In WWF’s eye-opening Living Planet Report 2012, scientists reveal the world’s population currently uses natural resources at a rate of 1.5 times the planet can provide. The report goes on to say that if we don’t change course, by 2030 the resources from two planets will not be enough to sustain our rate of consumption.

Other facts from the WWF’s findings include:

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• Biodiversity – the number of plants and animal species – has dropped by 28 percent globally since 1970, with tropical and freshwater species experiencing the biggest declines; the tropical freshwater index dropped by 70 percent

• The five biggest consumers of natural resources are Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Denmark, and the United States.

• As many as 2.7 billion people already experience a severe scarcity of fresh water at least one month per year

• Deforestation and forest degradation currently account for up to 20 percent of global man-made CO2 emissions

• The past few decades have been warmer than any other comparable period for at least the last 400 years

When asked why environmental groups continue to struggle with their conservation efforts, WWF International’s director general Jim Leape said: “We’ve built an economy over the last century that is built on fossil fuels and on a premise that the Earth’s resources could not be exhausted. You see that conspicuously in the case of the oceans, where we’ve been taking fish as if there were no tomorrow, as if fish would just always be there.

“Secondly, we’re doing it in the context of a marketplace that continues to send the wrong signals. So many of the costs that we’re talking about are not built into the prices you see … Markets can work well if prices are telling the truth but at the moment they don’t, in hugely important ways.”

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As well as outlining the world’s conservation challenges, the report also put forth ideas for solutions to living within the planet’s means:

1. Significantly expand the global protected areas of network: protect 20 percent of key ecological areas that are vital to sustaining biodiversity and implement adequate funding
2. Halt loss of priority habitats: eliminate deforestation and degradation by 2020, preserve freshwater systems, and increase the marine protected areas from 5 to 20 percent
3. Restore damaged ecosystems and ecosystem services: reverse the damage done to those systems that are vital for food, water, and energy security

Consumers can shop for labels that identify products produced with minimal or no negative impact on the environment or society. Organizations which certify products that bear the labels include: Aquaculture Stewardship Council, Marine Stewardship Council, and Forest Stewardship Council.

For the first time, monster solar tornadoes several times the size of the Earth and swirling at speeds of up to 190,000 miles per hour were filmed by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The $850 million spacecraft, launched Feb. 11, 2010, constantly gathers high-definition video and data about the sun to help experts better understand the effects solar activity has on the Earth.

The video was filmed between February 7 and 8 and shows cooler plasma material as darker spots on a bright background. The tornadoes, noted as swirling plasma erupting from deep inside the solar corona, are shaped by the sun’s powerful magnetic field.

“Prominences are tangled magnetic fields trapping cold and dense plasma in the solar corona,” says Dr Xing Li, a solar physicist at Wales’ Aberystwyth University.

“These often erupt spectacularly and fly out into space as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and large CMEs will impact our space weather and space technology in a significant way when they are heading toward the Earth.”

As humans becomes more dependent on sensitive technology, it is critical that scientists develop new and more sophisticated ways to predict the Sun’s future eruptions. And solar tornadoes may hold the key to predicting when the next coronal mass ejection will be launched.

The review of hundreds of paleoceanographic studies is the first of its kind to analyze the evidence of ocean acidification over such a vast time period.

The oceans absorb excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which combines with sea water to form carbonic acid and is eventually neutralized by fossil carbonate shells on the seafloor. When the oceans absorb CO2 too quickly, however, it interferes with the marine life’s ability to sustain a balanced ecosystem.

“What we’re doing today really stands out,” said lead author Bärbel Hönisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “We know that life during past ocean acidification events was not wiped out—new species evolved to replace those that died off. But if industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about—coral reefs, oysters, salmon.”

In the last hundred years, atmospheric CO2 has risen about 30 percent, to 393 parts per million, and ocean pH has fallen by 0.1 unit, to 8.1 – an acidification rate at least 10 times faster than 56 million years ago, says Hönisch.

Many areas are already exhibiting alarming signs of deterioration.  In a 2011 study of coral reefs off Papua New Guinea, scientists writing in the journal Nature Climate Change found that when pH dropped to 7.8, reef diversity declined by as much as 40 percent.

“It’s not a problem that can be quickly reversed,” said Christopher Langdon, a biological oceanographer at the University of Miami who co-authored the study on Papua New Guinea reefs. “Once a species goes extinct it’s gone forever. We’re playing a very dangerous game.”

Mediterranean seagrass Posidonia oceanica ranks amongst the slowest-growing and longest-lived plants in existence, according to Carlos Duarte of the University of Western Australia in Perth.  Duarte estimates the minimum age to be between 80,000 and 200,000 years, projecting the origin of the clones well into the late Pleistocene, and making it the oldest known living organism on the planet.

Seagrasses reproduce by cloning and can form extensive meadows considered to be one organism.

Despite its longevity, Posidonia oceanica may well be challenged by the unprecedented rate of environmental change imposed by current global climate change. Seagrasses are the basis of essential coastal ecosystems but are waning worldwide, and P. oceanica meadows are declining at an estimated rate of about 5% per year. The results reported in the February 1st edition of PLoS ONE suggest that clones of that species have adapted to a broad range of environmental conditions, but the unprecedented rate of global climate change, together with the steep decline in seagrasses already observed for the past 20 years, are raising serious concerns about the continued survival of this long-lived species.

Source: Implications of Extreme Life Span in Clonal Organisms: Millenary Clones in Meadows of the Threatened Seagrass Posidonia oceanica

Based on core samples from 55.9 million years ago, when the earth last experienced a rapid period of global warming, our current rate of carbon release is nearly 10 times as fast. According to geologists, rate matters and this current rapid change may not allow sufficient time for the biological environment to adjust.

The past warming period, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), experienced a rapid increase in global temperatures over a time span of 20,000 years. Based on models developed at Penn State University, the outcome was a warming of from 9 to 16 degrees Fahrenheit and an acidification event in the oceans.

“Rather than the 20,000 years of the PETM which is long enough for ecological systems to adapt, carbon is now being released into the atmosphere at a rate 10 times faster,” said Lee R. Kump, professor of geosciences at Penn State. “It is possible that this is faster than ecosystems can adapt.”

Professor Martin Kennedy from the University of Adelaide and Professor Thomas Wagner from Newcastle University, UK, have been studying these dead zones, or “greenhouse oceans.” They studied core samples from the Late Cretaceous Period (85 million years ago) across a 400,000-year timespan, and found evidence that points to a mass mortality in the oceans at a time when the Earth was going through a greenhouse effect. The mass extinction of marine life in our oceans during that prehistoric time is a warning that the same could happen again due to similarly high levels of greenhouse gases, according to their research.

“This could have a catastrophic, profound impact on the sustainability of life in our oceans, which in turn is likely to impact on the sustainability of life for many land-based species, including humankind,” he added.

What the geological records show, however, is a glimmer of hope attributed to a naturally occurring response to the greenhouse effect. After the phase when the oceans suffer a lack of oxygen, the concentration eventually improves, along with an increase in marine life. Carbon burial of the excess carbon ultimately contributes to CO2 removal from the atmosphere, cooling the planet and the ocean.

“This is nature’s solution to the greenhouse effect and it could offer a possible solution for us,” said Professor Wagner. “If we are able to learn more about this effect and its feedbacks, we may be able to manage it, and reduce the present rate of warming threatening our oceans.”

Their research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The Arctic region is the part of globe that is warming up the fastest today compared with all other regions. Measurements of air temperature show that the most recent five-year period has been the warmest since 1880, when monitoring began. Other data, from tree rings among other things, show that the summer temperatures over the last decades have been the highest in 2,000 years. As a consequence, the snow cover in May and June has decreased by close to 20 percent. The winter season has also become almost two weeks shorter – in just a few decades. In addition, the temperature in the permafrost has increased by between half a degree and two degrees.

“The changes we see are dramatic. And they are not coincidental. The trends are unequivocal and deviate from the norm when compared with a longer term perspective,” says Terry Callaghan, a researcher at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and contributor to a new research report detailing the vast changes to the Arctic region, which was presented in Copenhagen last week.

The report states that the permafrost will continue to thaw and release large quantities of carbon, which comes from organic material that was “deep frozen” in the ground during the last ice age. “Our data shows that there is significantly more than previously thought. There is approximately double the amount of carbon in the permafrost as there is in the atmosphere today,” says Margareta Johansson.

“But it is also possible that the vegetation which will be able to grow when the ground thaws will absorb the carbon dioxide. We still know very little about this. With the knowledge we have today we cannot say for sure whether the thawing tundra will absorb or produce more greenhouse gases in the future,” says Margareta Johansson from Lund University, another researcher behind the report.

The region’s temperatures are expected to rise by 3 to 7 degrees, according to the latest climate models, and sea levels are expected to rise 3 to 5 feet (0.9 to 1.6 meters).

The report, “Impacts of climate change on snow, water, ice and permafrost in the Arctic” has been compiled by close to 200 polar researchers. It is the most comprehensive synthesis of knowledge about the Arctic that has been presented in the last six years. The work was organized by the Arctic Council’s working group for environmental monitoring (the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme) and will serve as the basis for the IPCC’s fifth report, which is expected to be ready by 2014.

The report, “Fate of Mountain Glaciers in the Anthropocene (pdf),” points out numerous examples of glacial decline around the world and the evidence linking that decline to human-caused changes in climate and air pollution. The authors emphasize the threat to the ways of life of people dependent upon glaciers and snow packs for water supplies. The report suggests immediate action to mitigate the effects of climate change and to adapt to what changes are happening now and are projected to happen in the future. Specifically, it recommends pursuit of three measures: immediate reduction of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions; reduction of concentrations of warming air pollutants such as soot, ozone, methane and hydroflurocarbons by up to 50 percent; and preparation to adapt to climate changes that society will not be able to mitigate.

“The widespread loss of snow and ice in the mountain glaciers is one of the most visible changes attributable to global climate change. The disintegration of many small glaciers in the Himalayas is most disturbing to me since this region serves as the water tower of Asia and since both the greenhouse gases and air pollutants like soot and ozone contribute to the melting,” said Scripps Climate and Atmospheric Scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan, who has been a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences since 2004.

The scientists congregated at the Vatican from April 2-4, 2011 under the invitation of Chancellor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo of the pontifical academy. The report will be presented to Pope Benedict XVI.

To help guide clean-up and tracking operations, Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, have created model projections of the probable pathways the debris will follow.

According to their projections, the debris first spreads out eastward from the Japan Coast in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. In a year, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument will see pieces washing up on its shores; in two years, the remaining Hawaiian islands will see some effects; in three years, the plume will reach the US West Coast, dumping debris on Californian beaches and the beaches of British Columbia, Alaska, and Baja California. The debris will then drift into the famous North Pacific Garbage Patch, where it will wander around and break into smaller and smaller pieces. In five years, Hawaii shores can expect to see another barrage of debris that is stronger and longer-lasting than the first one. Much of the debris leaving the North Pacific Garbage Patch ends up on Hawaii’s reefs and beaches.

Maximenko’s longstanding work has been important in understanding what happens to all ocean debris and how it negatively impacts marine ecosystems, fisheries, and shipping. His work on ocean currents and transports predicted that there are five major regions in the World Ocean where debris collects if it is not washed up on shores or sinks to the ocean bottom, deteriorates, or is ingested by marine organisms. These regions turn out to be “garbage patches.” The North Pacific Garbage Patch has become famous, the North Atlantic Patch was fixed some years ago, and the South Atlantic, South Indian Ocean, and South Pacific patches have just been found, guided by the map of his model that shows where floating marine debris should collect.

Dear EarthTalk: I understand that Congress passed legislation not too long ago that protected a few million acres of wilderness areas, parks and wild rivers, in part to help offset climate change. How does conserving land prevent global warming?
– M. Oakes, Charlottesville, NC

The legislation in question is called the Omnibus Public Land Management Act. It was passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law by President Obama in the spring of 2009. The Act protects some two million acres outright as wilderness in nine different states (California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia) and requires the Bureau of Land Management to prioritize conservation on another 26 million acres of mostly Western lands. The bill also established three new national park units, a new national monument, three new national conservation areas, over 1,000 miles of national wild and scenic rivers, and four new national trails.

According to The Wilderness Society, American
forests capture about one-tenth of the greenhouse
gases put out by US cars, factories and other sources.
Pictured: Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.
Photo credit: Thinkstock

With provisions appealing to sportsmen and conservationists alike, the bill enjoyed broad support; drafters took into account requests from dozens of constituent groups in putting together the legislation. As such, it is one of the most significant expansions of U.S. wilderness protection in the past quarter century. “This legislation guarantees that we will not take our forests, rivers, oceans, national parks, monuments and wilderness areas for granted, but rather we will set them aside and guard their sanctity for everyone to share,” President Obama said upon signing the bill into law.

While the law doesn’t specifically address global warming in its language, environmentalists are overjoyed at the climate benefits that protecting so much land will bring. “Our forests store vast amounts of carbon in tree trunks, roots, leaves, dead wood and soils—a service that is becoming ever more essential as the threat of global climate change mounts due to the buildup of human-generated carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” reports the nonprofit Wilderness Society.

Plants and trees utilize ground-level carbon dioxide as building blocks in photosynthesis. The more flora we leave growing naturally on the ground, the more greenhouse gas we can store (or “sequester”) there and prevent from drifting on up to the atmosphere where it can contribute to global warming.

“Although investments in energy efficiency and clean energy will provide the only permanent solutions to climate change, forest sequestration can buy us time to develop those alternatives,” says the Wilderness Society, adding that American forests currently capture the equivalent of about one-tenth of the greenhouse gases put out by U.S. cars, factories and other sources. In addition, forests provide other key environmental benefits such as cleansing our air and water.

In the absence of binding legislation mandating stricter carbon emissions standards, the Omnibus Public Land Management Act, given the climate-related benefits of land conservation, may well be the most significant global warming bill Congress has passed to date. And environmentalists might have to take what they can get: With Republicans now in control of the House and gaining ground in the Senate, dedicated climate legislation may be even more elusive than analysts thought even a year ago.

CONTACTS: Bureau of Land Management, www.blm.gov; Wilderness Society, www.wilderness.org; Omnibus Public Land Management Act, http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-146.

Dear EarthTalk: What specific issues and protections are covered by the Food Safety Modernization Act recently signed into law?
– P. Palmerino, New York, NY

Some 48 million Americans are afflicted with a form of
food borne illness each year. The Food Safety
Modernization Act, signed into law in January 2011,
now gives the U.S. Food and Drug Administration wider
latitude in protecting our food supply, including the
ability to order recalls of tainted foods (previously,
the agency could only negotiate with businesses
to order voluntary recalls).
Photo credit: FDA

Existing laws and oversight from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have done a decent job of keeping the vast majority of Americans safe from food borne illnesses, but several recent cases of contamination have put the spotlight on what more we can do to protect ourselves from unwittingly consuming harmful bacteria, parasites, viruses and toxins that could be lurking on our dinner plates.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that, of the 48 million Americans afflicted with some sort of food borne illness every year, 128,000 are hospitalized and about 3,000 die. In response to this growing problem, in January 2011 Congress passed and President Obama signed into law the landmark Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), a comprehensive $1.4 billion bill that aims to stop outbreaks of food borne illnesses before they begin.

“This law makes everyone responsible and accountable at each step in today’s global food supply chain,” reports FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg. “This law represents a sea change for food safety in America, bringing a new focus on prevention, and I expect that in the coming years it will have a dramatic and positive effect on the safety of the food supply.”

FDA inspectors have monitored domestic producers of seafood, juice, meat, eggs and poultry for decades, but the new law expands their powers to evaluate hazards in all kinds of food and to impose stricter standards on imported foods. Processors are now required to proactively take measures to prevent contamination, and must have plans in place for corrective action when something does go wrong. Smaller producers are exempt from some of the more onerous and costly provisions of the new law, but are nevertheless still responsible for maintaining the strict health safety standards set forth in its provisions. The new law also increases the number and frequency of inspections at both high-risk and non-high risk facilities. And the FDA can now order recalls of tainted foods; before FSMA’s enactment, the agency could only negotiate with businesses to order voluntary recalls.

Given that some 15 percent of our food supply—including 60 percent of fresh fruits and 80 percent of seafood—is imported, the new law also requires importers to verify the safety of food from their foreign suppliers and authorizes the FDA to block foods from facilities or countries that refuse inspections.

FSMA also provides funds for training, equipment and facilities at food safety agencies across federal, state, local, territorial, tribal and even foreign jurisdictions to ensure that all parties are up to snuff on the ways and means of preventing and containing food borne illnesses.

“Really this is a major victory for every American who will sit down at the dinner table and have more confidence that their food is going to be safe,” says Erik Olson of the Pew Health Group, one the most vocal of hundreds of nonprofits in favor of strengthening our nation’s food safety net.

CONTACTS: FDA, www.fda.gov; CDC, www.cdc.gov; Pew Health Group, www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_category.aspx?id=184.

EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E – The Environmental Magazine ( www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.