The Earth Is Crying Out for Help

By THOMAS LOVEJOY
Published: December 8, 2009
As national leaders and others assemble in Copenhagen for the climate change negotiations, the whole subject must seem a mystifying cloud of acronyms, numbers and data. But as important as all these are in crafting an action plan, they completely obscure the fact that the planet works as a biological as well as a physical system.
That biophysical system (the biosphere and atmosphere together) is the key to understanding the urgency of climate change as well as crafting a truly meaningful response.
Everywhere one looks on the planet, nature is on the move in ways never seen before by natural science. Species are changing the timing of their life cycles, and some are already moving and changing where they occur. We are beginning to see a decoupling of tight links in nature in which one element is cued by day length and the other by temperature. With the earlier arrival of spring, for example, snowshoe hares are now no longer camouflaged by their brilliant white winter coats because they are in snowless landscapes — completely obvious to predators.
Of greater consequence, ecosystem failure has begun to take place. Five percent of humanity depends on and lives within 100 meters of tropical coral reefs. A temperature increase causes the reef’s basic partnership between coral animals and algae to break down. With temperature stress, the coral animal ejects the alga and the ecosystem undergoes “bleaching events”: The brilliantly colorful reef essentially goes black and white as attendant diversity and productivity crash.
Similar ecosystem failure is occurring in the coniferous forests of North America as milder winters and longer summers tip the balance in favor of native bark beetles. In the United States, approximately 22 million acres are currently projected to be affected. It is an enormous forest and fire management problem. It is hard to project what the future of these forests will be.
The implications for agricultural ecosystems is equally worrisome. Australia has had to abandon rice as a major export crop because of persistent drought (an early manifestation of climate change). Dwindling glaciers and glacial melt threaten agricultural productivity in many parts of the world. Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, projects considerable difficulty in maintaining current agricultural practice and production in the face of rising global temperatures.
Vast as it may be, the Amazon seems perilously close to a tipping point. For some time a dieback of the forest in the southern and southeastern Amazon has been projected by one of the climate models, first at 2.5 degrees global temperature increase but more recently at 2.0. Recent studies that include the effects of deforestation and fire as well as climate change show the initiation of dieback perilously close — just years away.
Were that to happen, the loss of biodiversity, the carbon added to the atmosphere and the impact on people in the region would be horrific. The good news is that aggressive reforestation could add a safety margin and reduce the imminence of the tipping point.
The oceans, so important to us for seafood, have become 30 percent more acid because of higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. This ultimately will affect all the tens of thousands of marine species that build skeletons or shells of calcium carbonate. Effects are already being noticed at the base of some ocean food chains.
The living planet is signaling very clearly that current greenhouse gas concentrations are already too high.
So the challenge becomes not only to find ways to reduce emissions from deforestation (“REDD”) and other land-use change, but also to identify ways to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Because all living things are built of carbon, restoring ecosystems on a planetary scale can contribute in a meaningful way. Actions that can capture carbon include reforestation, restoring degraded grasslands and grazing lands and managing agriculture to return carbon into the soils.
There is no single reliable number for the carbon capture potential of ecosystem restoration globally, but an ambitious program might reduce planetary CO2 concentrations by as much as 40 parts per million. That is the difference between current level (roughly 390 p.p.m.) and the 350 p.p.m. that is the upper limit for dangerous interference with ecosystems.
As important as such a reduction would be, it is insufficient. The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, has called for a major effort to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. A major research effort to examine additional ways to remove CO2 without environmental side effects must be a global priority.
This is generically different than most geoengineering schemes. Most of these only address temperature (the symptom) rather than CO2 (the cause) and hence are not a real fix. Further, the risk of unintended detrimental effects is inherently high because most geoengineering proposals are planetary in scale.
It is clear that the targets and timetables most nations are bringing to the table at Copenhagen are insufficient to safeguard the living planet and the biological underpinnings of sustainability.
The United States, entering late in the game, is proposing a goal that is but a 5.5 percent reduction below 1990 levels. The equivalent number for China is an increase of 253 percent and for India, 229 percent. Brazil’s emissions (without land use change) would increase 15 percent.
They can be a basis for meaningful discussions and initial lines of action, but only in a context that respects this planet for the biosphere it is.
Thomas Lovejoy holds the Biodiversity Chair at the Heinz Center and heads the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel for the Global Environment Facility.

"In Bolivia, Water and Ice Tell of Climate Change"

Bolivia is a country located in South America with deep valleys filled with large glaciers. The glaciers that once provided electricity and water for families are not melting away. Due to the severe effects of global warming glaciers are melting around the world. In some cases the melting glaciers do not have an affect on the regions but in Bolivia they certainly do. Two years ago the citizens in the region had not problem obtaining water but now it is scare.

The article focuses on how one family is impacted by the affect of climate change. The family has to relocate their home and find new jobs because there location is no longer suitable. Without water from the glaciers the family and many others will die. The climate change could result in a “large urban casualty” due to climate change.

The article suggest that world leaders and superior nations such as the United Stares should make efforts to help this problem. The societies in Bolivia can longer fuel off of glacier, advancements need to be made. The United States and European Union agreed to help towards a project to help the poor countries cope. Scientists state that “money and engineering” could solve the water problems.

The affects of global warming are occurring so rapidly and action needs to be taken immediately to cope with the affects. One glacier in Bolivia that was predicted to last to 2020 melted this year! As powerful and advanced nations the United States and European Union need to donate money to help those in need. With technological advancements Bolivia will no longer need to rely on glaciers for water and electricity. Though the issue can be resolved (enough though it is costly) it just goes to show that global warming is having an immense affect on humanity

"Land-Ice" called Permafrost at risk of destruction

There was a post on the blog which discussed the connection between carbon and temperature, and the effect that these two things have on our earth. This is exactly what I wrote my research paper on so I thought I would elaborate more in the "land ice" that Lyndsay mentioned. This "land-ice" is also known as the arctic permafrost, and extensive research done by scientists in the past few years have shown that temperature and carbon have both been the large cause of the disintegration of the permafrost. Carbon is stored in this land ice layer and as it is emitted into Earth's atmosphere, the temperature around the Earth, not just in arctic regions is increasing. It has brought on great concern regarding the condition of the permafrost, and scientists have concluded that the image of the Earth's arctic which holds the staple of the white ice permafrost is drastically changing. With the disappearance of the permafrost, the temperature across the rest of the Earth is increasing. Scientists have said that the disappearance of the permafrost is increasing the amount of Carbon in the atmosphere and also raising the temperature of the Earth. Unfortunately, it seems that as this"land ice" continues to disappear, the planet is only more susceptible to the dreadful effects of global warming. To quote a research scientist Matthew Sturm, who did extensive field work to investigate the condition of the permafrost; "As long as this highly reflective cover is intact and extensive, sunlight coming directly into the Arctic is mostly reflected back into space, keeping the Arctic cool and a good repository for the heat brought in from lower latitudes. But if the cover begins to melt and shrink, it will reflect less sunlight and the Arctic will become a poorer repository, eventually warming the climate of the entire planet."

Fruit Flies Unravel Brain Mysteries

Scientists have discovered something special from something very small. For almost a century, scientists have used the fruit fly (scientifically known as (Drosophila melanogaster) as a model organism for investigating various biological systems. Now a days they have discovered that the through the fruit fly they can understand how humans perceive the world and make choices. The study of the fruit fly is now considered one of the must studied organism in biological research. Drosophila is being used as a genetic model for several human diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's disease. Researchers are also using the fly to study mechanisms underlying ageing, immunity, diabetes, and cancer.

These scientist are still using the fruit fly to get a better understand of how humans and other animals perceive things around them. In saying that, visual information is very important for many organisms. An animal's visual system is what allows it to see, by interpreting the information from light to build up a representation of the world surrounding its body.
What the scientists know about the vision of the fruit fly is its functional architecture brain and eye structure. What scientists do not know is the route it takes to get from the eye to the brain to interpret the information from light to build up a representation of the world surrounding its body.

The importance of Drosophila is clear, and it has a major role in furthering our understanding of the brain. Due to the unique nature of the genetic system of the Drosophila and the advanced techniques now available to researchers, even the most detailed pathways can be uncovered and their interactions unraveled.

http://www.firstscience.com/home/articles/nature/fruit-flies-unravel-brain-mysteries-page-3-1_52219.html

Black Hole Found to Be Much Closer to Earth Than Previously Thought

An international team of astronomers has accurately measured the distance from Earth to a black hole for the first time. The astronomers have measured the distance to 7800 light years, which is much closer than expected. They achieved this number by measuring the radio emissions from the black hole and its associated dying star. Now that there is a lower error margin astronomers can get a better idea of how black holes grow and evolve. In saying that it is important to know the distance to know the measurement of the black hole’s spin.
Astronomical distances are most easily measured using the so-called trigonometric parallax, in which astronomers make use of the annual shift in the star's position as a consequence of the Earth's orbit around the sun (parallax shift). Peter Jonker from SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research and his colleagues are now using the method to a close black hole and its associated star, V404 Cygni, in the Cygnus constellation.
The outermost layers of the star are being drawn into the black hole. This gas first of all accumulates in a plasma disc around the black hole before it disappears into it, a process during which a lot of X-rays and radio waves are emitted. Picture
Now that astronomers have the mathematical means to measure these black holes they will start applying this to several other black holes.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091209193904.htm

Ancient gases

Courtesy of Jahnna Rymer:

Source: Science
By: Phil Berardelli
The next breath you take could have come beyond Pluto. Researchers studying the composition of ancient gases trapped in deep wells in New Mexico have found convincing evidence that some of our planet's atmosphere originated in the far reaches of the solar system. The discovery could change thinking about how Earth's atmosphere evolved. Since the 1950s, scientists have thought that as Earth congealed from the primordial cloud of dust and gases that also formed the sun and other planet. According to their believes the cloud of dust trapped particles forming a mantle and then over hundreds of years volcanic eruptions and gravity returned the gasses into space and then the mixing of these gases, with oxygen and other molecules formed the atmosphere where we are today.

The original purpose of the research was to study the pristine bubbles of volcanic gases trapped underground for billions of years. These bubbles had never made it to the surface before and therefore remained uncontaminated by the modern atmosphere. The conclusion established was that part of Earth's atmosphere must have arrived after the planet had fully formed possibly carried by comets that hit the planet and whose ice would have evaporated upon impact, leaving water vapor and traces of krypton, xenon, and other elements in the atmosphere.

This article relates to earth science because it shows how particles and planets contribute to the formation of the atmosphere, and it is important because it allows people to realize the magnificence of the planet. Another reason why this article is of importance is because it shows how science is a non-finishing cycle and how everyday new discoveries and advancements are made in science. It shows how one hypothesis or theory may be established but other possibilities might come along proving that the last hypothesis might have not been as convincing or completely right.

Researchers Say Arctic Sea Ice Still at Risk Despite Cold Winter

NASA researchers have using the latest satellite observations report that the Arctic is still on "thin ice" when it comes to the condition of sea ice cover in the region. A new area of sea ice has risen due to the colder-than-average winter in the Arctic this year. On March 18 the scientists said they believe that the increased area of sea ice this winter is due to recent weather conditions, while the decline in perennial ice reflects the longer-term warming climate trend and is a result of increased melting during summer and greater movement of the older ice out of the Arctic. Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, says that as ice ages it will continue to grow and thicken, so that older ice is generally thicker. But this winter they have noticed that the ice is thinner than usual. Therefore it is in a more vulnerable state heading into the summer melt. To get a better understanding of the behavior of sea ice, NASA is planning a follow-on satellite mission, ICESat II, to launch in 2015. The Arctic sea grows and declines seasonally, ranging from an average minimum of 2.5 million square miles in the month of September to an average winter maximum extent of 5.9 million square miles in the month of March. The ice in the Arctic is much younger than normal, with vast regions now covered by first-year ice and much less area covered by multiyear ice. NASA satellites and scientists are continuing to keep a close watch on the conditions of the Arctic Ocean as the summer makes its way in. In doing this they are trying to better determine the extent of the perennial sea ice.

http://geology.com/nasa/arctic-sea-ice.shtml