David Suzuki and 1,461 other scientists speak out for the protection of Australia’s oceans
Conservationist and 1,461 other scientists release statement describing Australia’s oceans as a ‘global asset’ that must be protected, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/27/david-suzuki-australia-sickening-threat-to-marine-reserves-undermines-global-protection
Guardian,Michael Slezak, 26 Sept 17, Growing global momentum to protect the world’s oceans from overfishing could be undermined by Australia, warns renowned conservationist David Suzuki and more than 1,461 other scientists.David Suzuki: Australia’s ‘sickening’ threat to marine reserves undermines global protection He said Australia needed to face up to the interconnected issues of climate change and ocean health, both of which it was failing to address.
“I’m sorry Australia, wake up,” Suzuki said. “The oceans are a mess and a great deal of the mess is a reflection of climate change. Climate change is the overarching issue that is hammering the oceans as well as terrestrial areas. And it is absolutely disgusting that coal is still considered a great economic input to Australia.
“When you’ve got something that [other countries] would die for – you’ve got sunlight up the ying yang, why isn’t Australia the world leader in this incredible form of energy? It makes me sick. You’ve got great research facilities. You’ve got great scientists. You’ve got everything going to be a world leader in the energy of the future and you’re not doing it. And it’s not surprising then that you are doing the same to the oceans. What is it going to take for Australia to wake up to the opportunities?”
Australia is currently considering the world’s biggest downgrading of a protected area with a reduction in the size of its network of marine reserves.
“If Australia does something progressive in 2012, and then walks back from that, what the hell are we going to expect [from] international cooperation?” said Suzuki, who described the move as “sickening”.
In 2012 the Australian government created what was then the world’s largest network of marine reserves. The move followed years of consultation, and despite limited protection for the most biodiverse coastal areas, it was welcomed by environmental groups.
Since then, global momentum has been building for marine protection. In 2014 at the once-a-decade World Parks Congress in Sydney, conservation scientists called for fishing to be banned in 30% of each type of marine habitat globally – a call supported two years later by about 90 countries and hundreds of NGOs that are members of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
In 2016, the US president Barack Obama created the world’s largest marine reserve by expanding an existing ocean reserve off Hawaii. That year he also established a large marine park in the Atlantic Ocean.
Similarly, Chile, France, Kiribati, New Zealand, Russia and the UK have created large areas where fishing is banned.
In contrast, the Australian government recently announced draft plans to reduce by 40% the amount of its marine parks that are “no-take” fishing or construction zones.
According to WWF-Australia, that would represent the world’s largest downgrading of protected areas on record. More than 433,000 sq km would be downgraded to allow commercial fishing – more than half of that in the Coral Sea marine park, adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef, one of the few remaining large parts of the Pacific Ocean still in good health.
Australian waters contain rich biodiversity ranging from the tropics to Antarctica. A statement signed by Suzuki and 1,461 scientists described these waters as a “global asset” and called on the government to increase protections.
“They support six of the seven known species of marine turtles and more than half of the world’s whale and dolphin species. Australia’s oceans are home to more than 20% of the world’s fish species and are a hot spot of marine endemism. By properly protecting them, Australia will be supporting the maintenance of our global ocean heritage,” the statement said.
It’s absurd to think this is really Australia’s water,” Suzuki told the Guardian. “These oceans belong to the world – you just happen to be the caretakers in that particular area.”
Jessica Meeuwig, director of the Centre for Marine Futures at the University of Western Australia, said Australia’s move set a dangerous international precedent.
“Australia’s move to go backwards undermines that progress,” she said. “In Australia we will be supporting an international benchmark that says we’re happy to have paper parks [areas technically set aside but with minimal actual protections].”
Paper parks have been a major concern in the conservation world.
Meeuwig said Australia’s precedent is particularly dangerous given the Trump administration is mulling cuts to protected areas on land and in the ocean.
“Australia will pip Trump to the post,” she said.
The Trump administration is examining 27 protected areas for the rollback of protections, with a leaked memo revealing 10 – including the two marine parks established by Obama – earmarked to allow “traditional uses” such as mining, logging and hunting.
She said Australia’s unwinding of protections would help normalise radical moves to unwind protection in the US, as well as set a poor example for other countries.
“Such a backwards step just gives other countries an excuse to do less. [Australia is] a developed economy with good governance. If we can’t get this right, all we’re doing is putting the responsibility to protect oceans to nations that have less and are dealing with bigger challenges. That’s not leadership.”
Suzuki, who owns a house in Queensland’s Port Douglas and has spent a lot of time on the Great Barrier Reef, is angry about Australia’s rollback.
“We’re an air-breathing land animal. We’ve trashed the terrestrial environment with vast clearcuts and monocultures of rubber trees and corn and wheat. We’ve used the land and air to spread potent pesticides and toxic compounds. We’ve really fucked up the land that is our ecosystem. And now we go into the oceans that cover 70% of the planet and we’ve trashed that,” he said.
Suzuki said after the devastating bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in 2016, he visited it and wept.
He said Australia needed to face up to the interconnected issues of climate change and ocean health, both of which it was failing to address.
“I’m sorry Australia, wake up,” Suzuki said. “The oceans are a mess and a great deal of the mess is a reflection of climate change. Climate change is the overarching issue that is hammering the oceans as well as terrestrial areas. And it is absolutely disgusting that coal is still considered a great economic input to Australia.
“When you’ve got something that [other countries] would die for – you’ve got sunlight up the ying yang, why isn’t Australia the world leader in this incredible form of energy? It makes me sick. You’ve got great research facilities. You’ve got great scientists. You’ve got everything going to be a world leader in the energy of the future and you’re not doing it. And it’s not surprising then that you are doing the same to the oceans. What is it going to take for Australia to wake up to the opportunities?”
Petition to National Assembly of Wales to suspend licence for dumping rdaioactive mud into Welsh inshore waters
National Assembly for Wales (accessed) 28th Sept 2017,
Petition “We call on the National Assembly for Wales to urge the Welsh
Government to direct Natural Resources Wales to suspend the licence it has
granted to NNB Genco, which permits up to 300,000 tonnes of radioactively
contaminated material, dredged from the seabed at the Hinkley Point Nuclear
power station site, to be dumped into Welsh inshore waters.
We further request that the suspension of the licence is used to ensure that a full
Environmental Impact Assessment, complete radiological analysis and core
sampling are carried out under the auspices of Natural Resources Wales, and
that a Public Inquiry, a full hearing of independent evidence and a Public
Consultation take place before any dump of the Hinkley sediments is
permitted.”
https://www.assembly.wales/en/gethome/e-petitions/Pages/petitiondetail.aspx?PetitionID=1243
Concern over plan to dump 300,000 tonnes of potentially radioactive mud into the sea off Cardiff
BBC 25th Sept 2017, Plans to dredge 300,000 tonnes of mud from near a disused nuclear plant and
dump it off Cardiff and Vale of Glamorgan’s coast have been criticised. A
pollution consultant claims the mud from near Hinkley Point in Somerset
could expose people to radioactivity. EDF Energy, the company behind the
plans, said the work was not harmful to humans or the environment. The
Welsh Government said all applications were considered in line with legal
requirements.
Dredging is proposed in Bridgewater Bay near the
decommissioned Hinkley Point A and B as part of construction work for the
new £19.6bn Hinkley Point C nuclear power station. Welsh ministers granted
permission in 2013 for developers to dispose of the sediment at a site know
as Cardiff Grounds, previously used to deposit waste from Cardiff and
Newport docks.
But consultant Tim Deere-Jones, who specialises in marine
radioactivity, claimed sampling of the mud to check for potentially harmful
contaminates had been “inadequate”. He told BBC Wales low level waste from
the nuclear plant had entered the site for more than 50 years and there was
a lack of knowledge about the potential harm of moving the mud.
“Rather than being relatively stable at the Hinkley site it is being churned up and
brought over here to be dumped,” he said. “Radioactive and non-radioactive
pollutants will inevitably enter inshore waters and coastal environments.
“Several studies have shown that wastes dumped into the sea transfer to the
land in sea spray and episodes of coastal flooding.
Dangers of radioactivity in the dumping off Cardiff, of mud from old nuclear site
Wales Online 25th Sept 2017, Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of mud from the site of a disused nuclear
power station is to be dumped off Cardiff’s coast when the UK’s newest
nuclear power station is built.
EDF Energy, which is building the Hinkley
Point C reactor in north Somerset, has a marine licence to dump up to
200,000 cubic metres of dredged material close to Cardiff Bay.
One expert has raised concerns about the proposed dumping, saying he fears that the
mud may have a higher level of radioactivity that is currently believed.
Expert Tim Deere-Jones has been analysing data about the tests conducted on
mud and waste which could be dumped off the coast of Wales.
He says he has three concerns about the waste. Mr Deere-Jones says that there are 50
different radionuclides and that testing has only taken place on three of
those. Secondly, he says that he believes only surface samples have been
taken. He says that while samples of from between 0 and 5cm have been
taken, research from other sites has shown that if samples are taken from
five times deeper, there can be a five times higher collection of
radioactivity. Thirdly, he says tides in Wales mean that waste could be
transferred from the sea into land, that can be through coastal flooding or
even sea spray heading up to 10 miles inland. However, it is understood
dredging has not yet begun and no date set for it to begin.
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/hundreds-thousands-tonnes-radioactive-mud-13673203
Peak contamination levels from Fukushima off North America now known
http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/52701 From: University of Victoria
September 29, 2017, For the first time since 2011, peak contamination levels in Pacific Canadian waters from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are known, says a University of Victoria scientist who has been monitoring levels since the meltdown of three reactors at the plant.
Releases of radioactive elements from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident in 2011 were the largest unplanned discharges of radioactivity into the ocean. The disaster, triggered by a 15-metre tsunami caused by a magnitude-9 earthquake, created widespread concern over the potential impact on marine life and human health.
“Contamination from Fukushima never reached a level where it was a significant threat to either marine or human life in our neighborhood of the North Pacific,” says UVic chemical oceanographer Jay Cullen.
Continue reading at University of Victoria.
Pictures show the tragedy of Russian villages contaminated by 1957 nuclear explosion
‘Left To Die As Guinea Pigs’: Tatar Village Struggles On, 60 Years After Nuclear Catastrophe https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-nuclear-mayak/28755780.html, September 28, 2017 An explosion at a Soviet nuclear plant 1,400 kilometers east of Moscow remains the world’s third-largest nuclear disaster, after Chernobyl and Fukushima. At the time, in 1957, it was the worst ever. Sixty years on, nearby Tatar villagers are still struggling for official recognition of their plight. (RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service) TEXTS BELOW DESCRIBE EACH OF THE EXCELLENT PICTURES ON THE ORIGINAL
The sign says “Danger Zone.” An explosion on September 29, 1957, contaminated an area of 23,000 square kilometers and exposed more than 270,000 people to significant levels of radiation.
The village of Karabolka is 30 kilometers from the Mayak nuclear plant, where the explosion occurred. For decades afterwards, it did not appear on maps, only reappearing 20 years ago. But life there continued.
Gulshara Ismagilova has lived in Karabolka all her life. She is campaigning for official recognition for the suffering of the villagers. Rates of cancer and genetic abnormalities here are significantly higher than the national average. “We are all handicapped here,” she says.
These are Ismagilova’s relatives who have died over the last 60 years. It includes an aunt, her mother, and her brother, who all died of cancer. Ismagilova herself has liver cancer.
In 1957, the village had about 4,000 residents; in 2010, just 423. The village had two distinct parts: a mostly Tatar part, which was not evacuated, and a mostly Russian part, which was. Some locals say they were used in an experiment on the effects of radiation.
The village has eight cemeteries. Seven of them are a resting place for residents who died of cancer. Children here are often born with cancer and die before reaching adulthood.
Only Muslims are buried here. Following their beliefs, some relatives prevent autopsies being performed. This can prevent some deaths being classified as cancer-related.
A pile of coffins at the ready. Families usually bury their dead by noon of the day following their death. “People don’t know what to eat and how to survive,” Ismagilova says. “They have been left here to die as guinea pigs.”
This house has a pile of firewood outside. In the 1990s, local people were warned that wood stored radiation and should not be used for burning. But the village was not connected to a gas supply until 2016.
A water pump outside a house. “The authorities prohibited drinking water from local wells but couldn’t arrange supplies of clean water. A couple of months later, they took samples and said the local water was good enough to drink,” says Ismagilova.
A Greenpeace report 10 years ago said the Mayak site was “one of the most radioactive places on Earth.” It added that thousands of people in surrounding towns and villages still lived on contaminated land
Sellafield nuclear processes trashing the River Hehen, home to endangered fresh water pearl mussels.
Scisco Media 23rd Sept 2017, The domestic supply of fresh water from Ennerdale to West Cumbrians is to
cease by 2022. This is (so the official narrative goes) to safeguard water levels on the River Ehen flowing from Ennerdale Water that provides a “delicate habitat” for one of the last populations of endangered fresh water pearl mussels.
The enormous sums of money and effort to save the pearl mussels are meaningless while the integrity of the River Ehen is
being trashed by the nuclear industry. The volumes of fresh water abstraction from the River Ehen by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority for Sellafield’s cooling and processing is staggering (remember they take
four million gallons daily from Wastwater as well as other sources too).
https://sciscomedia.co.uk/nuclear-contamination-drinking-water/
Looking after Chernobyl’s radioactive puppies
The Puppies of Chernobyl
HUNDREDS OF RADIOACTIVE PUPPIES JUST GOT SPAYED, NEUTERED AT CHERNOBYL DISASTER SITE http://www.newsweek.com/hundreds-puppies-got-spayed-and-neutered-chernobyl-year-669093, BY An American nonprofit organization, Clean Futures Fund, has started a spay and neuter clinic for the four-legged descendants of survivors of one of history’s worst nuclear disasters.
After the Chernobyl nuclear reactor melted down on April 26, 1986, some dogs and cats left behind survived and began to breed. More than 400 animals were spayed and neutered in the first year of the clinic’s operation at the former reactor, which ended earlier this month.
The laws governing the exclusion zone around Chernobyl strongly advise people to avoid feeding or touching the dogs, due to the risk of contamination. Not only is the dogs’ fur potentially loaded with radioactive particles, but their food and water is contaminated. The radioactive molecules they ingest may also linger in their bodies.
“We could find areas in their bones where radioisotopes had accumulated. We could survey the bones and we could see the radioactivity in them,” a Clean Futures Fund co-founder, Lucas Hixson, told Newsweek. The program funds medical treatment for locals in addition to running the spay and neuter program at the power plant and in the neighboring city.
“These dogs run through [contaminated areas] and it gets stuck on their coat and on the end of their noses and their feet.”
There are nearly 1,000 dogs in the area around the power plant. Only a few dozen cats live in the highly contaminated areas that the dogs frequent.
Hixson has been traveling to Chernobyl for about five years, initially as a radiation specialist. “I go over there expecting to do my work, and I step off the train at the power plant and there’s a dog in my face. Honestly, it was one of the last things I expected to see at Chernobyl,” he said.
To keep the veterinary hospital as free from radioactive contamination as possible, dogs that come to the facility are examined and washed down until their levels of radioactivity are deemed safe.
Despite the potential risk, Hixson said he’s continued to interact with the dogs. “There is a fair amount of handling that happens. This is a natural reaction between humans and dogs,” he said. “You can’t help yourself.”
“They’re not hazardous to your immediate health and wellbeing. But anytime you go pet the dogs, go wash your hands afterwards before you eat.”
Clean Futures Fund got approval from the Ukranian government for its operations. Other partners include SPCA International, Dogs Trust and two U.S. universities, including Worchester Polytechnic Institute and the University of South Carolina.
Hixson also noted the local workers have welcomed the team. “I remember there was a lot of skepticism when we showed up,” he said. “But after about two or three days of us catching dogs, processing them, releasing them, the attitude immediately changed,” he said. “I can’t thank them enough for everything they did.”
Even if every dog and cat in Chernobyl is sterilized and vaccinated, the wider stray dog issue in Ukraine means that more dogs could move into the contaminated area and Clean Futures Fund’s efforts could be somewhat for naught. Ultimately, Hixson would like to work with the Ukranian government on a wider rescue program to get the dogs out of the area and into homes.
He will be returning in November to measure the impact of the program, which is expected to run for five years. The next spay and neuter clinic will happen next summer.
An international Treaty that works! The Montreal Protocol and the healing of the ozone layer.
Each year, during the southern spring, a hole appears in the ozone layer above Antarctica. This is due to the extremely cold temperatures in the winter stratosphere (above 10km altitude) that allow byproducts of CFCsand related gases to be converted into forms that destroy ozone when the sunlight returns in spring.
As ozone-destroying gases are phased out, the annual ozone hole is generally getting smaller – a rare success story for international environmentalism.
Back in 2012, our Saving the Ozone series marked the Montreal Protocol’s silver jubilee and reflected on its success. But how has the ozone hole fared in the five years since?
The Antarctic ozone hole has continued to appear each spring, as it has since the late 1970s. This is expected, as levels of the ozone-destroying halocarbon gases controlled by the Montreal Protocol are still relatively high. The figure below shows that concentrations of these human-made substances over Antarctica have fallen by 14% since their peak in about 2000.
It typically takes a few decades for these gases to cycle between the lower atmosphere and the stratosphere, and then ultimately to disappear. The most recent official assessment, released in 2014, predicted that it will take 30-40 years for the Antarctic ozone hole to shrink to the size it was in 1980………
Reassuringly, a recent study showed that the size of the ozone hole each September has shrunk overall since the turn of the century, and that more than half of this shrinking trend is consistent with reductions in ozone-depleting substances. However, another study warns that careful analysis is needed to account for a variety of natural factors that could confound our detection of ozone recovery……..
While annual monitoring continues, which includes measurements under the Australian Antarctic Program, a more comprehensive assessment of the ozone layer’s prospects is set to arrive late next year. Scientists across the globe, coordinated by the UN Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organisation, are busy preparing the next report required under the Montreal Protocol, called the Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2018.
This peer-reviewed report will examine the recent state of the ozone layer and the atmospheric concentration of ozone-depleting chemicals, how the ozone layer is projected to change, and links between ozone change and climate.
In the meantime we’ll watch the 2017 hole as it peaks then shrinks over the remainder of the year, as well as the ozone holes of future years, which will tend to grow less and less large as the ozone layer heals. https://theconversation.com/after-30-years-of-the-montreal-protocol-the-ozone-layer-is-gradually-healing-84051
Abandoned radioactive generators and other nuclear junk sunk in oceans by Russia
Feisty mayor in Russia’s Far East wants his nuclear trash collected http://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2017-09-feisty-mayor-in-russia-far-east-wants-his-nuclear-trash-collected
While lighthouses run on atomic batteries in Russia have become rare, especially along the coasts of the Baltic and Barents Seas, they still have their adherents in the country’s Far East. by Charles Digges charles@bellona.no While lighthouses run on atomic batteries in Russia have become rare, especially along the coasts of the Baltic and Barents Seas, they still have their adherents in the country’s Far East.
A group of radioactivity tracking sleuths on Sakhalin Island in the Pacific say they have hunted down an abandoned generator that ran on strontium-90 sunk off the shores of one of its premier beach resorts.
But that, they say, is just the tip of the iceberg: The discovery lies in the middle of a radioactive graveyard that includes no fewer than 38 sunken vessels containing nuclear waste, and two nuclear warheads that went down when a Soviet bomber crashed near the island’s southern tip in 1976.
Though the Russian Ministry of Defense recently began acknowledging the lost bomber, tracing the origins of the other nuclear cast offs is not so easy.
But at least, says Nikolai Sidirov, mayor of the coastal town of Makarov on Sakhalin’s Bay of Patience, his town knows what this new discovery is – and they want it raised from the depths with the rest of the glowing junk.
Speaking to Novaya Izvestiya, a popular tabloid that morphed out of the official Soviet-era mouthpiece Izvestiya, Sidirov said satellite photos tracking the location of the crashed bomber have turned up something else lurking under the waves: An RTG.
That’s short for Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, a small radioactive energy source that for decades powered thousands of Soviet lighthouses and other navigational beacons along Russia’s Baltic, Arctic and Pacific coasts.
After the fall of the Soviet Union and the crash of the Russian economy, officials lost track of many of the RTGs as bureaucracies collapsed and records went missing. Thieves pillaged them for their valuable metal, exposing their strontium innards. Hikers and shepherds, drawn to their atomic heat, would stagger out of the woods sick with radiation poisoning.
Around Murmansk and on the Pacific coast, frightful reports about strontium elements turning up on beaches proliferated in local media. Some newly independent Soviet republics telegraphed anxieties about their inherited RTGs back to Moscow – along with requests to come take them away.
And then there was the biggest fear of all: What if strontium 90 from these virtually unguarded, remotely radiological sources ended up in the hands of terrorists who wanted to make a dirty bomb?
So far, that hasn’t happened – anybody trying to make off with a strontium battery would likely end up very ill or dead. But when three woodsmen in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia turned up in a hospital with radiation burns and caught the attention of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the dangers of orphaned Soviet RTGs were finally on everyone’s mind.
A colossal effort spearheaded by the Norwegian government entirely rid the coasts of the Barents, Kara and White Seas of more than 180 RTGs. By infusing €20 million into the push, Norway helped Russia replace the strontium 90 batteries on these lighthouses and beacons with solar power over a six year period ending in 2015.
In all, Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, says it has decommission more than 1000 RTGs throughout the country, adding that it has mostly eliminated the hazard of these stray radioactive sources from its coastlines.
But some areas have not been so lucky, at least according to the mayor of Makarov out on Sakhalin Island, six times zones east of Moscow. Sidirov, a feisty campaigner who had been publicly heckling the capital about the nuclear trash in the seas near his town for years, says divers have located the RTG, and that he now has the coordinates of where it lies. He told Novaya Izvestiya he will pass on the RTGs location to what he calls “competent authorities” lest it end up in scheming hands.
How the RTG, which lies in 14 meters of water, came to be there is still anyone’s guess. The Russian Navy sent a statement to the newspaper insisting that all RTGs under the purview of the Pacific Fleet have been hunted down and destroyed.
But Russia’s environmental oversight agency confirmed that there were numerous radioactive foundlings in the oceans off Sakhalin Island, though they didn’t identify Sidirov’s RTG specifically.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time someone screwed up with an RTG in the area, however. Twenty years ago, in 1997, a helicopter from Russia’s Emergency Services Ministry accidentally dropped a strontium-powered RTG into Sakhalin’s waters. It was later retrieved by the navy.
So far, Rosatom has remained mum on the veracity of Sidirov’s claim about the RTG. But since the history of the downed bomber and the other hazards in his area has been confirmed, there’s every reason to believe him about the RTG. And he wants it gone.
“The ecological authorities and the military, they’re being very stubborn about coming to collect it,” Sidorov told Novaya Izvestiya. “It’s there job to collect it – if they’re ever interested, I’ll be here to show them exactly where it is.”
Climate change and coral reefs – for some reefs, their end is nigh
Farewelling coral reefs The Saturday Paper, Karen Middleton, 16 Sept 17 We hear much about trying to contain temperature rises to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Why is that the magic number?
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg The 2-degree guardrail came out of the 2009 Copenhagen meeting. When you looked at how ecosystems were responding, you got into an unmanageable area at 2 degrees above the pre-industrial period, which was where the CO2 concentration had been stable for a long time. The trajectory we’re on today could raise temperatures by as much as 5 or 6 degrees on history.
One of the problems with 2 degrees is that generally people have the idea that it’s a guardrail. You go up to the edge of 2 degrees and look over it and see where you don’t want to go and it’s all very safe here. But it’s more like a slippery slope. Things get progressively worse until they become unmanageable. At the latest Conference of the Parties, the UNFCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ] governing framework started to say, “well actually we want to keep things well below 2 degrees, and hopefully aim for 1.5 in the long term”.
KM And where are we now?
OHG We’re about a degree above the pre-industrial period.
KM So we’ve got half a degree’s leeway left.
OHG: To keep to that half a degree would be a massive decarbonisation of almost everything we do – energy, transport, food production and so on. Key to this is not just the amount of temperature change; it’s the system’s stability. If we don’t take care of fossil fuels we very quickly get into a situation where things change. Anything like that puts a lot of stress on biology but also on our economic systems. If you’re constantly having increasing temperatures and challenges then you’re not going to be able to build an economic system that will last 50 or 100 years……..
KM You predicted 20 years ago that we were going to be in a diabolical situation. Are you saying, “I told you so?”
OHG I wish I’d been wrong. A very simple model that I put together with people from the European Union showed what temperature was likely to do and we knew the temperature at which coral reefs got into trouble and they crossed each other around mid-century. I remember thinking at the time, “I hope this one’s wrong.” In the last couple of years we’ve had back-to-back bleaching events. Reefs have disappeared from many places – the Caribbean has been particularly hit hard. Corals have gone from maybe 50 to 60 per cent of the bottom of the ocean to less than 5 per cent in many places.
KM Is this irreversible?
OHG Under normal, non-climate-change circumstances, reefs might lose corals due to cyclones for example. And if they’re given 10 to 20 years, they’ll bounce back. But what’s been happening with these bleaching events, which are similar to cyclones in killing coral en masse, is they’re now coming faster and faster. There’s not enough time for reefs to bounce back……..
you have to say, “Where are those reefs that have the best chance of surviving a climate increase of 0.5 degrees?” The ocean isn’t heating up at the same rate in all places. There are some places where the currents have stalled, where it’s getting a lot hotter a lot quicker, like the equatorial Pacific, versus the coral triangle, which is this South-East Asian paradise for corals. The number of species there is something like three times that of Australia. So you start to go, “Oh, well if we’re going to preserve something we wouldn’t do it at the equator where it’s getting really, really hot – we should be going to South-East Asia.”
You do run into what appears to be triage, and I don’t think that’s the right word. I think it’s about another strategy being added onto the great things that are already going on in conservation. We will be releasing a list later this year and you have to ask the question: “What if the Great Barrier Reef’s not on it?” And it’s an interesting one………
KM How do you assess the current status of the Great Barrier Reef? How bad was the bleaching?
OHG The reef’s health has been rocky for some time. In 1998 we had 50 per cent of the reef bleached but only 10 per cent died. That’s 10 per cent of 40,000 square kilometres of coral – it’s still a large amount. Then it happened again in 2002 and then we had a bit of a break and then it came roaring back in 2016 and 2017, where not only much of the reef bleached but we lost almost 50 per cent of the corals over the last two years. If we continue to have warm summers like we had in ’16 and this year, the next one could wipe out the remaining coral. Now, I don’t want to sound doomsday, but that’s where we’re at right now. It’s still a wonderful place to visit. But if we continue on this trajectory it won’t be, very soon – within our lifetime. I think that this is the wake-up call that we need. If losing the Great Barrier Reef isn’t serious stuff, what is? https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/environment/2017/09/16/farewelling-coral-reefs/15054840005215
Rdioactive particles detected in soils from Northern Japan
Science Direct (accessed) 11th Sept 2017, Arnie Gundersen & Marco Kaltofen: Radioactively-hot particles detected in dusts and soils from Northern Japan by combination of gamma spectrometry,
autoradiography, and SEM/EDS analysis and implications in radiation risk
assessment. After the March 11, 2011, nuclear reactor meltdowns at
Fukushima Dai-ichi, 180 samples of Japanese particulate matter (dusts and
surface soils) and 235 similar U.S. and Canadian samples were collected and
analyzed sequentially by gamma spectrometry, autoradiography, and scanning
electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray analysis.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969717317953
Investigation of radiation contaminated Dalgety Beach
Dundee Courier 8th Oct 2017, Radiation remediation work at Dalgety Bay has edged closer with the start
of ground surveys at the contaminated beach. Investigations into ground
conditions began on Monday,before the long-awaited clean-up of dumped
radioactive debris from the Second World War, which is due to begin in
spring 2019.
The Ministry of Defence confirmed this week engineers are now
on site, having secured access. Stephen Ritchie, of the MoD’s Defence
Infrastructure Organisation, said: “Work started on site on Monday on a
ground investigation survey which has been the subject of ongoing
negotiations with the landowner.“That’s likely to take six weeks,
depending on the weather.” Updating south and west Fife councillors on
progress, Mr Ritchie also said it was hoped planning consent would be
issued soon for the remediation works.
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/fife/504987/surveys-begin-of-radium-contaminated-fife-beach-ahead-of-mod-clean-up/
Satellites reveal global fingerprints of sea-level rise
Geological processes send more meltwater from glaciers and ice sheets to Earth’s mid-latitudes. Rachael Lallensack, As an ice sheet melts, it leaves a unique signature behind. Complex geological processes distribute the meltwater in a distinct pattern, or ‘fingerprint’, that causes seas to rise unevenly around the world. Now, for the first time, researchers have observed what these sea-level fingerprints look like on a global scale.
“No one has put it together for a complete global picture like this before,” says James Davis, a geophysicist at Columbia University in Palisades, New York. The work was published in Geophysical Research Letters on 9 September1.
The concept of sea-level fingerprints has been been factored into models used to predict sea-level rise for several years, says lead researcher Isabella Velicogna, a geophysicist at the University of California, Irvine. And researchers have used tide gauges for just as long to observe the fingerprints in coastal regions. But the global view provided by the latest study adds confidence to projections of future sea-level rise.
As an ice sheet melts, it leaves a unique signature behind. Complex geological processes distribute the meltwater in a distinct pattern, or ‘fingerprint’, that causes seas to rise unevenly around the world. Now, for the first time, researchers have observed what these sea-level fingerprints look like on a global scale.
“No one has put it together for a complete global picture like this before,” says James Davis, a geophysicist at Columbia University in Palisades, New York. The work was published in Geophysical Research Letters on 9 September1.
The concept of sea-level fingerprints has been been factored into models used to predict sea-level rise for several years, says lead researcher Isabella Velicogna, a geophysicist at the University of California, Irvine. And researchers have used tide gauges for just as long to observe the fingerprints in coastal regions. But the global view provided by the latest study adds confidence to projections of future sea-level rise.
Velicogna and co-author Chia-Wei Hsu, also at the University of California, Irvine, used gravity data from NASA’s two Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, which measure changes in mass on Earth’s surface. The scientists looked at satellite data from April 2002 to October 2014, and matched it with measurements from pressure stations on the ocean floor. These instruments measure the total mass above them.
Velicogna says that the findings should be used to create a roadmap for better placement of ocean-bottom pressure stations, which in turn can be used to improve calculations of sea-level fingerprints in the future.
“We know sea-level change throughout the world won’t be uniform, and it’s useful for people to know how those changes might show up,” says Mark Tamisiea, a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin.
China on alert for radiation seeping from North Korea’s latest nuclear test.
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