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July 18, 2021

 



Even as awareness around plastic pollution grows, very little is being done to solve the problem. At this rate, by 2050, some experts predict the world's oceans will contain more plastic than fish.

A think piece from the United Nations, commissioned by the G20, has now detailed everything the world should do to stop that from becoming our reality because we're not doing enough.

Today, roughly 11 million tonnes of plastic end up in our oceans each year, and according to a 2020 model from SYSTEMIQ and The Pew Trusts, by 2040, the amount of plastic waste that leaks into our oceans could nearly triple.

Meanwhile, promises and policies from governments and companies will only reduce plastic litter in the marine environment by 7 percent.

That's nowhere near what will be needed to achieve the G20's Osaka Blue Ocean Vision, which seeks to stop any new plastic pollution from entering the oceans by 2050.

To get there, researchers at the UN argue the world needs a "wholesale change in the plastics economy". We need the plastics industry to go from a "linear and wasteful system" to a circular and renewable one in just a few decades.

According to the report, that's a lofty goal, but it's the only way to achieve the Osaka Blue Ocean Vision. If the G20 is really serious about its commitments, then leading nations need to make plastic pollution a bigger priority going forward.

The report is largely reliant upon a model published in 2020. It shows that if the world does decide to take ambitious and urgent action on plastic pollution, we can reduce the litter destined for our oceans by 82 percent come 2040 using known technology and approaches.

That will, of course, require nations from all around the world to act in unison, something we haven't been great at so far. But if we can figure out the best route to get there, we could create a road map for all to follow.

"It's time to stop isolated changes where you have country after country doing random things that on the face of it are good but actually don't make any difference at all," says Steve Fletcher from the University of Portsmouth. 

"Intentions are good but don't recognize that changing one part of the system in isolation doesn't magically change everything else."

Recycling alone won't be enough. The 2020 model found at least half a million people will need to be connected to waste collection services every day for that to work as a strategy. 

"Given this is unlikely, reducing the amount of plastic in the system should be a top priority for policymakers because waste management systems cannot scale quickly enough," the report argues.

"The use of plastic can be reduced, minimized, or avoided entirely in many circumstances through intentional design changes to a product."

Global packaging, the authors point out, is valued between $80-120 billion USD per year, yet 95 percent of that money is lost as plastic waste. Not only could changing the design save companies money, but there are also economic benefits that come from developing new products which rely less on plastic and more on renewable materials.

Ocean clean-up efforts will also be necessary to pick up at least part of what we have already tossed away, including the enormous Pacific garbage patch and other similar accumulations of plastic.

But preventing further leakage should be our number one priority, researchers say. Cleaning up plastic in the ocean comes with a lot of challenges, requires advanced technology, and costs a lot of money.

As such, ocean clean-ups should only be considered a "useful transitional effort" on our way to a circular plastics economy. Otherwise, we'll just keep giving ourselves more and more garbage to chip away at.

In a time of global economic recovery, when COVID-19 stimulus packages emphasize green growth like never before, the world has an opportunity to address the plastics economy like never before.

If these stimulus packages can include measures to reduce marine plastic and create greener sectors from nation to nation, we might just make the Osaka Blue Ocean Vision come true after all.

The UN International Resource Panel report is available here.



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October 14, 2019

Ninety-nine per cent of all freshwater ice on Earth is sitting on top of Greenland and Antarctica, and
each year, a little more of it melts into the ocean.
Normally, it would take hundreds to thousands of years for it all to melt away. But what if something
happened that caused a massive global melt overnight?
As we slept, sea levels would rise by a whopping 66 meters. Coastal cities like New York, Shanghai,
and London would drown in the apocalyptic mass flood, forcing up to 40 percent of the world's population
out of their homes.
While all this chaos ensues above-ground, something equally sinister is happening below. All that rising
saltwater will infiltrate
groundwater reserves farther inland, forcing its way into nearby freshwater aquifers.
You know, the ones that supply our drinking water, irrigation systems, and power-plant cooling systems?
All those aquifers would be destroyed. Not good.
On top of that, the ice on Greenland and Antarctica is made of freshwater, so when it melts, that's about
69 percent of the world's freshwater supply that's going straight into the oceans. This will wreak
havoc on our ocean currents and weather patterns.
Take the Gulf Stream, for example. It's a strong ocean current that brings warm air to northern Europe
and relies on dense, salty water from the Arctic in order to function. But a flood of freshwater would
dilute the current and could weaken or even stop it altogether.
Without that warm air, temperatures in northern Europe would plummet, and that could spawn a
mini ice age, according to some experts.
That's not even the worst of it. Take a look at what will happen when that last 1 percent of freshwater
ice that's not part of Greenland or Antarctica thaws. Some of that 1 percent is sitting in glaciers farther
inland.
The Himalayan glaciers specifically pose one of the largest threats because of what's trapped inside:
toxic chemicals like dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT. Scientists discovered that glaciers
like this can store these chemicals for decades. But as they thaw, those glaciers release the chemicals
into rivers, lakes, and groundwater reserves, poisoning each one as they go.
The rest of that 1 percent is hanging out underground, mostly in the Arctic tundra, as something
called permafrost. Permafrost is organic matter that's been frozen in the ground for two-plus years.
Now, one of the most immediate problems with thawing permafrost would be mercury poisoning.
That's right: There are an estimated 15 million gallons of mercury stored up in the Arctic permafrost.
That's almost equal to the amount of mercury everywhere else on Earth.
On top of that, the organic matter in permafrost is a tasty meal for microorganisms. After they digest it
all, they fart out two of the most potent greenhouse gases out there, carbon dioxide and methane.
Scientists estimate this could double the current levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and
potentially cause global temperatures to rise by 3.5 degrees Celsius compared to today.
That might not sound like much, but say goodbye to that mini European ice age, and even rivers
and lakes around the world. They'd evaporate from the higher temperatures and cause mass droughts
and desert-like climates. And all that extra water vapour in the atmosphere would fuel more frequent
and stronger storms, floods, and hurricanes.
So all of that newly established coastline on the eastern US would be one of the last places you'd want
to live. Instead, there would be mass migrations to Canada, Alaska, the Arctic, and even what's left
of the Antarctic.
And you're right, this is probably never going to happen. After all, there's enough ice right now to cover
the entire continent of North America in a sheet a mile thick.
So the next time you hear about record-breaking heat or ultra-powerful hurricanes, at least you know
that it could be worse. But scientists estimate that if we don't take action and global temperatures
increase by just 1 degree Celsius, the effects of climate change we already see today will be irreversible.
So yes, it could be worse, and it will be if we're not careful.
This is a transcript of the embedded video.

This article was originally published by Business Insider.
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January 22, 2017

More than 100,000 years ago, a period of unusually warm sea surface temperatures saw the oceans rise up to 9 metres higher than they are today.

The bad news? We might be looking at the same thing happening again, after researchers discovered that the heat extremes of that ancient, natural phase of global warming were actually similar to the temperature trends we're seeing today.
A new analysis led by researchers from Oregon State University has found that sea surface temperatures (SST) during the last interglacial period (LIG) – also called the Eemian – bear a striking resemblance to the rise in SSTs that have taken place over the last 150 years or so.
The LIG occurred between 129,000 and 116,000 years ago, and was one of the warmest periods of the last 800,000 years.
During the interglaciation, Earth's climate warmed due to a shift in the tilt of the planet, causing sea levels to rise between 6 and 9 metres higher than they are at present.
Now, after analysing marine sediment cores from 83 sites around the world, the researchers have reconstructed global sea surface temperatures during the LIG, and matched it with temperature data sets covering the years 1870–1889 and 1995–2014.
At the outset of the LIG, some 129,000 years ago, the global sea surface temperature was already similar to the average sea surface temperature for the 1870–1889 period.
Temperatures warmed very slowly during the LIG, with the global sea surface temperature increasing by about 0.5°C by 125,000 years ago.
But while that change occurred slowly over 4 millennia during the LIG, the 1995–2014 average shows the sea surface is at the same temperature now – and the rise took less than 150 years this time around.
"The result that present global sea surface temperatures are indistinguishable from those at the last interglacial 125,000 years ago is extremely worrying, since sea levels were 6 to 9 metres higher then compared to present," says climate scientist Richard Allan from the University of Reading in the UK, who was not involved with the study.
Even though the sea surface temperature now is about the same as it was 125,000 years ago, there's still a lot we don't know about how sea levels will rise this time, since the time-scale over which these temperature increases took place – and are still taking place – is so different.
During the LIG, the warming occurred so slowly that sea ice melting would have been a gradual, drawn out process. This time around – with a much faster increase in sea surface temperatures due to human activity – it's unclear how long the effect will take.
"[D]ue to the length of time it takes to heat up the depths of our vast oceans and to melt giant ice sheets it would take thousands of years before sea level could potentially rise to such levels," says Allan.
"[S]o sustained and substantive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from energy-intensive activities remain vital and beneficial to societies."
While current global efforts are aiming to rein in carbon and keep global warming temperature increases to less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, it's not great news that – as it stands – human intervention can speed up natural global warming processes to such a worrisome extent.
"It's not just the warming, it's the release of carbon from reservoirs [of fossil fuels] in the planet that have been around for millions of years," lead researcher Jeremy Hoffman told Ian Johnston at The Independent.
"We're talking about something that took millions of years to form and we're removing it in decades. Earth would need to have an eruption like Mount St Helen's happen every 2.5 hours … to keep pace with the emissions we are producing."
Despite the sober outlook the research provides, scientists say we need to use this knowledge and act while we can, to mitigate the impact on generations in many centuries from now.
"Sea level responds directly to global temperatures, but slowly, so that the full extent of sea level rise will only be apparent over thousands of years," researcher Andrew Watson from the University of Exeter in the UK, who wasn't involved with the study, said in a statement.

"The good news is that with luck it will continue to rise slowly, so that we have time to adapt, but the bad news is that eventually all our present coastal city locations will be inundated."

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September 17, 2015
Water- On- Earth-ocean
Hang onto your chair and prepare to have your mind blown.. New research reveals that a big portion of the Earth’s water is older than previously thought, and actually predates the age of the Sun. Moreover, the findings of the study suggest that water – and life – could exist on exoplanets throughout our galaxy and beyond.
That bottle of water sitting on your desk is really really old.. Actually, unfathomably ancient..
“This is an important step forward in our quest to find out if life exists on other planets,” said Professor Tim Harries of the University of Exeter, a member of the research team. “We know that water is vital for the evolution of life on Earth, but it was possible that the Earth’s water originated in the specific conditions of the early solar system, and that those circumstances might occur infrequently elsewhere.”
The findings increase the chances that water is present on other planets. The study confirms that the way in which our solar system was formed is not unique, which means that the same conditions – and therefore life – likely exists elsewhere in our galaxy. It is an amazing finding, given the fact that approximately 2,000exoplanets have been discovered so far, and no one knows how many of them may still be waiting to be discovered. According to the estimations, each star in the Milky Way galaxy hosts at least one planet.
It is worth noting that water is not an exclusive privilege of our planet. In fact, much evidence of it can be found throughout our solar system. In particular, water ice is present on comets and asteroids, as well as on other planets of our solar system and their moons, such as Jupiter’s Europa or Saturn’s Enceladus.
The prevailing theory in modern cosmology suggests that water came from the solar nebula, or the so-calledprotoplanetary disc, a cloud of dust and gas surrounding the forming Sun. Now, researchers from theUniversity of Michigan led by astronomy PhD student Ilse Cleeves decided to find out whether the water was already present in the sun’s protoplanetary disc, or whether it was formed with the birth of the Solar System.
“If water in the early Solar System was primarily inherited as ice from interstellar space, then it is likely that similar ices, along with the prebiotic organic matter that they contain, are abundant in most or all protoplanetary disks around forming stars,” said co-author of the study Conel Alexander of the Carnegie Institute.
“But if the early Solar System’s water was largely the result of local chemical processing during the Sun’s birth, then it is possible that the abundance of water varies considerably in forming planetary systems, which would obviously have implications for the potential for the emergence of life elsewhere.”
water-in-ocean-huge-amount
To figure out where the water was formed, the researchers simulated a model with two kinds of frozen water– regular hydrogen based water, and so-called “heavy water” containing the hydrogen isotope deuterium, which can be found on comets, meteorites and in the Earth’s oceans.
To recreate the conditions of the solar system’s formation, the scientists simulated a solar nebula without frozen heavy water, in order to find out whether the solar system was able to generate the ratios of deuterium from chemical reactions in the nebula. As a result, it was discovered that the system couldn’t produce heavy water; therefore it must have already existed in the sun’s protoplanetary disk.
According to the results of the simulation, 30 to 50 per cent of the water originated in the solar nebula, which means that it is nearly a million years older than our solar system.
“Our findings show that a significant fraction of our Solar System’s water, the most-fundamental ingredient to fostering life, is older than the Sun, which indicates that abundant, organic-rich interstellar ices should probably be found in all young planetary systems,” concluded Alexander.

The findings add to a plethora of evidence that water and therefore life is not exclusive to our planet.. a paradigm shift in the way we see the universe indeed.
source - http://www.learning-mind.com/
http://themindunleashed.org/
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