Global warming threatens natural wonders

NF Reporter · 04-06-2007, 01:01 AM

AP - An environmental group said Thursday some of the world's greatest natural treasures are threatened with destruction because of global warming — from the Great Barrier Reef to the Amazon rain forests and the unique ecosystem of the Mexican desert.

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waltky · 08-12-2007, 12:07 AM

Rainforests at risk from global warming...

Global warming could reduce rainforest tree growth by 50 percent
Aug.11, 2007 : Data collected on forests in Panama and Malaysia has revealed that global warming could reduce the growth of trees in tropical rainforests by 50 percent, besides severely affecting their ability to remove carbon dioxide from the air.

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According to Ken Feeley of Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum in Boston, the study shows that rising average temperatures have reduced growth rates by up to 50 percent in the two rainforests, which have both experienced climate warming above the world average over the past few decades. Feeley, who presented his research at an annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in San Jose, California, warned that if other rainforests follow suit as world temperatures rise, important carbon stores such as the pristine old-growth forests of the Amazon, could conceivably stop storing as much carbon.

The amount of carbon that a forest stores depends on the balance between the rate at which it draws carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and the rate at which it gives carbon dioxide back through respiration. In carbon sinks, which are mostly found at high latitudes, photosynthesis outstrips respiration and the amount of carbon stored increases. In general, tropical forests are today thought to act as stable stores of carbon, with their photosynthetic input and their respiratory output more or less in balance.

Some scientists and environmentalists have suggested that, given the way carbon dioxide spurs plant growth, tropical forests could in time come to act as a sink, offsetting some of the man-made carbon dioxide build-up. Feeley and his colleagues analysed data on climate and tree growth for 50-hectare plots in each of the two rainforests, at Barro Colorado Island in Panama, and Pasoh in Malaysia. Both have witnessed temperature rises of more than one degree Centigrade over the past 30 years, and both showed dramatic decreases in rates of tree growth.

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waltky · 12-06-2007, 09:36 AM

Amazon endangered by deforestation, climate change...

Nature fund warns of severe Amazon damage
Thursday 6th December, 2007 - The World Wide Fund for Nature has confirmed a vicious cycle of climate change and deforestation could wipe out or severely damage nearly 60 percent of the Amazon forest by 2030.

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Deforestation in the Amazon could release 55.5 to 96.9 billion tonnes of CO2 up to 2030, which is equivalent to more than two years of global greenhouse gas emissions. At a press conference, scientist at the Woods Hole Research Centre in Massachusetts, said the destruction of the Amazon would also destroy one of the key stabilizers of the global climate system.

Dan Nepstad, who is also the author of a new WWF report titled the Amazon's Vicious Cycles said: 'The importance of the Amazon forest for the world's climate cannot be underplayed. It's not only essential for cooling the world's temperature but is also such a large source of freshwater that it may be enough to influence some of the great ocean currents, and on top of that it's a massive store of carbon'. .

He added that current trends in agriculture and livestock expansion, fire, drought and logging could clear or severely damage 55 percent of the Amazon rainforest by 2030. If, as anticipated by scientists, rainfall declines 10 percent in the future, then an additional four percent of the forests will be damaged by drought.

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Report: One-third of world's population affected by weather disasters
Dec. 6, 2007 -- One third of the world's population has already been affected by weather-related disasters and this is set to soar because of climate change unless urgent international action is taken, said a report by Tearfund, one of the UK's leading relief and development agencies

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Tearfund says governments must commit at least 50 billion U.S. dollars every year to helping the world's most vulnerable communities prepare to save their own lives and livelihoods. The report called Climate of Disaster published this week in Bali, a resort island of Indonesia, reveals that in the last 10 years, weather-related disasters have killed over 443,000 people, affected 2.5 billion people and cost an estimated 600 billion U.S. dollars in economic losses.

With climate change increasing the number and intensity of extreme events such as floods and droughts, more and more people are becoming vulnerable to a range of environmental disasters. Without urgent action, this trend is set to rise, leading to unprecedented levels of suffering and deaths. Poor people will be hit hardest - they are the least able to cope with, and live in the most vulnerable areas of the world. Speaking at the UN Climate Change conference in Bali, Andy Atkins, Tearfund's Advocacy Director said "It is time for the international community to take stronger action to support vulnerable communities' efforts to reduce the risk of disaster."

"Airlifting stranded people from floodwaters and sending food packages to those affected by drought can no longer be our sole response to weather-related disasters. As a global community we have a moral responsibility to invest our aid money upfront in helping the planet's poorest people prepare for predictable disaster," Atkins said. "If we do not, then many thousands of lives will be needlessly lost and billions of pounds of aid money will not be used to best effect," he said. A two-week UN climate change conference kicked off here on Monday. The conference is tasked with setting up a roadmap for negotiations on a new climate deal before the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

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waltky · 02-04-2008, 03:30 AM

Still, it doesn't stand to reason that destruction of the Amazon region would be a good thing...

Scientists puzzle over Amazon's role in warming world
3 Feb. `08 — Julio Tota stood atop a 195-foot steel tower in the heart of the Amazon rain forest, watching "rivers of air" flowing over an unbroken green canopy that stretched as far as the eye could see.

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These billows of fog showed researcher Tota how greenhouse gases emitted by decaying organic material on the forest floor don't rise straight into the atmosphere, as scientists had supposed. Instead, they hover and drift — confounding scientific efforts to unlock the secrets of the world's largest remaining tropical wilderness. "What we've learned is, the Amazon rain forest is much more fragile and much more complex than we had first imagined," Tota said. "My research is pretty specific. It's aimed at showing why all our measurements are probably off."

Tota is part of the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment, a decade-old endeavor involving hundreds of scientists, led by Brazilians and with funding from NASA and the European Union. Their open-air "laboratories" are 15 such observation posts spread over an area of rain forest larger than Europe. The project's goal is to make the best scientific arguments for why this vast rain forest — along with other endangered forests in Africa, southeast Asia and elsewhere — is essential to combating global climate change. But as the first phase of the $100 million experiment draws to a close, its researchers acknowledge that the data have raised more questions than answers.

Scientists can now say with certainty that the Amazon is neither the lungs of the Earth, nor the planet's air conditioner. Paradoxically, the forest's cooling vapors also trap heat, by reflecting it back toward Earth in much the same way greenhouse gases do. But a key question remains unanswered: Does the Amazon work as a net carbon "sink," absorbing carbon dioxide, or is it adding more CO2 to the atmosphere than it is subtracting, because of burning and other deforestation that have claimed an average 8,000 square miles — an area the size of Israel or New Jersey — each year of the past decade?

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waltky · 10-11-2008, 12:44 AM

Deforestation bigger losses than global financial meltdown...

Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'
Friday, 10 October 2008 - The global economy loses more money from deforestation than the current banking crisis, says an EU-commissioned report.

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It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion. The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide. The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern Review into the economics of climate change.

It has been discussed during many sessions here at the World Conservation Congress. Some conservationists see it as a new way of persuading policymakers to fund nature protection rather than allowing the decline in ecosystems and species, highlighted in the release on Monday of the Red List of Threatened Species, to continue.

Capital losses

Speaking to BBC News on the fringes of the congress, study leader Pavan Sukhdev emphasised that the cost of natural decline dwarfs losses on the financial markets. "It's not only greater but it's also continuous, it's been happening every year, year after year," he told BBC News. "Teeb will... show the risks we run by not valuing [nature] adequately." - Andrew Mitchell, Global Canopy Programme

"So whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within the financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at today's rate we are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every year." The review that Mr Sukhdev leads, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb), was initiated by Germany under its recent EU presidency, with the European Commission providing funding. The first phase concluded in May when the team released its finding that forest decline could be costing about 7% of global GDP. The second phase will expand the scope to other natural systems.

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