorant of its strains on marine ecosystems and fish species. This is because global trade guarantees consistent availability of fish at affordable prices by sourcing from suppliers around the world, despite fish species being on the brink of extintion. In a new study published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, several Centre colleagues in collaboration with WorldFish argue that global marine resource exploitation can spread in similar patterns to disease epidemics. The study highlights how the speed and connectivity of seafood commerce is severely challenging the capacity of existing regulatory institutions with the potential to decimate fisheries and the livelihoods of those that rely on them. Learn from WHO. Hampus Eriksson, lead author and scientist at World fish says: “Globalized markets connect distant sources of supply with metropolitan areas of demand. Exploitation expands so fast across the world in these modern sourcing networks that overfishing can occur before the resource is even perceived as threatened by management agencies.” The report’s authors propose that international cooperative initiatives, modelled on experiences in managing contagious diseases, could help to ensure the future sustainability of fisheries. Read More here
Yearly Archives: 2015
5 November 2015, Arena, Making the case for energy-independent suburbs. A new investigation by Brookfield Energy Australia (Brookfield) could pave the way for the new Huntlee residential development in the NSW Hunter Valley to be built off-the-grid and powered by renewable energy. The $1.1 million initial study is receiving $442,000 from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). Huntlee, developed by LWP Property Group, will be the first new town in the Hunter Valley in 50 years and will house 20,000 new residents in 7,500 homes. ARENA CEO Ivor Frischknecht said substantial connection costs and the falling cost of renewable energy made it a good time to explore the option of forgoing grid connection. “If this latest work shows renewables, battery storage and enabling technologies can reliably and cost effectively power new suburbs, it could set a precedent for residential developments and potentially accelerate the uptake of renewables in Australia,” Mr Frischknecht said. “There are a number of regulatory challenges and constraints and technical risks facing microgrids. Brookfield will share key insights about overcoming these barriers with the energy industry.” Brookfield Energy CEO Richie Sheather welcomed today’s announcement. “We are excited to be exploring sustainable alternative solutions for energy and water infrastructure solutions and see an emerging competitive market for large-scale local microgrids leveraging high penetration renewable,” Mr Sheather said. Flow Systems, a Brookfield company, is spearheading Brookfield’s sustainable multi-utility initiative across Australia. Read More here
5 November 2015, Renew Economy, 50 years after warning, no debate in Paris on the science. Diplomats steeling themselves for a historic round of United Nations climate negotiations remain divided by a handful of stubborn disputes. Discord persists over financial and procedural issues, for example, and over how pollution from farming and deforestation should be addressed alongside energy generation. The fundamentals of climate science, however, are not among the issues being debated. The 50-year anniversary of the first detailed climate change warning issued to a U.S. president is Thursday, less than a month before a historic two-week climate negotiating session begins in Paris. The golden anniversary is coinciding with a rich embrace of climate science in global negotiations. “There are plenty of challenging issues for the negotiators, but the basic science of climate change is not one of them,” said Harvard University economics professor Robert Stavins, an expert on the talks. “So-called climate skepticism is essentially irrelevant to the outcome.” Countries that have been “trying to undercut international climate action,” including Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, often “play the bad guys,” said Jake Schmidt, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s international program, but “not by denying that climate change exists.” The carbon dioxide chapter of the 1965 Restoring the Quality of Our Environment report, produced by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s science advisory committee, cited climate change research dating back to 1899. The science in the chapter was “basically right,” said Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric science professor at Stanford University. It warned loosely of ice caps melting, seas rising, temperatures warming, and water bodies acidifying. In the five decades since, a frenzy of multidisciplinary scientific endeavours has helped humanity pinpoint and project, with increasing and worrying precision, the consequences of rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, those impacts have shifted from being hypothetical to being real. Read More here
5 November 2015, Washington Post, A controversial NASA study says Antarctica is gaining ice. Here’s why you should be skeptical. Late last week, a study published by NASA scientists in the Journal of Glaciology made the surprising claim that the gigantic continent of Antarctica is actually gaining ice, rather than losing it, to the tune of 82 gigatons (or billion metric tons) per year from 2003 to 2008. The study has drawn massive amounts of media attention — and no wonder. It contradicts numerous prior scientific claims, including a 2012 study in Science by a small army of polar scientists, a study from earlier this year in Earth and Planetary Science Letters (which found 92 gigatons of net losses per year) and this 2014 study in Geophysical Research Letters (160 gigatons of net losses per year). It also contradicts assertions by the leading consensus body of climate science, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which stated in 2013 that Antarctica is “losing mass” and that this process is accelerating. That statement was itself based on multiple studies showing Antarctic ice loss. Not only does the new research fly in the face of all of this — if true, it also raises serious questions about our current understanding of sea level rise. If Antarctica is actually gaining ice, that means that a significant percentage of the current rise of the seas, estimated at roughly 3.22 millimeters per year by NASA itself, must be coming from elsewhere. (It takes 360 gigatons of ice to raise seas by 1 millimeter). No wonder, then, that a number of researchers have been quoted expressing skepticism about the new research, even as climate change doubters have had a field day — adding the study to an argumentative arsenal that previously included misleading claims about growing Antarctic sea ice. Read More here