[Graeme]

Saving the fragile layer that supports life on earth

Safeguarding this critical zone was the focus of a recent meeting in Beijing, where the National Science Foundation of China met with their counterparts in the US, UK, France and Germany. The aim was to develop an Apollo-scale programme to tackle the resource constraints that threaten to undermine global economic development.

Like the Apollo programme, the challenges are clear. We have about 10 years to identify solutions for basic human needs such as energy, food and water, and to mitigate the risks associated with climate change and further degradation of natural resources. We have 10 years because many solutions will take at least a decade to take effect, and because we have only 20 years before the perfect storm of food, water and energy shortages makes landfall.

Without a coordinated global effort, it is hard to be optimistic about the prospects for international security, economic stability and human well-being.

Managing the interconnected insecurity of water, food and energy requires a new approach, and this requires joint efforts across an extraordinary breadth of expertise. This new science will pull in the best of businesses and governments to deliver coordinated solutions around the world. Scientists are good at innovating, businesses are good at pragmatism and delivering on time, and global governance is required to create the appropriate environment for change wherever it is needed. Working together is essential if we are to implement real solutions in time.

We still lack the ability to see the critical zone in its entirety. We cannot measure the flows of life-sustaining resources – such as food, energy and water – with enough confidence to know how best to protect them. We have computer models of river flows, plant growth and some soil processes, but we cannot predict the behaviour of the system as a whole. The critical zone programme aims to develop and apply the technologies to envision this system, to make forecasts and identify ways to intervene.

forumblog

[basil_hayden]

Another step in the ongoing effort to model the world; I welcome our GIS overlords.

[Newfie]

Yeah, really. Lots of human hubris there. Earth did fine without us, and will do so again.

[Graeme]

Which ecosystems are most vulnerable to climate change?

New research highlights the world's most (and least) vulnerable ecosystems to climate change. The study, published in Nature Climate Change, is the first to combine anticipated climatic impacts with how degraded the ecosystem is due to human impacts, creating what scientists hope is a more accurate list of vulnerable regions. The most endangered regions include southern and southeast Asia, western and central Europe, eastern South America, and southern Australia.

James Watson, lead author of the study, says the research is meant to provide "clarity" on "where limited resources will do the most good" in safe-guarding vulnerable ecosystems in a warming world.

"We need to realize that climate change is going to impact ecosystems both directly and indirectly in a variety of ways and we can’t keep on assuming that all adaptation actions are suitable everywhere. The fact is there is only limited funds out there and we need to start to be clever in our investments in adaptation strategies around the world," says Watson, the Director of Wildlife Conservation Society's (WCS) Climate Change Program.

mongabay

[dohboi]

"climate change is going to impact ecosystems both directly and indirectly in a variety of ways"

And of course, CC is not the only insult pushing ecosystems beyond their limits...

[dohboi]

To the point:

Human Activities Have Cut Animal Populations In Half Since 1970

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/0 ... nt-animal/

According to a new report, the Earth has lost half its vertebrate species — mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians — since 1970.

The latest Living Planet Report, put out by a joint research effort between the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London, found a stunning drop of 52 percent in the population of wild animals on the planet over the last 40 years. The most catastrophic drop was among the inhabitants of freshwater ecosystems — the last stop for much of the world’s pollution from road run-off, farming, and emissions — whose numbers declined 75 percent. Oceanic and land species both dropped roughly 40 percent.

“If half the animals died in London zoo next week it would be front page news,” Ken Norris, director of science at the Zoological Society London, told the Guardian. “But that is happening in the great outdoors.”

The researchers analyzed 10,000 different animal populations encompassing 3,000 different species. The data was then used to create the Living Planet Index (LPI) to represent the situation of the globe’s 45,000 known species of vertebrates. The LPI has also been adopted by the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity as an effective metric of biodiversity.

As Ibon has been trying to tell us, we're already deep into the meltdown.

No reason not to post this again here:

http://xkcd.com/1338/



Note that all the wild elephants in the world represent just one of those squares.

[Tanada]

I must say we macroscopic life forms sure are filled with hubris. The vast majority, by orders of magnitude, of life is microscopic. Most of that is single celled life. The bacteria alone out weight all macroscopic life by ten thousand times the biomass, and guess how many single cell life forms we have made extinct? None of them. They exist from deep hot rock layers, ocean thermal vents, surface dirt, right up into the cirrus cloud layer in the air, and probably higher. That is not counting the fungi, yeast, germs, zooplankton/phytoplankton algae ad nauseum.

You know the smaller a life form is the more of that life form it takes to fill a niche. Well as you sit there reading this the non human single cell life forms living in your body out number your own cell structure. You are just a carrier for microscopic life, and when you die they or their descendents move on to a new host without mourning your passing.

[dohboi]

T, many good points. But when you go to:

"...guess how many single cell life forms we have made extinct? None of them."

Well, since we haven't even identified a fraction of them there is simply no way to know whether this is true or not. I would guess that it is not true, since many live in symbiosis with larger organisms, many of which have been obliterated.

The fact of the matter is, most people if asked whether the loss of all or most complex life forms on earth would be a loss would indeed see it as a great tragedy. Of course, there will be some exceptions.

[Tanada]

T, many good points. But when you go to:

"...guess how many single cell life forms we have made extinct? None of them."

Well, since we haven't even identified a fraction of them there is simply no way to know whether this is true or not. I would guess that it is not true, since many live in symbiosis with larger organisms, many of which have been obliterated.

The fact of the matter is, most people if asked whether the loss of all or most complex life forms on earth would be a loss would indeed see it as a great tragedy. Of course, there will be some exceptions.

As they say dohboi, you can't prove a negative and only a fool will try. My point is, single cell life forms are very widespread and exist from as deep as we have ever mined into the surface to the top of the Troposphere in the air. I am not in favor of making macroscopic life extinct, except perhaps for a few parasitic life forms like the little bug that causes Malaria. The simple fact of the matter is, making a macroscopic form like an Elephant is much easier than killing off all the Passenger Pigeons, yet we did manage to kill them all. We in theory eliminated Smallpox, but that virus is just a mutation of Cowpox that could reappear at any time so long as humans live in close proximity with Cattle.

If humans go extinct the hardest hit creatures will be the dust mites that prefer dead skin cells as their main food source.

[Keith_McClary]

guess how many single cell life forms we have made extinct? None of them.

Smallpox?

[Strummer]

A virus is not considered a cellular organism, or is it?

[Tanada]

A virus is by most standards not alive, they can only reproduce by attacking a host cell's capability in its DNA sequencing to reproduce itself.

[dohboi]

"If humans go extinct the hardest hit creatures will be the dust mites"

I think head lice may take a hit, too!

I'm pretty sure we're in agreement on these broad issues. The pedant in me compels me to pick when I see a nit (not to mention a louse! ).

[Keith_McClary]

A virus is by most standards not alive, they can only reproduce by attacking a host cell's capability in its DNA sequencing to reproduce itself.

Some bacteria are host-specific (eg. some STDs) - I guess the go extinct when their hosts do.