17 February 2016, The Guardian, The key to halting climate change: admit we can’t save everything. Climate change, and human resistance to making the changes needed to halt it, both continue apace: 2015 was the hottest year in recorded history, we may be on the brink of a major species extinction event in the ocean, and yet political will is woefully lacking to tackle this solvable problem. Given these dire ecological trends, limited public funding and legislative gridlock, the time is ripe for a budget-neutral, executive-branch approach for managing our natural resources: triage. A science-based triage approach should be used to classify areas and species into one of three categories: not at immediate risk, in need of immediate attention or beyond help. Refusing to apply triage implicitly assumes that we can save everything and prevent change, which we cannot. Prioritization will occur regardless, just ad hoc and shrouded. This triage system would replace the status quo of inadequately managing our full portfolio of over 1m square miles of public land and 1,589 threatened and endangered species. For areas or species not at immediate risk, we can delay action while monitoring to detect changes in that status. For example, increased temperatures and prolonged periods of drought may increase both wildfires and populations of tree-killing beetles in forests of the Pacific north-west. Knowing this, we can track these variables and explore management options that minimize risk without prematurely devoting disproportionate resources. For areas needing immediate help, we must act now. For the coral reefs of the Florida Keys and US Virgin Islands, all anthropogenic impacts (such as overfishing, pollution and coastal development) must be dramatically reduced. Otherwise, because the health of these coral reefs is currently so compromised, they are unlikely to survive the sea level rise, rising ocean temperatures and increasing acidification resulting from climate change. For species protections, it would be wise to focus on keystone species such as oysters (water filterers), parrotfish (algae eaters on overgrown coral reefs), bees (pollinators) and wolves (key predators). For areas we can no longer maintain, we must make the most difficult of choices – give up, and accept that change is not always preventable. In Alaska, it may be too late to prevent the climate change-induced shift from coniferous-dominated to deciduous-dominated stands, with unfortunate impacts on forest-dwelling species and the logging industry. In the ocean, entire fisheries can be lost from an area when species shift due to warming waters. Read More here
Monthly Archives: February 2016
17 February 2016, Eureka Alert, Assessing carbon capture technology. Carbon capture and storage could be used to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and thus ameliorate their impact on climate change. The focus of this technology is on the large-scale reduction of carbon emissions from fossil-fuelled power plants. Research published in the International Journal of Decision Support Systems investigates the pros and cons, assesses the risks associated with carbon capture and provides a new framework for assessing the necessary technology. John Michael Humphries Choptiany formerly of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and now at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome, Italy, together with colleagues at Dalhousie, Alberta Innovates – Technology Futures (AITF), and G BACH Enterprises Incorporated, explain how they have adopted information from the environmental, social, economic and engineering fields to create their assessment framework, which incorporates utility curves, criterion weights, thresholds, decision trees, Monte Carlo simulation, critical events and sensitivity analysis. “Climate change is one of the most serious threats facing humankind,” the team reports, “Carbon capture and storage (CCS) includes a suite of technologies and processes with the goal of mitigating climate change by capturing and storing anthropogenic CO2 from various emitters, including fossil-fuelled power plants, in geological reservoirs.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recognized that CCS should be one component of our response to carbon emissions and climate change, but there are many different approaches that could be taken, all with various risks. Read More here
16 February 2016, The Conversation, Adapting to bushfires: a new idea of ‘fire-proof’ homes. This summer’s bushfires have destroyed homes, precious ecosystems and, tragically, lives. Fires in South Australia and Western Australia killed two and six people, respectively. On Christmas Day more than 100 properties were destroyed in Victoria, and ongoing fires in Tasmania’s wilderness have claimed ancient, fire-sensitive vegetation. Our key strategy to address this is to evacuate fire-prone areas extensively on days when fire weather is likely to present a risk. In essence, we are leaving our homes to fend for themselves, and rightly so. Homes can be replaced; lives cannot. We know the cost of fire. In a warming world, it is very likely we will see more frequent and more extreme fires. To adapt to these future fires we will need to change how we approach fire management and the safety of our homes. Fortunately there are good examples in contemporary Australia of how we might do so. Land of fire Before European settlement, Australia was a fire-adapted continent from the southern tip of Tasmania to the tropical north. Its indigenous citizens understood fire both as a threat and as a tool. Indigenous people regularly used fire to modify the vegetation so that fires could not reach an intensity that would damage to trees, animals or indigenous settlements. Unfortunately, most of Australia looks nothing like it did back then. The bush in many parts has reverted to a thick impenetrable scrub with fuel loads that can support fires so severe that agencies have no way of stopping them. Read More here
15 February 2016, Science Daily, Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. You may as well learn the expression “carbon-negative technology,” or Bio-CCS, right away, because it has become a talking point in technological circles. Gemini explains why. There exists a method, or technology, that is capable of reducing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. “In practice, the methods consists of capturing carbon dioxide emitted by “climate-neutral” processes such as the combustion of organic waste, pellets or sawdust,” explains SINTEF research scientist Mario Ditaranto, a specialist in combustion technology. It is then stored safely underground for ever, thus reducing its concentration in the atmosphere, because it has been eliminated from the natural carbon dioxide cycle. This is the only method we have to lower the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is an important cause of our climate problems. The method is called Bio-CCS, and it is not new. Until now it has suffered from a rather mixed reputation as insignificant, expensive and limited in its range of applications. However, in the light of climate change and the recent COP21 summit in Paris, it is on the of everyone in the climatology field. In Norway, it has led to SINTEF, the environmental organisation Bellona and certain branches of Norwegian industry working together for a rapid breakthrough. “Superlight” geoengineering The reason for the growing popularity of Bio-CCS is that at the very least it can be regarded as an extremely mild and non-hazardous form of geo-engineering. The aim of geo-engineering is to counteract anthropogenic climaste changes by means of physical interventions. Launching huge sunshades into space and spraying >> millions of ?? tonnes of sulphur into the atmosphere to filter sunlight are a couple of suggestions. These have naturally led to heated debates about both the ethics and safety of such solutions. After all, what might be the consequences if we fix things in ways that only make them worse? Unavoidable More than 1000 estimates brought together in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/) show that even a significant but gradual brake on carbon dioxide emissions will not be sufficient if we are to avoid a serious climatic crisis. Read More here