Third Rock From The Sun

Going Green - How To Make Your Home Environmental Friendly.

2008-02-27T18:33:00.000-08:00

With the world's environment in such a bad shape, people are now realizing how irresponsible choices and actions can have an impact on the environment and threaten their families health and well-being.

And going green and leading an environmental friendly lifestyle does not have to be about grand gestures and neither does it requires massive changes to the way you live. Simple changes to how you live, play and get around can make all the difference.

Whether we are recycling paper, saving energy or water, it is in these little, everyday actions that will go a long way in helping to heal the earth. The following are some tips that the average home owner can use in making their home environmentally friendly :

E - The Environmental Magazine

1. COMPACT FLUORESCENTS
Since the models introduced in the early 1980s, these light bulbs have come a long way. Today's compact fluorescents have electronic ballasts that switch on quickly, do not buzz and comes with warmer colours too.

Although they are more expensive than incandescent light bulbs, they can repay the cost by lasting years longer and using less electricity. For example, replacing just one 75-watt bulb with a 23-watt compact fluorescent in a typical apartment, will chop off an estimated US$12 off the electricity bill in one year.

2. DUAL-FLUSH TOILETS
With the dual-flush toilet using about six litres of water to flush solid wastes and three litres for liquids, studies have found that the dual-flush system reduced flush volumes by 68 percent in homes and saved 26 percent more water than a normal toilet flush.

As flushing the toilet accounts for about 30 percent of water usage in a typical home, this compares favorably with a traditional toilet flush which uses 11 or more litres of water for flushing. Better yet, the water you save will pay for the cost of buying the new cistern in less than 6 years.

3. OCCUPANCY SENSORS
While parents have not figured out how to get their children to turn off the lights in their bedrooms when not in use, great strides have been made in developing occupancy sensors. These sensors detects and switches off the lights in a room, automatically, when no-one is around. With models ranging from $40 to $80, occupancy sensors are a cost-effective way to save electricity.

4. CONTINUOUS-FLOW WATER HEATERS
Most homes have conventional hot-water tanks that are constantly fired up, keeping 250 to 300 litres of water ready for the next shower or sink full of dirty dishes. Approximately 4600 kilowatt hours of energy, annually, is needed to keep the tank heated.

By contrast, continuous-flow gas heaters do not use a tank but employ powerful burners to heat up water only when it is needed. Not only do these heaters save space as they are small and can be wall-mounted, up to 40 percent savings in energy usage can be achieve.

Greening Your Home
5. BAMBOO FLOORING
Wooden floors are gorgeous and perennially popular but the hardwoods traditionally used take decades to grow and are still harvested illegally and irresponsibly in rainforests, resulting in massive deforestation and subsequent loss of habitats for many species.

Switching to bamboo for flooring is a viable and attractive alternative. Not only does it grows faster but with most material coming from controlled bamboo forests in China, where it matures in four to five years with the plants regenerating themselves, it is also a sustainable alternative. When laminated into boards, bamboo is as tough as hardwoods and is just as beautiful with it's richly patterned grain.

6. RECYCLED TIMBER
If you are determined to use hardwoods in the construction of your home or furniture, one tree-friendly option is to buy timber salvaged from demolished buildings. Not only is recovered wood often cheaper than new timber, it is also notable for its acquired character which may includes markings or nail holes.

7. PLASTIC DECKING
Consider faux wood products for traditional decking which usually uses imported hardwoods from rapidly declining rainforests. There are companies that makes planking and other wood-like products from recycled plastics such as milk bottles and cling wrap. Some sells composite decking made from a combination of non-virgin wood and recycled plastic. Besides looking great, these products will not rot, crack, does not require staining or additives and are termites resistant.

8. SOLAR ROOFING
Besides cost, past drawbacks to using solar roofing include the clunky panels which make your home look strange and funny. With advances in solar technology however, you can now build or renovate using roofing products that has solar electricity capabilities built into it.

Made from toughened and laminated glass, they are designed to be installed in the same fashion as regular roofing tiles with the same durability. During installation, the tiles are wired into your home's electrical system and depending on weather condition and energy consumption, can often generate all the power your home needs. Better yet, on sunny days when the tiles generate more power than is needed, the current is fed into the power grid, making your meter run backwards and saving on your electricity bill.

9. INSULATION
It seems strange to insulate a home in the tropics but most heat transmitted into a room comes from the sun hitting the roof. To minimize this heat and saving on air-conditioning bills, insulation should be install between the roof and the ceiling as well as in the walls. Insulating your home will also keep the cool air produced by your air conditioners from simply escaping out your windows.

*Related posts :
Going Green Series
- Going Green At Home
- Going Green At Work
- Calculating Your Carbon Footprints
- Sustainable Solutions - From Plastic To Fuel

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The Myth of Biofuels.

2008-02-18T17:23:00.000-08:00

"We cannot afford to ignore the consequences of converting land for biofuels. Doing so means we might unintentionally promote fuel alternatives that are worse than fossil fuels they are designed to replace." - Joe Fargione, The Nature Conservancy

Are biofuels all that they are made out to be - a silver bullet, a panacea for reducing carbon emissions and mitigating the effects of climate change?

Biofuels - made from the processing of food crops like corn, soybeans and palm oil - have been embraced widely as an essential solution to global warming and are viewed favorably as better than fossil fuels because the carbon released when they are burned are balance by a comparable amount of carbon that the plants absorbed when they grew.

Oilseed plantation

But this basis for adopting biofuels, as an alternative to fossil fuels, to reduce carbon emissions is fundamentally flawed as it does not takes into account the carbon emitted by the process of turning plants into fuels, especially from the conversion of land for growing biofuel crops.

Two recent studies published in the journal Science have, in fact, indicated that the rush to grow crops for biofuels have actually increased greenhouse gas emissions rather than reducing it. "Any biofuel that uses productive land is going to create more greenhouse gas emissions than it saves," said Timothy Searchinger of Princeton University, a lead author of one of the studies.

Called by some environmentalists as the "deforestation fuel", huge amount of natural land are currently being converted to meet the global demand for biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel, and the clearance of forests and grasslands releases vast amounts of carbon - far more than the carbon spared by burning biofuels instead of petrol.

Research by the Nature Conservancy estimated that the clearing of grasslands and forests for biofuel plantations releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gases that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land. "So, for the next 93 years, you are making climate change worse, just at the time when we need to be bringing down carbon emissions," said Joseph Fargione, of the Nature Conservancy.
Biofuel harvesting
Even using existing farmland to grow biofuel crops instead of food crops, increases greenhouse gas emissions because food production would simply be shifted to other parts of the world, resulting in the destruction of more forests and grasslands to make way for agriculture. And as all biofuel agriculture causes habitats destruction, it further exacerbates the massive loss of natural ecosystems and biodiversity in recent years.

With global production of ethanol almost doubling between 2000 and 2005 and biodiesel output quadrupling to meet the rising demand for biofuels, especially in Europe, much of the biofuels come from Brazil where pristine forests in the Amazon are being burned to plant more sugar and soybeans, and also from South East Asia, especially Indonesia, where rainforests are cleared to make way for oil palm plantations, destroying the habitats of many species like the orangutans. Species are actually dying for our driving.

The rush to embrace biofuels has also contributed to the recent worldwide increases in food prices especially grains, sugar and vegetable oil, and prices are expected to rise even further as farmers shift their emphasis from food crops to biofuel crops to cash in on the demand.

While biofuels does have a part to play in our efforts to reduce carbon emissions, it can only be as part of an overall strategy that must include reducing energy usage, improving fuel efficiency in production and transport, and a diversity of sustainable energy resources.

It is frightening that something so well-intentioned can turn out to be damaging to our environment instead and there is now an urgent need to turn attention towards producing biofuels that do not require cropping such as waste from agriculture and forest lands, and woody biomass grown on marginal lands unsuitable for crop production, as they do not require the conversion of land.

*Sources
- Science journal
- IPPC, United Nations
- The Nature Conservancy
- World Conservation Union
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

*Related posts :
- Man & The Loss Of Biodiversity
- Deforestation - How The World Is Losing Its Cool
- Burps, Flatulence & A Killer Warming Gas

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Japan's Whale Hunt - Barbarism At Its Worst.

2008-02-09T12:21:00.000-08:00

"It is explicitly clear from these images that this is the indiscriminate killing of whales, where you have a whale and its calf killed in this way. To claim that this is in any way scientific is to continue the charade that has surrounded this issue from day one."- Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett.

A shocking photo, released recently by the Australian government, on Japan's whale hunt in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in Antarctic waters, left me disgusted at the barbarity and extreme cruelty of the Japanese government in the needless slaughter of whales under the guise of scientific research.

The picture, one of many, showed two bleeding whales - an endangered mother minke whale and her calf - being dragged aboard a Japanese whaling ship after being harpooned.

Because of their sheer mass and complex vascular systems, whales do not die immediately after being harpooned but have been known to survive for up to an hour. To fully understand just how much pain whales go through after being harpooned, readers are urged to read Magical Melodies And The Songs of Pain, and will come to understand the distress and terror that these majestic creatures have to endured.

And a charade is what this has been. Despite claims of killing whales in the name of science, Japanese whaling isn’t about science at all and is simply commercial whaling in disguise, with the meat being viewed as a delicacy and sold to supermarkets and restaurants.

Non-lethal methods to study whales such as photo identification, tagging, DNA analysis and observation experiments already exist. Without a single harpoon being fired, data from satellite tagging of whales, harmless skin biopsies and fluke identification have yielded valuable information about the migration patterns of whales.

And the International Whaling Commission has clearly stated it does not need the data obtained from killing whales and has, in fact, passed forty-one resolutions critical of Japan’s research whaling program.

The slaughtering of endangered whales for food is also totally unnecessary and whale meat is unsuitable as a food source as it is often extremely toxic and is dangerous to eat. Whales accumulate environmental pollutants that bond with their blubber, such as polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) and dioxin, and also heavy metals such as methylmercury. The effects on humans who consume contaminated whale meat or blubber include cancer, nerve damage, reproductive and developmental disorders and liver damage, to name a few.

These majestic cetaceans are highly evolved animals with a complex social life and are sensitive, social animals - they call out to each other over the vast expanses of the oceans - with highly developed nervous systems and have a profound capacity to suffer distress, terror and pain.

The international community has to act and put an immediate stop to this barbaric practice as the killing of whales is totally unjust, terribly inhuman and has no place in modern civilized society.

For individuals, we can help to spread the barbarism of Japan's whale hunt by writing about it or signing a petition, "Why Use A Harpoon...When We Can Use A Canon?" organize by Green Peace, to register our indignation. These two simple initiatives will reinforce the Australian government's determination to stop Japan's whale hunt in its own backyard. Japan has got away with murder for much too long.

"It is now clear to the world that Japan continues to undermine the international efforts to conserve and protect whales despite the International Whaling Commission repeatedly urging Japan to refrain from hunting whales." - International Whaling Commission.

*Related articles :
- Magical Melodies & The Songs Of Pain.
- Whaling Photos Distressing : Garett - The Sydney Morning Herald
- Japan's Shame Files - Shocking Photos Of Whale Hunt - The Sydney Morning Herald
- Why Use A Harpoon...When You Can Use A Canon - A Petition By Green Peace

Burps, Flatulence and A Killer Warming Gas.

2008-02-03T05:57:00.000-08:00

"Methane concentrations have increased about 150 percent in the air since 1750 and now far exceed the natural range of the past 650,000 years. And human activities are largely to blame." - United Nation IPPC

While much have been written about the contribution of carbon dioxide - released from the unbridled burning of fossils fuels and deforestation - to global warming, there is another greenhouse gas, much more potent and efficient in trapping atmospheric heat than carbon dioxide, that gets far less public attention in our efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change : Methane.

With a warming potential that is 23 times more than carbon dioxide, Methane is responsible for nearly as much global warming as all other non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases put together. Once emitted, it lasts about ten years in our atmosphere before further oxidizing into carbon dioxide and water. According to climate scientist Dr.Paul Fraser of Australia, a fifth of all greenhouse gas-induced global warming has been due to methane since pre-industrial time and it is the second-largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions worldwide after carbon dioxide.

Methane is produced from a number of sources, mainly from human activities, like landfills, coal mining and forest fires but the number one source worldwide is animal agriculture.

Animal farming produces more than 100 million tons of methane every year with about 85 per cent of this produced in the digestive traits of livestock like cows, sheep and goats. A byproduct of digestion, cattle and other livestock animals produce methane when organisms in their stomachs break down the fiber in the grasses and grains that they eat, and through their belching and flatulence, emit methane and nitrous oxide, another potent greenhouse gas, into our atmosphere.

It is estimated that a single cow produces between 80 to 110 kilograms of methane a day and considering the hundreds of millions of livestock animals worldwide, the amount of methane produced is enormous.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, cattle emit about 5.5 million tons of methane every year in the United States alone, while in New Zealand, emissions from animal farming constituted about half of all greenhouse gas emissions from that country. Behaving like gas factories, livestock animals are responsible for about 18 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Besides the methane produced, animal agriculture is also a major contributor to serious environmental degradations like water pollution, from the collection of livestock waste, and deforestation - where forests are cleared for livestock farming - which had led to widespread loss in biodiversity of species in recent years. And as living standards rise in the developing world, the situation is expected to deteriorate with sharp increases in methane emissions as the demand for meat and dairy products rises.

With so much of the world's focus on reduction of carbon dioxide emissions - from capping emissions from power plants to investing in alternative energy resources - to mitigate the effects of climate change, we are overlooking the contribution of non-carbon dioxide gas emissions like methane to the rise in global temperatures.

Data published by Dr. James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies have actually indicated that non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases like methane are responsible for as much global warming as carbon dioxide, if not more. By focusing solely on carbon dioxide reduction, governments and environmental organizations are actually neglecting other sources of greenhouse gas emissions and alternative strategies for reducing global temperatures.

Unlike carbon dioxide, which can remain in the atmosphere for more than a century, methane cycles out of the atmosphere in about ten years, so lowering methane emissions can quickly translate to cooling of the earth. Similarly, unlike the efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions which can have devastating impact on economies, especially of developing countries, reduction in methane gas emissions is much easier to achieve.

On Earth - The No. 1
Environmental Magazine

From the introduction of additives like enzyme inhibitors, to block the production of methane in the rumen of livestock, and supplementing the animals' diet with amino acids like cycteine, which reduces the amount of methane produced, to better agricultural practices to the straight forward capture of methane from landfills and coal mines to burn for power, reduction in methane gas emissions is a much more cheaper, attainable and feasible target than carbon dioxide reduction.

And like all the environmental issues facing mankind in recent years, it is again at the individual level that the greatest reduction in methane gas emissions will come from. Just by eating less meat or better still, adopting a vegetarian diet, will lead to lesser demand and not only will it reduce methane gas emissions from animal agriculture, it will also result in a cleaner environment and a healthier you.

*Sources :
- Earth Save
- Live Science Daily
- World Wildlife Federation
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
- U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

*Related posts :
- Man and The Loss Of Biodiversity
- The Convenient But Deadly Plastic Bag
- A Planet In Peril

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Sustainable Solutions - From Plastic To Fuel.

2008-01-26T09:51:00.001-08:00

Plastic waste, the scourge of the environment - clogging landfills and responsible for the deaths of thousands of marine life every year - have been given a new lease of life through an exciting new technology which converts waste plastic into useable fuels and gases.

In what is a world's first, Enviro-Hub Holdings, a main-board listed waste management and recycling company in Singapore, has announced the construction of a S$50 million plastic-to-fuel commercial plant after researching for a long-term environmental solution for plastic waste since 2005.

E-The Environmental Magazine

Using a patented technology developed in India, for which Enviro-Hub holds an exclusive license, the company built a pilot plant that was able to revert plastics back to its constituent - oil. The technology heats waste plastic with a special catalyst that breaks it down into 85 per cent diesel, 10 per cent liquid petroleum gas and 5 per cent coke.

And the good news is that the diesel produced - unlike older technologies - will have a low sulphur content and lower carbon dioxide emissions. The heating process of converting the waste plastic into fuel will also be emissions-free.

Enviro-Hub's new facility will initially be able to take up to 100 tonnes of waste plastic a day and at about 30,000 tonnes a year, it will produce 20 million litres of diesel, four to five million kilograms of gas and 1,500 tonnes of coke. The plant will also be self-generating, using about 5 per cent of the fuel it produces to power itself with the rest being sold to other industries. There are also plans to expand the plant's capacity to handle up to 50,000 tonnes of plastic waste by the end of 2008.

With an estimated 4 billion tonnes of plastic waste discarded worldwide every year, the commercial potential is huge and Enviro-Hub's initiative will go a long way in coming to grips with plastic waste - a persistent environmental scourge - and is a great example of using technology to come up with sustainable solutions for environmental issues.

*Related post :
- The Conve nient But Deadly Plastic Bag.

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The Convenient But Deadly Plastic Bag.

2008-01-19T14:24:00.000-08:00

"Worldwide, an estimated 4 billion plastic bags end up as litter each year. Tied end to end, that’s enough to circle the earth 63 times." - Algalita Marine Research Foundation.

The plastic bag, an apt icon of consumerism and convenience, is the single most common consumer item on Earth, numbering in the trillions. Useful and durable, those plastic bags that you use to bag your groceries and shopping purchases are at the same time deadly pollutants, responsible for the deaths of thousands of marine life and are the scourge of the environment.

Plastic trash in China

Introduce to modern society about 25 years ago, plastic bags are derived from a non-renewable natural resource - oil. Extremely durable and stable, they do not biodegrade but instead photo-degrade under sunlight, fragmenting into smaller toxic bits and contaminating soil, choking waterways and rivers, polluting our oceans and killing wildlife and livestock.

With an estimated 4 billion plastic bags discarded each year and their ability to persist for thousands of years in our environment, plastic bags are the leading cause of deaths of marine life. Often mistaken for food, hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags. Estimates from the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation indicated that more than 50 percent of all marine litter is some form of plastic and a million birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die every year from ingestion of plastic or entanglement.

Turtle feeding on plastic
The Northern Pacific Gyre, a great vortex of ocean currents about 1,000 miles off the coast of California, is an astounding example of the extend of plastic pollution of our oceans. In this vortex, dubbed the "Trash Vortex", lies a swirling mass of plastic trash with an area that is twice the size of Texas. "It's an endless stream of incessant plastic particles everywhere you look. Fifty or sixty years ago, there were no plastic out there." said Dr. Marcus Eriksen, director of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation.

Plastic trash also have the ability to act as chemical sponges, attracting and concentrating the many persistent organic pollutants like PCB and DDT in our oceans which enters into the food chain when eaten by animals. As not all plastic floats - about 70 per cent of discarded plastic sinks to the ocean floor - they also smother corals and kill many marine species living at the bottom of the oceans.

Coral smother by plastic bags

And countries around the world are waking up to this scourge of our environment. From Europe to China to tiny Singapore, through a combination of heavy taxes, outright banning or eliminating the widely used thinnest plastic bags, countries are trying to get a grip on plastic pollution.

With a consumption rate of about 3 billion plastic bags a day, China recently announced the banning of the production of the widely used ultra-thin plastic bags and forbidding its supermarkets and shops from handing out free plastic bags from June this year. Kenya and Uganda have banned flimsy plastic bags by introducing minimum thickness requirements with many supermarkets giving away a free reusable basket with a minimum purchase.

An extremely successful plastic levy - at 15 euros per bag - introduced in Ireland in 2003 reduced plastic bag consumption by about 90% while tiny Singapore, where a whopping 2.5 billion plastic bags are used each year, has its Bring Your Own Bag Day every month. Australia has also joined in and recently announced that it will phased out plastic bags in supermarkets by the end of the year.

While legislations, levies and exploring technology to breakdown plastic back to oil will have an immediate impact on the reduction of plastic bags usage, it is at the individual level that the greatest contribution will come from. Adopting simple measures in our daily lives like using reusable shopping bags, foregoing double bagging for our purchases, avoiding plastics for our needs, proper disposal, reducing and reusing can go a long way in addressing an urgent environmental issue.

*Sources :
- BBC News
- Planet Ark
- Green Peace
- Algalita Marine Research Foundation
- Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation

*Related posts :
- Sustainable Solutions - From Plastic To Fuel
- Man and The Loss of Biodiversity
- Global Warming and The Cradle of Life

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Deforestation - How The World Is Losing its Cool

2008-01-13T00:44:00.000-08:00

"Over the past 150 years, deforestation has contributed an estimated 30 percent of the atmospheric build-up of CO2. It is also a significant driving force behind the loss of genes, species and critical ecosystem services." - Climate, Biodiversity and Forests, World Resources Institute, 1998

From Indonesia to central Africa to the Amazon basin, the world's great forests, fueled by an insatiable demand for timber, are being lost at an alarming rate. Imagine losing forests the combined size of England, Scotland and Wales - about 20 million hectares - every year, with more than half being pristine primary forests and releasing millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Accounting for more greenhouse gas emissions than all the vehicles in the world, deforestation is a major contributor to global warming and accounts for about 20 per cent of all global carbon dioxide emissions. It is also the leading cause of loss in biodiversity and extinction of many species.

Deforestation in Indonesia

In Indonesia, second only to Brazil in terrestrial biodiversity, forests the size of the state of Maryland in the US are being lost every year - much of it from illegal logging - making it the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, after US and China. Between 1997 and 1998, large scale slash-and-burn in Sumatra and Kalimantan resulted in the loss of more than 5 million hectares of pristine rainforests, and the ancient Paradise Forests in Papua New Guinea are being destroyed faster than any other forest on the planet.

Indonesia is, in fact, the world's fastest forest destroyer. According to Greenpeace, between 2000 and 2005, an area of forest equivalent to 300 soccer pitches was destroyed every hour. At this rate, the country's 133.5 million ha of forests will disappear within 47 years, along with many rare plants and animals unique to the archipelago.

Deforestation in Amazon
Alarming deforestation, for timber and land for cattle ranching, is also occurring in Brazil - home to the Amazon basin which contains the planet's largest tropical rainforest. About a fifth of Amazon's forests has already been destroyed with the forests in the state of Parana almost completely cleared by the middle of the 20th century, a duration taking less than 30 years.

"Our recent report indicates that 60 per cent of the Amazon's forests could be gone by 2030, releasing billion of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, with major contributions to global warming", said Dr. Meg Symington, WWF's priority leader for the Amazon. As a result, about 75 per cent of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation and forest fires - mainly in the Amazon - making it the fourth largest climate polluter in the world.

Deforestation in Africa

In Africa, approximately 150 million acres of forests were lost between 1980 and 1995. According to World Wildlife Federation, West Africa had around 500,000 sq. km of coastal rainforests at the turn of the century but by 1997, only 22.8 per cent of West Africa's moist rainforests remain. Largely depleted by commercial exploitation - logging and conversion for agriculture - Africa is now losing forests at an estimated rate of 9 million acres each year. In Madagascar, an island off the southeast of Africa, only about 10 percent of its lush forest remains.

Similiar large scale destruction of our planet's forests can be also be found in China, Vietnam, Philippines and Ecuador.

Pristine rainforest
Often described as the Earth's lungs, forests are natural carbon sinks, soaking up and sequestrating CO2 from the atmosphere while releasing oxygen during photosynthesis but the unprecedented scale of deforestation in recent years had led to the release of millions of tons of carbon dioxide from decaying plants and trees, leading to higher worldwide temperatures.

Besides contributing to higher worldwide temperatures, deforestation also has other environmental implications. As forests play an important role in regulating and stabilising the world's climate, the unabated deforestation has led to disruption in rainfall patterns, altering natural water cycles, soil erosion - through the loss of forest canopies which reduces the impact of rainfall on soil - and catastrophic flooding.

Indonesia's slash-and-burn technique of forests clearing during the 90s' had also caused widespread pollution in South East Asia. The haze from these fires blanketed much of neighbouring countries like Malaysia, Singapore and even northern Australia, risking the health of millions of people and causing an estimated loss of US$4 billion in tourism revenue.

Deforestation is the leading cause of the loss of ecosystems, disappearance of numerous indigenous people and cultures, and the extinction of some of the rarest plants and animals on the planet. This unsustainable exploitation of nature is detrimental to both biodiversity and mankind, and unless actions are taken to halt deforestation and recognise the natural value of these ancient forests, they would virtually disappear as functioning ecosystems, resulting in the loss of a legacy that took thousands of years to form.

*Sources :
- Greenpeace
- World Wildlife Federation
- The Nature Conservancy
- Rainforest Action Network
- Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, United Nations
- Climate, Biodiversity and Forests, World Resources Institute

*Related post : Man & The Loss Of Biodiversity

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Another Year Of Freakish Weather Patterns.

2008-01-08T08:22:00.000-08:00

Bush fires in Australia

Australia started the new year with a spate of extreme weather conditions from heatwaves, heavy rainfall to flooding. Major cities, like Perth and Melbourne, suffered heatwaves with bushfires raging in the east and west coast while in Sydney, huge waves of up to 3 m high pounded the beaches, forcing their closure to the public. In northern Darwin, Cyclone Helen wrought havoc with winds of up to 130 kmh and a stretch of New South Wales coast was declared a natural disaster zone after five rivers in the east coast broke their banks amid heavy rainfall, with the flooding forcing people to flee their homes, submerging properties and bridges.

Winter storm in US
According to Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, Australia experienced its sixth warmest year on record last year, with an average annual temperature of 21.8 deg C, some 0.67 deg C above normal. The southern states of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, as well as the major agricultural zone of Murray Darling Basin, experienced their hottest year since 1910.

These areas are home to the majority of Australia's population and formed about 75 per cent of the country's irrigated farmlands. "What we have seen in the past year is a confirmation of what we have known is going on. Australia is warming; it is warming quickly," said Mr. David Jones of the National Climate Centre. What made the higher temperatures abnormal was the fact that it came about as the country experienced the La Nina phenomenon - usually associated with cooler and wetter conditions.

Heavy flooding in Malaysia

Similiar freakish weather behaviour were also reported in other countries for the new year. In the US west coast, winter storms left hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in California, Oregon and Washington without power. Emergencies were declared in three counties in California and about 160 km of the Interstate 80 highway was closed. In Malaysia, sudden monsoon storms and heavy downpours caused heavy flooding in the states of Johor, Pahang and Kelantan, submerging homes and leaving thousands of people stranded without food and power.

Harbin Ice Festival
In China, higher temperatures are even hurting the most famous tourist attraction in the northern city of Harbin - its annual ice sculpture contest. Average annual temperatures in the city, dubbed the "City of Ice", hit 6.6 deg C last year, the highest since record-keeping began. Ice sculptures and lanterns melted right after they were sculpted and as the temperatures rises, the period of ice and snow activities shortened dramatically. "The average temperature of winter in Harbin is 5 deg C higher than historical records," said a senior meteorologist from the Heilongjiang Observatory.

The unbridled burning of fossil fuels have led to higher worldwide temperatures and changing weather patterns. With the world projected to experience a warmer 2008, and unless man can come to grips with reducing carbon emissions to mitigate the effects of climate change, the freakish and unpredictable weather patterns seems like here to stay

*Sources :
- NASA
- BBC News
- Science journal Nature
- Bureau of Meterology, Australia
- Heilongjiang Observatory, China

*Related post : The Impact of Global Warming on Rainfall and Flooding.

Global Problem, Local Solutions

2007-12-29T07:07:00.000-08:00

"If we want to tackle climate change, we have to be local. Our aim is for the cities to push the governments to act on climate change." - Pedro Ballesteros Torres, manager of the European Commission's Sustainable Energy Europe campaign.

With the inability of governments around the world to take immediate and concrete actions to reduce greenhouse gases emissions, many cities, towns and even villages across Europe are forging ahead with their own initiatives to cut carbon emissions and mitigate the effects of climate change and global warming.

From Vaxjo, in southern Sweden, to major cities like London, Munich and Paris, Europeans are taking the lead and using novel ways to reduce their carbon footprints, with some of them achieving emission cuts that exceeded those prescribed by the Kyoto Protocol. Here are some heartwarming examples of what an environment-conscious citizenry can achieved :

Woodchip fuel, Vaxjo

Vaxjo, Sweden
This southern city of 78,000 in Sweden, which aims to be completely free of fossil fuels eventually, has been using leftover products from forestry industry and sawmills, namely fir and pine chips, to generate electricity. Its centralised "district heating system", running on the low-emitting woodchip fuel, provides about 90 per cent of local heating needs. Ashes from the process are also brought back to fertilize the forest.

With emissions from cars being a major contributor to carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere, Vaxjo has also been encouraging its citizens to use bicycles as the main mode of transport. Snow is cleared from the cycle paths before roads and its bicycle network has also been expanded. So successful has been its efforts that Vaxjo has managed to cut greenhouse gases emissions by 30 per cent since 1996 and is confident it can get a 50 per cent cut by 2010. Visitors from all over the world also come to see what can be done on a local level.

Photo-voltaic panels, Woking
Woking, England
An early pioneer in adopting environmental-friendly practices, this town south of London has gained a reputation as Britain's greenest city. With its solar-powered street lights, photo-voltaic panels and energy-efficient power generators, it has managed to cut carbon emissions by about 20 per cent since 1990. Enterprising solutions like installing photo-voltaic panels on top of glass-roofed structures along its roads, generates more than 50,000Kwh of energy every year and reduces carbon dioxide emissions by more than 40 tonnes annually. Thanks to its alternative energy supplies, parts of Woking will remain lit even if the national energy grid were to go down.

Gussing, Austria
This tiny town in Austria is the first community in the European Union to cut carbon emissions by more than 90 percent since 1995. Using a technology that produces natural gas from scrap lumber, which is use to drive the town's power plants, Gussing generates about 22 megawatt hours of power a year, more than enough to meet its energy needs and sells the surplus of 8 megawatt hours to the national grid.

Big signs of "Eco-Energy Land" greet visitors to the town and its alternative and renewable energy movements have spawned an entire "eco" industry with many companies producing power, heat and fuels from sawdust, corn, cooking oil and creating more than 1,000 jobs. So determined is this tiny outpost in Austria in seeking alternative energy that it is now embarking on a major project to harness the power of the sun through a 50 million euros plant built by Solon AG Fuer Solartechnik of Germany, which is scheduled to begin operation next year.

"Velib" bicycle scheme, Paris

Cities
Major metropolises in Europe are also doing their part in reducing their carbon footprints. In Barcelona, through its Solar Thermal Ordinance, all new and renovated buildings are required to be fitted with solar panels to generate at least 60 per cent of the energy needed for hot water production while in Munich, old buildings are been refurbished to tackle energy wastage through poor insulation.

The Europeans are also tackling the fastest-growing source of carbon-emissions in cities : transport. Paris has its "Velib" free bicycle rental scheme, a self-service bicycle-hire scheme that is available round the clock to encourage people to cut down usage of cars. Similar bicycle schemes can also be found in Copenhagen, Helsinki and Brussels. In London, its much-admired congestion charge has tremendously cut down weekday traffic through the city centre. And through the Climate Alliance of European Cities, a grouping of more than 1,400 cities and municipalities across Europe, the Europeans have also set the ambitious target of cutting carbon emissions by 10 per cent every five years.

Cities covers just 1 per cent of the earth's surface but are home to more than half the world's population. They consume about 75 per cent of global energy and are responsible for 80 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases emissions. As a result, it is cities that have an important role to play in mitigating the effects of climate change and it is also in cities that climate and sustainability solutions are to be found.

The actions by the Europeans are definitive and shining examples of what the local populace can do and achieve in the battle against global warming, proving that it does not need international agreements like the Kyoto Protocol or the recently ended contentious Bali Climate Talks to come to grips with climate change.

*Sources :
- The Nature Conservancy
- Climate Alliance of European Cities
- Sustainable Energy Europe Campaign, European Commission
- Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, United Nations

*Related posts :
- A Planet In Peril
- From Ice To Water
- The Kyoto Song And The Bali Dance

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Bali Climate Talks - A Nation Who Lost The Plot.

2007-12-15T09:52:00.000-08:00

"....So, I am going to speak an inconvenient truth. My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali," - Former US Vice-President Al Gore.

Having followed the progress of the Bali Climate Talks and waiting in anticipation for the outcome, I was compelled to ditch today's post on deforestation around the world in favour of a piece on the divisive behaviour of some nations, especially the United States, in the Bali Talks.

Exasperated and disgusted are understatements of how I felt. What's with the moral police and champion of democracy of the world? So quick on the draw with Iraq and Afghanistan and condemnation of human rights abuses around the world, but seemingly myopic, almost blind to the urgent task at hand to come up with a coherent agenda to tackle global warming. The behaviour of the United States at the Bali Talks seems like a nation with a leader who is morally bankrupt.

A recent headline by Associated Press : "US obstructing progress of talks, says Gore," spoke volumes of a nation who have both the ability and resources, but most importantly, a moral responsibility, by being the world's largest emitter of carbon emissions, to take on a leadership role in pressing for a solution to global warming but instead, chooses not to do so.

The moral responsibility and need for the United States to take decisive actions to curb carbon emissions cannot be overstated. Recent statistics released by the Washington-based National Environmental Trust, showed that 42 US states individually emitted more carbon dioxide per year than 50 developing countries combined and 3 states individually emitted more CO2 than 100 developing countries. The US President home state of Texas, with just 24 million people, emits 696 million tonnes of CO2 per year, much more than Britain, whose 60 million people emit 578 million tonnes annually.

It is one thing not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol (which is already bad enough), but to throw spanners in the works at every opportunity, adopting a divisive stance and creating dissension among nations in an attempt to derail the Bali Talks smacks of the behaviour of an over-sized bully out of control. From opposing mandatory carbon emission caps, going off in a different direction with its unilateral decision to have its own climate change talks to the constant proposing of amendments, even at the end of negotiations, the United States arrived at the Bali Talks without any intention of working with the rest of the world in forging a common consensus. Not only was the EU at odds with the US position, but all the members of the G77 developing countries, including China, found US demands that all countries be treated the same way, illogically and unacceptable.

While the United States is not the only country that opposed mandatory carbon dioxide emission caps, the Bali Climate Talks - already saddled with a whole range of contentious issues to deal with, from equity, worries of slowing of economic growth to calculation of carbon emissions caps by per capita basis or by per volume basis between developed and developing nations - certainly can do without the needless posturing of the United States. A statement by the delegate from Papua New Guinea, Kevin Conrad, aptly summed up the general feelings about the behaviour of the United States : "If you are not willing to lead, then get out of the way!" - a position that i had adopted and thought was necessary in order to achieve a modicum of progress in the Bali talks in my previous post - The Kyoto Song And The Bali Dance.

Well, the Bali Climate Talks are now over and the United States should be patting themselves on the back, as the outcome was a compromised piece of watered-down "Bali Road Map", with no mandatory and binding carbon emissions capping, but 2 more years of further negotiations leading to a new accord to replace the Kyoto Protocol by 2009. The original goal of the Bali Climate Talks to cut industrialised nations' carbon emissions by between 25 per cent to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 was eliminated and relegated to a footnote, replaced by vague goals like "....developed countries should take the lead in driving cuts in emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases," and "....developing nations should consider measurable and reportable national mitigation actions." More talks, more song and dance.

While I am not totally surprised by the failure of the Bali Talks to come up with concrete and decisive actions to deal with global warming, considering the complexity of the talks as the threat of climate change cuts across all aspects of our life and challenges the very structure and system that our current societies are built on, what actually surprised me was the continual faux pax that the guy in the White House, with that funny-sounding plant name, keeps doing in recent years, from the fiasco in Iraq to his handling of the sub-prime mortgage crisis in US.

With the latest "performance" by the United States at the Bali Talks, I doubt he can look at his children and children's children eyes and say he did what was best for the only home we will ever have. My children will certainly say he did not.

*Related articles :
- Climate Talks Near End Amid Row - BBC News
- Al Gore Lays Blame Of Bali Stalemate On US - Reuters
- The Kyoto Song And The Bali Dance

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The Kyoto Song And The Bali Dance

2007-12-07T10:18:00.000-08:00

"...the world is already at or above the worst-case scenarios in terms of emissions and we are moving past the most pessimistic estimates of the IPPC." - Germany's Kiel Institute for World Economy.

Representatives from more than 190 nations are meeting in Bali this week for talks to find a successor to the emissions-curbing Kyoto Protocol, which ends in 2012. The outcome of the 13th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will define the world's response to the threat of global warming and climate change in years to come.

Will the Bali talks result in a universal framework of concrete actions and commitments from the world's industrialised nations to adopt binding and absolute targets to curb and reduce greenhouse gases or will it be just another song and dance showpiece like the Kyoto Protocol?

The Kyoto Protocol came out of the UNFCCC and was adopted in Japan in Dec 1997 with an expiry in 2012. The Protocol committed 36 developed countries to reducing emissions of six greenhouse gases by around 5 per cent below 1990 levels and the target must be met between 2008 and 2012.

But since its inception 10 years ago, global carbon dioxide levels have increased instead, from 365 parts per million in 1998 to 383 parts per million today and the United States, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases with an annual emission of more than 6 billion metric tons, has yet to ratify the Protocol, with Australia signing it just recently with its change of government. Countries like Canada, while being a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, has largely ignored it with emissions up by about 25% from 1990 levels, without taking environmental degradations like deforestation in Canada into account.

Clearly, the 36 developed countries under the Kyoto Protocol have failed to deliver on their promises and carbon emissions have actually continued to rise in many industrialised countries that ratify the Protocol. Emissions have also soared in developing countries, like China, India and Brazil, who have ratified the accord but were not required to cut emissions. According to a report recently released by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, explosive economic growth and voracious coal consumption has led China to overtake the U.S. in CO2 emissions in 2006.

Deforestation in Indonesia

Large scale deforestation, a major contributor to global warming and which accounts for about 20 per cent of all global carbon dioxide emissions, is still unchecked in Indonesia and Brazil. Recent reports by Greenpeace indicated that between 2000 and 2005, an area of forest equivalent to 300 soccer pitches was destroyed every hour in Indonesia, making it the third largest CO2 polluter.

Probably the only positive outcome of the Kyoto Protocol was the increase in awareness among the general public and there is now a greater readiness among the people to act and to demand action. What is sorely lacking and what is needed is the political will.

With the United States divisive stand and indication that it is still opposed to mandatory capping in carbon emissions and Japan's latest proposal to adopt a broad "least common denominator" approach, without legally binding targets, in the Bali talks plus the contentious issues of equity, slowing of economic growth due to environmental controls and reduction definitions by per capita or per volume basis, the Bali conference is unlikely to produce an updated and strengthened successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

But produce it must, as the time for talking is over and the days of waiting for Bush is long gone. With or without the US, the world must act now as it no longer can afford another 10 years of inaction. The UN, EU and ASEAN must show desperately needed leadership and use the Bali conference to come up with a coherent agenda and mobilise global public opinion to support concrete, legally binding and absolute reduction targets in greenhouse gases emissions.

Let's hope the Bali conference is a dance that will result in a revolution that the world desperately needs - a healing one - before it is too late.

*Sources :
- Greenpeace
- World Wildlife Fund
- Kiel Institute for World Economy
- Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency
- Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, United Nations

*Related post : A Planet In Peril

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Global Warming And The Cradle Of Life.

2007-11-28T06:36:00.000-08:00

"Increased carbon dioxide emissions are rapidly making the world's oceans more acidic and, if unabated, could cause a mass extinction of marine life..." - Carnegie Institution's Dept of Global Ecology Report Feb 2006.

Our oceans, the cradle of life, account for about 70 per cent of the Earth's surface and are home to a diverse range of life, from marine mammals like whales and dolphins to fishes, corals, crustaceans and exotic micro-organisms. Many, like the food fishes, are crucial to us and the oceans, as natural carbon sinks, perform an important role in maintaining atmospheric gaseous equilibrium through the carbon cycle.

But rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, due to the unbridled burning of fossil fuels especially over the last two to three decades, are causing the climate to warm resulting in rising water temperatures, and the oceans to become increasingly acidic.

A recent report, "Turning Up the Heat: How Global Warming Threatens Life in the Sea," by the World Wildlife Fund and Marine Conservation Biology Institute in June 2007, indicated that rising global temperatures are impacting ocean ecosystems to a far greater extent then previously thought. Wide spread changes are occurring across the entire marine food chain, from plankton, corals, fishes, seabirds to penguins and polar bears.

Coral reefs, the most biologically diverse and beautiful marine ecosystems, are suffering unprecedented devastation due to high surface water temperatures, with large numbers in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea, losing their polyps, turning completely white and dying - a process called bleaching. As a result, thousands of species of fishes and invertebrates that depend on the habitats that the reefs provide are in danger.

Dying corals off Florida's coast 1975 - 1995

Unchecked warming would also wipe out most of the habitat of the salmon species, eg. the Pacific Sockeye salmon, as they are extremely temperature-sensitive. In the waters off Australia, warmer oceans have sparked mass migration of species like the yellow-fin tuna, stinging jellyfish and sea turtles to the cooler waters in the south while in California, reef fish and inter-tidal invertebrates including sea anemones, crabs and snails are moving toward the poles in response to warming.

The biomass of phytoplankton, tiny marine plants that many marine organisms depend on for food, has also declined as a result of warmer oceans. Data released by researchers from the Oregon State University, after a ten-years analysis, indicated that phytoplankton productivity from 2000 onwards, declined by 190 million tons of carbon each year, with carbon as a unit of measurement of the amount of carbon dioxide they remove from the atmosphere through photosynthesis.

The study clearly showed that overall phytoplankton biomass decreases as the climate warms. This also creates a vicious cycle. As carbon dioxide levels rise, with decrease in phytoplankton production, there will be less ocean plants to absorb this green house gas.

Coral bleaching

The declined in plankton biomass has also contributed to decreased reproduction and increased mortality of seabirds due to starvation as these plankton form the base of the birds' food chain. Between late 1980s and early 1990s, California's Sooty shearwaters population declined by 90 percent and Cassin's auklets by more than 50 per cent. Common murres also died by tens of thousands.

Besides warmer ocean temperatures, the rising amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide is also causing our oceans to be increasingly acidic which will adversely affect many organisms that use calcium carbonate for their skeletons and shells, including corals and molluscs. Carbon dioxide, when dissolved in the oceans, becomes carbonic acid and excessive amount of carbonic acid lowers the pH of the oceans, increases its acidity and endangers marine life.

This drop in ocean pH is especially damaging to hard-shell marine animals such as corals and shellfish that use calcium carbonate, a critical mineral, for the formation of their shells and growth. However, a more acidic ocean will easily dissolve calcium carbonate, just like a piece of chalk dissolving in vinegar.

For decades, the oceans' absorption of carbon dioxide have been viewed as an environmental plus, as it mitigates the effects of global warming. But by taking up about 30 per cent of the atmosphere's carbon dioxide, mainly produced through the burning of fossil fuels, our oceans ph levels have dropped by about 0.1 units on the 14-point scale since the Industrial Revolution.

Scientists expect that carbon dioxide emissions, if left unchecked, will further reduce the oceans ph levels by another 0.3 units by 2100 and the increased ocean acidification will have serious repercussions to all marine life from the smallest marine micro-organisms, molluscs, corals to large marine mammals like whales.

Failure to check and reduce carbon dioxide emissions today may mean that there will be no place in the oceans of the future for many of the species and ecosystems that we know today.

*Sources :
-Live Science
-Science Daily
-World Wildlife Fund
-Oregon State University
-National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

*Related post :
- Magical Melodies & The Songs Of Pain

Magical Melodies And The Songs Of Pain.

2007-11-19T03:13:00.000-08:00

"A Japanese whaling fleet has set sail aiming to harpoon humpback whales for the first time in decades. The fleet is conducting its largest hunt in the South Pacific - it has instructions to kill up to 1,000 whales, including 50 humpbacks." - BBC News Nov 18 2007

Have you ever heard the songs that whales sing? You can listen to them here and you will realise that they sing some of the most beautiful songs on Earth. The songs are an amazing phenomenon, highly structured and at any one time, all the males sing the same songs using the same sounds arranged in the same pattern. These haunting songs travel many kilometres and can even be heard above the surface and consists of intricate vocalisations ranging from high squeaks to low growls, with many at a frequency so low that they are inaudible to humans.

The Singer of The Sea - the endangered humpback whale - produces the most varied songs in the animal world, with each lasting 10-15 minutes and can be repeated without pause, for hours. The largest of the whales, the blue whale, can sing for 10 hours.

But the songs they sing, with the latest announcement by Japan, will no longer be songs of joy but of pain.

“If we can imagine a horse having two or three explosive spears stuck in its stomach and being made to pull a butcher's truck through the streets of London while its blood pours into the gutter, we shall have an idea of the method of killing whales." - "Troubled Waters," a March 2004 report by Whale Watch.

The main method of killing whales is insanely inhuman and cruel. Using a grenade-tipped harpoon fired from a cannon mounted on the brow of a ship, the harpoon penetrates about 30cm into the whale before detonation. The aim is to kill the animal through neuro-trauma induced by the blast-generated pressure waves of the explosion. And if this fails, which is more often the case, a second harpoon is fired.

Given their sheer mass, complex vascular systems, their adaptations for diving and the constantly moving environment of the sea, killing them swiftly is impossible. Whales, when hit with an exploding harpoon, can take up to an hour or more before dying with the majority likely to suffer a slow and painful death.

In the Faroes Islands, whole families of whales - including pregnant mothers, lactating females, youngsters and foetuses - are butchered by the islanders in a carnival-like atmosphere. Islanders in motorboats first drive and round-up the terrified and confused whales into a shallow bay where the bloodbath begins.

The islanders repeatedly jab 2.2 kg metal poles into the living flesh of each whale until the hooks hold. A 15 cm knife is then used to slash through the blubber and flesh to the spinal column followed by the severing of the main blood vessels. The blood-stained bay is soon filled with horribly mutilated and dying whales, screaming in agony.

Despite a worldwide ban since 1986, about 30,000 whales have been killed by the 3 whaling nations - Japan and Iceland under the guise of "scientific research"- while the meat and by-products from the slaughtered whales are sold for profit - and by Norway as commercial hunt. The numbers of whales killed in recent years are among the highest since the moratorium went into effect and they continue to increase.

More shockingly, this unsanctioned killing is happening in the protected waters of Antarctica’s Southern Ocean Marine Sanctuary, blatantly defying international law. Japan and Iceland ability to continue hunting whales with such blatant disregard for international law is because they are exploiting a loophole in the international ban that permits killing whales in the name of scientific research. But the painful slaughter of whales is totally unnecessary as it does not benefit science, whales or people.

Despite claims of killing whales in the name of science, Japanese whaling isn’t about science at all and is simply commercial whaling in disguise.

Non-lethal methods to study whales already exist such as photo identification, tagging, DNA analysis and observation experiments. Data from satellite tagging of whales, harmless skin biopsies and fluke identification has already yielded valuable information about the migration patterns of whales, without a single harpoon being fired. In fact, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has clearly stated it does not need the data obtained from killing whales and has passed forty-one resolutions critical of Japan’s research whaling program.

As a food source, it is a known fact that whale meat is often extremely toxic and is dangerous to eat. Whales accumulate environmental pollutants that bond with their blubber, such as polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) and dioxin, and also heavy metals such as methylmercury. The effects on humans who consume contaminated whale meat or blubber include cancer, nerve damage, reproductive and developmental disorders, immune system suppression and liver damage, to name a few.

With the whales' natural low reproductive rates and already facing long-term debilitating effects on their communication, social behaviour and foraging habits arising from chemical pollution, noise pollution, increasing shipping traffic and oil and gas exploration, it is imperative that all governments condemn and stop the needless slaughter of whales by Japan, Iceland and Norway, with the ultimate objective of banning this barbaric practice entirely. A complete and permanent ban would also stop the exploitation of the loophole in International Whaling Commission rules and exceptions by the pro-whaling nations.

These majestic cetaceans are the largest animals that have ever existed, far larger than any dinosaur that have roamed the Earth and are highly evolved animals with a complex social life. Whales are sensitive, social animals - they call out to each other over the vast expanses of the oceans - with highly developed nervous systems and have a profound capacity to suffer distress, terror and pain. The killing of whales is unjust, terribly inhuman and has no place in modern civilised society.

Living whales are far more valuable to us and a joy to behold. We should allow them to sing their songs of joy again.

*Sources :
- Whale Trust
- Whale Watch
- Stop Whaling
- Green Peace
- Humane Society of United States

*Catch the latest updates about Japan's whaling mission :
- Greenpeace.org
- GlobalNewsBlogger

*Related post : Man And The Loss Of Biodiversity

Man And The Loss Of Biodiversity.

2007-11-17T10:20:00.000-08:00

"Current documented rates of extinction of species are estimated to be roughly 100 times higher than typical rates in the fossil record." - United Nations GEO4 report.

Golden Mahseer

Have you ever seen the golden mahseer before? The majestic fish, known to reach 2.75m in length and 60 kg in weight, is no ordinary fish. Lying at the top of the food chain, the golden mahseer is the emperor of the freshwater fish species inhabiting the mountain streams of the Himalayas. But in recent years, its population have been declining rapidly because of net and dynamite fishing, damming and pollution of the rivers it depends on.

Living often in the same habitats as the golden mahseer is another species which was suddenly found this year to be highly endangered - the gharial, or fish-eating crocodile. With increasing human encroachment into their habitats and as gharials compete directly with people for fish in the rivers they inhabit, there are now only an estimated 200 breeding adults left in the wild as compare to about 10,000 in the 1950s.

Ghavial
Like the golden mahseer and gharial, thousands of species are dying worldwide, often unacknowledged because they are not cute or cuddly. Some, like the Sumatran Rhino, are functionally extinct in the wild - meaning their population is so low and so widely scattered that breeding is no longer possible.

A recent update of endangered species by the Swiss-based World Conservation Union in September concluded that more than 16,000 species are in danger of being extinct - 188 more than last year. In Europe, more than a third of the continent's 522 freshwater fish species face extinction due to overfishing, pollution and damming which have caused rivers to dry up. The European eel, which reproduces only once in 20 years, is critically endangered and the population of jarabugo, a freshwater fish found only in Spain and Portugal, has declined by more than 50 per cent in the past 10 years.

Golden Headed Langur

Hong Kong's Ocean Park Conservation Foundation released findings recently that showed 79 species of freshwater turtles - 80 per cent of the turtle family in Asia - are endangered. Asia alone has 11 primates, including the Hainan black-crested gibbon and Siau island tarsier, on the endangered list. In Vietnam, the population of the beautiful golden-headed langur has declined drastically - down from thousands of animals two generations ago to only 65 today.

While species extinction is a natural part of Earth’s history, numerous studies have clearly
shown that human activity is accelerating the extinction rate by at least 100 times. The causes of this rapid and widespread loss of biodiversity, with entire species in the air, on land, in freshwater and in our seas and oceans disappearing, includes loss of ecosystems from large scale conversion of natural forests for use in agriculture, industry and towns, changing the geography and hydrology of river systems with dams and reservoirs, over-exploitation of natural resources for food and commercial trade, and pollution.

Hainan Black-Crested Gibbon
Biodiversity loss, as part of the food chain, has negative effects on several aspects of human well-being, such as food security, vulnerability to natural disasters, energy security, and access to clean water and raw materials. It also affects human health and social relations as it narrows the base for food and medicine.

This drastic loss of biodiversity is seriously impacting us if we are to survive as a species ourselves and it is now imperative that education on the importance of biodiversity be ramp up across all segments of our society. Further actions like habitat conservation, reduction in consumption and waste, recycling and promoting sustainable agricultural practices are needed to reverse this loss in biodiversity so that future generations can enjoy our priceless heritage.

*Sources :
- United Nations GEO 4
- World Conservation Union
- Hong Kong Ocean Park Conservation Foundation
- The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
- GreenFacts. org

*Related post : A Planet In Peril

Reducing Your Carbon Footprints - Going Green At Work.

2007-11-16T05:14:00.000-08:00

With many of us spending a major chunk of our time at work, the office is another area besides our home where simple changes to the way we work can result in drastic reduction in the amount of resources and energy being consumed plus the additional benefit of saving money.

With offices being major producers of paper, printing and electronic waste, adopting environmental friendly practices like recycling and waste reduction, can have a tremendous and beneficial impact on our environment. With an estimated 3.8 million acres of U.S. forests cleared every year to meet Americans demand for wood pulp, implementing paper waste reduction practices for example, can drastically reduce the need for large scale deforestation. Refurbishing and reusing computers and other electronic products will also go a long way in reducing the ever growing amount of hard-to-dispose and hazardous electronic waste.

Here are some green tips that you can easily adopt in your office and contribute to a better environment :

1. Go paperless where possible
- Think before you print and print only when you really need to. Read documents off the screen and store them online. Post employee instructions, manuals and other similiar materials online rather than distributing hard copies.
- Use a fax-modem to reduce paper usage as it allows documents to be sent directly from a computer without the need for a printed hard copy.

2. Print smarter
- Print on both sides of paper or recycle old documents for printing on one side.
- Avoid color printing and print in draft mode whenever possible.
- Buy chlorine-free paper as products bleached with chlorine leached harmful by-products like dioxins into the environment.
- Choose a lighter stock of paper, which uses less paper fibre, and consider alternatives made from bamboo, hemp, organic cotton or kenaf.
- Consider buying copier paper produced from farmed trees as paper produced from farmed trees which are grown and replaced, have minimal environmental impact.

3. Recycle
- Recycle toner and ink cartridges and buy re-manufactured ones. Companies like Dell and Hewlett-Packard have schemes to take back used printing cartridges from their customers for recycling.
- Recycle everything that your company collects including fax paper, junk mail and catalogs and check if your suppliers take back packaging for re-use.
- Place recycling bins in accessible, high-traffic areas and provide clear information about what can and cannot be recycled.

4. Improve computer efficiency
- Turn off your computer at the end of the day. Leaving it on overnight increases energy consumption by more than 50 per cent, increases mechanical stress and reduces its lifespan.
- Turn off the monitor when not in use and setting your computer to "sleep" mode during breaks reduces energy consumption by as much as 60 per cent.
- Invest in energy-saving electronic products for e.g switching to LCD monitors as they use half the energy of old, bulky CRT ones.
- Refurbish and reuse old computers or donate them to organizations that will refurbish and find them new homes.

5. Save electricity
- Turn off the lights, air-conditioners and other apliances when leaving a room. Utilize natural light whenever you can.
- Use energy-rated light bulbs and fixtures, which use at least two-thirds less energy than regular lighting, and install timers or motion sensors that automatically shut off lights when they're not needed.

6. Improve communication efficiency
- Reduce the amount of traveling by investing in video-conferencing and other technological solutions.
- Make it a habit to commute by train, bus or subway whenever possible instead of a rental car when traveling on business.

7. Create a healthy office environment.
- Brighten up your workplace with plants which absorbs indoor pollution.
- Use non-toxic cleaning products.
- Buy furniture and carpeting and use paint that are free of volatile organic compounds that will not leach toxic chemicals.

*Related post :
- Going green at home.
- Calculating your carbon footprints.

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The Impact Of Global Warming On Rainfall And Flooding.

2007-11-12T06:17:00.000-08:00

"Breaking news in recent years has been swamped with stories of extreme weather - flash floods in East Asia, prolonged drought in Africa, destructive hurricanes like Hurricane Katrina, heavy monsoon rainfall in South Asia, and an historic heat wave in Europe. The effects of these weather crises have been devastating and their frequency seemingly on the rise." - A NASA Feb 2007 report

When i was a boy, the year-end monsoon season always started somewhere in late October and will end around February of the following year, followed by the hot months from March to September. But the timing of this raining season has become unpredictable and had in fact, shifted in recent years. Together with sudden occurrences of heavy thunderstorms in what is suppose to be hot months and hot days during the traditional monsoon period, it all points to changes to our weather patterns and i am sure these freakish climate changes are not isolated to my country alone.

Global warming, the result of unbridled emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, leads to higher rainfall because a warming atmosphere contains more water vapour and more energy. An increase in global temperatures will cause an increase in evaporation and higher levels of water vapour. In addition, a warmer atmosphere is also capable of holding more water vapour. The excess water vapour will in turn lead to more frequent heavy and intense downpours which results in flooding, soil erosion, landslides and damage to structures and crops.

Besides causing increased rainfalls, global warming also leads to heavy flooding due to the impact of the massive amount of CO2 - the principle greenhouse gas - has on vegetation. During photosynthesis - the process in which plants make food and produce oxygen - CO2 enter plants thorough tiny holes in their leaves called stomata. Plants take water from the ground and secrete the excess thorough the stomata. But higher levels of CO2 in the air cause these tiny holes to open far less widely, leading to reduced water loss from the plants.

And with plants extracting less water from the soil in a warmer world, the soil becomes saturated and surplus water will then drain into rivers. "This will increase global flows by a further 6 per cent on top of the 11 per cent rise already predicted due to global warming," said a meteorologist at Britain's Met Office. Together with more water staying in the ground and the runoff into rivers, areas with increased rainfall will suffer severe flooding and flash floods.

According to recent study published by the British science journal Nature in Aug 2007, the risks of flooding may increase more than previously expected because intense precipitation events - heavy downpours - would be more likely to occur over areas with saturated ground.

Flooding is a major problem, especially in poor countries that do not have the money to invest in drainage systems to cope with runoffs from saturated soils. Since June this year, more than 3,200 people in South Asia have been killed as a result of heavy monsoon rains and snow melt and many more left homeless.

*Sources :
- NASA
- British science journal Nature
- Union of Concerned Scientists
- Climate Ark

*Related post : The Melting Of Our Polar Ice Caps.

A Planet In Peril.

2007-11-11T06:07:00.000-08:00

"The earth has experienced five mass extinction in the past 450 million years, the latest about 65 million years ago. A sixth major extinction is under way, this time caused by human behaviour."

This statement was made in the recent fourth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-4), a United Nations environmental report. Alarmist? Maybe, but it is a fact that the human population is living far beyond its means and is inflicting damage and seriously undermining the environment of the only home we will ever have.

Climate change, the challenge of feeding a growing population and the rate of extinction of species are putting humanity at risk. Over the past twenty years, our world population has increased dramatically by about 35 per cent, from 5 billion to 6.7 billion. The amount of resources needed to sustain it far exceeds what is available at current consumption patterns and human activity, needed to feed this population, has reached an unsustainable level and is outstripping available resources.

Humanity's demand on space, currently at 21ha per person, is now about a third more than what the earth can supply. This intensity of land use have led to major environmental degradation, due to pollution, soil erosion and nutrient depletion and affects more than a third of the world's people. Over-harvesting of the oceans due to rising fish consumption coupled with the rapid formation of "dead zones", where marine life cannot survive due to pollution, will result in massive depletion of fish stocks and the extinction of marine life.

The environmental degradation has also led to species becoming extinct 100 times faster than what available fossil records show, with 12 per cent of birds, 23 per cent of mammals and over 30 per cent of amphibians facing possible extinction. Other than the golden-headed langur of Vietnam and China's Hainan gibbon, it is estimated that a third of all apes, monkeys and other primates now face extinction due to large scale deforestation.

The ever-rising energy demands to cope with the world's population has contributed to the rapid rise in greenhouse gases in our atmosphere and will further hinder efforts to stabilise the situation. As a result of the unbridled burning of oil, gas and coal, the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are now around a third more than in pre-industrial times.

With some greenhouse gases ability to persist in our atmosphere for up to 50,000 years, global temperatures are expected to rise by 1.8 to 4 deg C this century and accelerates the rate of melting of glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic continents. The resultant rising sea levels will have disastrous implications on about 60 per cent of the world's population who live within 100km off coasts. Vast river systems, sustaining hundreds of millions of people, will dry up as the glaciers that feed them disappear and the resultant migration people, in search of water and sustenance, may lead to terrible conflicts.

While advances in science and technology, especially the development and deployment of clean technologies, together with improvements in energy conservation and efficiency are vital in meeting the climate change challenges, efficiency and innovation will not be enough unless there are concerted and coordinated efforts by governments to come up with a global framework that obliges governments to penalise pollution and provide market incentives to encourage clean energy alternatives.

*Sources
- Global Environment Outlook 4
- World Conservation Union
- British Science journal-Nature

*Related post : The Melting Of Our Polar Ice Caps

From Ice To Water

2007-11-10T11:14:00.000-08:00

"Rising seas would severely impact the United States and scientists have projected a 1.5m sea-level rise by 2100. This increase would inundate some 22,400 square miles of land along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States, primarily in Louisiana, Texas, Florida and North Carolina." - A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 2001 Report.

Quite simply, as a result of global warming, the polar ice caps are melting and at a rate faster than previously thought. A study, published by the journal Science last year, suggests that sea levels worldwide will rise by several metres by the end of this century leading to catastrophic consequences to huge swaths of low-lying regions from Florida, Bangladesh, Lagos to Shanghai.

A recently released UNEP report in June this year said that a 1 metre rise in sea level would inundate over 800 sq km of low-lying lands in Asia with an estimated displacement of more than 100 million people. Coastal and island tidal gauge data indicated that sea levels rose by just 20cm over a 130 years period from 1871 to 2001, at an average rise of 1.7mm per year. But from 1993 to 2006, a mere 7 years, global measurements by satellite altimeters shows that worldwide average sea level rose by more than 3mm per year.

With the world's only two continental ice sheets, Antarctic and Greenland, containing more than half of the world's total amount of freshwater and around 99 per cent of freshwater ice on Earth, the potential for global catastrophe is clear. The rise in global temperatures over the last 50 years, has contributed to the rapid shrinking and melting of both our polar ice caps, especially the Arctic continent.

Arctic Continent.
Greenland is much more susceptible to global warming than Antarctica because it's climate is strongly affected by its proximity to other land masses and to the North Atlantic ocean. Its ice sheet is also smaller and much less thicker, with a volume about one-ninth that of the Antarctic ice sheet. Average temperatures in the Arctic region are rising twice as fast as they are elsewhere in the world and its ice sheets are shrinking rapidly, melting and rupturing. The largest single block of ice in the Arctic, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, which had been around for 3,000 years, started cracking in 2000. Within two years it had split all the way through and is now breaking into pieces.

Summer melting now occurs over half of the surface of Greenland's ice sheet, particularly near the coast, with much of the water flowing into the sea. "As the surrounding temperatures rose, the total loss from the ice sheet more than doubled from a few tens of billions of tonnes per year in the early 1990s to about 100 billion tonnes in 2000, with a likely further doubling by 2005," said the UNEP report. Recent images from NASA satellites show that the ice cover is contracting at a rate of 9 percent per decade. If this trend continues, summers in the Arctic could become ice-free by the end of the century.

Antarctic
The "Frozen Continent", an area larger than Europe, is totally covered in ice, some as thick as 10,000 feet. While the rate of melting of its ice sheets is nowhere as fast as in the Arctic, some ice shelves in the northernmost part of Antarctica—the Antarctic Peninsula—have been collapsing in recent years, in line with the rapid warming trend there since 1945.

In Jan 1995, the 1,994 km2 Larsen A ice shelf disintegrated suddenly and in March 1998, after more than 400 years, more than 2,978 km2 of the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed. This was followed by the disintegration of the Wilkins ice shelf in March 1999. The dramatic disintegration of the ices shelves in such a short time period has been attributed to the rise in global temperatures.

Results from a 2005 study by researchers at British Antarctic Survey and U.S. Geological Survey, showed that over the last 50 years, 87% of 244 glaciers studied have retreated and that average retreat rates have accelerated. "On average, the glaciers retreated by 50 metres per year in the last five years, faster than at any time in the last fifty years," the report said. Overall, seven ice shelves have between them, declined in area by about 13,500 km2 since 1974.

Besides contributing to rising sea levels, the rapid shrinking of the ice sheets have tremendous impact on the ecosystem and its native people. Polar bears, seals, whales and walruses in the Arctic are changing their feeding and migration patterns, the natives are finding it difficult to hunt them and along the coastlines, entire villages has been uprooted. The very cultural identity and survival of the native people and the many denizens of the ecosystem are being threatened. In Antarctic, the population of Adelie Penguin have shrunk by 33% during the past 25 years as a result of the disappearance of their winter sea ice habitat.

The retreat of the ice caps is also accelerating global warming due to the loss of the reflective and protective nature of the ice sheets. The melting will expose more land to the sun and the earth will absorb more sunlight and gets even hotter, thus hastening the rise in global temperatures.

Other than governmental and world bodies initiatives in tackling global warming, like the Antarctic tour that Mr.Ban Ki Moon, the United Nations secretary-general is embarking on this week, it is imperative that companies and citizens worldwide adopt clean energy alternatives and green practices to drastically reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emissions. Failure to do so would result in serious repercussions and we might find the price to high to pay for our children.

*Resources :
- Natural Resources Defence Council
- Science Daily
- Climate Hot Maps

*Related post : A Planet In Peril

Tired Of FTP?

Reducing Your Carbon Footprints - Going Green At Home.

2007-11-10T04:12:00.000-08:00

You don't have to take drastic measures to save planet Earth from the effects of global warming, neither does it requires massive changes to the way you live. Going green and leading an environmental friendly lifestyle does not have to be about grand gestures.

Simple changes to how you live, play and get around can make all the difference and you can even save money in the process. For example, choosing to take the trains or bus instead of driving your car can keep about 4,500kg of CO2 out of the environment a year and will also result in a bundle of savings for you. Replacing 3 incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs in your household will result in less electricity used by up to 4 times.

Here are some green tips for an area which anyone can easily adopt and reduce their carbon footprints - your home.

Electricity
- Switch off lights, fans, air-conditioners, televisions, computers and other appliances when not in use. Turn-off "standby" mode and pull out the plug as well.
- Replace incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs and install dimers, timers and sensors.

Air-conditioning
- Do not overcool air-conditioned rooms. Set the temperature at between 25 to 26 deg C and remember to close all doors and windows when running the units.
- Check air-con filters once a month and clean or replace them if necessary. Dirty air filters impede air flow and result in more electricity being consumed.
- Do not place television sets, lamps or other heat-emitting appliances near the air-con thermostat as they will interfere with its ability to regulate the air-con operations, thus making it work harder than it needs to.

Refrigerator
- Decide what you want before you open the door. That way, it doesn't stay open too long and waste energy.
- Cool down hot food before you put it into the fridge so that it does not have to work harder to maintain the temperature.
-Avoid overcrowding the fridge as too many items obstruct air-flow and reduce cooling capabilities.
- Do not position fridge near to a oven or stove.

Washing Machine
- Wash clothes only when you have a full load and choose a cold water wash cycle.
- Use just enough detergent as this will cut the need to rinse again.

Appliances
- Opt for energy-efficient appliances as green tick energy-labelled appliances can result in massive energy savings.

Furniture
- "Green" your furniture. Buy furniture made from sustainable harvested woods and recycled, bio-based or non-toxic materials.
- Bamboo is an excellent option as it is versatile and grows fast. You can also buy second-hand or vintage furniture which does not require further resources to make.

Shopping, eating and drinking
- Where possible, buy in bulk. Buy household necessities like rice, juice and detergent in large sizes as small sizes use relatively more packaging materials and opt for refills instead of throwing bottles away.
- Cut back on consumption of meat. Not only will it do wonders for your health but will help greatly in cutting down emission of greenhouse gases. Estimates by the United Nations point to livestock as contributing to almost a fifth of the world's emissions with cattle being the biggest contributor. They emit methane and nitrous oxide, greenhouse gases that trap more heat than carbon dioxide.

Watch what you throw.
- Learn to compost. Even if you live in an apartment, food waste can be used as compost in your personal or community garden. You can learn more about composting at sites like Compost Guide.com.
- Use recycling bins for your trash like paper, bottles and other materials so that they can be recycled.

*Related posts :
- Calculating Your Carbon Footprint
- How To Make Your Home Environmental Friendly

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Calculating Your Carbon Footprints.

2007-11-09T11:16:00.000-08:00

Small lifestyle changes can go a long way in saving Earth from the effects of global warming and the easiest way is to reduce your carbon footprints - the amount of carbon dioxide that you emit from everyday activities.

From the moment you wake up each day, everything you do - eat, drink, shop to driving a car consumes energy that produces carbon dioxide and has an impact on the environment. Your carbon footprint represents the impact that you and your lifestyle have on our planet in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide.

In line with global target, aim to limit your carbon dioxide emissions to no more than 2.5 tonnes a year. As a guide, the average American has a footprint of 20 tonnes while the average Briton produces about 5 tonnes. Less energy consumed means less fossil fuels being burned which means less carbon dioxide emissions. You can calculate your carbon footprint at resurgence.org which provides calculators that can convert your utility bills and transport use into CO2 emissions. This should give you some idea of where you stand and you can then take steps to try and reduce it.

Other than reducing your carbon footprint, you can also offset your emissions. Many companies, example airlines and travel agencies, allows you to compensate for unavoidable emissions by contributing to projects that remove an equivalent amount of greenhouse gases from the environment. These include re-forestation and energy-savings initiatives. For example, you can offset your carbon emissions from your holiday to Japan by planting some trees in Indonesia. Some airlines even offer carbon offsetting when you are purchasing your tickets.

Genuine carbon offset companies are endorsed by organisations like the United Nations and include carbonfootprint.com, carbonfund.org and climatecare.org.

*Related post : Reducing Your Carbon Footprints - Going Green At Home

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