60 Years to Restore the Ozone Layer Over Antarctica

10/10/2006 Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, developing world, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, Global Issues and Perspectives, News, ozone, Pollution and Toxics, Science/Tech

Stephen Leahy*

TORONTO, Sep 20 (Tierramérica) – Another giant ozone hole has opened up over the Antarctic, while evidence mounts that 20 years of international efforts have finally helped the atmosphere to start to heal itself.

The “hole” over the South Pole — actually an annual thinning of the ozone layer, which protects Earth from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation — measured about 24 million square kilometres, nearly the size of North America, according to the Sep. 8 estimate by the renowned British Antarctic Survey, a scientific organisation that has been studying the region for the past six decades.

The ozone hole will continue to grow and likely be one of the larger and “deeper” ones, perhaps 28 million square kilometres, predicts Andrew Klekociuk of the Australian government’s Antarctic Division. The largest ever recorded was 30.3 million sq km in 2000, according to NASA, the U.S. space agency.

— Tierramerica and Inter Press News Service

Forests Worth Far More Alive Than Dead

10/10/200610/10/2006 Stephen CANADA, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, Global Issues and Perspectives, News, Pollution and Toxics, Science/Tech

Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Sep 27 (IPS) – Boreal forests provide 250 billion dollars a year in ecosystem services like reducing atmospheric carbon and water filtration, but which have gone unacknowledged by governments and industry, experts say.

Governments need to begin accounting for those services before allowing timber, oil and gas and mining to carve up the world’s remaining northern forests, argues the Edmonton, Canada-based ecological economist Mark Anielski.

The globe-spanning boreal forest is the last great forest ecosystem — larger even than the Amazon. The boreal is also the largest terrestrial storehouse of carbon, making it one of the world’s best defences against global climate change.

“The boreal is like a giant carbon bank account. The forests and peatlands store an estimated 67 billion tonnes of carbon in Canada alone — almost eight times the amount of carbon produced worldwide in the year 2000,” Anielski told IPS.

—Inter Press News Service

Canada Urged to Rein In Soaring Emissions

10/10/200611/10/2006 Stephen CANADA, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, News, Pollution and Toxics, Science/Tech

Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Sep 29 (IPS) – Canada should move quickly to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the country’s environmental auditor warned Thursday.

Earlier this week, leading U.S. scientists said that the Earth is warmer than it has been in 10,000 years and less than one degree C from being the warmest in a million years.

“Our future is at stake,” said Johanne Gélinas, Canada’s commissioner of the environment and sustainable development.

“I am more troubled than ever by the federal government’s longstanding failure to confront one of the greatest challenges of our time,” Gélinas wrote in her annual audit report.

…Inter Press News Service