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#Post#: 90--------------------------------------------------
Pollution
By: AGelbert Date: October 17, 2013, 6:43 pm
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Here’s where you’re most likely to die from air pollution
[img width=640
height=380]
HTML http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/82000/82087/pollution_excess_deaths_lrg.png[/img]
[url=
HTML http://grist.org/climate-energy/heres-where-youre-most-likely-to-die-from-air-pollution]http://grist.org/climate-energy/heres-where-youre-most-likely-to-die-from-air-pollution[/
#Post#: 135--------------------------------------------------
Turning This Latino Farmworker Town Into A Toxic Wasteland
By: AGelbert Date: October 21, 2013, 2:51 pm
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HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4qaHCFaF9I&feature=player_embedded<br
/>
The Dirty Business Of Turning This Latino Farmworker Town Into A
Toxic Wasteland
HTML http://www.mycuentame.org/toxicwasteland
HTML http://www.mycuentame.org/toxicwasteland
#Post#: 138--------------------------------------------------
U.N. lists air pollution as carcinogen
By: AGelbert Date: October 21, 2013, 7:16 pm
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U.N. lists air pollution as carcinogen
By John Upton
If you want to avoid lung cancer, the United Nation’s
cancer-research body has some advice for you: Don’t breathe. :P
>:(
The International Agency for Research on Cancer on Thursday
added air pollution, and the particulate matter that it
contains, to its list of carcinogens.
The airborne poisons were classified as “Group 1″
carcinogens, meaning there is “sufficient evidence” that they
cause cancer in humans. They are mostly produced through the
burning of fossil fuels in vehicles, power plants, and stoves.
And it’s not just lung cancer that can be triggered by air
pollution. In a statement [PDF], the agency noted “a positive
association” between polluted air and bladder cancer.
“Our task was to evaluate the air everyone breathes rather than
focus on specific air pollutants,” agency official Dana Loomis
told Reuters. “The results from the reviewed studies point in
the same direction: the risk of developing lung cancer is
significantly increased in people exposed to air pollution.”
The decision follows findings that air pollution killed 3.2
million people in 2010, including 233,000 cancer-related deaths.
Most of the deaths occurred in India, China, and other
developing countries with large populations. The Clean Air Act
helped dramatically clean up the air that Americans breathe, but
anybody who has visited Los Angeles or California’s Central
Valley knows that problems persist in the West.
Air pollution and particulate matter now join a list [PDF]
HTML http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/ClassificationsGroupOrder.pdf,<br
/>nicknamed the encyclopedia of carcinogens, that also contains
such nasties as [size=14pt]
asbestos,
plutonium,
hepatitis, and
tobacco smoke. Oh, and
sun rays,
estrogen therapy,
Chinese-style salted fish, and
booze.
Source
Outdoor air pollution a leading environmental cause of cancer
deaths, IARC
HTML http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/iarcnews/pdf/pr221_E.pdf
UN agency calls outdoor air pollution leading cause of cancer,
Reuters
HTML http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/10/17/cancer-pollution-idINL6N0I63Q220131017
John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets,
posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes
reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:
johnupton@gmail.com.
HTML http://grist.org/news/u-n-lists-air-pollution-as-carcinogen
#Post#: 143--------------------------------------------------
Re: Pollution
By: AGelbert Date: October 22, 2013, 10:04 pm
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HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za4r5uWj4AY&feature=player_embedded<br
/>
#Post#: 158--------------------------------------------------
Our Responsibility to Care for the Biosphere; REAL Christians Te
ll it like it IS
By: AGelbert Date: October 25, 2013, 8:15 pm
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Environmental engineering
‘We continue to abuse the environment as a convenient dump for
increasing amounts of wastes, including large quantities of
man-made toxic materials. Our efforts to control the risks have
had limited success, but have made us painfully aware of how
little is known about natural processes and our created life
support system. This environmental crisis, which is to a
considerable degree the result of greed—[I]a desire to have more
and more material possessions—[/I] has now reached a critical
point where the damage may not be reversible in time to prevent
a major catastrophe.
‘As a Christian who believes [color=green]we cannot separate our
stewardship role from our faith, I believe it is a spiritual
issue, a wake-up call from God to greater holiness. The majority
of Christians, including myself, have bought into an economic
system based on unlimited growth and, hence, unlimited
consumption of the Earth’s resources. Materialism—more and
bigger cars, houses, gadgets, etc.—interferes with our
stewardship obligations, as well as our spiritual growth.’
[I]Dr Lambert Otten,
Director, School of Engineering
Professor of Biological Engineering
Professor of Environmental Engineering
University of Guelph, Canada.[/I]
Environmental science
‘The Bible teaches that the Curse on nature will end—nature will
be restored to its original splendour (Acts 3:21), sharing in
the effects of redemption (Romans 8:19–23). Biblical visions of
this restoration are of people and nature once again in harmony.
‘Christians are part of a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). We
share the Gospel message with many people, even though we know
that probably only a few will respond. Likewise, we ought to be
willing to care for creation, even though we know we can’t bring
full restoration.
It is therefore right to care for the natural environment,
provided it does not conflict with another Scripture principle.
Too often we waste and misuse God’s possessions, like the
manager in Luke 16:1 wasted his master’s possessions.’
Dr George Hawke
Senior Environmental Consultant
Pacific Power International, Sydney, Australia.
Environmental management
‘The principle of Ecologically Sustainable Development has been
widely accepted by governments all over the world since the
Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. One of its main principles is
inter-generational equity, i.e. [I]we shouldn’t eat now the
future of our children.[/I] It’s not hard to see Biblical ethics
behind this idea.’
Geoff Meadows
Manager–Environmental Planning
Environmental Protection Agency, Cairns, Australia.
References and notes
1. This current of warm water from the tropics is probably
‘driven’ by cold water sinking in the freezing Arctic. Return to
text.
2. Impact # 339, Acts and Facts, September 2001. Return to text.
3. Hugh Mackay, The Adelaide Advertiser , 2 May 1990. Return to
text.
4. Batten, D., What! … no potatoes?, Creation 21(1):12—14,
1998. Return to text.
5. Some say that a consistent evolutionist should not complain
about extinction because it is part of evolution. This is true,
but may be a little unfair. The evolutionist believes that it
took a very long time for nature to create these things, and
that the abnormal selection pressure applied by mankind nowadays
is forcing extinction to occur at a far greater rate than new
ones could possibly evolve. Return to text.
6. For a discussion of the problem of how ‘bad’ things arose
post-Fall, see Chapter 6 of The 7. Creation Answers Book,
Creation Ministries International, Brisbane, 2006. Return to
text.
7. Singer, P. (Ed.), In Defence of Animals, Basil Blackwell
Limited, Oxford, p. 6, 1985. Return to text.
8. Time, p. 57, 26 March 1990. Return to text.
9. Frey, R. & G., Journal of Medical Ethics 9:94–97, 1983.
Return to text.
Fouling the nest Christianity and the environment
HTML http://creation.com/fouling-the-nest
#Post#: 167--------------------------------------------------
The case for a revenue-neutral carbon tax
By: AGelbert Date: October 26, 2013, 8:52 pm
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The case for a revenue-neutral carbon tax
By John D. Kelley
“Men argue. Nature acts.” Voltaire
No argument will prevent ice from changing into water when the
temperature shifts from 32 degrees Fahrenheit to 33 degrees
Fahrenheit. The climate of our planet is not controlled by
wishes and opinions, it only responds to the natural forces that
drive it.
There is no longer any credible scientific debate that carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases caused by human activities
are warming the Earth in dangerous ways. Worldwide, people are
experiencing the effects of climate change with sea level rise,
bigger storms, larger floods, extreme heat, longer droughts, and
huge wildfires. Four of the five largest wildfires in California
history have occurred since 2003. The Rim Fire currently burning
near Yosemite is the third largest. It has burned over 400
square miles. >:(
We have a moral responsibility to future generations to take
powerful action now to moderate climate change by severely
curtailing our greenhouse gas emissions. A revenue-neutral
carbon tax that would change the economics of energy and reduce
our greenhouse gas emissions is getting support across the
political spectrum. The essence of this concept is to tax carbon
production and return 100% of the proceeds equally to all
citizens. This is a powerful way to cause a shift away from
carbon fuels while protecting American families from higher
energy prices.
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/128fs318181.gif
A growing number of people believe that a national carbon tax
is the most efficient, transparent, and enforceable mechanism to
drive an effective and fair transition to a clean energy
economy. To make the economic transition as smooth as possible
the tax would start small and increase annually and predictably.
At the same time fossil fuel subsidies would be phased out.
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/128fs318181.gifThis
would mean
that energy prices would be predictable for people and
businesses.
A national carbon tax would be easy to administer. The tax would
be charged at first point-of-sale, the mine, wellhead, or border
crossing, and would be collected by the IRS. The funds would be
placed in a Carbon Tax Trust Fund and rebated to American
households. All adult citizens would receive equal monthly
dividends and families would also receive ½ share per child
under 18 years old, with a limit of 2 child-shares per family.
It is estimated that 70% of families would see a net increase in
income.
A national carbon tax would be reconciled with existing state
programs such as California’s cap and trade system. There are
several ways this would be done: 1. Preemption 2. Stacking 3.
Integration.
In Preemption, the CA program would cease to function once the
federal law took effect.
In Stacking, the program would continue to function as is on top
of the federal regulations.
In Integration, the state and federal programs would work
together. To ensure that U.S. made goods remain competitive in
international markets carbon tax equivalent tariffs would be
charged for goods entering the U.S. from countries without
equivalent carbon pricing while carbon tax rebates would reduce
the price of exports to those countries. These tariffs and
rebates would provide an incentive for international adoption of
carbon taxes.
Five years ago British Columbia implemented a revenue-neutral
carbon tax. It gradually added to the cost of fossil fuels while
cutting both personal and corporate income taxes. A recent study
reports that BC’s use of petroleum fuels has dropped by 15.1%.”
The study also finds that BC’s “personal and corporate income
tax rates are now the the lowest in Canada, due to the carbon
tax shift.
Perhaps we are finally approaching a political tipping point
regarding climate change policies. Currently the Environmental
Protection Agency is under court order to issue climate change
rules. The fossil fuel industry is fearful of what the EPA may
do, so there is a new congressional debate over climate change
policy.
HTML http://www.websmileys.com/sm/violent/sterb029.gifAs
part
of this national debate a revenue-neutral carbon tax must be
considered. It would be efficient, transparent, and
enforceable because market decisions would select the best clean
energy programs and technologies, and the dividends would
stimulate the economy. By acting now to implement a
revenue-neutral carbon tax we can create a stronger economy and
ensure a more livable climate for our children and
grandchildren.
HTML http://dl3.glitter-graphics.net/pub/465/465823jzy0y15obs.gif
John D. Kelley AIA, an award-winning architect, specializes in
healthy, environmentally-friendly home design. A former
President of AIA Santa Barbara, he is a founding member of
several local volunteer groups including: The Sustainability
Project, the Green Building Alliance, and the Mesa Architects.
As a concerned citizen he advocates for immediate action to
address climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
HTML http://citizensclimatelobby.org/oct-11-2013-oped-in-pacific-coast-business-times/
#Post#: 211--------------------------------------------------
Wide Support For EPA Across State & Party Lines
By: AGelbert Date: October 30, 2013, 6:58 pm
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Wide Support For EPA Across State & Party Lines
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/128fs318181.gif
Fighting emissions regulations by the Environmental Protection
Agency must be a winning national electoral issue, right?
Otherwise why would so many politicians fight so hard to allow
power plants to keep spewing pollution into the air?
Um, not so much. :o ;D An overwhelming majority of voters in
swing states across the country support EPA action to limit the
amount of carbon power plants can emit, according to a new
survey from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV).
By wide margins, voters in 11 states considered in play for 2014
Senate elections not only support emissions regulation, but
trust EPA to administer the policy and say they’re less likely
to vote for candidates who either oppose EPA’s proposal or deny
climate change.
[img width=640
height=380]
HTML http://i0.wp.com/cleantechnica.com/files/2013/10/2013-10-28-lcvhartgraphic.jpg[/img]
74% of voters support EPA’s proposals to limit power plant
emissions. That support cuts across states Barack Obama (73%)
and Mitt Romney (73%) as well as party identification for
Democrats (92%), independents (72%), and Republicans (58%). “The
anti-environmental message is a losing argument with the
American people,” blogged Gene Karpinski, LCV President.
The LCV poll derived these findings from telephone interviews on
October 9-13 with 1,113 likely voters in Alaska, Arkansas,
Colorado, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire,
North Carolina, and Virginia.
It’s also probably not surprising to learn the public wants EPA
to regulate emissions, not Congress. At the height of the
government shutdown, voters preferred EPA regulation to
Congressional action by a 5-to-1 margin, 66% to 12%
Anti-EPA Stance & Climate Denial Cost Votes
In fact, EPA opposition may actually turn out to be a harmful
policy position for 2014 candidates. Nearly half (48%) of all
voters said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate
who opposed emissions regulation, while only 17% said they’d be
more likely to vote for that candidate. By comparison, 44% of
voters said they’d be more likely to vote for a candidate who
supported power plant emissions regulations by EPA.
When presented with both sides of the argument (war on coal,
higher electricity prices, and job killer were used against
regulation while climate change, public health, and protecting
the planet were used for regulation), 64% of voters said they
wanted their senator to support EPA’s proposal.
Those same trends translate to voter perceptions about the
threat of climate change. 65% of voters say climate change is a
serious problem nationwide, and surprisingly say so at a higher
rate in Romney states (67%) compared to Obama states (64%).
And if candidates deny climate change, they may be shooting
their campaigns in the foot. 63% of voters said hearing their
Senate candidate deny climate change would make them view the
candidate less favorably than one recognizing basic science.
Pro-Climate Trends Taking Shape One Year Out
Election Day 2014 could be a major turning point for clean
energy and climate policy – if Republicans keep the House of
Representatives and take control of the Senate, action would
grind to a halt for the rest of Obama’s term. However, if
Democrats cut into the GOP’s House majority and hold the Senate,
Obama could cement his progressive legacy by pushing through
renewables support and emissions reduction goals.
LCV’s latest survey tracks with a bipartisan poll from July 2013
that found young voters “intensely supportive” of action to
fight climate change, and willing to punish those who ignore the
problem. Now that those trends are showing up across the wider
US population, on broader policy fronts, it might just be time
to scrap that climate-denier, anti-EPA playbook.
Read more at
HTML http://cleantechnica.com/2013/10/30/poll-74-us-voters-back-epa-power-plant-emissions-regulation/#A3wgwACM6TejgZfk.99
#Post#: 228--------------------------------------------------
Re: Pollution/Devolution of the Seas
By: Surly1 Date: October 31, 2013, 6:11 am
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This article brought to our attention By Gail Zawacki on the
Earth Matters FB page. It appeared in Foreign Affairs (!) and in
spite of that, we offer it here. It illustrates the extent to
which we are soiling our own nest through apathy and ignorance.
The Devolution of the Seas
HTML https://www.facebook.com/notes/doomstead-diner/the-devolution-of-the-seas/716242245071091
October 29, 2013 at 2:28pm
The Devolution of the Seas: The Consequences of Oceanic
Destruction
By Alan B. Sielen
HTML https://fbcdn-photos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/1379207_716244951737487_1069405648_a.jpg
Of all the threats looming over the planet today, one of the
most alarming is the seemingly inexorable descent of the world’s
oceans into ecological perdition. Over the last several decades,
human activities have so altered the basic chemistry of the seas
that they are now experiencing evolution in reverse: a return to
the barren primeval waters of hundreds of millions of years ago.
A visitor to the oceans at the dawn of time would have found an
underwater world that was mostly lifeless. Eventually, around
3.5 billion years ago, basic organisms began to emerge from the
primordial ooze. This microbial soup of algae and bacteria
needed little oxygen to survive. Worms, jellyfish, and toxic
fireweed ruled the deep. In time, these simple organisms began
to evolve into higher life forms, resulting in the wondrously
rich diversity of fish, corals, whales, and other sea life one
associates with the oceans today.
Yet that sea life is now in peril. Over the last 50 years -- a
mere blink in geologic time -- humanity has come perilously
close to reversing the almost miraculous biological abundance of
the deep. Pollution, overfishing, the destruction of habitats,
and climate change are emptying the oceans and enabling the
lowest forms of life to regain their dominance. The
oceanographer Jeremy Jackson calls it “the rise of slime”: the
transformation of once complex oceanic ecosystems featuring
intricate food webs with large animals into simplistic systems
dominated by microbes, jellyfish, and disease. In effect, humans
are eliminating the lions and tigers of the seas to make room
for the cockroaches and rats.
The prospect of vanishing whales, polar bears, bluefin tuna, sea
turtles, and wild coasts should be worrying enough on its own.
But the disruption of entire ecosystems threatens our very
survival, since it is the healthy functioning of these diverse
systems that sustains life on earth. Destruction on this level
will cost humans dearly in terms of food, jobs, health, and
quality of life. It also violates the unspoken promise passed
from one generation to the next of a better future.
Humans are eliminating the lions and tigers of the seas to make
room for the cockroaches and rats.
LAYING WASTE
The oceans’ problems start with pollution, the most visible
forms of which are the catastrophic spills from offshore oil and
gas drilling or from tanker accidents. Yet as devastating as
these events can be, especially locally, their overall
contribution to marine pollution pales in comparison to the much
less spectacular waste that finds its way to the seas through
rivers, pipes, runoff, and the air. For example, trash --
plastic bags, bottles, cans, tiny plastic pellets used in
manufacturing -- washes into coastal waters or gets discarded by
ships large and small. This debris drifts out to sea, where it
forms epic gyres of floating waste, such as the infamous Great
Pacific Garbage Patch, which spans hundreds of miles across the
North Pacific Ocean.
The most dangerous pollutants are chemicals. The seas are being
poisoned by substances that are toxic, remain in the environment
for a long time, travel great distances, accumulate in marine
life, and move up the food chain. Among the worst culprits are
heavy metals such as mercury, which is released into the
atmosphere by the burning of coal and then rains down on the
oceans, rivers, and lakes; mercury can also be found in medical
waste.
Hundreds of new industrial chemicals enter the market each year,
most of them untested. Of special concern are those known as
persistent organic pollutants, which are commonly found in
streams, rivers, coastal waters, and, increasingly, the open
ocean. These chemicals build up slowly in the tissues of fish
and shellfish and are transferred to the larger creatures that
eat them. Studies by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
have linked exposure to persistent organic pollutants to death,
disease, and abnormalities in fish and other wildlife. These
pervasive chemicals can also adversely affect the development of
the brain, the neurologic system, and the reproductive system in
humans.
Then there are the nutrients, which increasingly show up in
coastal waters after being used as chemical fertilizers on
farms, often far inland. All living things require nutrients;
excessive amounts, however, wreak havoc on the natural
environment. Fertilizer that makes its way into the water causes
the explosive growth of algae. When these algae die and sink to
the sea floor, their decomposition robs the water of the oxygen
needed to support complex marine life. Some algal blooms also
produce toxins that can kill fish and poison humans who consume
seafood.
The result has been the emergence of what marine scientists call
“dead zones” -- areas devoid of the ocean life people value
most. The high concentration of nutrients flowing down the
Mississippi River and emptying into the Gulf of Mexico has
created a seasonal offshore dead zone larger than the state of
New Jersey. An even larger dead zone -- the world’s biggest --
can be found in the Baltic Sea, which is comparable in size to
California. The estuaries of China’s two greatest rivers, the
Yangtze and the Yellow, have similarly lost their complex marine
life. Since 2004, the total number of such aquatic wastelands
worldwide has more than quadrupled, from 146 to over 600 today.
TEACH A MAN TO FISH -- THEN WHAT?
Another cause of the oceans’ decline is that humans are simply
killing and eating too many fish. A frequently cited 2003 study
in the journal Nature by the marine biologists Ransom Myers and
Boris Worm found that the number of large fish -- both
open-ocean species, such as tuna, swordfish, and marlin, and
large groundfish, such as cod, halibut, and flounder -- had
declined by 90 percent since 1950. The finding provoked
controversy among some scientists and fishery managers. But
subsequent studies have confirmed that fish populations have
indeed fallen dramatically.
In fact, if one looks back further than 1950, the 90 percent
figure turns out to be conservative. As historical ecologists
have shown, we are far removed from the days when Christopher
Columbus reported seeing large numbers of sea turtles migrating
off the coast of the New World, when 15-foot sturgeon bursting
with caviar leaped from the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, when
George Washington’s Continental army could avoid starvation by
feasting on swarms of shad swimming upriver to spawn, when dense
oyster beds nearly blocked the mouth of the Hudson River, and
when the early-twentieth-century American adventure writer Zane
Grey marveled at the enormous swordfish, tuna, wahoo, and
grouper he found in the Gulf of California.
Today, the human appetite has nearly wiped those populations
out. It’s no wonder that stocks of large predator fish are
rapidly dwindling when one considers the fact that one bluefin
tuna can go for hundreds of thousands of dollars at market in
Japan. High prices -- in January 2013, a 489-pound Pacific
bluefin tuna sold for $1.7 million at auction in Tokyo -- make
it profitable to employ airplanes and helicopters to scan the
ocean for the fish that remain; against such technologies,
marine animals don’t stand a chance.
Nor are big fish the only ones that are threatened. In area
after area, once the long-lived predatory species, such as tuna
and swordfish, disappear, fishing fleets move on to smaller,
plankton-eating fish, such as sardines, anchovy, and herring.
The overexploitation of smaller fish deprives the larger wild
fish that remain of their food; aquatic mammals and sea birds,
such as ospreys and eagles, also go hungry. Marine scientists
refer to this sequential process as fishing down the food chain.
The problem is not just that we eat too much seafood; it’s also
how we catch it. Modern industrial fishing fleets drag lines
with thousands of hooks miles behind a vessel, and industrial
trawlers on the high seas drop nets thousands of feet below the
sea’s surface. In the process, many untargeted species,
including sea turtles, dolphins, whales, and large sea birds
(such as albatross) get accidentally captured or entangled.
Millions of tons of unwanted sea life is killed or injured in
commercial fishing operations each year; indeed, as much as a
third of what fishermen pull out of the waters was never meant
to be harvested. Some of the most destructive fisheries discard
80 to 90 percent of what they bring in. In the Gulf of Mexico,
for example, for every pound of shrimp caught by a trawler, over
three pounds of marine life is thrown away.
As the oceans decline and the demand for their products rises,
marine and freshwater aquaculture may look like a tempting
solution. After all, since we raise livestock on land for food,
why not farm fish at sea? Fish farming is growing faster than
any other form of food production, and today, the majority of
commercially sold fish in the world and half of U.S. seafood
imports come from aquaculture. Done right, fish farming can be
environmentally acceptable. But the impact of aquaculture varies
widely depending on the species raised, methods used, and
location, and several factors make healthy and sustainable
production difficult. Many farmed fish rely heavily on processed
wild fish for food, which eliminates the fish-conservation
benefits of aquaculture. Farmed fish can also escape into rivers
and oceans and endanger wild populations by transmitting
diseases or parasites or by competing with native species for
feeding and spawning grounds. Open-net pens also pollute,
sending fish waste, pesticides, antibiotics, uneaten food,
diseases, and parasites flowing directly into the surrounding
waters.
DESTROYING THE EARTH’S FINAL FRONTIER
Yet another factor driving the decline of the oceans is the
destruction of the habitats that have allowed spectacular marine
life to thrive for millennia. Residential and commercial
development have laid waste to once-wild coastal areas. In
particular, humans are eliminating coastal marshes, which serve
as feeding grounds and nurseries for fish and other wildlife,
filter out pollutants, and fortify coasts against storms and
erosion.
Hidden from view but no less worrying is the wholesale
destruction of deep-ocean habitats. For fishermen seeking ever
more elusive prey, the depths of the seas have become the
earth’s final frontier. There, submerged mountain chains called
seamounts -- numbering in the tens of thousands and mostly
uncharted -- have proved especially desirable targets. Some rise
from the sea floor to heights approaching that of Mount Rainier,
in Washington State. The steep slopes, ridges, and tops of
seamounts in the South Pacific and elsewhere are home to a rich
variety of marine life, including large pools of undiscovered
species.
Today, fishing vessels drag huge nets outfitted with steel
plates and heavy rollers across the sea floor and over
underwater mountains, more than a mile deep, destroying
everything in their path. As industrial trawlers bulldoze their
way along, the surfaces of seamounts are reduced to sand, bare
rock, and rubble. Deep cold-water corals, some older than the
California redwoods, are being obliterated. In the process, an
unknown number of species from these unique islands of
biological diversity -- which might harbor new medicines or
other important information -- are being driven extinct before
humans even get a chance to study them.
Relatively new problems present additional challenges. Invasive
species, such as lionfish, zebra mussels, and Pacific jellyfish,
are disrupting coastal ecosystems and in some cases have caused
the collapse of entire fisheries. Noise from sonar used by
military systems and other sources can have devastating effects
on whales, dolphins, and other marine life. Large vessels
speeding through busy shipping lanes are also killing whales.
Finally, melting Arctic ice creates new environmental hazards,
as wildlife habitats disappear, mining becomes easier, and
shipping routes expand.
IN HOT WATER
As if all this were not enough, scientists estimate that
man-made climate change will drive the planet’s temperature up
by between four and seven degrees Fahrenheit over the course of
this century, making the oceans hotter. Sea levels are rising,
storms are getting stronger, and the life cycles of plants and
animals are being upended, changing migration patterns and
causing other serious disruptions.
Global warming has already devastated coral reefs, and marine
scientists now foresee the collapse of entire reef systems in
the next few decades. Warmer waters drive out the tiny plants
that corals feed on and depend on for their vivid coloration.
Deprived of food, the corals starve to death, a process known as
“bleaching.” At the same time, rising ocean temperatures promote
disease in corals and other marine life. Nowhere are these
complex interrelationships contributing to dying seas more than
in fragile coral ecosystems.
The oceans have also become more acidic as carbon dioxide
emitted into the atmosphere dissolves in the world’s water. The
buildup of acid in ocean waters reduces the availability of
calcium carbonate, a key building block for the skeletons and
shells of corals, plankton, shellfish, and many other marine
organisms. Just as trees make wood to grow tall and reach light,
many sea creatures need hard shells to grow and also to guard
against predators.
On top of all these problems, the most severe impact of the
damage being done to the oceans by climate change and ocean
acidification may be impossible to predict. The world’s seas
support processes essential to life on earth. These include
complex biological and physical systems, such as the nitrogen
and carbon cycles; photosynthesis, which creates half of the
oxygen that humans breathe and forms the base of the ocean’s
biological productivity; and ocean circulation. Much of this
activity takes place in the open ocean, where the sea and the
atmosphere interact. Despite flashes of terror, such as the
Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami of 2004, the delicate
balance of nature that sustains these systems has remained
remarkably stable since well before the advent of human
civilization.
But these complex processes both influence and respond to the
earth’s climate, and scientists see certain recent developments
as red flags possibly heralding an impending catastrophe. To
take one example, tropical fish are increasingly migrating to
the cooler waters of the Arctic and Southern oceans. Such
changes may result in extinctions of fish species, threatening a
critical food source especially in developing countries in the
tropics. Or consider that satellite data show that warm surface
waters are mixing less with cooler, deeper waters. This
reduction in vertical mixing separates near-surface marine life
from the nutrients below, ultimately driving down the population
of phytoplankton, which is the foundation of the ocean’s food
chain. Transformations in the open ocean could dramatically
affect the earth’s climate and the complex processes that
support life both on land and at sea. Scientists do not yet
fully understand how all these processes work, but disregarding
the warning signs could result in grave consequences.
A WAY FORWARD
Governments and societies have come to expect much less from the
sea. The base lines of environmental quality, good governance,
and personal responsibility have plummeted. This passive
acceptance of the ongoing destruction of the seas is all the
more shameful given how avoidable the process is. Many solutions
exist, and some are relatively simple. For example, governments
could create and expand protected marine areas, adopt and
enforce stronger international rules to conserve biological
diversity in the open ocean, and place a moratorium on the
fishing of dwindling fish species, such as Pacific bluefin tuna.
But solutions will also require broader changes in how societies
approach energy, agriculture, and the management of natural
resources. Countries will have to make substantial reductions in
greenhouse gas emissions, transition to clean energy, eliminate
the worst toxic chemicals, and end the massive nutrient
pollution in watersheds.
These challenges may seem daunting, especially for countries
focused on basic survival. But governments, international
institutions, nongovernmental organizations, scholars, and
businesses have the necessary experience and capacity to find
answers to the oceans’ problems. And they have succeeded in the
past, through innovative local initiatives on every continent,
impressive scientific advances, tough environmental regulation
and enforcement, and important international measures, such as
the global ban on the dumping of nuclear waste in the oceans.
So long as pollution, overfishing, and ocean acidification
remain concerns only for scientists, however, little will change
for the good. Diplomats and national security experts, who
understand the potential for conflict in an overheated world,
should realize that climate change might soon become a matter of
war and peace. Business leaders should understand better than
most the direct links between healthy seas and healthy
economies. And government officials, who are entrusted with the
public’s well-being, must surely see the importance of clean
air, land, and water.
The world faces a choice. We do not have to return to an oceanic
Stone Age. Whether we can summon the political will and moral
courage to restore the seas to health before it is too late is
an open question. The challenge and the opportunity are there.
If you have a password, see the original here:
HTML http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140164/alan-b-sielen/the-devolution-of-the-seas
#Post#: 230--------------------------------------------------
Re: Pollution
By: AGelbert Date: October 31, 2013, 3:08 pm
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[quote]The world faces a choice. [/quote]
And the 99% have made the right one. It's the 1% with their
massive financial leverage that need to wake up and smell the
coffee.
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#Post#: 250--------------------------------------------------
Making "lemonade' out of 600 Year Polluting 'lemons'
By: AGelbert Date: November 2, 2013, 10:34 pm
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Discarded Fishing Nets Turn Into Carpets And Benefits
Communities
Reducing Pollution AND Poverty
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ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqTUOPq6844&feature=player_embedde
d
An inspiring story of Win Win Win
Here is a business that harvests fishing nets from the
shorelines of the Philippines and uses the nylon they're made of
to create 100% recycled carpeting.
These fishing nets were traditionally just left on the shores,
polluting the environment for 600 years. Worse, they were
discarded in the water and caught fish and other marine life
that just lingered and died for no benefit.
"Networks" is a program that takes discarded fishing nets from
impoverished communities and recycles them into carpet tile. Not
only do the nets turn into something useful instead of polluting
the environment, but the program is set up to benefit the
community in the long term.
An inspiring story of Win Win Win that is just getting started.
Other materials are next!
--Bibi Farber
This video was produced by Sustainable Brands
- See more at:
HTML http://www.nextworldtv.com/videos/reducing-waste/discarded-fishing-nets-turn-into-carpets-and-benefits-communities.html#sthash.6cLeO4jE.dpuf
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