Immediate government action to halt greenhouse gas emissions is needed to limit damage to fisheries and coral reefs due to increasing ocean acidity, warned more than 150 marine scientists from 26 countries in a declaration issued today.
The Monaco Declaration on Ocean Acidification, released at an international aquatic sciences meeting in Nice, warns that levels of acidity are accelerating and that negative socio-economic impacts can only be limited by cutting back on the amounts of greenhouse gases released to the atmosphere.
Ocean acidification may make most regions of the ocean inhospitable to coral reefs by 2050, if atmospheric CO2 levels continue to increase, the declaration warns.
This reef collapse could lead to substantial changes in commercial fish stocks, threatening food security for millions of people as well as the multi-billion dollar fishing industry.
Ocean testing for acidity (Photo by Chris Sabine, Reefbase)
The declaration is based on results from a UNESCO symposium, The Ocean in a High-CO2 World, held at the Oceanography Museum in Monaco last October.
Prince Albert II of Monaco today urged political leaders to take notice of the declaration ahead of negotiations at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen at the end of the year.
"I strongly support this declaration," said the prince, whose environmental foundation provided support for the symposium. "I hope the declaration will be heard by all the political leaders meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009."
"The chemistry is so fundamental and changes so rapid and severe that impacts on organisms appear unavoidable," said symposium chair James Orr of the Monaco-based UN Marine Environment Laboratories, a division of the the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"The questions are now how bad will it be and how soon will it happen," said Orr.
The international community has been developing a global observing system for ocean carbon, using ships, buoys, and satellites to understand how the ocean absorbs atmospheric CO2.
The ocean absorbs a quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere from human activities. Observations from the last 25 years show increasing acidity in surface seawater, following trends in increasing atmospheric CO2.
"Measured recent increases in ocean acidity follow exactly what is expected from basic chemistry; meanwhile, key ocean regions reveal decreases in shell weights and corals that are less able to build skeletal material," said Orr.
"The report from the symposium summarizes the state of the science and priorities for future research, while the Monaco Declaration implores political leaders to launch urgent actions to limit the source of the problem," he said.
"The Monaco Declaration is a clear statement from this expert group of marine scientists that ocean acidification is happening fast and highlights the critical importance of documenting associated changes to marine life," says Professor Sybil Seitzinger, executive director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, one of the sponsors of the symposium.
Other symposium sponsors were UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research, and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The other great oceanic consequence of high atmospheric CO2 concentrations from fossil fuel burning - the expansion of low oxygen dead zones - was highlighted in a report Monday from a team of Danish scientists.
Dead zones across the world's oceans would expand by a factor of 10 or more if global warming continues unchecked, the Danish team warned, based on newly developed climate models that project 100,000 years into the future.
"Such expansion would lead to increased frequency and severity of fish and shellfish mortality events, for example off the west coasts of the continents like off Oregon and Chile," said Professor Gary Shaffer of the University of Copenhagen, leader of the research team at the Danish Center for Earth System Science, with scientists from the Danish Meteorological Institute and the National Space Institute.
"If, as in many climate model simulations, the overturning circulation of the ocean would greatly weaken in response to global warming," explained Shaffer, "these oxygen minimum zones would expand much more still and invade the deep ocean."
Extreme events of ocean oxygen depletion are believed to have contributed to some of the large extinction events in Earth history, including the largest such event 250 million years ago, when 96 percent of all marine species and 70 percent of terrestrial vertebrate species went extinct.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2009/2009-01-30-02.asp
Friday, 30 January 2009
Obama urged not to backburner climate change
Don't put off action on global warming just because times are lean — that's the message Al Gore, world environmental leaders and U.S. executives sent Friday to President Barack Obama.
Worries are mounting that economic troubles are sapping momentum, in the U.S. Congress and in other world capitals, for costly investment in clean energy and cutting carbon emissions.
"The oceans are being choked off of oxygen. They are dying as a result of this process we are seeing before our eyes the melting of the polar ice cap," Gore said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "The assumption that we can continue on this path is an assumption that is collapsing."
Many countries are looking to Obama for aggressive action after frustration at the Bush administration's refusal to sign international pacts on reducing emissions of carbon, blamed for global warming.
Gore, U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer and executives were discussing the fate of a U.N. meeting in Copenhagen this December aiming for a global agreement on reducing emissions. Questions remain over the new U.S. government's position on the Copenhagen meeting, which is seen as crucial.
"We need an agreement this year, not next year or some other time," Gore said.
Still, Gore expressed optimism in Obama, calling him "the greenest person in the room" for making environmental funding a big chunk of the $819 billion economic stimulus bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives this week.
But he and other panelists acknowledged that the financial crisis will be a key challenge. Governments could shy from forcing polluting industries to pay for their carbon emissions or using taxpayer money for expensive new clean energy investments — even if they prove more efficient in the long term.
"Undeniably the financial crisis is making things more difficult," U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer, told Associated Press Television News. "There is a shortage of finance, you see that many renewable energy projects are being put on the back burner."
But he added, "If you look at the economic recovery packages of the European Union, the United States, Japan, China — they are all using this as an opportunity to change the direction of economic growth, and that I find encouraging."
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who will host the Copenhagen meeting, urged countries to agree to reduce global emissions by 50 percent by 2050, and said industrialized countries should reduce by 80 percent.
"We have to be vigilant so that the crisis does not derail this," he told the AP.
The onus is not only on Obama. Climate negotiators are looking anxiously at developing giants and heavy emitters China and India. And Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin disappointed some activists with his non-committal stance on climate change in his keynote address at the Davos forum.
Media magnate Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of News Corp., joined the call to ensure that investment in clean energy doesn't collapse.
"There's a real risk that the alternative energy industry could die again," he said later. "I really hope that the new president will not let that happen."
The head of the New York Stock Exchange, Duncan Niederauer, agreed.
"We've got to stay the course on energy efficiency," he said. "It's time we get serious about it and push it through."
ANGELA CHARLTON
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5joP1fpuSb6ejhPHRWqnbA2IsIh5AD961MNAO1
Worries are mounting that economic troubles are sapping momentum, in the U.S. Congress and in other world capitals, for costly investment in clean energy and cutting carbon emissions.
"The oceans are being choked off of oxygen. They are dying as a result of this process we are seeing before our eyes the melting of the polar ice cap," Gore said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "The assumption that we can continue on this path is an assumption that is collapsing."
Many countries are looking to Obama for aggressive action after frustration at the Bush administration's refusal to sign international pacts on reducing emissions of carbon, blamed for global warming.
Gore, U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer and executives were discussing the fate of a U.N. meeting in Copenhagen this December aiming for a global agreement on reducing emissions. Questions remain over the new U.S. government's position on the Copenhagen meeting, which is seen as crucial.
"We need an agreement this year, not next year or some other time," Gore said.
Still, Gore expressed optimism in Obama, calling him "the greenest person in the room" for making environmental funding a big chunk of the $819 billion economic stimulus bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives this week.
But he and other panelists acknowledged that the financial crisis will be a key challenge. Governments could shy from forcing polluting industries to pay for their carbon emissions or using taxpayer money for expensive new clean energy investments — even if they prove more efficient in the long term.
"Undeniably the financial crisis is making things more difficult," U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer, told Associated Press Television News. "There is a shortage of finance, you see that many renewable energy projects are being put on the back burner."
But he added, "If you look at the economic recovery packages of the European Union, the United States, Japan, China — they are all using this as an opportunity to change the direction of economic growth, and that I find encouraging."
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who will host the Copenhagen meeting, urged countries to agree to reduce global emissions by 50 percent by 2050, and said industrialized countries should reduce by 80 percent.
"We have to be vigilant so that the crisis does not derail this," he told the AP.
The onus is not only on Obama. Climate negotiators are looking anxiously at developing giants and heavy emitters China and India. And Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin disappointed some activists with his non-committal stance on climate change in his keynote address at the Davos forum.
Media magnate Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of News Corp., joined the call to ensure that investment in clean energy doesn't collapse.
"There's a real risk that the alternative energy industry could die again," he said later. "I really hope that the new president will not let that happen."
The head of the New York Stock Exchange, Duncan Niederauer, agreed.
"We've got to stay the course on energy efficiency," he said. "It's time we get serious about it and push it through."
ANGELA CHARLTON
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5joP1fpuSb6ejhPHRWqnbA2IsIh5AD961MNAO1
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