Paraphrase of the Day:
Arctic sea ice is melting because of increasing temperatures.
Without taking serious and urgent action to stabilize the climate, there is no future for polar bears says Andrew Derocher, Chair of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), Polar Bear Specialist Group.
Paraphrase of the Day: We’re like a two year old playing with fire when it comes to deforestation of the Amazon and global climate change.
We’re messing around with something dangerous and don’t really understand what will happen. — William Laurence, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Panama.
Ailments Surge as Ozone Hole Widens
The increase in skin cancer from sun exposure is alarming, scientists say. Residents of southern Chile and Argentina are advised to take extra care in protecting themselves from solar rays this spring season in the southern hemisphere.
By Stephen Leahy
TORONTO, Nov 11’06 (Tierramérica) – Skin cancer, eye lesions and other infections are on the rise, a reminder that the Antarctic ozone hole continues to be a serious problem, especially for southern Argentina and Chile, where ultraviolet radiation during the spring months increases 25 percent.
The ozone layer covers the entire planet at an altitude of between 15 and 30 kilometres, and protects living organisms from the sun’s harmful rays.
According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the dramatic thinning of the ozone layer over the Antarctic — an annual phenomenon — sprawled to an average of 29.5 million square kilometres Sep. 21 to Sep. 30.
“This year’s Antarctic ozone ‘hole’ is the largest on record,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
“Governments need to reduce and shut down the remaining sources of ozone-depleting chemicals,” Steiner said in a statement.
The rates of sunburn increase during the southern hemisphere springtime, when the Antarctic ozone hole is large enough to extend over the city of Punta Arenas at the southern tip of Chile, according to studies conducted by Chile’s Universidad de Magallanes.
My More Recent Ozone Articles:
2008 – Monster Ozone Hole (Again) – But your skin would fry in 3 mins without 20-yr old Ozone Treaty
2007 – Skin Cancer Rising Despite New Ozone Deal to Cut CO2 Emissions
Ozone Hole is Back and Bigger Than Ever
By Stephen Leahy
BROOKLIN, Canada, Nov 10 (IPS) – Three hundred and eighty parts per million. That’s the current concentration of carbon dioxide going into your lungs with each breath. Our parents or grandparents’ first breaths at birth contained about 290 parts per million (ppm), as it was for everyone born before them.
What does it really mean when in the not so distant future our children or grandchildren will inhale 450, perhaps 500 ppm or more of carbon dioxide?
Evidently, breathing in a bit more carbon dioxide (CO2) isn’t bad for human health — oxygen at sea level is 200,000 ppm, after all — but the changing atmosphere is having profound impacts on the climate of the planet.
The changing climate has many consequences, among them the potential loss of ancient ruins in Thailand, coral reefs in Belize, 13th century mosques in the Sahara, the Cape Floral Kingdom in South Africa and other irreplaceable natural and historic sites around the world, experts reported this week.
“Climate changes are impacting on all aspects of human and natural systems, including both cultural and natural World Heritage properties, “said Koichiro Matsuura, director-general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, which hosts the World Heritage Centre.
By Stephen Leahy
BROOKLIN, Canada, Nov 6 (IPS) – Climate change will devastate Africa without substantial help from the world community, according to a new report released at the opening of a major U.N. climate change conference in Nairobi, Kenya Monday.
“Africa is the least responsible for climate change but will be hit the hardest,” said Nick Nuttall, spokesperson for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
New scientific data shows that Africa is more vulnerable to the impacts than previously thought, Nuttall told IPS from Nairobi.
Seventy million people and 30 percent of Africa’s coastal infrastructure face the risk of coastal flooding by 2080 linked to rising sea levels, the report found. More than one-third of the habitats that support African wildlife could be lost. Crop yields will fall due to warmer temperatures and more intense droughts.
By 2025, some 480 million people in Africa could be living in water-scarce or water-stressed areas.
“If Africa’s weather gets any more fickle, then they are in very deep trouble,” said Steve Sawyer of Greenpeace International. Sawyer is one of 6,000 people in Nairobi attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
By Stephen Leahy Nov 2 ’06 (IPS) – Every single commercial fishery in the world will be wiped before 2050 and the oceans may never recover if over-fishing continues at its current rate, a four-year scientific investigation has found.
“By the time my nine-year-old son is my age, there would be no wild seafood left,” said Emmett Duffy, a scientist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences in the United States.
In this grim, not-to-far-off future, not only will there be no fish to eat, humans will also lose the vital services oceans provide, including processing wastes, cleaning beaches, controlling flooding and absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Continue reading
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Answer to Energy Crisis? Waste Not, Want Not
By Stephen Leahy*
BROOKLIN, Canada, Oct 23 (IPS/IFEJ) – Soaring worldwide demand for energy is driving climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions dangerously higher, and even as investments grow in new “clean” energy sources, existing technologies to reduce energy use are being neglected.
Energy remains crucial to economic development in a world where over 1.6 billion people have no access to electricity. While the media and government focus has been on greener and cleaner ways to generate power through renewable sources like biofuels, wind, solar and hydrogen, experts say that major improvements in energy efficiency could dramatically reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, save money and provide the breathing space needed to improve and develop new energy sources.
Scientists estimate that to avoid dangerous climate change (generally viewed as a two-degree rise in global temperatures), world greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by about 60 percent from today’s levels by 2050.
At the same time, world energy demand is projected to increase by over 50 percent between now and 2030, and that will raise energy-related carbon dioxide emissions 52 percent higher than they are today, reported the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its 2005 World Energy Outlook, considered the definitive report on global energy.
That energy path is unsustainable, warns the IEA, which is calling for major changes.
“The need to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions means a drastic overhaul of how we produce energy,” said Christopher Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute, a U.S. environmental group.
“We are facing the biggest economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution,” Flavin told IPS.
Tropical forests are worth more alive, storing carbon, than they would be worth if burned and transformed to unproductive fields. — Kenneth Chomitz, economist at the World Bank.
Critics Say New Environment Policy Ignores Science
By Stephen Leahy
Canada has officially turned its back on the Kyoto Protocol and climate change in its new “green plan” introduced Thursday, environmentalists say.
The new Conservative government’s environmental legislation called the Clean Air Act does not offer specific reduction targets other than a goal of cutting emissions of greenhouse gases 45-65 percent below 2003 levels by 2050.
“It’s a green scam, a delaying tactic that involves three more years of consultations,” said Claire Stockwell of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition.
“We have already had six years of consultations and under existing legislation we could regulate emissions of greenhouse gases tomorrow,” Stockwell told IPS.
About 40 youth groups formed the non-partisan coalition this past September because of the realisation that the Conservative government will not comply with Canada’s commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, she said.
The coalition organised mock “funerals for the future” in 14 Canadian cities last week to protest the lack of urgent action on “the most pressing issue of our time”.
Stephen Leahy, International Environmental Journalist 
