Plastic waste on beach in Panama, Central America

>>> From an Article by Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch.com, January 18, 2022

PHOTO ~ Plastic pollution in Panama, an example of the conditions around the Earth.

Humanity is currently releasing more chemical and plastic pollution into the environment than Earth can support.

That’s the conclusion of a first-of-its-kind study published in Environmental Science and Technology on Tuesday, January 18, which argues that the planetary boundary for novel entities has been exceeded by human activity. The researchers defined “novel entities” as manufactured chemicals that do not appear naturally in large quantities and have the potential to disrupt Earth’s systems.

“There has been a 50-fold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950. This is projected to triple again by 2050,” study co-author Patricia Villarubia-Gómez from the Stockholm Resilience Centre(SRC) at Stockholm University said in a press release emailed to EcoWatch. “The pace that societies are producing and releasing new chemicals and other novel entities into the environment is not consistent with staying within a safe operating space for humanity.”

In 2009, a team of researchers identified nine planetary boundaries that have led to a stable Earth for the last 10,000 years. These include greenhouse gas emissions, the ozone layer, forests, freshwater and biodiversity. The new research builds on this foundation by quantifying the planetary boundary for novel entities.

The researchers concluded that the boundary had been breached because production and release of plastics and other chemicals now surpasses the ability of governments to assess and monitor these pollutants.

“For a long time, people have known that chemical pollution is a bad thing,” study co-author Dr. Sarah Cornell of the SRC told The Guardian. “But they haven’t been thinking about it at the global level. This work brings chemical pollution, especially plastics, into the story of how people are changing the planet.”

Scientists have previously concluded that humanity has exceeded the planetary boundaries for global heating, biodiversity loss, habitat loss and nitrogen and phosphorous pollution. The researchers noted that there are around 350,000 different types of manufactured chemicals on the global market, with almost 70,000 introduced in the last decade. Among them are plastics, pesticides, industrial chemicals and pharmaceutical products.

Plastics are especially concerning, the study authors said. They now weigh more than double the mass of living animals and around 80 percent of all the plastics ever produced persist in the environment instead of being properly recycled. Further, plastics are made up of more than 10,000 other chemicals that can enter the environment in new combinations when they degrade.

In order to address the risk posed by plastics and other chemical pollutants, the study authors argued that it is important to curb their production and release into the environment.

“We need to be working towards implementing a fixed cap on chemical production and release,” study co-author Bethanie Carney Almroth from the University of Gothenburg said in the press release.

They also supported calls for a circular economy. “That means changing materials and products so they can be reused not wasted, designing chemicals and products for recycling, and much better screening of chemicals for their safety and sustainability along their whole impact pathway in the Earth system,” Villarubia Gómez said in the press release.

Ocean acidification weakens the ability of crabs and other marine animals to form protective shells.

From an Article by Matthew Bergen, News Deeply, October 2, 2017

The effects of ocean acidification on marine life have only become widely recognized in the past decade. Now researchers are rapidly expanding the scope of investigations into what falling pH means for ocean ecosystems.

The ocean is becoming increasingly acidic as climate change accelerates and scientists are ramping up investigations into the impact on marine life and ecosystems. In just a few years, the young field of ocean acidification research has expanded rapidly – progressing from short-term experiments on single species to complex, long-term studies that encompass interactions across interdependent species.

“Like any discipline, it takes it time to mature, and now we’re seeing that maturing process,” said Shallin Busch, who studies ocean acidification at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.

As the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, the pH of seawater falls. The resulting increase in acidity hinders the ability of coral, crabs, oysters, clams and other marine animals to form shells and skeletons made of calcium carbonate. While the greenhouse gas effect from pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere has been known for decades, it wasn’t until the mid-2000s that the impacts of ocean acidification became widely recognized. In fact, there is no mention of acidification in the first three reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued in 1990, 1995 and 2001. Ocean acidification did receive a brief mention in the 2007 report summarizing the then-current state of climate science, and finally was discussed at length in the latest edition released in 2014.

But about halfway through that brief dozen years of acidification research, a shift started taking place. “The early studies were just a first step and often quite simple,” said Busch of ocean acidification research. “But you can’t jump into the deep end before you learn how to swim.”

That started to change about five or six years ago, according to Philip Munday, who researches acidification effects on coral reefs at Australia’s James Cook University. “The first studies were often single species tested against ocean acidification conditions, often quite extreme conditions over short periods of time,” he said. “Now people are working on co-occurring stresses in longer-term experiments.”

That includes studying how acidification could change how organisms across a community or ecosystem interact – in other words, how the impacts on one species affect those it eats, competes with or that eat it. It also means looking at how impacts could change over time, due to species migrating or adapting, either in the short term or across a number of generations and how such effects may vary within the same species or even with the same population.

Nine examples of this new generation of acidification research are included in the latest issue of the journal Biology Letters. One study, for example, found that the ability to adapt to pH changes differed in members of the same species of sea urchins based on location. Another discovered that a predatory cone snail was more active in waters with elevated carbon dioxide levels but was less successful at capturing prey, reducing predation on a conch species. Another highlights that an individual organism’s sex can affect its response to acidification.

Munday, who edited the series of papers, said one of the major takeaways is that researchers are increasingly studying the potential for species to adapt to ocean acidification and finding those adaptations can be quite complex.

He pointed to a study on oysters. Previous work had shown that oysters whose parents were exposed to acidification conditions do better in those conditions than those whose parents weren’t. But in a new study, researchers found that when they exposed the offspring to additional stressors – such as hotter water temperatures and higher salinity – those adaptive advantages decreased.

All the studies call for including often-overlooked factors such as sex, location or changes in predation rate in future studies. Otherwise, researchers warn, impacts will be increasingly difficult to predict as the ocean continues to acidify. “It’s far too early to make any sort of generalities,” Munday said.

The latest paper from NOAA’s Busch also cautions against generalities. By building a database of species in Puget Sound and their sensitivity to changes in dissolved calcium carbonate, she found that summarizing species’ sensitivity by class or order rather than the specific family can result in overestimating their sensitivity.

She compared it to similarities between people in the same immediate family versus people who are distant cousins. “There would be a lot more variation among those people because they’re not super closely related,” she said. But when people started summarizing data really early in the field, there wasn’t much data to pull from. So it was done at a class level.

“Now that we have many more studies and information to pull from, how we draw summaries of species response should be nuanced,” she added.

Acidification research is likely to get only more nuanced in the years ahead. From the broad initial projections of average, ocean-wide surface acidity, for instance, researchers have started to pinpoint local pH projections, local impacts and local adaptations.

“We know the ocean is changing in a number of ways,” said Busch. “So just studying one of those factors without looking at the other changes in what’s going on in the ocean is not going to yield useful results.”

Activities Sept. 19th thru 24th

Climate Activists to Converge on NYC for UN Summit, People’s Climate March (9/21/14) and More

From an Article by Anastasia Pantsios, EcoWatch.com, September 9, 2014

For one week surrounding the UN Climate Summit 2014, the focus of the environmental movement will be in New York City. A dizzying array of events will take place, sponsored by hundreds of nonprofit organizations, businesses and religious groups all demanding immediate climate action.

One of the most high-profile events of the week that will capture widespread international attention is the People’s Climate March on September 21st.

Busloads of marchers are coming from all parts of the country and international participants are expected as well. With more than a thousand partnering groups, including nonprofits, religious groups, advocacy organizations, schools and businesses, tens of thousands—maybe more—could show up, with expectations of this event being the largest climate action in world history.

March organizers hope to impress on the world leaders who will be meeting at the UN on September 23rd that there is mass public demand for action on climate change and to take that level of public engagement to an even higher level.

“We believe that world leaders will only act (or be able to act) on climate change when everyday people express the desire, and create the political mandate for them to do so,” said organizers of the march. “Therefore, we aren’t opposed to this summit happening, and it is generally a good thing for heads of state to discuss climate change. We don’t have blind faith that the summit will solve the crisis either. We think that organizing, mobilizing and building social movements are ultimately what changes the course of history.”

While the UN Climate Summit on September 23rd is not open to the public (although it will be broadcast for public viewing), the schedule of activities is so dense that finding time to sleep that week might be a concern for any activist heading to NYC.

There are many small preliminary events including sign-making parties, rallies, meetings, concerts, forums and social gatherings. There are conferences, lectures, meetings and other events, both public and invitation only, listed at Climate Week NYC.

Here is a small sampling of some of the events going on in NYC that week:

NYC Climate Convergence from Sept. 19 – 21, an alternative to the UN Climate Summit. It will feature speakers like The Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein, workshops, teach-ins, music and more.

Join Riverkeeper and Waterkeeper Alliance as part of NYC Climate Convergence Sept. 20 at St. Johns University in Room 112 from 10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Hudson Riverkeeper Paul Gallay will moderate an all-star panel of leaders and experts on the climate-water nexus.

Religions for the Earth Conference: This event will gather together more than 200 international religious and spiritual leaders at the Union Theological Seminary.

Solutions Grassroots Tour: Nightly music and theater performance and film screening at the Irondale Center in Brooklyn. Sept. 22-26, it’s “an interactive music, theater and film event that motivates towns to adopt renewable energy solutions.” Watch the trailer here.

People’s Climate Justice Summit hosted by the Climate Justice Alliance will feature workshops, interactive panels and other activities to provide an alternative voice to the UN Climate Summit. This event is at the New School University Auditorium & UN Church Center from Sept. 22-23.

Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) is hosting “Women Leading Solutions on the Front Lines of Climate Change” with an international panel of women leaders at the UN Church Center on Sept. 22. The following day it’s co-sponsoring “Rights of Nature and Systemic Change in Climate Solutions” with the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature on Sept. 23.

Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting: The theme of this four-day event, Sept. 21-24, is “Reimagining Impact” and it will stress the effectiveness of various climate strategies. It features plenary sessions, breakout groups, workshops and a star-studded lineup of speakers including President Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Matt Damon.

The UN Climate Summit itself will be broadcast online Sept. 23. “The Summit will consist of an opening ceremony; announcements by heads of state and governments; announcements by the private sector; and the launch of new initiatives that address key action areas by coalitions of governments, businesses and civil society organizations,” according to the UN. The Secretary-General will summarize the outcome of the day at the closing ceremony.”

See also: China and UK Join Forces on Climate Change Agreement

Acid Damaging Corals, Fisheries and Tourism

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World Meteorological Organization: Ocean Acids and Greenhouse Gases Hit Record Levels

From an EcoWatch Article by Alex Kirby, Climate News Network, September 9, 2014

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reports that the amounts of atmospheric greenhouse gases reached a new high in 2013, driven by rapidly rising levels of carbon dioxide.

The news is consistent with trends in fossil fuel consumption. But what comes as more of a surprise is the WMO’s revelation that the current rate of ocean acidification, which greenhouse gases (GHGs) help to cause, appears unprecedented in at least the last 300 million years.

The details of growing GHG levels are in the annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, published by the WMO—the United Nations specialist agency that plays a leading role in international efforts to monitor and protect the environment.

They show that between 1990 and 2013 there was a 34 percent increase in radiative forcing—the warming effect on our climate—because of long-lived greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide.

Complex interactions

The Bulletin reports on atmospheric concentrations—not emissions—of greenhouse gases. Emissions are what go into the atmosphere, while concentrations are what stay there after the complex system of interactions between the atmosphere, biosphere (the entire global ecological system) and the oceans.

About a quarter of total emissions are taken up by the oceans and another quarter by the biosphere, cutting levels of atmospheric CO2. In 2013, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was 142 percent higher than before the Industrial Revolution started, in about 1750. Concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide had risen by 253 percent and 121 percent respectively.

The observations from WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch network showed that CO2 levels increased more from 2012 to 2013 than during any other year since 1984. Scientists think this may be related to reduced CO2 absorption by the Earth’s biosphere, as well as by the steady increase in emissions.

Although the oceans lessen the increase in CO2 that would otherwise happen in the atmosphere, they do so at a price to marine life and to fishing communities—and also to tourism. The Bulletin says the oceans appear to be acidifying faster than at any time in at least the last 300 million years.

“We know without any doubt that our climate is changing and our weather is becoming more extreme due to human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels,” said the WMO’s secretary-general, Michel Jarraud.

Running out of time

“The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin shows that, far from falling, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere actually increased last year at the fastest rate for nearly 30 years. We are running out of time. The laws of physics are non-negotiable.

“The Bulletin provides a scientific base for decision-making. We have the knowledge and we have the tools for action to try to keep temperature increases within 2°C to give our planet a chance and to give our children and grandchildren a future. Pleading ignorance can no longer be an excuse for not acting.”

Wendy Watson-Wright, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, said: “It is high time the ocean, as the primary driver of the planet’s climate and attenuator of climate change, becomes a central part of climate change discussions.

“If global warming is not a strong enough reason to cut CO2 emissions, ocean acidification should be, since its effects are already being felt and will increase for many decades to come.” The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere reached 396.0 parts per million (ppm) in 2013. At the current rate of increase, the global annual average concentration is set to cross the symbolic 400 ppm threshold within the next two years.

More potent

Methane, in the short term, is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2—34 times more potent over a century, but 84 times more over 20 years. Atmospheric methane reached a new high of about 1,824 parts per billion (ppb) in 2013, because of increased emissions from human sources. Since 2007, it has started increasing again, after a temporary period of levelling-off.

Nitrous oxide’s atmospheric concentration in 2013 was about 325.9 ppb. Its impact on climate, over a century, is 298 times greater than equal emissions of CO2. It also plays an important role in the destruction of the ozone layer that protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet solar radiation.

The oceans currently absorb a quarter of anthropogenic CO2 emissions—about 4kg of CO2 per day per person. Acidification will continue to accelerate at least until mid-century, according to projections from Earth system models.

See also:

NOAA: Ocean Acidification Rises, Marine Economy Sinks

Sea Shepherd Founder to Bill Maher: ‘If Oceans Die, We Die’

How Acidification, Overfishing and Plastics Threaten the World’s Oceans