20 July 2016, Climate News Network, Humans play high-risk ecological roulette. Analysis of millions of records by thousands of scientists across the world shows that human impacts have helped push the planet’s vital biodiversity into the danger zone. Humans have reduced biodiversity – the teeming variety of plant and animal life that competes and co-operates in every ecosystem – tobelow safe levels across more than 58% of the planet’s land surface. This is ultimately bad news for human food security because biological diversity underwrites what naturalists call the resilient ecosystem services on which humans and all higher animals depend – crop pollination and pest control, nutrient decomposition and recycling, water and air purification − and because that 58% of the terrestrial planet is home to 71% of all humans, That humans are reducing biodiversity − and at a cost to the disturbed ecosystems − is not news. Separate research teams have repeatedly warned of thedangers of extinction of species. Biggest picture But Tim Newbold, a bioscience research associate at University College London, and colleagues report in Science journal that instead of drawing conclusions from one or a series of studies, they looked at the biggest picture available. The research, which is part of a British partnership study called PREDICTS, analysed 2.38 million records made by other scientists of 39,123 species at 18,659 places. Read More here
Category Archives: Ecosystem Stress
19 July 2016, Climate News Network, Climate change’s costs are still escalating. Scientific reports released for a conference today on disaster risk reduction warn that people are already dying and economies being hit by climate change − and that the dangers are growing. The massive economic and health losses that climate change is already causing across the world are detailed in six scientific papers published today. Perhaps most striking is the warning about large productivity losses already being experienced due to heat stress, which can already be calculated for 43 countries. The paper estimates that in South-East Asia alone “as much as 15% to 20% of annual work hours may already be lost in heat-exposed jobs”. And that figure may double by 2030 as the planet continues warming − with poor manual labourers who work outdoors being the worst affected. The release of the papers coincides with the start of a conference on disaster risk reduction, held in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, and jointly sponsored by the International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH) and the UN Development Programme. The aim is to alert delegates to the already pressing scale of the problem and the need to take measures to protect the health of people, and to outline the economic costs of not taking action. Read More here
3 July 2016, Climate News Network, Fences snare wildlife fleeing warming climate. As border fences proliferate across Europe and elsewhere, humans face mounting risks – and so does wildlife fleeing the impacts of climate change. The world is becoming sadly familiar with the sight of thousands of desperate refugees – escaping bombing and violence in countries like Syria – being pressed against border fences erected to separate countries in Europe and further afield. Less recognised is the effect these thousands of kilometres of newly-installed border fencing is often having on wildlife. But climate change does not recognise borders, and nor do the birds or animals migrating across their territories. A study by the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research estimates that between 25,000 and 30,000 kilometres of fences and walls now run along the borders of various countries in Europe and Central Asia. Much of this is of very recent construction and has led to what the researchers describe as “a dramatic reduction in the permeability of borders for wildlife, as well as people.” Driven further Changes in climate, including rising temperatures and an increase in flash flooding and droughts, mean that wild creatures in many regions are forced to roam ever-larger ranges to find food and water. The study says the fences are a significant threat: “The long-term consequences are a low viability of wildlife populations, and a reduction in their ability to respond to climate change.” Read More here
30 June 2016, NASA. Why a half-degree temperature rise is a big deal. The Paris Agreement, which delegates from 196 countries hammered out in December 2015, calls for holding the ongoing rise in global average temperature to “well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels,” while “pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C.” How much difference could that half-degree of wiggle room (or 0.9 degree on the Fahrenheit scale) possibly make in the real world? Quite a bit, it appears. The European Geosciences Union published a study in April 2016 that examined the impact of a 1.5 degree Celsius vs. a 2.0 C temperature increase by the end of the century, given what we know so far about how climate works. It found that the jump from 1.5 to 2 degrees—a third more of an increase—raises the impact by about that same fraction, very roughly, on most of the phenomena the study covered. Heat waves would last around a third longer, rain storms would be about a third more intense, the increase in sea level would be approximately that much higher and the percentage of tropical coral reefs at risk of severe degradation would be roughly that much greater. But in some cases, that extra increase in temperature makes things much more dire. At 1.5 C, the study found that tropical coral reefs stand a chance of adapting and reversing a portion of their die-off in the last half of the century. But at 2 C, the chance of recovery vanishes. Tropical corals are virtually wiped out by the year 2100. Read More here