Drought in Amazon raised severe concerns

It is unusual but sometimes happens for the rain forests to have no rain.

In 2005 the severe drought hit Amazon rain forest, the rivers level fell dramatically and according to the scientists these could happen ones in a century or so.

But an expectantly last year drought affected Amazon region in much larger area than in 2005, so the scientist are concern that these could become a pattern and that it is more than a coincides.

Although the cause is still unknown, it could be natural climatic variations and in the future we might see no more of these types of droughts, but the alternative is that it is associated with high concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, Dr. Simon Lewis explained for BBC News.

Rain forests like Amazon are natural absorbers of CO2 and by losing their ability and capacity to absorb; more greenhouse gases are ending in the atmosphere.

According to a research published in journal Science, in a typical year the forest absorbs 1.5 bn tonnes CO2, but in the 2005 the forest released 5 bn tonnes CO2, because of a dying trees. 

The real concern comes if we just compare the last year’s figures of released 8 bn tonnes from the forest and 5.4 bn tonnes CO2  produced by US  in 2009 by burning fossil fuels.

It is our duty to protect the forests by any cost.

Written by: Jasmina Nikoloska
Source: www.bbc.co.uk

First GM chickens resistant to bird flu created

The journal Science published a study of genetically modified [GM] chickens that are resistant to bird flu. 

According to the researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh in the United Kingdom, this achievement could stop bird flu from spreading and possibly reduce the risk of bird flu epidemics that could lead to flu virus epidemics in humans. 

Photo: minyanville.com

The researchers believe that the technology has the potential to create a variety of GM farm animals resistant to viral diseases.
They think that the genetic modification they have introduced is harmless to the chickens as well to people who might eat the birds and possibly it could an alternative to vaccination.
As the researchers explained, they inserted an artificial gene into chickens, which diverts an enzyme crucial for transmitting the H5N1 strain. Still the birds get sick and eventually die but they didn't pass on that virus to other chickens.

Although the technology offers a benefit, British public is sceptical over GM food and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) should conduct a full detailed safety evaluation before any of this GM produce could enter the market.
And Tim Elsdale, who is an organic farmer in East Sussex, told BBC News that it was better to adopt good farming practices to avoid animals getting diseases in the first place than to create GM farm animals.

On the other hand human population is growing rapidly and eventually feeding the world is going to be a real problem.

Written By Jasmina Nikoloska

Sources : bbc.co.uk & www.medicalnewstoday.com

Campaign - The Big Fish Fight

DISCARDS AT SEA

Around half of the fish caught by fishermen in the North Sea are unnecessarily thrown back into the ocean dead.

The problem is that in a mixed fishery where many different fish live together, fishermen cannot control the species that they catch.

Fishing for one species often means catching another, and if people don’t want them or fishermen are not allowed to land them, the only option is to throw them overboard. The vast majority of these discarded fish will die.
Because discards are not monitored, it is difficult to know exactly how many fish are being thrown away. The EU estimates that in the North Sea, discards are between 40% and 60% of the total catch. Many of these fish are species that have fallen out of fashion: we can help to prevent their discard just by rediscovering our taste for them.
Others are prime cod, haddock, plaice and other popular food species that are “over-quota”. The quota system is intended to protect fish stocks by setting limits on how many fish of a certain species should be caught.

Fishermen are not allowed to land any over-quota fish; if they accidentally catch them – which they can’t help but do - there is no choice but to throw them overboard before they reach the docks.

THE SOLUTIONs

We need to diversify our fish eating habits, and we need to change policy so that it works for fish, fishermen and consumers.
The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), which is the political framework for the quota system, is currently being reformed for 2012. Scientists and environmental groups have suggested a number of ways that that the policy can work to protect fish stocks. Some details of these can be found on our solutions page.
Re-writing the Common Fisheries Policy is going to be an enormously complicated business, and unfortunately there is no one easy solution to ending discards. Many people agree that the answer will lie in a combination of different ideas and policies.

See more and get involved at: http://www.fishfight.net/

Solar industry raises concerns of potential e-waste

Reducing the use of fossil fuel, cutting greenhouse gases and other air pollution emissions have become recognised necessities; the recent explosive growth of solar technology is a welcomed occurrence because of the expected energy crisis. 

PHOTO: solarthermalmagazine.com
Thankfully, the Sun is most widely available energy resource.
However, solar modules contain some of the potentially dangerous substances found in electronic waste, including silicon tetrachloride, cadmium, selenium and sulphur hexafluoride, which is a potent greenhouse gas.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that e-waste is growing at two to three times the rate of any other source of waste; furthermore, only 15 to 20 per cent of e-waste is recycled.
The crystalline photovoltaic cell is the oldest and most widespread solar technology in the United States, holding a 57 per cent market share in 2009, according to Greentech Media. A thin film technology called cadmium telluride holds about 21 per cent, while copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) currently has a market share of just 6 per cent. Amorphous silicon, which also has an indium tin oxide layer, takes 16 per cent.
Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition (SCTC) issued a report in 2009 warning that solar panels provide clean energy while in use, but a variety of factors during their manufacturing and disposal has the potential to greatly damage the environment.
Now is the right time to recognise the necessary measures for the solar industry to remain sustainable and retain it green credibility. Although solar panels have a life expectancy of approximately 25 years, and it is not expected for large amounts of modules to be returned for another 10 to 15 years for recycling or disposal, there is a big e-waste potential.
It is important to build proper infrastructure and address the issues of producer responsibility, recycling in an attempt to avoid the danger of electronic waste and future plans for the disposal of solar panels that are no longer needed.
Still, most companies that are beginning recycling programmes today are proceeding under the assumption that recycling will be costly. They are preparing for that expense by creating a variety of funding mechanisms based on the principle of producer responsibility, The Guardian wrote on 3 September 2010.
Currently there is nothing much to recycle except.....

See more: http://www.energetika.net/eu/novice/interviews/solar-industry-raises-concerns-of-potential-ewaste

Climate Change May Alter Natural Climate Cycles of Pacific

ScienceDaily (Oct. 18, 2010) — While it's still hotly debated among scientists whether climate change causes a shift from the traditional form of El Nino to one known as El Nino Modoki, scientists now say that El Nino Modoki affects long-term changes in currents in the North Pacific Ocean.

Photo: en.wikipedia.org

The research is published online in the journal Nature Geoscience.

El Nino is a periodic warming in the eastern tropical Pacific that occurs along the coast of South America. Recently, scientists have noticed that El Nino warming is stronger in the Central Pacific rather than the Eastern Pacific, a phenomenon known as El Nino Modoki (Modoki is a Japanese term for "similar, but different").

Last year, the journal Nature published a paper that found climate change is behind this shift from El Nino to El Nino Modoki. While the findings of that paper are still being debated, this latest paper in Nature Geoscience presents evidence that El Nino Modoki drives a climate pattern known as the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO).

"We've found that El Nino Modoki is responsible for changes in the NPGO,"said Emanuele Di Lorenzo, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "The reason this is important is because the NPGO has significant effects on fish stocks and ocean nutrient distributions in the Pacific, especially along the west coast of the United States."

The NPGO, first named two years ago by Di Lorenzo and colleagues in a paper in Geophysical Research Letters, explained for the first time long-term changes in ocean circulation of the North Pacific, which scientists now link to an increasing number of dramatic transitions in coastal marine ecosystems.

"The ecosystems of the Pacific may very well become more sensitive to the NPGO in the future," said Di Lorenzo. "Our data show that this NPGO is definitively linked to El Nino Modoki, so as Modoki becomes more frequent in the central tropical Pacific, the NPGO will also intensify."

See more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101017133641.htm

What's the carbon footprint of ... building a house

New homes require far less energy to run than older properties, but building them generates plenty of CO2

• More carbon footprints: the internet, cycling a mile, others
• Understand more about carbon footprints

 

New houses such as these ones in south Derbyshire take lots of energy and resources to produce. Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA

 

The carbon footprint of a house:
80 tonnes CO2e: A newbuild two-bed cottage

The carbon footprint of building a house depends on all kinds of things – including, of course, the size of the house and the types of materials chosen.

The estimate of 80 tonnes given above is for the construction of a brand-new cottage with two bedrooms upstairs and two reception rooms and a kitchen downstairs. It's based on a study that I was involved in for Historic Scotland.
The study looked at the climate change implications of various options for a traditional cottage in Dumfries: leave it as it is, refurbish, or knock it down and build a new one to various different building codes. We looked at the climate change impact over a 100-year period, taking into account the embodied emissions in the construction and maintenance as well as the energy used and generated by those living in the building.

Unsurprisingly, the worst option by far was to do nothing and leave the old house leaking energy like a sieve. Knocking down and starting again worked out at about 80 tonnes CO2e whether the house was built to 2008 Scottish building regulations or to the much more stringent and expensive Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5 that demanded 'carbon neutrality'.

Here's how that total broke down for the carbon-neutral option:

• Walls 60%
• Timber 14%
• Pipework and drainage 9%
• Floors 5%
• Slate roof 5%
• Photovoltaic panels 3%
• Other 4%

Eighty tonnes is a lot – equivalent to five brand-new family cars, about six years of living for the average Brit or 24 economy-class trips to Hong Kong from London. But a house may last for a century or more, so the annual carbon cost is much less – and for all the new-build options, the up-front emissions from construction work were paid back by savings from better energy efficiency in 15–20 years.

However, the winning option was to refurbish the old house, because the carbon investment of doing this was just eight tonnes CO2e, and even the highest-specification newbuild could not catch up this advantage over the 100-year period. Once cost was taken into account, refurbishment became dramatically the most practical and attractive option, too.

If this one study is representative, the message for the construction industry is clear. Investment in the very highest levels of energy-efficiency for new homes is, even at its best, an extremely costly way of saving carbon. Investing in improvements to existing homes is dramatically more cost-effective.

See more carbon footprints.

• This article draws on text from How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything by Mike Berners-Lee

www.guardian.co.uk

Pollution is not the reason of temperature drop in Northern Hemisphere around 1970

The new research, led by Dave Thompson from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, US, shows that the top layers of Northern Hemisphere water cooled by about 0.3C between 1968 and 1972, while the South Hemisphere saw approximately the same degree of warming.

But the timescale of the drop is much shorter, than that previously linked to the increasing sulphate aerosols from fossil fuel in the troposphere, or changes in the climate of the world’s oceans that evolve over decades (oscillatory multidecadal variability).

Photo: ijolumoet.com

This research suggests that the explanation of the cooling could lie somewhere else, it is not clear where, since the effect of aerosols is expected to be more gradually.

A model developed by Thompson which uses data collected by ships and buoys over the past two and a half centuries examined temperature change on a month-by-month basis, unlike previous studies that look at temperature change on a decadal scale.

The team fed the data into a model that blocks out short-term changes in ocean temperature – triggered, for example, by volcanic eruptions which spew sulphur aerosols into the atmosphere. This allowed them to identify changes in ocean temperature that weren't linked to natural variation; The Guardian wrote on 22 September 2010.

It is unclear what caused the cooling process, but an unusually large discharge of ice from the Arctic Ocean in 1967 is the reason of a 10,000 cubic kilometre pool of fresh water from the coast of Greenland, which appears to have lowered the salinity of water in the North Atlantic, according to Mark Maslin of the Environment Institute at University College London.

One possibility is the Great Salinity Anomaly (GSA) which presumably interrupted the mixing process of cooled surface water and warm deep water that caused a cool period by dumping light, fresh water on the surface.

Still, it is a fact that currently greenhouse gases are warming up the Planet.


Written by Jasmina Nikoloska
Sources: Abstract of the paper in Journal Nature

               The Guardian