Brazil: Deforestation rises sharply as farmers push into Amazon
Posted on September 5, 2008
Environment | Leave a Comment
Concerns over the destruction of the Brazilian rainforest resurfaced at the weekend after it emerged that deforestation jumped by 64% over the last 12 months, according to official government data. Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research this week said that around 3,145 square miles - an area half the size of Wales - were razed between August 2007 and August 2008.
With commodity prices hitting recent highs and loggers and soy farmers pushing ever further into the Amazon jungle, satellite images captured by a real-time monitoring system, known in Brazil as Deter, showed that deforestation was once again on the rise after three years on the wane. The figures launched the controversy over how best to preserve the Amazon rainforest onto the front pages of Brazilian newspapers, and triggered a war of words between environmental campaigners and members of the government who claim that their struggle to protect the rainforest is not being given sufficient recognition.
Environmental campaigners fear that Brazil’s push to expand its economy and develop the Amazon region is posing increasing threats to Brazil’s natural resources. They accuse the government of retreating from its promises to defend the Amazon rainforest, which has been decimated since the 1970s by a mixture of logging, cattle ranching and soy farming. Guardian 1st September 2008
Climate change consequences collection
Posted on September 4, 2008
Environment | Leave a Comment
For much of the past 20 years, studies by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been greeted with skepticism and even vilified in some quarters. But, UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, says any lingering doubts that the globe is warming were laid to rest in the Panel’s Fourth Assessment Report. He says the report established that climate change is real, that it is happening, and that human activity is the primary driver of this phenomenon. “It has developed into a full-scale crisis that makes it increasingly difficult for us to reach and maintain development aspirations such as the Millennium Development Goals. But, the crisis needs a commensurate response. After 20 years of the work of the IPCC, we have the science. We know what needs to be done,” he said. VOA 31st August 2008
NOT MANY people outside the world of science would be able to offer an explanation of systematics. It’s a botanical and biological specialism, the science of documenting and describing the diversity of living organisms. Some of the world’s leading authorities in this area, in addition to experts in biology, botany and climatology, are at Trinity College Dublin this week to discuss the impact of climate change on the world’s biodiversity, such as changes in the distribution of species and threats of extinction. The conference will hear that climate change will lead to “very large reductions” in the diversity of plant species across the globe. It will also lead to the extinction of plants and animals, and will shift habitats to cooler places, say some of the experts on botany and biology to speak at the conference. Irish Times 1st September 2008
An analysis to be issued today also outlines the latest science on the impact of climate change, warning that if no action is taken to cut emissions, irrigated agricultural production in the Murray-Darling Basin will all but disappear. It warns that a 2 per cent global temperature increase would kill off coral reefs, including the Great Barrier Reef, and cause the melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. That, it says, would raise the sea level by several metres. A failure by industrialised countries to reduce carbon emissions by 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 risked severe climate impacts, such as the collapse of the Amazon rainforest. The report said that a rise in temperatures of two or more degrees would lead to a 300 per cent increase in extreme fire danger days. Canberra Times 1st September 2008
The vast Greenland ice sheet could begin to melt more rapidly than expected towards the end of the century, accelerating the rise in sea levels as a result of global warming, scientists warned yesterday. Water running off the ice sheet could triple the current rate of sea level rise to around 9mm a year, leading to a global rise of almost 1 metre per century, the researchers found. Sea levels are already on the rise as a result of increasing temperatures, because the oceans expand as they warm up, but until now scientists have had a poor understanding of how quickly ice sheets such as those in Greenland and Antarctica will begin to disappear.
There are signs that the Greenland ice sheet, which covers 1.7 million square kilometres of land, has already begun to melt faster than expected. The reason is thought to be surface water on the ice sheet trickling down through fissures to the underlying bedrock, making the ice sheet less stable, and the loss of buttressing ice shelves along the coastline. Climate scientists are uncertain how susceptible ice sheets are to global warming, largely because they have never witnessed one disappear, so researchers led by Anders Carlson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to look back to the end of the last ice age for clues.
The researchers used evidence in the geological record and computer simulations to reconstruct the demise of the Laurentide ice sheet, which was the last ice sheet to completely disappear in the northern hemisphere. The reconstruction suggests that the Greenland ice sheet may melt in a similar fashion. “We’re not talking about something catastrophic, but we could see a much bigger response in terms of sea level from the Greenland ice sheet over the next 100 years than what is currently predicted,” Carlson added.
The most recent report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that sea levels will have risen by around 10cm at most by 2100, but according to Carlson’s analysis, rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet could cause much greater rises. “For planning purposes, we should see the IPCC projections as conservative,” he said. “We think this is a very low estimate of what the Greenland ice sheet will contribute to sea level.” In an accompanying article, Mark Sidall at Bristol University describes how a 1 metre rise in sea level would submerge an estimated 2.2m square kilometres of land, largely in Asia, and displace around 145 million people at a global cost of $944 billion.
Guardian, New Scientist 1st September 2008
More long-term migrants to UK
Posted on September 3, 2008
Environment | Leave a Comment
The number of migrants coming to the UK for a year or more has risen to a record level, figures show.
Between mid-2006 and mid-2007, 605,000 long-term migrants arrived, up from 591,000 in the previous 12 months, said the Office for National Statistics. The UK’s population is growing by about a million every three years, also due to a rise in births, the ONS said. About two-thirds of the increase in births were accounted for by women born outside the UK.
‘Yesterday’s migrants’
As of mid-2007, the UK population was almost 61 million, an increase of 388,000 from 2006. It is rising despite a record level of emigration - in 2006/7, about 406,000 left the UK. On average, that means about 1,650 are arriving in the UK each day, compared to 1,100 leaving.
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Guy Goodwin
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Recent migrants have changed the number of people in that age band when women are typically having their children 
UK Independence Party MEP Godfrey Bloom said the figures proved Britain did not have “proper” border controls.
He said the increase in the number of long-term migrant workers “belies the prime minister’s promise of ‘British jobs for British workers’”.
There were 187,000 more births than deaths in the 12-month period.
Statistics show that the number of babies with foreign-born mothers has almost doubled in the last decade, from 84,497 in 1997 to 160,340 in 2007.
In some cities, including London, Slough and Luton, more than half of babies have mothers born overseas, and in the London borough of Newham the figure is 75%.
Increased fertility
Guy Goodwin, from the ONS, told the BBC: “Effectively these are yesterday’s migrants, as well as today’s migrants, contributing to this high level of population growth.” Mr Goodwin said that a few years ago the contribution of births to population growth was actually falling, but now that trend has been reversed.
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Dominic Grieve |
“There are two main drivers [for that],” he said.
“One is an increase in the fertility rates for both UK and non-UK born mums, but also it’s because recent migrants have changed the number of people in that age band - child-bearing age.”
Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve accused the government of failing to manage Britain’s immigration system. “With births to foreign mothers becoming such a large driver of population growth, it is vital that immigration levels are set taking into account the ability of our schools, hospitals and other local services to cope,” he said. “With the number of migrants arriving from the new EU countries now approaching one million, the government’s estimate that a maximum of just 13,000 migrants a year would arrive from these countries is woeful. “Labour must realise that immigration can benefit the country, but only if it is properly controlled.”
System ’shake-up’
However, a Home Office spokesman said the government was “carrying out the biggest shake-up to the immigration system for a generation”. He said: “Centre-stage is our new Australian-style points based system which means only those we need can come here to work or study.
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Home Office spokesman |
“Migrants contribute to the economy, putting more into the exchequer purse than they take out.
“So it is vital we take the social impact of migration into account when we make migration decisions.
“That’s why we set up the Migration Impacts Forum (MIF) to provide independent advice to the government on how migration affects public services and local communities. “We will also ask migrants to pay a little extra towards a fund of tens of millions of pounds to help services deal with the short-term pressures of migration.”
The figures also show that asylum applications fell to 5,720 in the second quarter of this year, down from 6,595 in the first. Donna Covey, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said that could indicate a worrying trend. “If the low numbers of asylum seekers to the UK were the result of the world becoming a safer, more peaceful place, then we would have something to celebrate,” she said. “As it is, we have real concerns that people who need our help and protection are not able to get here to access it.”
A second set of figures released by the Home Office on Thursday showed that the number of East European migrants coming to the UK to work has fallen to its lowest level since EU expansion in 2004. BBC 21st August 2008
Carbon emission risk from UK moorlands
Posted on September 2, 2008
Environment | Leave a Comment
Well-managed upland is essential. The upland areas cover 40 per cent of Britain’s land mass and provide 70 per cent of our drinking water, and their beauty attracts 100 million day visits annually. They offer refuge to threatened species, including the black grouse, ring ouzel, curlew, golden plover and twite. They preserve 75 per cent of the world’s remaining heather moors. As climate change tops every agenda, too few are aware that its peat and blanket bogs store some 5 billion tonnes of carbon - the equivalent of more than 20 years of the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions. If cared for, peatlands could absorb 41,000 tonnes of carbon a year. But if dried out, they will release 381,000 tonnes a year into the atmosphere or the water table.
‘The uplands are facing a huge threat,’ says Pat Thompson, uplands conservation officer at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). ‘It’s as urgent as standing here in 20 years’ time with your grandchildren asking: “What on earth were you lot doing in 2008?” ‘Erosion, the legacy of overgrazing, artificial drainage, unregulated burning of moorland, and industrial pollution of the atmosphere have degraded vast areas. Guardian August 24th 2008
UK population ‘will be top in EU’
Posted on September 1, 2008
Environment | Leave a Comment
The UK population is set to become the largest in the European Union, according to a report.
It is expected to increase from its current figure of 61 million to almost 77 million in 2060 - a rise of 25%.
This would make it the largest population in the EU, ahead of the projections for France (72 million) and Germany (71 million).
The EU’s statistical office Eurostat also predicts the EU population will reach 506m in 2060, from 495m in 2008.
It is expected to peak at 521m in 2035 but then decline.
The report predicts the average age of the EU population will rise, due to “persistently low fertility and an increasing number of survivors to higher ages”.
The proportion of the population aged 65 or above in the UK is projected to reach 24.7% in 2060, from 16.1% in 2008.
The number of Britons aged 80 or above is expected to reach 9% in 2060, compared with the current figure of 4.5%.
If the projection is correct, 42.1% of the UK’s population would be above retirement age - that proportion is currently 24.3%.
Ahead of the UK, the largest population growth within the EU is expected in Cyprus (+66%), the Irish Republic (+53%) and Luxembourg (+52%).
Strategy call
A Home Office spokesman said: “Projections such as these are proof that we are right to be carrying out the biggest shake-up to the immigration system for a generation.
“Centre-stage is our new Australian-style points-based system, which means only those we need can come here to work or study.”
Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said the figures showed it was “essential we develop a coherent strategy to deal with population growth”.
He added: “This strategy must bring together policy on issues from the family to border control, housing to skills and planning to immigration control.
“We not only need to ensure that our population grows at a more sustainable rate but that we also prepare properly for that sustainable rate of growth.
“The government have shown that they have no answers to the challenges we face by failing to plan for our increasing population - this makes them part of the problem, not the solution.” BBC 27th August 2008
Higher fertilizer costs hit subsistence farmers
Posted on August 29, 2008
Environment | Leave a Comment
World fertilizer prices have risen by 200 to 500% over the last 15 months, driven by the rising cost of oil and soaring demand from US biofuel producers. This is threatening the world’s poorest subsistence farmers, according to the UN, raising the possibility of widespread hunger for millions more. Prices are expected to stay high for several years. Guardian August 12th 2008
Talking of which, rapidly rising global food costs have contributed to the worst hunger crisis in East Africa for eight years, with at least 14 million people at risk of malnutrition, aid agencies said yesterday.
In Ethiopia, the worst-affected country in the region, the Government said that 4.6 million people faced starvation, but aid agencies claimed that the true figure was closer to 10 million.
Drought has worsened food shortages, and Oxfam said that the number of acute malnutrition cases had reached its highest level since the droughts of 2000, when mortality rates peaked at more than six people per 10,000 per day. The official definition of a famine is more than four deaths per 10,000 per day.
Times August 18th 2008
World population stats. from the Population Reference Bureau
Posted on August 28, 2008
Environment | Leave a Comment
Yesterday, the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) released its 2008 World Population Data Sheet. Required reading for anyone interested in how population trends are changing our world, this year’s publication focuses renewed attention on the growing “demographic divide” between the rich and poor areas of the world. In releasing the report, Bill Butz, PRB’s president, observed that “Nearly all of world population growth is now concentrated in the world’s poor countries.” Mary Mederios Kent, one of the co-authors of the report, noted that on one side of the “demographic divide” “are mostly poor countries with high birth rates and low life expectancies. On the other side are mostly wealthy countries with low birth rates and rapid aging.”
The PRB report looked at several population trends. Highlights include discussion of:
- Increased urbanization: More than half the world now lives in a city, town or village;
- Education and nutrition: Mothers in developing countries who have low educational status are more likely to have malnourished children whose growth is stunted.
- Declining fertility rates: In the past half centuries fertility rates have dropped sharply in many countries, but not all. In countries like Yemen and Niger women, on average, still have six or more children during their lifetimes.
- World population growth: Due to high fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia, world population is expected to grow from 6.7 billion in 2008 to 9.3 billion by 2050.
To illustrate the impact of the demographic divide, PRB looked at the demographic profiles of Italy and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), two countries that are very close in terms of population size (60 million and 67 million respectively), but on opposite sides of the “demographic divide.” Most importantly, 74% percent of children in the DRC are undernourished, compared to less than 2.5 percent in Italy. Despite high mortality rates, the population of the DRC could nearly triple by 2050, reaching a projected population of 189 million, while Italy’s population in 2050 will remain largely unchanged (62 million).
Population Reference Bureau
Warming climate threatens Alaska’s vast forests
Posted on August 27, 2008
Environment | Leave a Comment
Records indicate that Alaska has already experienced the largest regional warming of any U.S. state — an average 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) since the 1960s and about 8 degrees Fahrenheit (4.5 degrees Celsius) in the interior of the state during winter months.
“We’ve got mounds of evidence that an extremely powerful and unprecedented climate-driven change is underway,” said Glenn Juday, a forest ecologist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. ”It’s not that this might happen, Juday said. “These changes are underway and there are more changes coming.”
In a state that is one-third forest, the change will take the form of droughts, forest fires, and infestations of tree-killing insects like spruce beetles and spruce budworm moths. on the scenic Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage, rising temperatures are partly to blame for an outbreak of bark-infesting beetles, which thrive in warmer climates. Altogether more than 3 million acres (1.21 million hectares) of spruce have been killed in south-central Alaska since 1992, the biggest recorded outbreak in North American history.
While wetlands like the ones Berg studies have acted as a speed bump for forest fires, the drying pattern has scientists worried about an uptick in forest fires.Scattered at the outskirts of the bog are seedling black spruce trees, which burn more easily than white spruce and could provide a “fuel bridge” to allow fires to burn across peat bogs, which have long acted as a fire retardant.
Peat bogs are about 50 percent composed of carbon, and drying or burning would release heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Reuters August 19th
Abortion does not harm mental health
Posted on August 26, 2008
Environment | Leave a Comment
Women do not put their mental health at risk by having an abortion, according to an authoritative study that will undermine the campaign to tighten the UK’s abortion laws.
By challenging a key scientific argument for reform, the findings will hinder the latest effort to make it harder for British women to obtain terminations, which is to be debated by the House of Commons in October.
Anti-abortion MPs have tabled an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill that would require all women to be counselled about psychiatric risks before they can be cleared to have a termination. They cite research suggesting that mental health issues such as depression and anxiety are more common among women who have had abortions.
The APA report said that the findings of such studies were unreliable because they either failed to distinguish between abortions of wanted and unwanted pregnancies, or they did not consider factors such as poverty and drug use that raise the likelihood both of having an abortion and suffering mental illness.
The APA found “no credible evidence” that single abortions could directly cause mental health problems among adults with unwanted pregnancies. It called for more well-designed studies to investigate the issue.
Even the evidence for adverse psychiatric effects of multiple abortions was equivocal, it found. Higher rates of mental illness among such women could be explained by social factors, such as poverty or drug use that also put them at higher risk of unplanned and unwanted pregnancy.
Brenda Major, who chaired the task force, said: “The best scientific evidence published indicates that among adult women who have an unplanned pregnancy the relative risk of mental health problems is no greater if they have a single elective first-trimester abortion or deliver that pregnancy.
“The evidence regarding the relative mental health risks associated with multiple abortions is more uncertain.”
The report, which was published last week at the APA’s annual conference in Boston, found evidence that women who had late abortions because of foetal abnormalities often suffered adverse psychological reactions, similar to those experienced by women who had miscarried or had a stillbirth. These effects, however, were seen among women who had lost a wanted pregnancy, and should not be extrapolated to those who chose to terminate for other reasons. They were also less serious than those seen in women who gave birth to infants with life-threatening defects.
The majority of UK abortions meet the criteria for which the APA said there are no attested psychiatric risks. About 90 per cent are conducted in the first trimester to end unwanted pregnancies, and two thirds of the abortions carried out in England and Wales last year were for women who had not had one before.
The results are significant, because after the defeat in May of attempts to reduce the 24-week time limit for terminations anti-abortion campaigners are now demanding mandatory psychiatric counselling and a “cooling-off period”.
Supporters pointed to research such as a New Zealand study led by David Ferguson, of Christchurch School of Medicine, which found in 2006 that women who had had abortions had an elevated risk of mental health problems. The study prompted a group of doctors led by Patricia Casey, of University College, Dublin, to write to The Times: “Since women having abortions can no longer be said to have a low risk of suffering from psychiatric conditions such as depression, doctors have a duty to advise about long-term adverse psychological consequences of abortion.”
In March, Nadine Dorries, the Conservative MP who led attempts to reduce the time limit to 20 weeks, said: “We now know that abortion leads to depression and mental health problems in later life, along with other complications in future pregnancies.”
The Ferguson study was among those whose design was criticised by the APA review, in this case because it did not distinguish between abortions of wanted and unwanted pregnancies.
The APA’s conclusions matched those of the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee, which last year found no evidence for psychiatric damage caused by abortion. The Royal College of Psychiatrists also considered research inconclusive.
Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which provided 55,000 abortions in 2007, said: “Abortion research is highly politicised, but large, high-quality studies consistently show that having an abortion does not result in psychological damage.”
Mrs Dorries said: “If this rehashed, inconclusive and dated research is being used to deny women in the UK who seek an abortion the right to counselling, then it’s a fairly desperate act on behalf of the abortion industry and those who wish to deny women the right to make a fully informed decision.” Times August 18th
US population set to grow by 40% in the next 40 years.
Posted on August 25, 2008
Environment | Leave a Comment
The U.S. Census Bureau last week released its latest population projections for 2050. In releasing the new numbers, the Census Bureau noted that, “The nation will be more racially and ethnically diverse, as well as much older, by midcentury.” It will also be significantly larger.
The report indicates that the U.S. is on track to break the 400 million mark in 2039, just 33 years after the nation’s population passed the 300 million mark. By 2050, U.S. population is projected to reach 439 million, a jump of more than 40 percent from today’s level (304.8 million). Population Counts
The consequences for the climate, environment and resources are fairly grim…
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