Climate change link to lizard extinction
By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News
Climate change could wipe out 20% of the world’s lizard species by 2080, according to a global-scale study.
An international team of scientists also found that rising temperatures had already driven 12% of Mexico’s lizard populations to extinction.
Based on this discovery, the team was able to make global predictions using an “extinction model”.
They conclude, in an article in Science journal, that “lizards have already crossed a threshold for extinctions”.
Although the grim prediction for 2080 could change if humans are able to slow global climate warming, the scientists say that a sharp decline in their numbers had already begun and would continue for decades.
The large research team was led by Barry Sinervo from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California in Santa Cruz, US.
He said: “We are actually seeing lowland species moving upward in elevation, slowly driving upland species extinct, and if the upland species can’t evolve fast enough then they’re going to continue to go extinct.”
Lizards, the researchers say, are far more susceptible to climate-warming extinction than previously thought. Many species live right at the edge of their “thermal limits”.
Rising temperatures, they explained, leave lizards unable to spend sufficient time foraging for food, as they have to rest and regulate their body temperature.
A group of biologists including Dr Raymond Huey from the University of Washington in Seattle wrote an accompanying article in Science explaining the significance of the research.
Dr Huey and his colleagues said the predictions were “disturbing”.
But they pointed out that follow-up surveys were needed to confirm the results.
“Lizard populations rise and fall over time and failure to detect individuals during short surveys may indicate transient rarity rather than extinction,” they wrote.
But their article went on to say that the research team had shown that “climate-forced extinctions were not only in the future” but were “happening now”.
>>> Please read the full article at the BBC website, here
May 28, 2010
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Kevin McCloud’s top green home tips – BBC.co.uk
As Grand Designs Live opens, TV presenter Kevin McCloud selects 10 products from recycled scourers to insulating 
blinds
Sting plus – upholstery made from nettles
There are lots of points to make about this fabric. But the main one is that it does everything a synthetic fabric can achieve (meeting fire ratings, “rub tests”, resistance to fading and so on) while being made out of nettles and old wool, the two things you’ll be almost guaranteed to find in a British field, together with barbed wire. There’s nothing barbed about this fabric, however – it may be ethical but it doesn’t sting or itch. Like linen, which is another natural fabric made from plant fibre, Sting is beautiful and glamorous.
Smile Plastics recycled plastic worktops
When it comes to specifying sheet materials for a new kitchen or some cupboards, recycled plastics often get overlooked, usually because they look like frozen sick. Smile Plastics, however, have begun making sheet plastics made from single source plastics: recycled and chopped CDs for example, which give the material the iridescence of abalone or mother-of-pearl. This is upcycled plastic. I chose it for this list because I wanted designers and architects to see it and specify it, as well as consumers.
Parans solar lighting
This product is almost too technical to describe. An egg-crate panel of little rotating eyes follow the sun all day long like a sunflower, collecting direct sunlight and distributing it through a building via a network of fibre-optic cables. This is ideal for introducing light into earth-sheltered or buried buildings or the thousands of London homes now retro-fitted with three underground storeys. It is brilliant. Literally.
Giles Miller – cardboard furniture
Giles is a designer-maker of extraordinary pedigree who examines the value and the usefulness of everything he utilises. So he forces us to re-evaluate materials like corrugated cardboard as not only durable and utilitarian, but also beautiful. We already ran the Grand Designs Awards and these are judged by a panel of luminaries from the worlds of design and sustainability. But choosing this range of cardboard furniture and the other green products here was a much simpler exercise – and much more personal. These are products and inventions that I’ve chosen because I like them, I’ve used or tested them and I wanted them to get more exposure.
Hemcrete – greener concrete
Hemcrete is a walling material that can be sprayed or cast like concrete, but it’s made from lime and hemp. It performs both as an insulant and as a thermal-mass and it locks up carbon as it grows. The average hemp house can stow away about 20 tonnes of CO2 into its walls this way, about 40 kilogrammes for every square metre of wall in comparison with a traditional brick, block and cavity wall which is responsible for the production of about 100kg for every square metre. And hemp is the second-fastest growing crop on the planet after bamboo, so it can be slotted in between other crops during a growing season. It also requires almost no inputs and enriches the soil.
EcoForce – recycled everyday homewares
I remember clearly the day – as if it were yesterday – that someone told me that toilet roll wasn’t made from recycled paper. What do you mean? Surely it’s got to be, it only gets used once? The same goes for scourers and cleaners. You’d sort of expect throwaway bits of foam and gritty green plastic to be of the very cheapest grades of recycled plastic. But not a bit of it. They’re all manufactured from virgin petrochemicals. I can understand that the acrylic used for making DVDs, that are read by lasers and spun at 200mph, needs to be perfect and crystal clear. But not my clothes pegs.
Black Mountain Sheepswool insulation – natural insulation
We all know about sheepswool insulation that comes from New Zealand or other far-flung outreaches of the world of sheep. It is highly breathable, natural, people-friendly and hygroscopic, regulating the moisture content in a cavity such as a wall. Very, very useful in timber framed buildings where condensation and moisture can dissolve the building into wet rot. And Black Mountain is British. Home-grown. Many of our sheep are bred to be shorn twice a year but only get fleeced once because the market for wool is so depressed. If we all bought sheepswool for our attics the flocks of Britain would be much more comfortable.
Newform Energy – combined solar electricity and hot water
Since Becquerel used selenium to experiment with photovoltaics in 1836, and Horace de Saussure captured solar heat in his homemade “hotbox” in 1767, the two disciplines of using solar energy to produce either electricity or hot water have remained separate. Until a very short while ago when some brilliant German physicists decided to circulate the water from solar thermal panels around the electronics in solar photovoltaic panels providing – bingo – a faster-than-normal supply of hot water. The resulting panel also produces electricity more efficiency than a standard photovoltaic panel.
Heatsaver Shades – insulated blinds
Heatsaver is an American firm that make insulated window blinds from the multilayer thin insulation sold for roofspaces which looks like the covering of a Nasa spaceship. Heatsaver uses a less complex structure in its product, which has the appearance of interlined cream linen Roman blinds and the thermal performance of several inches of plastic foam. Their secret, however, lies in a specially designed channel on the wall, in which the blind slides, forming an effective seal. There is no better way of keeping heat inside a building with large glazed walls or a listed building that is single-glazed.
Tirex from Interface Flor – flooring made from recycled rubber
We throw away 486,000 tonnes of tyres every year in Britain. Tirex carpet tiles are recycled — with a minimum of processing — by slicing old tyres and rubber machinery belts into long French fries and then bonding them together side-on. The durable fabric webbing that is inside the tyre wall is exposed as the top surface of the carpet and the resulting texture is a revelation. Interface Flor sell it as “entrance matting” but Tirex doesn’t look anything like a tyre. Its colours are grey and brown. It is elegant and sophisticated and every office in the world and quite a few homes ought to be carpeted with it.
>>> Please read the full article here
May 8, 2010
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UK beaches swamped by plastic litter, say campaigners
UK beaches are being ruined by an ever-accumulating tide of plastic litter, the Marine Conservation Society says.
Volunteers at 400 beaches collected 1,849 items of litter per kilometre in the weekend of the MCS’s 2009 survey and 63% of it was plastic, it said.
It said the amount of rubbish was 77% higher than in 1994 – its first annual survey – and the proportion of plastic volunteers found had never been higher.
However, the overall amount of litter collected was down on 2008. The MCS says plastic is unsightly and harmed marine animals. A spokeswoman said the figures showed plastic makes up an increasing proportion of beach litter – now nearly two-thirds of the total.
She said a 16% drop in litter collected since last year’s findings was a small trough in an overall upward trend.
She added there had been calm weather in the run up to September, when the latest survey took place.
The survey involved more than 4,600 volunteers, each of whom went to their favourite beach over one weekend. Altogether, they collected 2,742 rubbish bags of waste.
The haul included 7,393 plastic bags, 16,243 plastic drinks bottles, 17,712 fishing nets and 70,546 small plastic pieces.
Among the rubbish were a laboratory incubator, syringes, nappies, half a boomerang, a message in a bottle from “Sly Sally”; a joke severed finger and a set of fake vampire’s teeth.
The biggest source of waste was public littering, followed by both commercial and recreational fishing. The MCS spokeswoman said the beaches with the most litter were in the South West of England. She said this because they were closer to shipping lanes and had a higher number of tourists.
“Plastic does not biodegrade but breaks down into small pieces that will last for hundreds if not thousands of years. In parts of our oceans there are now six times more plastic particles in the water than plankton,” she added.
“No-one has been alive long enough to know how long this litter is going to last.
MCS litter projects officer Rachel Bailey said: “Our seas and beaches are becoming overwhelmed with plastic litter, which not only looks horrible, but kills and injures many of our fantastic marine animals every year.
“Over 260 species of marine wildlife become entangled in litter or mistake it for food.
>>> Please read the full article here
>>> Take a look at Eco Pic of the Day’s ‘Farewell Plastikl!‘ article
>>> Check out Eco Pic of the Day’s Eco pictures
April 11, 2010
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Tiger decline is ’sign of world’s failure’
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
Governments need to crack down on illegal tiger trading if the big cats are to be saved, the UN has warned.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meeting in Doha, Qatar heard that tiger numbers are continuing to fall.
Organised crime rings are playing an increasing part in illegal trading of tiger parts, CITES says, as they are with bears, rhinos and elephants.
Interpol is working with CITES to track and curb the international trade.
Last year, World Bank chief Robert Zoellick said the global black market in wildlife products was worth about $10bn per year, making wildlife the third most valuable illicit commodity after drugs and weapons.
Conservationists also point to China’s tiger farms as a threat to the wild animals.
Although China does not officially permit the sale of goods from these farms, in practice several investigations have revealed tiger parts are being sold.
Campaigners warn this perpetuates a market into which wild tiger parts can be sold, often commanding a higher value as products made from wild animals are perceived to be more “potent.”
Just before the CITES meeting opened, the World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies (WFCMS) called on traditional medicine practitioners to abandon the use of tiger parts.
“We will ask our members not to use endangered wildlife in traditional Chinese medicine, and reduce the misunderstanding and bias of the international community,” said WFCMS deputy secretary Huang Jianyin.
“The traditional Chinese medicine industry should look for substitutes and research on economical and effective substitutes for tiger products.”
A resolution before the fortnight-long CITES meeting calls for greater co-operation between regional enforcement authorities to cut down the tiger product trade, and to ensure that breeding operations are “consistent with the conservation of wild populations”.
>>> Please read the full article here
March 25, 2010
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Tough Love in a Troubled Climate – from the BBC
Governments have now demanded – and will get – an independent review into how the IPCC conducts its work and how well its conclusions stand up to scrutiny.
The decision – taken at the governing council meeting of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Bali – potentially offers everyone a way out of the mire currently engulfing climate science, from top-name researchers to the Joe and Joanna Public whose taxes fund them and who expect them to get things right.
The review should be finished within about six months, and the results discussed – and changes instituted – at the IPCC’s meeting in October.
In some quarters this is being touted as an investigation of IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri, who certainly annoyed some (not least in the Indian government) when he initially rebutted criticism of the Himalayan glacier date error in a manner lacking much diplomacy.
In fact, though, it is envisaged as a process that will be thorough and rigorous, but constructive; what you might summarise as “tough love”.
There is no point in governments either soft-soaping or lambasting the organisation to the extent that it loses all its credibility. After all, its conclusions should in principle have a major role in determining what policy options those self-same governments pursue in the arenas of disaster preparedness and energy supply.
So yes, it is possible that Dr Pachauri will not survive the process; and indeed it is possible that he will not want to, if the job description gets so heavily amended that continuing would result in him having to give up all his other interests.
But there are more important questions to be addressed.
To what extent do conclusions of the IPCC’s fourth assessment report (AR4) from 2007 stand up to scrutiny?
Should its processes for gathering and sifting information be amended – and in particular, is there a case for excluding “grey literature” (anything other than peer-reviewed science)?
Does it select its major contributors as objectively as it should? Does it communicate its conclusions effectively to policymakers and the public?
“Climate-sceptical” organisations may already be in ecstasy about a process that – they will argue – may bring down the IPCC, and by extension block political moves towards regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
And this, in turn, may prompt some people involved with the IPCC to put their heads in their hands and complain that the last thing they need is another process that will see lances levelled at the edifice of anthropogenic climate change.
That, I suggest, would be a mistake. Many commentators sympathetic to the organisation have insisted in recent months that it could do with a dose of reform; so why not have reforms recommended by a review that aims for a constructive outcome, rather than by a host of unsympathetic and unaccountable bloggers whose scientific or pseudo-scientific utterings are sometimes impelled by political theologies?
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, reform ideas for the IPCC produced by sympathetic academics so far include producing shorter, more focused and more intelligible reports; setting itself up as a wiki-form web-based platform; and farming out parts of its function to regional organisations or national science academies.
There are some who’ve argued that because the actual number of mistakes in the AR4 was triflingly small, there is no need for review or reform.
But in significant parts of politics, the media and the public, that argument has already been lost, and now it has been lost in reality as well; the review will happen.
Do we need all major scientific papers on climate to be available to all, rather than hidden from most behind the subscription-only business plans of journals such as Nature and Science?
Another reason for getting such a review up and running now is that in June, governments are due to decide whether they will establish an organisation loosely modelled on the IPCC that will collate and sift scientific evidence on biodiversity loss.
Although governments have decided the IPCC needs a review, they have also decided that the world needs an IPCC. And that should come as welcome news to those who feared that a tide of “denialism” was about to swamp the world’s body politic.
>>> Please read the full article here
March 18, 2010
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Scientists to review climate body
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked the world’s science academies to review work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Work will be co-ordinated by the Inter-Academy Council, which brings together bodies such as the UK’s Royal Society.
The IPCC has been under pressure over errors in its last major assessment of climate science in 2007.
Mr Ban said the overall concept of man-made climate change was robust, and action to curb emissions badly needed. The Inter-Academy Council will convene a panel of experts to conduct the review, and will be run independently of UN agencies.
One issue that was raised at the UN news conference was how independent the scientists on the Inter-Academy Council’s review panel will be from the scientists who contributed work to the IPCC in the first place. “Let me be clear – the threat posed by climate change is real,” said Mr Ban, speaking at UN headquarters in New York.
“I have seen no credible evidence that challenges the main conclusions of [the IPCC's 2007] report.”
Robbert Dijkgraaf, the council’s co-chair, said the review panel will be chosen so that it includes both inside knowledge of the IPCC and outside perspectives.
“The panel will look forward and will definitely not go over all the vast amount of data in climate science,” he said.
REVIEW’S TERMS OF REFERENCE
Analyse the IPCC process, including links with other UN agencies
Review the use of non-peer reviewed sources, and quality control on data
Assess how procedures handle “the full range of scientific views”
Review how the IPCC communicates with the public and the media
“It will see what are the [IPCC's] procedures, and how can they be improved, so we can avoid certain types of errors.”
But Roger Pielke Jr, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado who has recently criticised the IPCC over its assessment of the costs of climate-related disasters, said the terms of reference appeared to have some significant omissions. “How will it deal with allegations of breakdowns in procedures in the AR4?”, he asked. “The terms of reference say nothing about looking at the AR4 procedures, but it would be difficult to do a serious evaluation without actually evaluating experience,” he told BBC News.
“Should it ignore the AR4 issues, then it will risk being called a whitewash.” Prof Pielke also suggested the panel might look at apparent conflicts of interest within the IPCC’s staff. The conflict of interest charge has been levelled against the IPCC’s chair, Rajendra Pachauri, over his business interests.
But standing alongside Mr Ban, he welcomed the review.
“The IPCC stands firmly behind the rigour and reliability of its Fourth Assessment Report from 2007, but we recognise that we can improve,” he said. “We have listened and learned from our critics, and we intend to take every action we can to ensure that our reports are as robust as possible.”
The review was demanded by world governments at last month’s meeting of the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) Governing Council. The Inter-Academy Council has been asked to finalise its conclusions by August, in time that its recommendations can be discussed and adopted at October’s IPCC meeting.
>>> Read the full article here
March 16, 2010
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Battery Recycling
30,000 tonnes of portable batteries enter the UK market each year.
New EU rules have come into force that require some stores selling batteries to provide in-store recycling bins. Anyone selling more than 32kg a year – equivalent to one pack of four AA batteries a day – must comply as part of targets on cutting landfill.
The UK currently recycles only 3% of portable batteries, but the aim is to raise that figure to 45% by 2016. Battery maker Varta warned that a lack of awareness among consumers could hamper the scheme’s success.
An estimated 30,000 tonnes of batteries – from those in electrical goods like torches, to rechargeable ones in mobile phones – enter the UK market each year.
At present, 97% eventually end up in landfill sites, where they can leak toxic chemicals into the soil.
The EU Batteries Directive aims to tackle that problem and cut carbon emissions by reducing the need for new batteries to be made from scratch.
All the evidence shows home collections of recyclables produce the best results
Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said: “This new legislation will make it easier for consumers to do the right thing whilst ensuring retailers fulfil their part of the bargain.”
But Vince Armitage, divisional vice-president of Varta, said he was concerned. ”The directive places the responsibility of meeting its stringent collection and recycling targets on the manufacturer, but it relies on the co-operation of consumers and retailers to make it work,” he said. ”However, a lack of promotion means that awareness of the directive among these key groups is low.
“This gives us great concern that, as a nation, we are setting ourselves up to fail before we even begin.” Varta estimates that just meeting the 10% target will cost manufacturers £3m.
Bob Gordon, from the British Retail Consortium, said retailers were ready for the new requirements, but called for a “comprehensive and continuing” government information campaign to raise awareness among consumers. He also said shops should not be the only route for collection, adding: “We need an infrastructure to develop which includes workplaces, schools, community centres and kerbside collection.
Read the full article at: bbc.co.uk/news
February 4, 2010
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China has ‘open mind’
China’s lead climate change negotiator has said he was keeping an “open attitude” as to whether global warming
was man-made or due to natural cycles.
Xie Zhenhua said climate warming was a “solid fact” and that mainstream scientific opinion held it was due to emissions of gases such as CO2.
Mr Xie’s comments appeared to surprise the other environment ministers and envoys at a news conference at the end of their two-day meeting.
He said: “It is already a solid fact that the climate is warming.
“There is one starkly different view, that the climate change or climate warming issue is caused by the cyclical element of nature itself.
“I think we need to adopt an open attitude to the scientific research.”
He said that it was important to include as many views as possible “to be more scientific and to be more consistent”.
A number of scientists have recently disputed the figure. The vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said last week that it was an error and would be reviewed.
But the IPCC’s vice-chairman Jean-Pascal van Ypersele said it did not change the broader picture of man-made climate change.
At their weekend gathering, the officials said they would announce by the end of the month their plans to cut emissions.
They also agreed to contribute $10bn (£6.2bn) this year to help poor nations combat the effects of climate change.
Brazil’s Environment Minister Carols Minc said this would be “a slap in the face to the rich countries” who pledged at the Copenhagen climate summit in December to contribute $30bn (£18.5bn) in funding for the next three years and $100bn (£61.8bn) by 2020.
See the full article at the bbc.co.uk/news
January 28, 2010
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Saving the trillionth tonne
In a week that sees the final round of preliminary talks on a new UN climate treaty, where delegates seem to be focusing on emissions in 2020. Myles Allen argues that they must not lose sight of the much greater challenges that lie beyond 2020 or they risk wasting another decade in the battle against dangerous climate change.
On Thursday, 22 October 2009, a single tonne of anthracite coal was unveiled in the Science Museum in London as part of a new exhibition on climate change. Not, you might think, anything particularly remarkable about that, except that this is not any old tonne of coal: it will be, as close as we can estimate it, the trillionth tonne of carbon to be released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide since industrialisation began in the 18th Century.
The Science Museum, London, and University of Oxford are committed to looking after it for as long as it takes, and solemnly escorting it down to a power station or wherever it can be used most efficiently when total carbon emissions from human activity reach one trillion tonnes.
If, that is, that time ever comes.
The trillionth tonne matters because carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere. Once released, it continues to influence the climate more or less indefinitely unless active measures are taken to scrub it out again, which is not something anyone knows how to do on any scale. Over the past couple of decades, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels have risen by an average of 1.6% per year
Emissions since 1750 comprise of just over half a trillion tonnes of carbon (you can keep track of the number, and the countdown to the release of the trillionth tonne, on the trillionthtonne.org website). This is estimated to have caused just under 1C (1.8F) of global warming (other things affect global temperature as well but, as it happens, their effects more-or-less cancel out over this period). So if we release another 500 billion tonnes, we commit the Earth to a most likely warming of about 2C, which is widely regarded as the threshold for dangerous climate change, and a rubicon that governments of G8 countries and other major economies pledged this year not to cross.
Over the past couple of decades, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels have risen by an average of 1.6% per year, even allowing for the occasional blip like the collapse of the Soviet Union and this year’s recession. Emissions from deforestation have continued steadily.
If these trends continue, which is a relatively conservative “business-as-usual” scenario, we will release the trillionth tonne sometime in the 2040s – a date that is steadily advancing, as the underlying trend is for faster growth in recent years. Emissions resulting from human activity are expected, on balance, to add to the warming effect of carbon dioxide in the future, so if we are to keep the overall warming to less than 2C (or, for that matter, retain any hope of carbon dioxide levels eventually recovering back down to 350 parts per million, or avoid dangerous levels of ocean acidity), we cannot afford to release the trillionth tonne, ever.
What can you do?
Clearly, reducing your carbon footprint helps. Emitting carbon more slowly buys time, which we will certainly need. But to solve the problem in the long term, we need to reduce net emissions, in effect, to zero. Campaigners say atmospheric carbon must not pass 350 parts per million You can’t do this on your own, no matter how heroic a consumer you are. You could reduce your lifetime carbon footprint to zero – by making your home zero-carbon, never use a car and grow your own food – and save the world from dangerous climate change for just a mere two seconds.
So the most important thing you can do is make sure your government recognises the importance of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions in climate policy. At a previous round of negotiations, in Bonn in June, a group of us presented an open letter to the negotiators urging them to acknowledge the need to limit cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide. We did not call for a specific cap: just an acknowledgement that the principle would fundamentally alter the focus of future negotiations. The aim would no longer be to ration out emissions; the aim would be to ban them, just as we banned CFCs. We didn’t save the ozone layer by rationing deodorant. As far as we can tell, that request fell on deaf ears: “This was not the focus of the negotiations at present.” Odd, when cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide are the principal determinant of the risk of dangerous long-term human-induced climate change.
And next time you are in London, drop in to the Science Museum to pay your respects to the trillionth tonne.
Please read the full article here: BBC.co.uk
Image from same source: BBC.co.uk
November 16, 2009
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State of UK Beaches
A recent BBC Panorama programme raised some interesting points about the state of our beaches, but a lot of information that was provided to the BBC was left out. This film was produced to provide important information about bathing water that people need to know.
September 16, 2009
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