Scientists say climate change would incur $2 trillion worth of damage annually to oceans

by | Mar 21, 2012 | Climate Change

By Agence France-Presse

Greenhouse gases are likely to result in annual costs of nearly $2 trillion in damage to the oceans by 2100, according to a new Swedish study.

The estimate by the Stockholm Environment Institute is based on the assumption that climate-altering carbon emissions continue their upward spiral without a pause.

Warmer seas will lead to greater acidification and oxygen loss, hitting fisheries and coral reefs, it warns.

Rising sea levels and storms will boost the risk of flood damage, especially around the coastlines of Africa and Asia, it adds.

Projecting forward using a business-as-usual scenario, the Earth’s global temperature will rise by four degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, says the report, “Valuing the Ocean.”

On this basis, the cost in 2050 will be $428 billion annually, or 0.25 percent of global domestic product (GDP).

By 2100, the cost would rise to $1,979 billion, or 0.37 percent of output.

If emissions take a lower track, and warming is limited to 2.2 C (4 F), the cost in 2050 would be $105 billion, or 0.06 percent of worldwide GDP, rising to $612 billion, or 0.11 percent, by 2100.

“This is not a scaremongering forecast,” says the report.

It cautions that these figures do not take into account the bill for small island states swamped by rising seas. Nor do they include the impact of warming on the ocean’s basic processes, such as nutrient recycling, which are essential to life.

“The ocean has always been thought of as the epitome of unconquerable, inexhaustible vastness and variety, but this ‘plenty more fish in the sea’ image may be its worst enemy,” notes the report.

From PhysOrg: http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-ocean-climate-trillion.html

Scientists warn that oceans will die if “business as usual” continues

Scientists warn that oceans will die if “business as usual” continues

by | Mar 12, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change

By Bari Bates

Our oceans face a grim outlook in the coming decades. Ocean acidification, loss of marine biodiversity, climate change, pollution and over-exploitation of resources all point to the urgent need for a new paradigm on caring for the earth’s oceans—”business as usual” is simply not an option anymore, experts say.

The extreme rate of acidification – the term used to describe the decrease in ocean pH levels caused by man-made CO2 emissions – has happened before, Carol Turley of Plymouth Marine Laboratory said, a claim that might have been comforting if she hadn’t been referring to the time when dinosaurs died out.

This is a “huge environmental crisis,” she told attendees at an information session at European Parliament this month, addressing challenges and solutions for the world’s oceans months ahead of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, slated to be held in Brazil in June.

Turley joked that she’s often called the “acid queen” because of her bleak message, though the plight of more than 70 percent of the earth’s surface is not in the least bit humorous.

Each year, the ocean absorbs roughly 26 percent of total CO2 emissions, which have increased by 30 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in 1750, according to the International Ocean Acidification Reference User Group.

Ocean acidification affects marine life with calcium carbonate skeletons and shells, making them sensitive to even small changes in acidity. Acidification also reduces the availability of calcium for plankton and shelled species, which constitute the base of the entire marine food chain, creating a disastrous domino affect that could wipe out entire ecosystems.

“[The] earth system is truly under the influence of man,” said Wendy Watson-Wright, assistant director general and executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

The oceans could be 150 percent more acidic by 2100, she added. This means drastic decreases in yields from fisheries, and mass extinction of marine life.

The world is currently losing natural resources at a rate humans haven’t even begun to describe, she said.

Read more from Inter Press Service: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107042

Photo by SGR on Unsplash

Rivers, Lakes and Oceans Poisoned With Tons of Mine Waste

Rivers, Lakes and Oceans Poisoned With Tons of Mine Waste

by | Feb 28, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Toxification

By Ecowatch

Each year, mining companies dump more than 180 million tonnes of hazardous mine waste into rivers, lakes, and oceans worldwide, threatening vital bodies of water with toxic heavy metals and other chemicals poisonous to humans and wildlife, according to report released on Feb. 28 by two leading mining reform groups.

An investigation by Earthworks and MiningWatch Canada identifies the world’s waters that are suffering the greatest harm or at greatest risk from the dumping of mine waste. The report, Troubled Waters: How Mine Waste Dumping is Poisoning our Oceans, Rivers, and Lakes, also names the leading companies that continue to use this irresponsible method of disposal.

Mine processing wastes, or tailings, can contain as many as three dozen dangerous chemicals including arsenic, lead, mercury, and cyanide. The report found that the mining industry has left mountains of such waste from Alaska and Canada to Norway and Southeast Asia.

“Polluting the world’s waters with mine tailings is unconscionable, and damage it causes is largely irreversible,” said Payal Sampat, international program director for Washington, D.C.-based Earthworks. “Mining companies must stop using our oceans, rivers, and lakes as dumping grounds for their toxic waste.”

The report says some multinational mining companies are guilty of a double standard.

“Some companies dump their mining wastes into the oceans of other countries, even though their home countries have bans or restrictions against it,” said Catherine Coumans, research coordinator for Ottawa-based MiningWatch Canada. “We found that of the world’s largest mining companies, only one has policies against dumping in rivers and oceans, and none against dumping in lakes.”

There are safer methods of disposing of mine tailings, including returning the waste to the emptied mine. In other places, dumping of any kind is too risky. No feasible technology exists to remove and treat mine tailings from oceans; even partial cleanup of tailings dumped into rivers or lakes is prohibitively expensive.

“We are really suffering because of the millions of tons of mine waste that Barrick Gold dumps in and around our river system every year,” said Mark Ekepa, chairman of the Porgera Landowners’ Association. “Our rivers run red, our houses have become unstable, we have lost fresh drinking water and places to put our food gardens, and sometimes children get carried away by the waste.”

A number of nations, including the U.S., Canada, and Australia, have had restrictions on dumping mine tailings in natural bodies of water. Even these national regulations, however, are being eroded by amendments, exemptions, and loopholes that allow destructive dumping in lakes and streams. Even though U.S. law long banned lake dumping, in 2009 the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Coeur D’Alene Mines of Idaho to dump 7 million tonnes of tailings from the Kensington Gold Mine in Alaska into Lower Slate Lake, filling the lake and destroying all life in it.

In Canada, Taseko Mines Ltd. is proposing to reclassify Little Fish Lake and Fish Creek in British Columbia as a tailings impoundment for its proposed Prosperity Gold-Copper Mine. The watershed is home to grizzly bear and highly productive rainbow trout, and is an important cultural area for the Tsilhqot’in People. After being refused environmental approvals for the past 17 years, the company has re-applied with plans to build a tailings impoundment to dispose of 480 million tons of tailings and 240 million tons of waste rock in the basin of the creek and lake, burying the ecosystems under a hundred meters of waste.

From Ecowatch

Photo by Dominik Vanyi on Unsplash

Oceans becoming increasingly acidic as carbon emissions are absorbed

Oceans becoming increasingly acidic as carbon emissions are absorbed

by | Feb 22, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change

By Katharine Gammon

The oceans have already absorbed about one-third of the 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide that human activity has added to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. Absorbing carbon dioxide reduces the pH of seawater, indicating an increase in its acidity.

While more attention has been focused on the ecological fragility of coral reefs, cold-water life in other regions — from urchins and sea-stars to tiny plankton-like copepods — may be more at risk than their warmer-water counterparts, according to information presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Vancouver.

Like many effects of climate change, the impacts of acidification can vary from place to place.

“Ocean warming-related issues that have economic punch will not be evenly spread around the globe,” said Gretchen Hofmann , a professor of marine biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “They will be local, focal, and intense.”

The physical mechanisms are clear: because cold water tends to hold more gas, the Arctic and Antarctic oceans already contain more carbon dioxide than other areas. In a world with oceans even more acidic than they are today, marine creatures that form shells or body structure from calcium carbonate may struggle to create their structures. Losing those species will negatively affect species that are higher up on the food chain, like herring.

Already, some oyster hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest recently failed to produce oysters because the water had become too acidic for the larvae to form shells, Hofmann said.

Scientists are just beginning to predict what will happen in the future with more acidic waters. Jason Hall-Spencer, of Plymouth University in the U.K., studies life at sites where natural carbon dioxide bubbles like a Jacuzzi from the ocean floor. He chooses places along the carbon-rich sea floor vents that mimic the effects of high acidity in the rest of the ocean’s future — a time machine for looking at hundreds of species in conditions that will exist 10 or 50 years down the road.

Hall-Spencer has studied volcanic vents in Italy, California and Papua New Guinea. All of them show similar effects. “What we see are dramatic shifts in ecosystems, with a tipping point predicted at end of this century,” he said. That tipping point would spell out a 30% drop in biodiversity in everything from corals to fish, he added.

Hall-Spencer said that some organisms strain attempt to keep up with changing conditions. “It’s like us panting for oxygen at high altitude – they’re struggling,” he said.

Hall-Spencer called the combination of warming and acidification “a deadly noxious cocktail.”  He said that worst-case scenarios predict that acidity will increase another 150 percent by 2050 — and warming and acidification are a double-whammy.

From Physorg: http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-world-oceans-acid.html

Materials Used by Humans Weigh More than All Life on Earth

Materials Used by Humans Weigh More than All Life on Earth

by | Nov 16, 2024 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Human Supremacy, NEWS

By Nick King and Aled Jones / THE CONVERSATION

 

The extent of humanity’s influence on the planet has become increasingly clear in recent years. From the alarming accumulation of plastic waste in our oceans to the sprawling growth of urban areas, the size of our impact is undeniable.

The concept of the “technosphere” aims to reveal the immense scale of our collective impact. The concept was first introduced by US geologist Peter Haff in 2013, but paleobiologist Jan Zalasiewicz has since popularised the term through his work. The technosphere encompasses the vast global output of materials generated by human activities, as well as the associated energy consumption.

Since the agricultural revolution some 12,000 years ago (when we started building cities and accumulating goods), human enterprise has steadily grown. However, our impact has surged dramatically over the past couple of centuries. This surge has since transformed into exponential growth, particularly since 1950.

The technosphere is indicative of how humans are increasingly emerging as a global force on par with the natural systems that shape the world. The transformation that is needed to reduce our impact is therefore equally large. And yet, despite growing awareness, there has been a lack of concrete action to address humanity’s impact on the planet.

To comprehend the sheer magnitude of the technosphere, it is best visualised. So here are four graphs that capture how our collective addiction to “stuff” is progressively clogging up planet Earth.

1. Weighing the technosphere

In 2020, a group of Israeli academics presented a shocking fact: the combined mass of all materials currently utilised by humanity had surpassed the total mass of all living organisms on Earth.

According to their findings, the collective weight of all life on Earth (the biosphere) – ranging from microbes in the soil, to trees and animals on land – stands at 1.12 trillion tonnes. While the mass of materials actively used by humans, including concrete, plastic and asphalt, weighed in at 1.15 trillion tonnes.

The technosphere weighs more than all life on Earth (trillion tonnes):

A graph showing how the technosphere now weighs more than the biosphere.The relative weights of the active technosphere and biosphere. The active technosphere includes materials that are currently in use by human activities. The biosphere includes all living things.
Elhacham et al. (2020), CC BY-NC-ND

This graph offers a glimpse into the immense size of humanity’s footprint. But it likely only scratches the surface.

When accounting for the associated byproducts of the materials used by humans, including waste, ploughed soil and greenhouse gases, the geologist and palaeontologist, Jan Zalasiewicz, calculated that the technosphere expands to a staggering 30 trillion tonnes. This would include a mass of industrially emitted carbon dioxide equivalent to 150,000 Egyptian Pyramids.

2. Changing the Earth

Remarkably, human activity now dwarfs natural processes in changing the surface of our planet. The total global sediment load (erosion) that is transported naturally each year, primarily carried by rivers flowing into ocean basins, is estimated to be around 30 billion tonnes on average. However, this natural process has been overshadowed by the mass of material moved through human action like construction and mining activities.

In fact, the mass of material moved by humans surpassed the natural sediment load in the 1990s and has since grown rapidly. In 2015 alone, humans moved approximately 316 billion tonnes of material – more than ten times the natural sediment load.

Humans change the Earth’s surface more than natural processes (billion tonnes):

A graph showing how more materials are moved by mineral extraction and construction than by natural geological processes.Global movement of material: average annual natural sediment transport (blue), the total mass of things transported by humans in 1994 (purple) and in 2015 (orange).
Cooper at al. (2018) & ScienceDaily (2004), CC BY-NC-ND

3. Transporting ‘stuff’

Our ability to transport fuel and products worldwide has facilitated the trends shown in the preceding graphs. Humans now transport these materials over increasingly vast distances.

Shipping continues to be the primary mechanism for moving materials around the globe. Since 1990, the amount of materials that are shipped around the world has increased more than threefold – and is continuing to grow.

How shipping has grown since 1980 (million tonnes):

A graph showing the growth in shipping capacity from 1980 to 2022.Shipping capacity growth between 1980 and 2022.
World Ocean Review (2010) & UNCTAD (2022), CC BY-NC-ND

4. The growth of plastics

Plastic stands out as one of the main “wonder materials” of the modern world. Due to the sheer speed and scale of the growth in plastic manufacturing and use, plastic is perhaps the metric most representative of the technosphere.

The first forms of plastic emerged in the early 20th century. But its mass production began following the second world war, with an estimated quantity of 2 million tonnes produced in 1950. However, the global production of plastic had increased to approximately 460 million tonnes by 2019.

This surge in plastic manufacturing is a pressing concern. Plastic pollution now causes many negative impacts on both nature and humans. Ocean plastics, for example, can degrade into smaller pieces and be ingested by marine animals.

Plastic manufacturing (million tonnes) has grown exponentially since 1950:

A graph showing how plastic materials production has increased since 1950.Annual plastic production.
Geyer et al. (2017) and OECD (2023), CC BY-NC-ND

Humanity’s escalating impact on planet Earth poses a significant threat to the health and security of people and societies worldwide. But understanding the size of our impact is only one part of the story.

Equally important is the nature, form and location of the different materials that constitute the technosphere. Only then can we understand humanity’s true impact. For example, even the tiniest materials produced by humans, such as nanoplastics, can have significant and far-reaching consequences.

What is clear, though, is that our relentless pursuit of ever-increasing material output is overwhelming our planet.The Conversation

Aled Jones, Professor & Director, Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University and Nick King, Visiting Researcher, Anglia Ruskin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

Banner by Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons