Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Saturday 21 April 2018
Monday 9 April 2018
Land degradation will be main cause of species loss & driver of the migration of millions of people by 2050
IPBES:
Science and Policy for People and nature, media
release, 26 March 2018:
Worsening Worldwide Land
Degradation Now ‘Critical’, Undermining Well-Being of 3.2 Billion People
Main cause of species loss & driver of the migration of millions of people by 2050 In landmark 3-year assessment report, 100+ experts outline costs, dangers & options
Worsening land degradation caused by
human activities is undermining the well-being of two fifths of humanity,
driving species extinctions and intensifying climate change. It is also a major
contributor to mass human migration and increased conflict, according to the
world’s first comprehensive evidence-based assessment of land degradation and
restoration.
The dangers of land degradation, which
cost the equivalent of about 10% of the world’s annual gross product in 2010
through the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, are detailed for
policymakers, together with a catalogue of corrective options, in the
three-year assessment report by more than 100 leading experts from 45
countries, launched today.
Produced by the Intergovernmental
Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the
report was approved at the 6th session of the IPBES Plenary in Medellín,
Colombia. IPBES has 129 State Members.
Providing the best-available evidence
for policymakers to make better-informed decisions, the report draws on more
than 3,000 scientific, Government, indigenous and local knowledge sources.
Extensively peer-reviewed, it was improved by more than 7,300 comments,
received from over 200 external reviewers.
Serious Danger to Human
Well-being
Rapid expansion and unsustainable
management of croplands and grazing lands is the most extensive global direct
driver of land degradation, causing significant loss of biodiversity and
ecosystem services – food security, water purification, the provision of energy
and other contributions of nature essential to people. This has reached
‘critical’ levels in many parts of the world, the report says.
“With negative impacts on the
well-being of at least 3.2 billion people, the degradation of the Earth’s land
surface through human activities is pushing the planet towards a sixth mass
species extinction,” said Prof. Robert Scholes (South Africa), co-chair of the
assessment with Dr. Luca Montanarella (Italy). “Avoiding, reducing and
reversing this problem, and restoring degraded land, is an urgent priority to
protect the biodiversity and ecosystem services vital to all life on Earth and
to ensure human well-being.”
“Wetlands have been particularly hard
hit,” said Dr. Montanarella. “We have seen losses of 87% in wetland areas since
the start of the modern era – with 54% lost since 1900.”
According to the authors, land
degradation manifests in many ways: land abandonment, declining populations of
wild species, loss of soil and soil health, rangelands and fresh water, as well
as deforestation.
Underlying drivers of land
degradation, says the report, are the high-consumption lifestyles in the most
developed economies, combined with rising consumption in developing and
emerging economies. High and rising per capita consumption, amplified by
continued population growth in many parts of the world, can drive unsustainable
levels of agricultural expansion, natural resource and mineral extraction, and
urbanization – typically leading to greater levels of land degradation.
By 2014, more than 1.5 billion
hectares of natural ecosystems had been converted to croplands. Less than 25%
of the Earth’s land surface has escaped substantial impacts of human activity –
and by 2050, the IPBES experts estimate this will have fallen to less than 10%.
Crop and grazing lands now cover more
than one third of the Earth´s land surface, with recent clearance of native
habitats, including forests, grasslands and wetlands, being concentrated in
some of the most species-rich ecosystems on the planet.
The report says increasing demand for
food and biofuels will likely lead to continued increase in nutrient and
chemical inputs and a shift towards industrialized livestock production
systems, with pesticide and fertilizer use expected to double by 2050.
Avoidance of further agricultural
expansion into native habitats can be achieved through yield increases on the
existing farmlands, shifts towards less land degrading diets, such as those
with more plant-based foods and less animal protein from unsustainable sources,
and reductions in food loss and waste.
Strong Links to Climate
Change
“Through this report, the global
community of experts has delivered a frank and urgent warning, with clear
options to address dire environmental damage,” said Sir Robert Watson, Chair of
IPBES.
“Land degradation, biodiversity loss
and climate change are three different faces of the same central challenge: the
increasingly dangerous impact of our choices on the health of our natural
environment. We cannot afford to tackle any one of these three threats in
isolation – they each deserve the highest policy priority and must be addressed
together.”
The IPBES report finds that land
degradation is a major contributor to climate change, with deforestation alone
contributing about 10% of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. Another
major driver of the changing climate has been the release of carbon previously
stored in the soil, with land degradation between 2000 and 2009 responsible for
annual global emissions of up to 4.4 billion tonnes of CO2.
Given the importance of soil’s carbon
absorption and storage functions, the avoidance, reduction and reversal of land
degradation could provide more than a third of the most cost-effective
greenhouse gas mitigation activities needed by 2030 to keep global warming
under the 2°C threshold targeted in the Paris Agreement on climate change,
increase food and water security, and contribute to the avoidance of conflict
and migration.
Projections to 2050
“In just over three decades from now,
an estimated 4 billion people will live in drylands,” said Prof. Scholes. “By
then it is likely that land degradation, together with the closely related
problems of climate change, will have forced 50-700 million people to migrate.
Decreasing land productivity also makes societies more vulnerable to social
instability – particularly in dryland areas, where years with extremely low
rainfall have been associated with an increase of up to 45% in violent
conflict.”
Dr. Montanarella added: “By 2050, the
combination of land degradation and climate change is predicted to reduce
global crop yields by an average of 10%, and by up to 50% in some regions. In
the future, most degradation will occur in Central and South America,
sub-Saharan Africa and Asia – the areas with the most land still remaining that
is suitable for agriculture.”
The report also underlines the
challenges that land degradation poses, and the importance of restoration, for
key international development objectives, including the United Nations
Sustainable Development Goals and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. “The greatest
value of the assessment is the evidence that it provides to decision makers in
Government, business, academia and even at the level of local communities,”
said Dr. Anne Larigauderie, Executive Secretary of IPBES. “With better
information, backed by the consensus of the world’s leading experts, we can all
make better choices for more effective action.”
Options for Land
Restoration
The report notes that successful
examples of land restoration are found in every ecosystem, and that many
well-tested practices and techniques, both traditional and modern, can avoid or
reverse degradation.
In croplands, for instance, some of
these include reducing soil loss and improving soil health, the use of salt
tolerant crops, conservation agriculture and integrated crop, livestock and
forestry systems.
In rangelands with traditional
grazing, maintenance of appropriate fire regimes, and the reinstatement or
development of local livestock management practices and institutions have
proven effective.
Successful responses in wetlands have
included control over pollution sources, managing the wetlands as part of the
landscape, and reflooding wetlands damaged by draining.
In urban areas, urban spatial
planning, replanting with native species, the development of ‘green
infrastructure’ such as parks and riverways, remediation of contaminated and
sealed soils (e.g. under asphalt), wastewater treatment and river channel restoration
are identified as key options for action.
Opportunities to accelerate action
identified in the report include:
Improving monitoring, verification
systems and baseline data;
Coordinating policy between different
ministries to simultaneously encourage more sustainable production and
consumption practices of land-based commodities;
Eliminating ‘perverse incentives’ that
promote land degradation and promoting positive incentives that reward
sustainable land management; and
Integrating the agricultural,
forestry, energy, water, infrastructure and service agendas.
Making the point that existing
multilateral environmental agreements provide a good platform for action to
avoid, reduce and reverse land degradation and promote restoration, the authors
observe, however, that greater commitment and more effective cooperation is
needed at the national and local levels to achieve the goals of zero net land
degradation, no loss of biodiversity and improved human well-being.
Knowledge Gaps
Among the areas identified by the
report as opportunities for further research are:
The consequences of land degradation
on freshwater and coastal ecosystems, physical and mental health and spiritual
well-being, and infectious disease prevalence and transmission;
The potential for land degradation to
exacerbate climate change, and land restoration to help both mitigation and
adaptation;
The linkages between land degradation
and restoration and social, economic and political processes in far-off places;
and
Interactions among land degradation,
poverty, climate change, and the risk of conflict and of involuntary migration.
Environmental and
Economic Sense
The report found that higher
employment and other benefits of land restoration often exceed by far the costs
involved. On average, the benefits of restoration are 10 times higher
than the costs (estimated across nine different biomes), and, for regions like
Asia and Africa, the cost of inaction in the face of land degradation is at
least three times higher than the cost of action.
“Fully deploying the toolbox of proven
ways to stop and reverse land degradation is not only vital to ensure food
security, reduce climate change and protect biodiversity,” said Dr.
Montanarella, “It’s also economically prudent and increasingly urgent.”
Echoing this message, Sir Robert
Watson, said: “Of the many valuable messages in the report, this ranks among
the most important: implementing the right actions to combat land degradation
can transform the lives of millions of people across the planet, but this will
become more difficult and more costly the longer we take to act.”
Unedited
advance Summary for Policymakers of the regional assessment of biodiversity and
ecosystem services for Asia and the Pacific
EN
PDF
EN
Word
Unedited
advance Summary for Policymakers of the thematic assessment of land degradation
and restoration
EN
PDF
EN
Word
Monday 26 February 2018
Where have all the insects gone?
ABC
News, 24
February 2018:
A global crash in insect
populations has found its way to Australia, with entomologists across the
country reporting lower than average numbers of wild insects.
University of Sydney
entomologist Dr Cameron Webb said researchers around the world widely
acknowledge that insect populations are in decline, but are at a loss to
determine the cause.
"On one hand it
might be the widespread use of insecticides, on the other hand it might be
urbanisation and the fact that we're eliminating some of the plants where it's
really critical that these insects complete their development," Dr Webb
said.
"Add in to the mix
climate change and sea level rise and it's incredibly difficult to predict
exactly what it is."
Entomologist and owner
of the Australian Insect Farm, near Innisfail in far north Queensland, Jack
Hasenpusch is usually able to collect swarms of wild insects at this time of
year.
"I've been wondering
for the last few years why some of the insects have been dropping off and put
it down to lack of rainfall," Mr Hasenpusch said.
"This year has
really taken the cake with the lack of insects, it's left me dumbfounded, I
can't figure out what's going on."
Mr Hasenpusch said
entomologists he had spoken to from Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and even as far
away as New Caledonia and Italy all had similar stories.....
The
Guardian, 19
October 2017:
The abundance of flying
insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a
new study that has shocked scientists.
Insects are an integral
part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it
was known that some species such
as butterflies were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the
losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is “on course for
ecological Armageddon”, with profound impacts on human society.
The new data was
gathered in nature reserves across Germany but has implications for all
landscapes dominated by agriculture, the researchers said.
The cause of the huge
decline is as yet unclear, although the destruction of wild areas and
widespread use of pesticides are the most likely factors and climate change may
play a role. The scientists were able to rule out weather and changes to
landscape in the reserves as causes, but data on pesticide levels has not been
collected.
“The fact that the
number of flying insects is decreasing at such a high rate in such a large area
is an alarming discovery,” said Hans de Kroon, at Radboud University in the Netherlands
and who led the new research.
“Insects make up about
two-thirds of all life on Earth [but] there has been some kind of horrific
decline,” said Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University, UK, and part of the team
behind the new study. “We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable
to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon.
If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.”
The research, published
in the journal Plos One, is based on the work of dozens of amateur
entomologists across Germany who began using strictly standardised ways of
collecting insects in 1989. Special tents called malaise traps were used to capture
more than 1,500 samples of all flying insects at 63 different nature reserves.
Labels:
climate change,
extinction,
flora and fauna
Monday 19 February 2018
Global fires affect Earth's methane emission levels
National Aeronautics and
Space Administration
(NASA), 4 January 2018:
A reduction in global
burned area in the 2000s had an unexpectedly large impact on methane emissions.
A
new NASA-led study has solved a puzzle involving the recent rise in atmospheric
methane, a potent greenhouse gas, with a new calculation of emissions from
global fires. The new study resolves what looked like irreconcilable differences
in explanations for the increase.
Methane
emissions have been rising sharply since 2006. Different research teams have
produced viable estimates for two known sources of the increase: emissions from
the oil and gas industry, and microbial production in wet tropical environments
like marshes and rice paddies. But when these estimates were added to estimates
of other sources, the sum was considerably more than the observed increase. In
fact, each new estimate was large enough to explain the whole increase by
itself.
Scientist
John Worden of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and
colleagues focused on fires because they're also changing globally. The area
burned each year decreased about 12 percent between the early 2000s and the
more recent period of 2007 to 2014, according to a new study using observations
by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer satellite instrument. The
logical assumption would be that methane emissions from fires have decreased by
about the same percentage. Using satellite measurements of methane and carbon
monoxide, Worden's team found the real decrease in methane emissions was almost
twice as much as that assumption would suggest.
When
the research team subtracted this large decrease from the sum of all emissions,
the methane budget balanced correctly, with room for both fossil fuel and
wetland increases. The research is published in the journal Nature
Communications.
* Atmospheric methane concentrations
are given by their weight in teragrams.
* One teragram equals about 1.1
million U.S. tons -- more than the weight of 200,000 elephants.
* Methane emissions are increasing by
about 25 teragrams a year, with total emissions currently around 550 teragrams
a year.
Most
methane molecules in the atmosphere don't have identifying features that reveal
their origin. Tracking down their sources is a detective job involving multiple
lines of evidence: measurements of other gases, chemical analyses, isotopic
signatures, observations of land use, and more. "A fun thing about this
study was combining all this different evidence to piece this puzzle
together," Worden said.
Carbon
isotopes in the methane molecules are one clue. Of the three methane sources
examined in the new study, emissions from fires contain the largest percentage
of heavy carbon isotopes, microbial emissions have the smallest, and fossil
fuel emissions are in between. Another clue is ethane, which (like methane) is
a component of natural gas. An increase in atmospheric ethane indicates
increasing fossil fuel sources. Fires emit carbon monoxide as well as methane,
and measurements of that gas are a final clue.
Worden's
team used carbon monoxide and methane data from the Measurements of Pollutants
in the Troposphere instrument on NASA's Terra satellite and the Tropospheric
Emission Spectrometer instrument on NASA's Aura to quantify fire emissions of
methane. The results show these emissions have been decreasing much more
rapidly than expected.
Combining
isotopic evidence from ground surface measurements with the newly calculated
fire emissions, the team showed that about 17 teragrams per year of the
increase is due to fossil fuels, another 12 is from wetlands or rice farming,
while fires are decreasing by about 4 teragrams per year. The three numbers
combine to 25 teragrams a year -- the same as the observed increase.
Worden's
coauthors are at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder,
Colorado; and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research and University of
Utrecht, both in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Updated
Jan. 3, 2018, at 1:40 p.m. to clarify weight in sidebar feature.
Labels:
bushfires,
climate change,
greenhouse gases
Wednesday 14 February 2018
Climate change sceptics started the ball rolling again in 2018
It would appear that climate change denial remains alive and well, but with the same hearing and comprehension problems it acquired at birth.........
The Daily Examiner and Townsville Bulletin, 10 January 2018:
In today’s crazy world,
western politicians are wasting billions of taxpayer dollars force-feeding
costly unreliable green energy in the bizarre belief this will somehow change
Earth’s climate.
Even more incredible,
they fear global warmth and seem hellbent on creating global cooling. They
should study climate history. It is snow and ice, cold dry air and carbon
dioxide starvation we need to fear, not a warm, moist, fertile, bountiful
atmosphere.
Climate change is
natural and unstoppable. Just 20,000 years ago, Earth was in one of its
recurring glacial phases.
A thick massive ice
sheet smothered Canada, Alaska, Iceland, Greenland, North Asia and Europe as
far south as present-day London.
Much of the animal and
plant life of the previous warm era was extinguished. Even in warmer lands not
covered by the ice sheet, plants suffered as the cold oceans removed moisture
and carbon dioxide plant food from the atmosphere.
Then, because of
changing cycles in Earth’s orbit and tilt, reinforced by changing solar cycles,
the sun warmed the frozen lands.
The great ice sheets
melted, sea levels rose and the warming oceans expelled moisture and CO2 plant
food into the atmosphere. Plant life recovered.
Tundra, forests,
grasslands and herbivores advanced towards the pole and fish became abundant in
the shallow seas that flooded coastal plains. Hunters, herders, farmers and
fishermen followed the food.
Human population
increased greatly. They gave thanks for the warmth, and worshipped the sun. But
the peak of the modern warm era is past, and the natural cycles controlling
global temperatures are pointing downwards.
Only an idiot with a
death wish for life on Earth would attempt to accelerate our inevitable descent
into the next ice age.
Luckily, their costly
war on warmth is totally futile, but their war on carbon energy will prove
tragically misguided in the cold times ahead.
VIV FORBES, Washpool,
Qld
NOTE: According
to DeSmog, “Viv Forbes is the
Chairman of the Carbon
Sense Coalition, which was created to “defend the role of carbon on earth
and in the atmosphere,” and which describes Forbes as a “pasture manager, soil
scientist and geologist from Rosevale in Queensland.” [2]
Forbes
has also had a long association with the coal industry. According to his biography at Stanmore Coal where he acts as
director, Forbes has over 40 years of coal industry experience and has worked
with Burton Coal, Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal, South Blackwater Coal Mine,
Tahmoor Coal Mine, Newlands/Collinsville Coal Mines, MIM, Utah
Goonyella/Saraji and Gold Fields.
He is
also associated with other skeptical organizations including the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) and
the Australian Climate Science Coalition (ACSC).
According
to Forbes, the “Green Elite” has a “long-term agenda … to destroy human industry
and reduce human population. Thus they are opposed to farming, mining, fishing,
forestry, exploration and cheap power.” [3]”
The Daily Examiner, 17 January 2018, p10:
Sceptic miscue
Savvy DEX readers
certainly realise that sceptic science/climate denial mumbo jumbo has its
origins in the ultra conservative religious right of the US political
landscape.
Coincidentally but sadly
for the rest of the world, many in the Trump administration are of this ilk.
Dedicated sceptic and
Rosevale, Qld resident Viv Forbes has once again (DEX Jan 10)
produced a pitch- perfect melody from the sceptic songbook.
As Viv points out,
naturally occurring climate change takes place over thousands of years.
On the other hand,
global warming is measurable over decades, is a direct result of human activity
over the last century in particular and so is everything but natural.
Moreover, Viv is warning
us of an impending frozen armageddan (in sceptic speak that should read
OhMyGodden!)
I hope Viv appreciates
that in the very same week as he made this dire forecast, the BOM has confirmed
that 2017 was the warmest year on record for NSW and SE Queensland – timing is
everything Viv.
The world may well cool
in 25000 years or so, but world leaders rightly are more concerned with the
immediate effects of global warming over the next few decades.
Nevertheless, we should
probably remain grateful that Viv actually gets his name correct because
everything else in his letter is nothing more than irrelevant nonsense.
Ted Strong, Seelands
The Daily Examiner, 27 January 2018, p15:
Tampered temperatures
TED Strong (17/1)
commented: “As Viv Forbes points out, naturally occurring climate change takes
place over thousands of years. On the other hand, global warming is measurable
over decades, is a direct result of human activity over the last century in
particular and so is everything but natural.”
Actually Viv said:
“Climate change is natural and unstoppable.” He did not mention time, although
the changes often occur rapidly.
During the Pleistocene
Epoch, there have been many ice ages. The latest, which covered large portions
of the northern hemisphere with mile-high ice, peaked 21,000 years ago and was
gone by 11,700 years ago.
Since then there was the
little Ice Age between 1400AD and 1850AD and a number of warm periods, which
included two Holocene Optimums, the Roman Optimum from 250BC to 400AD, and the
Medieval Warm Period from 800 to 1400. These four were as warm as, or warmer
than, the Modern Warm Period, commencing around 1850.
So Ted could you explain
what caused the previous warming periods, because they definitely weren’t
“unnatural”?
But we keep being told
that our current temperatures are the “hottest ever recorded”. So how do NOAA,
NASA and the BOMs define “ever recorded”?
Our BOM stated: “…2017
was the third-warmest year on record, at 0.95 degrees above the 1961 to 1990
average” and that “Seven of the 10 hottest years, have occurred after 2005”.
Years ago the BOM
decided temperatures taken before 1911 were “incorrect” and would no longer be
taken into account. Obviously the 1890s temperatures were too high to explain.
But that left the 1939
era, which is still regarded as being the hottest since 1900. To overcome that
pesky problem they established a baseline temperature using a 30-year average
between 1961 and 1990.
This was a great choice
because it included the chilly 1970s, when the world panicked that an ice-age
was coming.
So our BOM, with a
straight face, tells us that the “warmest on record” years have actually been
selected from the last 28 years, and the 0.95 degree increase is based on the
chilly 1961-1990 average.
So although the BOM
openly says what period its figures are based on, it knows that the gullibles,
and (unfortunately) the media, will submissively accept their fallacious
statements as being from time immemorial.
JOHN IBBOTSON,
Gulmarrad
The Daily Examiner, 31 January 2018, p11:
Climate warriors rattle
cages
The war of words between
the two climate change adversaries, one upriver and his opponent from down
river, has reached a point where one party has delved into his “unseemly” bag
to crudely criticise and try to belittle his opponent.
John Ibbotson can make
his case with facts and figures garnered from research by Scientists that are
not locked into the one eyed ideology that has evolved from the suspect science
of climate change computer modelling.
Of course the Bureau of
Meteorology can make mistakes, and has freely admitted to errors in the past,
while Tim Flannery is an example of just how far off the planet these fear
mongering so called gurus can get.
The scandal involving
climate change scientists in the British Met in East Anglia will not go away
nor will the fact that in the early 1990s temperature readings used to falsify
average ground temperature data came from thousands of sites situated close by
or near to, major heat sources such as American airports and bustling highways.
John Ibbotson makes his
case in a calm and methodical way, Ted Strong just doesn’t like his precious
cage being rattled.
FRED PERRING, Halfway
Creek.
The Daily Examiner, 3 February 2018, p13:
Climate desperation
Blimey, things must be
getting desperate in the John Ibbotson climate sceptic camp. He now
has to rely on Fred Perring (DEX 31/1) for his great science knowledge.
PAUL STEPHEN, Yamba
The Daily Examiner, 7 February 2018, p11:
Wrong horse, wrong track
When compulsive scribe
Fred Perring submits his favourites – ie maligning left-wing pollies or bashing
the ABC – he does OK because the only requirements are bias, bluster and
righteous indignation which Fred does in spades, while fact and logic seem to
be of little consequence.
But when Fred comes out
swinging, (DEX 31/1) in support of downriver sceptic, John Ibbotson, fact and
logic become vital and so Fred flounders. Not only is he backing the wrong
horse he is not even at, or on the right track.
The tiresome “facts” he
trots out are Fred repeats, straight from the sceptic science hymn book and
still unsupportable.
Even Fred’s well-known
visually impaired namesake would by now have recognised that, particularly in
the past decade, global warming is no less than the bleeding obvious.
Advice for Fred is the
same as for John – stay away from sceptic websites and stick to the things you
do best. Also thanks for the “heads-up” re my cage – I’ve checked it out and it
appears quite solid if not completely foolproof.
TED STRONG, Seelands.
Labels:
climate change,
climate change denialists,
science
Tuesday 13 February 2018
There is no good news when it comes to climate change
University of Colorado Boulder, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), media release, 5 February 2018:
Scientists find massive reserves of mercury hidden in permafrost
Researchers have discovered that thawing permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere stores twice as much mercury as the rest of the planet's soils, atmosphere, and oceans. The finding has significant implications for human health and ecosystems worldwide.
In a new study, scientists measured mercury concentrations in cores of frozen ground—or permafrost—from Alaska and used the data to estimate how much mercury has been trapped in Northern Hemisphere permafrost since the last Ice Age.
They found that Northern Hemisphere permafrost regions contain 1,656 gigagrams of mercury (32 million gallons, or enough to fill 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools), making them the largest known reservoir of mercury on the planet. This amount is nearly twice as much mercury as all soils outside of the northern permafrost region, the ocean, and the atmosphere combined.
The researchers also found that of the 1,656 gigagrams of mercury, 863 gigagrams lie in the surface layer of soil that freezes and thaws each year (27 Olympic-sized swimming pools), and 793 gigagrams are frozen in permafrost (23 Olympic-sized swimming pools).
"This implies permafrost regions contain roughly 10 times the total human mercury emissions over the last 30 years," said NSIDC scientist Kevin Schaefer, a co-author of the study published today in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
"Previous studies assumed little or no mercury in permafrost regions, but we find the opposite is true," Schaefer said. "This completely changes our view of how mercury moves through the land and ocean."
"This discovery is a game-changer," said Paul Schuster, a hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Boulder, Colorado and lead author of the study. "We've quantified a pool of mercury that had not been done previously with confidence, and the results have profound implications for better understanding the global mercury cycle."
This diagram shows the modern mercury cycle with major reservoirs in white (gigagrams of mercury) and exchanges between reservoirs in black (gigagrams of mercury per year). Northern Hemisphere permafrost contains 863 gigagrams of mercury in the Active Layer, the layer of ground that is subject to annual thawing and freezing. About 793 gigagrams of mercury is found in Northern Hemisphere permafrost. Credit: Schuster et al./GRL/AGU. High-resolution image
Permafrost is permanently frozen ground and occurs in approximately 22.79 million square kilometers, or about 24 percent of the Northern Hemisphere land surface surrounding the Arctic ocean.
Mercury naturally occurs in the Earth's crust and typically enters the atmosphere through volcanic eruptions. The element cycles between the atmosphere and ocean quickly. However, mercury deposited on land from the atmosphere binds with organic matter in plants. After the plants die, soil microbes eat the dead organic matter, releasing the mercury back into the atmosphere or water.
In permafrost regions, however, the organic matter gets buried by sediment before it decays and becomes frozen into permafrost. Once frozen, the decay of organic matter stops, and the mercury remains trapped for thousands of years unless liberated by permafrost thaw.
"As long as the permafrost remains frozen, the mercury will stay trapped in the soil," Schaefer said. Higher air temperatures due to climate change could thaw much of the existing permafrost, allowing the decay of organic matter to resume and releasing mercury that could affect Earth's ecosystems. The released mercury can accumulate in aquatic and terrestrial food chains and cause harmful neurological and reproductive effects on animals.
"Although measurement of the rate of permafrost thaw was not part of this study, the thawing permafrost provides a potential for mercury to be released—that's just physics." Schuster said.
Climate models predict a 30 to 90 percent reduction in permafrost by 2100, depending on actual fuel emissions.
The researchers determined the total amount of mercury locked up in permafrost using field measurements. Between 2004 and 2012, the study authors drilled 13 permafrost soil cores at various sites in Alaska and measured the total amounts of mercury and carbon in each core. They selected sites with a diverse array of soil characteristics to best represent permafrost found around the entire Northern Hemisphere.
These images show soil mercury content (in micrograms of mercury per square meter) in Northern Hemisphere permafrost zones for four soil layers: 0 to 30 centimeters, 0 to 100 centimeters, 0 to 300 centimeters, and permafrost. The permafrost map represents mercury bound to frozen organic matter below the active layer and above a depth of 300 centimeters. Credit: Schuster et al./GRL/AGU. High-resolution image
Schuster, Schaefer, and their colleagues found their measurements were consistent with published data on mercury in non-permafrost and permafrost soils from thousands of other sites worldwide. They used their observed values to calculate the total amount of mercury stored in permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere and to create a map of soil mercury concentrations in the region.
The researchers believe their study gives policymakers and scientists new numbers to work with and calibrate their models as they begin to study this new phenomenon in more detail. The researchers intend to release another study modeling the release of mercury from permafrost due to climate change.
"Permafrost contains a huge amount of mercury," Schaefer said. "We need to know how much mercury will get released from thawing permafrost, when it will get released, and where."
-end-
Labels:
climate change,
health,
pollution
Tuesday 6 February 2018
Tuesday 30 January 2018
Scientists issue a final warning to humanity
THEN……
1992 World Scientists'
Warning to Humanity
Scientist Statement: World
Scientists' Warning to Humanity (1992) (PDF document)
Some 1,700 of the
world's leading scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in the
sciences, issued this appeal in November 1992. The World Scientists' Warning to
Humanity was written and spearheaded by the late Henry Kendall, former chair of
UCS's board of directors.
Introduction
Human beings and the
natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and
often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not
checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish
for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the
living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know.
Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present
course will bring about.
NOW……
World
Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice (PDF Document)
WILLIAM
J. RIPPLE, CHRISTOPHER WOLF, THOMAS M. NEWSOME, MAURO GALETTI, MOHAMMED
ALAMGIR, EILEEN CRIST, MAHMOUD I. MAHMOUD, WILLIAM F. LAURANCE, and 15,364
scientist signatories from 184 countries
Twenty-five years ago,
the Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 1700 independent scientists,
including the majority of living Nobel laureates in the sciences, penned the
1992 “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” (see supplemental file S1).
These concerned
professionals called on humankind to curtail environmental destruction and
cautioned that “a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on
it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided.” In their manifesto,
they showed that humans were on a collision course with the natural world. They
expressed concern about current, impending, or potential damage on planet Earth
involving ozone depletion, freshwater availability, marine life depletion,
ocean dead zones, forest loss, biodiversity destruction, climate change, and
continued human population growth. They proclaimed that fundamental changes
were urgently needed to avoid the consequences our present course would bring.
The authors of the 1992
declaration feared that humanity was pushing Earth’s ecosystems beyond their
capacities to support the web of life. They described how we are fast
approaching many of the limits of what the biosphere can tolerate without
substantial and irreversible harm. The scientists pleaded that we stabilize the
human population, describing how our large numbers—swelled by another 2 billion
people since 1992, a 35 percent increase—exert stresses on Earth that can
overwhelm other efforts to realize a sustainable future (Crist et al. 2017).
They implored that we cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and phase out fossil
fuels, reduce deforestation, and reverse the trend of collapsing biodiversity.
On the twenty-fifth
anniversary of their call, we look back at their warning and evaluate the human
response by exploring available time-series data. Since 1992, with the
exception of stabilizing the stratospheric ozone layer, humanity has failed to
make sufficient progress in generally solving these foreseen environmental
challenges, and alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse (figure 1, file
S1). Especially troubling is the current trajectory of potentially catastrophic
climate change due to rising GHGs from burning fossil fuels (Hansen et al.
2013), deforestation (Keenan et al. 2015), and agricultural production—
particularly from farming ruminants for meat consumption (Ripple et al. 2014).
Moreover, we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540
million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least
committed to extinction by the end of this century.
Humanity is now being
given a second notice, as illustrated by these alarming trends (figure 1). We
are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically
and demographically uneven material consumption and by not perceiving continued
rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even
societal threats (Crist et al. 2017). By failing to adequately limit population
growth, reassess the role of an economy rooted in growth, reduce greenhouse
gases, incentivize renewable energy, protect habitat, restore ecosystems, curb
pollution, halt defaunation, and constrain invasive alien species, humanity is
not taking the urgent steps needed to safeguard our imperilled biosphere.
As most political
leaders respond to pressure, scientists, media influencers, and lay citizens
must insist that their governments take immediate action as a moral imperative
to current and future generations of human and other life. With a groundswell
of organized grassroots efforts, dogged opposition can be overcome and
political leaders compelled to do the right thing. It is also time to
re-examine and change our individual behaviors, including limiting our own
reproduction (ideally to replacement level at most) and drastically diminishing
our per capita consumption of fossil fuels, meat, and other resources.
Read the full
Second Notice here.
ALL THE WHILE THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK IS TICKING.......
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 25 January 2018:
ALL THE WHILE THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK IS TICKING.......
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 25 January 2018:
It
is now two minutes to midnight
Editor’s
note: Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped
develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using
the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear
explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet. The
decision to move (or to leave in place) the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock
is made every year by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in
consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 15 Nobel laureates. The
Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s
vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and new
technologies emerging in other domains. A printable PDF of this statement,
complete with the President and CEO’s statement and Science and Security Board
biographies, is available here.
To:
Leaders and citizens of the world
Re:
Two minutes to midnight
Date:
January 25, 2018
In 2017, world leaders failed to respond
effectively to the looming threats of nuclear war and climate change, making
the world security situation more dangerous than it was a year ago—and as
dangerous as it has been since World War II.
The greatest risks last year arose in
the nuclear realm. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program made remarkable
progress in 2017, increasing risks to North Korea itself, other countries in
the region, and the United States. Hyperbolic rhetoric and provocative actions
by both sides have increased the possibility of nuclear war by accident or
miscalculation.
But the dangers brewing on the Korean
Peninsula were not the only nuclear risks evident in 2017: The United States
and Russia remained at odds, continuing military exercises along the borders of
NATO, undermining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), upgrading
their nuclear arsenals, and eschewing arms control negotiations.
In the Asia-Pacific region, tensions
over the South China Sea have increased, with relations between the United
States and China insufficient to re-establish a stable security situation.
In South Asia, Pakistan and India have
continued to build ever-larger arsenals of nuclear weapons.
And in the Middle East, uncertainty
about continued US support for the landmark Iranian nuclear deal adds to a
bleak overall picture.
To call the world nuclear situation
dire is to understate the danger—and its immediacy.
On the climate change front, the danger
may seem less immediate, but avoiding catastrophic temperature increases in the
long run requires urgent attention now. Global carbon dioxide emissions have
not yet shown the beginnings of the sustained decline towards zero that must
occur if ever-greater warming is to be avoided. The nations of the world will
have to significantly decrease their greenhouse gas emissions to keep climate
risks manageable, and so far, the global response has fallen far short of
meeting this challenge.
Beyond the nuclear and climate
domains, technological change is disrupting democracies around the world as
states seek and exploit opportunities to use information technologies as
weapons, among them internet-based deception campaigns aimed at undermining
elections and popular confidence in institutions essential to free thought and
global security.
The Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists Science and Security Board believes the perilous world security
situation just described would, in itself, justify moving the minute hand of
the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight.
But there has also been a breakdown in
the international order that has been dangerously exacerbated by recent US
actions. In 2017, the United States backed away from its long-standing
leadership role in the world, reducing its commitment to seek common ground and
undermining the overall effort toward solving pressing global governance
challenges. Neither allies nor adversaries have been able to reliably predict
US actions—or understand when US pronouncements are real, and when they are
mere rhetoric. International diplomacy has been reduced to name-calling, giving
it a surreal sense of unreality that makes the world security situation
ever more threatening.
Because of the extraordinary danger of
the current moment, the Science and Security Board today moves the minute hand
of the Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to catastrophe. It is now two minutes
to midnight—the closest the Clock has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it
was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.
The Science and Security Board hopes
this resetting of the Clock will be interpreted exactly as it is meant—as an
urgent warning of global danger. The time for world leaders to address looming
nuclear danger and the continuing march of climate change is long past. The
time for the citizens of the world to demand such action is now:
#rewindtheDoomsdayClock.
The untenable nuclear
threat. The risk that nuclear weapons
may be used—intentionally or because of miscalculation—grew last year around
the globe.
North Korea has long defied UN
Security Council resolutions to cease its nuclear and ballistic missile tests,
but the acceleration of its tests in 2017 reflects new resolve to acquire
sophisticated nuclear weapons. North Korea has or soon will have capabilities
to match its verbal threats—specifically, a thermonuclear warhead and a
ballistic missile that can carry it to the US mainland. In September, North
Korea tested what experts assess to be a true two-stage thermonuclear device,
and in November, it tested the Hwasong-15 missile, which experts believe has a
range of over 8,000 kilometers. The United States and its allies, Japan and
South Korea, responded with more frequent and larger military exercises, while
China and Russia proposed a freeze by North Korea of nuclear and missile tests
in exchange for a freeze in US exercises.
The failure to secure a temporary
freeze in 2017 was unsurprising to observers of the downward spiral of nuclear
rhetoric between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The failure to rein in North Korea’s nuclear program will reverberate not just
in the Asia-Pacific, as neighboring countries review their security options,
but more widely, as all countries consider the costs and benefits of the
international framework of nonproliferation treaties and agreements.
Nuclear risks have been compounded by
US-Russia relations that now feature more conflict than cooperation.
Coordination on nuclear risk reduction is all but dead, and no solution to
disputes over the INF Treaty—a landmark agreement to rid Europe of medium-range
nuclear missiles—is readily apparent. Both sides allege violations, but
Russia’s deployment of a new ground-launched cruise missile, if not
addressed, could trigger a collapse of the treaty. Such a collapse would
make what should have been a relatively easy five-year extension of the New
START arms control pact much harder to achieve and could terminate an arms
control process that dates back to the early 1970s.
For the first time in many years, in
fact, no US-Russian nuclear arms control negotiations are under way. New
strategic stability talks begun in April are potentially useful, but so far
they lack the energy and political commitment required for them to bear fruit.
More important, Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea and semi-covert support
of separatists in eastern Ukraine have sparked concerns that Russia will
support similar “hybrid” conflicts in new NATO members that it borders—actions
that could provoke a crisis at almost any time. Additional clash points could
emerge if Russia attempts to exploit friction between the United States and its
NATO partners, whether arising from disputes on burden-sharing, European Union
membership, and trade—or relating to policies on Israel, Iran, and terrorism in
the Middle East.
In the past year, US allies have
needed reassurance about American intentions more than ever. Instead, they have
been forced to negotiate a thicket of conflicting policy statements from a US
administration weakened in its cadre of foreign policy professionals, suffering
from turnover in senior leadership, led by an undisciplined and disruptive
president, and unable to develop, coordinate, and clearly communicate a
coherent nuclear policy. This inconsistency constitutes a major challenge for
deterrence, alliance management, and global stability. It has made the existing
nuclear risks greater than necessary and added to their complexity.
Especially in the case of the Iran
nuclear deal, allies are perplexed. While President Trump has steadfastly
opposed the agreement that his predecessor and US allies negotiated to keep
Iran from developing nuclear weapons, he has never successfully articulated
practical alternatives. His instruction to Congress in 2017 to legislate a
different approach resulted in a stalemate. The future of the Iran deal, at
this writing, remains uncertain.
In the United States, Russia, and
elsewhere around the world, plans for nuclear force modernization and
development continue apace. The Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review
appears likely to increase the types and roles of nuclear weapons in US defense
plans and lower the threshold to nuclear use. In South Asia, emphasis on
nuclear and missile capabilities grows. Conventional force imbalances and
destabilizing plans for nuclear weapons use early in any conflict continue to
plague the subcontinent.
Reflecting long decades of frustration
with slow progress toward nuclear disarmament, states signed a Treaty on the
Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the ban treaty, at the United
Nations this past September. The treaty—championed by the International
Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which has been awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize for its work—is a symbolic victory for those seeking a world without
nuclear weapons and a strong expression of the frustration with global
disarmament efforts to date. Predictably, countries with nuclear weapons
boycotted the negotiations, and none has signed the ban treaty. Their increased
reliance on nuclear weapons, threats, and doctrines that could make the use of
those weapons more likely stands in stark contrast to the expectations of the
rest of the world.
An insufficient response
to climate change. Last year, the US government
pursued unwise and ineffectual policies on climate change, following through on
a promise to derail past US climate policies. The Trump administration, which
includes avowed climate denialists in top positions at the Environmental
Protection Agency, the Interior Department, and other key agencies, has
announced its plan to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. In its rush to
dismantle rational climate and energy policy, the administration has ignored
scientific fact and well-founded economic analyses.
These US government climate decisions
transpired against a backdrop of worsening climate change and high-impact
weather-related disasters. This year past, the Caribbean region and other parts
of North America suffered a season of historic damage from exceedingly powerful
hurricanes. Extreme heat waves occurred in Australia, South America, Asia,
Europe, and California, with mounting evidence that heat-related illness and
death are correspondingly increasing. The Arctic ice cap achieved its
smallest-ever winter maximum in 2017, the third year in a row that this record
has been broken. The United States has witnessed devastating wildfires, likely
exacerbated by extreme drought and subsequent heavy rains that spurred
underbrush growth. When the data are assessed, 2017 is almost certain to continue the trend of exceptional global
warmth: All the warmest years in the instrumental record, which extends
back to the 1800s, have—excepting one year in the late 1990s—occurred in the
21st century.
Despite the sophisticated disinformation
campaign run by climate denialists, the unfolding consequences of an altered
climate are a harrowing testament to an undeniable reality: The science linking
climate change to human activity—mainly the burning of fossil fuels that
produce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases—is sound. The world continues
to warm as costly impacts mount, and there is evidence that overall rates of
sea level rise are accelerating—regardless of protestations to the contrary.
Especially against these trends, it is
heartening that the US government’s defection from the Paris Agreement did not
prompt its unravelling or diminish its support within the United States at
large. The “We Are Still In” movement signals a strong commitment within the
United States—by some 1,700 businesses, 250 cities, 200 communities of faith,
and nine states, representing more than 40 percent of the US population—to its
international climate commitments and to the validity of scientific facts.
This reaffirmation is reassuring,
and other countries have maintained their steadfast support for climate action,
reconfirmed their commitments to global climate cooperation, and clearly
acknowledged that more needs to be done. French President Emmanuel Macron’s
sober message to global leaders assembled at December’s global climate summit
in Paris was a reality check after the heady climate negotiations his country
hosted two years earlier: “We’re losing the battle. We’re not moving quickly
enough. We all need to act.” And indeed, after plateauing for a few years,
greenhouse gas emissions resumed their stubborn rise in 2017.
As we have noted before, the true
measure of the Paris Agreement is whether nations actually fulfill their
pledges to cut emissions, strengthen those pledges, and see to it that global greenhouse
gas emissions start declining in short order and head toward zero. As we drift
yet farther from this goal, the urgency of shifting course becomes greater, and
the existential threat posed by climate change looms larger.
Emerging technologies
and global risk. The Science and Security Board
is deeply concerned about the loss of public trust in political institutions,
in the media, in science, and in facts themselves—a loss that the abuse of
information technology has fostered. Attempts to intervene in elections through
sophisticated hacking operations and the spread of disinformation have
threatened democracy, which relies on an informed electorate to reach
reasonable decisions on public policy—including policy relating to nuclear
weapons, climate change, and other global threats. Meanwhile, corporate leaders
in the information domain, including established media outlets and internet
companies such as Facebook and Google, have been slow to adopt protocols to
prevent misuse of their services and protect citizens from manipulation.
The international community should establish new measures that discourage
and penalize all cross-border subversions of democracy.
Last year, the Science and Security
Board warned that “[t]echnological innovation is occurring at a speed that
challenges society’s ability to keep pace. While limited at the current time,
potentially existential threats posed by a host of emerging technologies need
to be monitored, and to the extent possible anticipated, as the 21st century
unfolds.”
If anything, the velocity of
technological change has only increased in the past year, and so our warning
holds for 2018. But beyond monitoring advances in emerging technology, the board
believes that world leaders also need to seek better collective methods of
managing those advances, so the positive aspects of new technologies are
encouraged and malign uses discovered and countered. The sophisticated hacking
of the “Internet of Things,” including computer systems that control major
financial and power infrastructure and have access to more than 20 billion
personal devices; the development of autonomous weaponry that makes “kill”
decisions without human supervision; and the possible misuse of advances in
synthetic biology, including the revolutionary Crispr gene-editing tool,
already pose potential global security risks. Those risks could expand without
strong public institutions and new management regimes. The increasing pace of
technological change requires faster development of those tools.
How to turn back the
Clock. In 1953, former Manhattan
Project scientist and Bulletin editor Eugene Rabinowitch set the
hands of the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight, writing, “The achievement
of a thermonuclear explosion by the Soviet Union, following on the heels of the
development of ‘thermonuclear devices’ in America, means that the time, dreaded
by scientists since 1945, when each major nation will hold the power
of destroying, at will, the urban civilization of any other nation, is close at
hand.”
The Science and Security Board now
again moves the hands of the Clock to two minutes before midnight. But the
current, extremely dangerous state of world affairs need not be permanent. The
means for managing dangerous technology and reducing global-scale risk exist;
indeed, many of them are well-known and within society’s reach, if leaders pay
reasonable attention to preserving the long-term prospects of humanity, and if
citizens demand that they do so.
This is a dangerous time, but the
danger is of our own making. Humankind has invented the implements of
apocalypse; so can it invent the methods of controlling and eventually
eliminating them. This year, leaders and citizens of the world can move the
Doomsday Clock and the world away from the metaphorical midnight of global
catastrophe by taking these common-sense actions:
• US President Donald Trump should
refrain from provocative rhetoric regarding North Korea, recognizing the
impossibility of predicting North Korean reactions.
• The US and North Korean governments
should open multiple channels of communication. At a minimum,
military-to-military communications can help reduce the likelihood of
inadvertent war on the Korean Peninsula. Keeping diplomatic channels open for
talks without preconditions is another common-sense way to reduce tensions. As
leading security expert Siegfried Hecker of Stanford University recently wrote: “Such talks should not be seen as a reward or
concession to Pyongyang, nor construed as signaling acceptance of a
nuclear-armed North Korea. They could, however, deliver the message that while
Washington fully intends to defend itself and its allies from any attack with a
devastating retaliatory response, it does not otherwise intend to attack North
Korea or pursue regime change."
• The world community should
pursue, as a short-term goal, the cessation of North Korea’s nuclear weapon and
ballistic missile tests. North Korea is the only country to violate the norm
against nuclear testing in 20 years. Over time, the United States should seek
North Korea’s signature on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty—and then,
along with China, at long last also ratify the treaty.
• The Trump administration should
abide by the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for Iran’s nuclear
program unless credible evidence emerges that Iran is not complying with the
agreement or Iran agrees to an alternative approach that meets US national
security needs.
• The United States and Russia should
discuss and adopt measures to prevent peacetime military incidents along the
borders of NATO. Provocative military exercises and maneuvers hold the
potential for crisis escalation. Both militaries must exercise restraint and
professionalism, adhering to all norms developed to avoid conflict and accidental
encounters.
• US and Russian leaders should return
to the negotiating table to resolve differences over the INF treaty; to seek
further reductions in nuclear arms; to discuss a lowering of the alert status
of the nuclear arsenals of both countries; to limit nuclear modernization
programs that threaten to create a new nuclear arms race; and to ensure that
new tactical or low-yield nuclear weapons are not built and that existing
tactical weapons are never used on the battlefield.
• US citizens should demand, in all
legal ways, climate action from their government. Climate change is a real and
serious threat to humanity. Citizens should insist that their governments
acknowledge it and act accordingly.
• Governments around the world should
redouble their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so they go well
beyond the initial, inadequate pledges under the Paris Agreement. The
temperature goal under that agreement—to keep warming well below 2 degrees
Celsius above preindustrial levels—is consistent with consensus views on
climate science, is eminently achievable, and is economically viable, provided
that poorer countries are given the support they need to make the post-carbon
transition. But the time window for achieving this goal is rapidly closing.
• The international community should
establish new protocols to discourage and penalize the misuse of information
technology to undermine public trust in political institutions, in the media,
in science, and in the existence of objective reality itself. Strong and
accountable institutions are necessary to prevent deception campaigns that are
a real threat to effective democracies, reducing their ability to enact
policies to address nuclear weapons, climate change, and other global dangers.
• The countries of the world should
collaborate on creating institutions specifically assigned to explore and
address potentially malign or catastrophic misuses of new technologies,
particularly as regards autonomous weaponry that makes “kill” decisions without
human supervision and advances in synthetic biology that could, if misused,
pose a global threat.
The failure of world leaders to
address the largest threats to humanity’s future is lamentable—but that failure
can be reversed. It is two minutes to midnight, but the Doomsday Clock has
ticked away from midnight in the past, and during the next year, the world can
again move it further from apocalypse. The warning the Science and Security
Board now sends is clear, the danger obvious and imminent. The
opportunity to reduce the danger is equally clear.
The world has seen the threat posed by
the misuse of information technology and witnessed the vulnerability of
democracies to disinformation. But there is a flip side to the abuse of social
media. Leaders react when citizens insist they do so, and citizens around the
world can use the power of the internet to improve the long-term prospects of
their children and grandchildren. They can insist on facts, and discount
nonsense. They can demand action to reduce the existential threat of nuclear
war and unchecked climate change. They can seize the opportunity to make a
safer and saner world.
They can #rewindtheDoomsdayClock.
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