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INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ WAY OF LIFE WOULD BE GONE
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- 3. ENTIRE OCEAN FOOD CHAIN COULD BE DESTROYED
- 4. IMPACT WOULD BE CATACLYSMIC
- SK/N206. CLIMATE CHANGE: Solvency 1. IT IS TOO LATE TO STOP ANTARCTIC ICE MELT
- 2. IT IS TOO LATE TO REVERSE CATACLYSMIC CLIMATE CHANGE
- SK/N207. CLIMATE CHANGE Disad A. REDUCING CLIMATE CHANGE IS A GLOBAL IMPERATIVE
- B. FOSSIL FUEL USE MUST BE DECREASED
- C. INCREASING FOSSIL FUEL USE WILL BE CATASTROPHIC 1. OCEANS ARE ON THE BRINK OF DISASTER
- 2. INCREASED ACIDITY WILL DESTROY THE OCEANS a. CARBON EMISSIONS INCREASE ACIDITY
2. INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ WAY OF LIFE WOULD BE GONE SK/N205.22) E.A. Barry-Pheby [Newcastle U. School of Law, United Kingdom], SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT LAW & POLICY, 2012-2013, LexisNexis Academic, p. 48. With its short food chain, and low temperatures, the Arctic Ocean is highly vulnerable to pollution. This marine environment is central to Arctic indigenous peoples existence: providing food, warmth, livelihood and cultural integrity. Yet the offshore hydrocarbon industry is increasingly exploiting the Arctic Ocean: many activities are in deeper, and formerly unexplored, territories. Relevant international law is not keeping pace, leaving this delicate marine environment, and its indigenous coastal populations increasingly vulnerable to oil pollution. SK/N205.23) E.A. Barry-Pheby [Newcastle U. School of Law, United Kingdom], SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT LAW & POLICY, 2012-2013, LexisNexis Academic, p. 48. The Arctic faces ongoing degradation from global warming, ozone depletion, radioactive waste, pollution from persistent organic pollutants, pollution from heavy metals, and oil development. Oil pollution from the offshore industry has the potential to damage marine animals, change migratory patterns, destroy flora and halt indigenous peoples subsistence lifestyles. SK/N205.24) E.A. Barry-Pheby [Newcastle U. School of Law, United Kingdom], SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT LAW & POLICY, 2012-2013, LexisNexis Academic, p. 51. The indigenous, Arctic coastal population maintains a largely symbiotic relationship with the marine environment: some still leading subsistence lifestyles and many others heavily relying on the marine environment for food, warmth and cultural identity. Pollution by the offshore oil industry that damages the marine environment would fundamentally interfere with indigenous peoples' lives. SK/N205.25) Marilyn Heiman [Director, US Arctic program, The Pew Charitable Trusts], THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, March 14, 2013, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. The administration must also protect areas that are biologically important or used for hunting and fishing by indigenous communities. The local communities should have a voice on what kind of development is appropriate, where it should take place, and what safeguards are needed. Traditional knowledge of Alaska Natives, who have survived in these extreme conditions since time immemorial, should be a critical piece of any decisions about development in the Arctic. 3. ENTIRE OCEAN FOOD CHAIN COULD BE DESTROYED SK/N205.26) E.A. Barry-Pheby [Newcastle U. School of Law, United Kingdom], SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT LAW & POLICY, 2012-2013, LexisNexis Academic, p. 49. Marine ecosystems are intricate, and interdependent, so damage to part of the food chain can have a catastrophic effect on the whole ecosystem. In the Arctic Ocean, plankton is a key part of the food chain for birds, fish and marine mammals. The Arctic Ocean, with restricted biodiversity and species with increased longevity is in particular need of conservation of its biological diversity. 4. IMPACT WOULD BE CATACLYSMIC SK/N205.27) Heath C. Roscoe et al. [National Security Fellows, Harvard Kennedy School], JOINT FORCE QUARTERLY, January 2014, p. 82, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. For example, if an MRO [mass rescue operation] or large oil spill incident occurred on the North Slope of Alaska, the closest Federal SAR and oil spill response is 820 miles away in Kodiak. Current oil spill response capabilities include four Spilled Oil Recover Systems equipped on 225-foot buoy tenders home ported in Alaska at Kodiak, Sitka, Cordova, and Homer; an aerial dispersant delivery system staged in Anchorage as a backup to commercial venders; and Federal on-scene coordinators located in Juneau, Anchorage, and Valdez with incident management expertise and limited prepositioned oil response equipment. Given these sparse and widely dispersed assets, the long-term environmental impacts of a spill in the Arctic Ocean could prove cataclysmic. SK/N205.28) STATES NEWS SERVICE, April 23, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. "The NRC [National Research Council] opens the 200 page report with the understatement that: "The risk of an oil spill in the Arctic presents hazards for Arctic nations and their neighbors." In fact, a spill would devastate sensitive Arctic ecosystems and the communities that rely on them for subsistence," said Mr Deans [Greenpeace US Arctic Campaigner]. SK/N206. CLIMATE CHANGE: Solvency 1. IT IS TOO LATE TO STOP ANTARCTIC ICE MELT SK/N206.01) Justin Gillis & Kenneth Chang, THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 13, 2014, p. A1, LexisNexis Academic. A large section of the mighty West Antarctica ice sheet has begun falling apart and its continued melting now appears to be unstoppable, two groups of scientists reported on Monday. If the findings hold up, they suggest that the melting could destabilize neighboring parts of the ice sheet and a rise in sea level of 10 feet or more may be unavoidable in coming centuries. SK/N206.02) Justin Gillis & Kenneth Chang, THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 13, 2014, p. A1, LexisNexis Academic. The rise of the sea is likely to continue to be relatively slow for the rest of the 21st century, the scientists added, but in the more distant future it may accelerate markedly, potentially throwing society into crisis. “This is really happening,” Thomas P. Wagner, who runs NASA's programs on polar ice and helped oversee some of the research, said in an interview. “There's nothing to stop it now. But you are still limited by the physics of how fast the ice can flow.” SK/N206.03) Justin Gillis & Kenneth Chang, THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 13, 2014, p. A1, LexisNexis Academic. Two scientific papers released on Monday by the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters came to similar conclusions by different means. Both groups of scientists found that West Antarctic glaciers had retreated far enough to set off an inherent instability in the ice sheet, one that experts have feared for decades. NASA called a telephone news conference Monday to highlight the urgency of the findings. SK/N206.04) Justin Gillis & Kenneth Chang, THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 13, 2014, p. A1, LexisNexis Academic. “Today we present observational evidence that a large sector of the West Antarctic ice sheet has gone into irreversible retreat,” Dr. Rignot said in the NASA news conference. “It has passed the point of no return.” Those six glaciers alone could cause the ocean to rise four feet as they disappear, Dr. Rignot said, possibly within a couple of centuries. He added that their disappearance will most likely destabilize other sectors of the ice sheet, so the ultimate rise could be triple that. SK/N206.05) Justin Gillis & Kenneth Chang, THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 13, 2014, p. A1, LexisNexis Academic. A separate team led by Ian Joughin of the University of Washington studied one of the most important glaciers, Thwaites, using sophisticated computer modeling, coupled with recent measurements of the ice flow. That team also found that a slow-motion collapse had become inevitable. Even if the warm water now eating away at the ice were to dissipate, it would be “too little, too late to stabilize the ice sheet,” Dr. Joughin said. “There's no stabilization mechanism.” 2. IT IS TOO LATE TO REVERSE CATACLYSMIC CLIMATE CHANGE SK/N206.06) Kevin Avery, THE DAILY NEWS (New Plymouth, New Zealand), April 21, 2014, p. 8. It takes 40 years for the pollution released today to raise the temperature. We are experiencing the pollution released in 1974. For a while huge amounts of methane have been released in the Arctic and this gas is going to kill us. Projections have the temperature increasing by 4C by 2030 and by 10C by 2040. It takes only a 6C temperature rise for us to be extinct. Reference source: Emeritus professor Guy McPherson of Arizona State University. SK/N207. CLIMATE CHANGE Disad A. REDUCING CLIMATE CHANGE IS A GLOBAL IMPERATIVE SK/N207.01) John Vidal, THE GUARDIAN (London, England), March 9, 2013, p. 10, LexisNexis Academic. The chances of the world holding temperature rises to 2C - the level considered "safe" by scientists - appear to be fading, with US monitors reporting the second greatest annual rise in carbon dioxide emissions in 2012. CO2 measured at Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii jumped by 2.67 parts per million (ppm) in 2012 to 395ppm, said Pieter Tans, who leads the greenhouse gas measurement team for the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The record was an increase of 2.93ppm in 1998. SK/N207.02) STATES NEWS SERVICE, May 28, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the third edition of a report, Climate Change Indicators in the United States. The report pulls together observed data on key measures of our environment, including U.S. and global temperature and precipitation, ocean heat and ocean acidity, sea level, length of growing season, and many others. With 30 indicators that include over 80 maps and graphs showing long-term trends, the report demonstrates that climate change is already affecting our environment and our society. SK/N207.03) STATES NEWS SERVICE, May 28, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Consistent with the recently released National Climate Assessment, this report presents clear evidence that the impacts of climate change are already occurring across the United States. The report shows evidence that: Average temperatures have risen across the contiguous 48 states since 1901, with an increased rate of warming over the past 30 years. Seven of the top 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1998. Tropical storm activity in the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico has increased during the past 20 years. Along the U.S. coastline, sea level has risen the most along the Mid-Atlantic coast and parts of the Gulf Coast, where some stations registered increases of more than 8 inches between 1960 and 2013. Glaciers have been melting at an accelerated rate over the past decade. The resulting loss of ice has contributed to the observed rise in sea level. SK/N207.04) US OFFICIAL NEWS, April 22, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. Though cool temperatures prevailed across the eastern U.S. and Canada through March, the month was the fourth warmest March on record globally, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Tuesday. It was the 38th March in a row with warmer-than-average temperatures. B. FOSSIL FUEL USE MUST BE DECREASED SK/N207.05) Paul Rogers, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (California), April 30, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. The vast majority of the world's scientists -- including those at NOAA, NASA, the National Academy of Sciences and the World Meteorological Organization -- say the Earth's temperature is rising because of humans burning fossil fuels like oil and coal. That burning pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and traps heat, similar to a greenhouse. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere have increased 25 percent since 1960 and are now at the highest levels in at least 800,000 years, according to measurements of air bubbles taken in ancient ice and other methods. SK/N207.06) John Vidal, THE GUARDIAN (London, England), March 9, 2013, p. 10, LexisNexis Academic. The increase comes as a study in Science looking at global surface temperatures for the past 1,500 years warned that "recent warming is unprecedented", prompting UN climate chief, Christiana Figueres, to say: "Rapid climate change must be countered with accelerated action." Tans [US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] told the Associated Press the major factor was an increase in fossil fuel use. SK/N207.07) PROGRESSIVE MEDIA, November 25, 2013, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. A report released on Friday highlights that two thirds of carbon emissions are made by just 90 companies - the majority of which are fossil fuel firms. SK/N207.08) PROGRESSIVE MEDIA, November 25, 2013, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. Ninety companies, including BP, Shell and Exxon Mobil, have been blamed for causing the climate change crisis in a new study carried out by the US-based Climate Accountability Institute. The study, published in journal Climatic Change, says these companies - 50 of which are investor-owned energy companies - are responsible for almost two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions emitted since the start of the Industrial Revolution. It supports these claims with calculations that suggest this group is responsible for the equivalent of 914 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide - 63% of all industrial carbon dioxide and methane emissions between 1751 and 2010. C. INCREASING FOSSIL FUEL USE WILL BE CATASTROPHIC 1. OCEANS ARE ON THE BRINK OF DISASTER SK/N207.09) Paul Rogers, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (California), April 30, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. If people reduce emissions of fossil fuels, cutting carbon dioxide levels in the decades ahead, the damage to the oceans can still be limited, he said. "But if we keep on the emissions profile we have now, by 2100 the oceans will be so harmed it's hard to imagine them coming back from that in anything less than thousands of years," Palumbi [director of Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station] said. 2. INCREASED ACIDITY WILL DESTROY THE OCEANS a. CARBON EMISSIONS INCREASE ACIDITY SK/N207.10) Paul Rogers, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (California), April 30, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. But what many people do not realize is that nearly a third of carbon dioxide emitted by humans is dissolved in the oceans. Some of that forms carbonic acid, which makes the ocean more corrosive. Over the past 200 years, the ocean's acidity has risen by roughly 30 percent. At the present rate, it is on track to rise by 70 percent by 2050 from preindustrial levels. SK/N207.11) Craig Welch, LOS ANGELES TIMES, May 11, 2014, p. A16, LexisNexis Academic. As human activity emits more CO2 from cars and power plants, about a quarter of it gets absorbed by the oceans, which lowers the pH of marine water. That change reduces the availability of carbonate ions, which creatures like oysters, mussels and pteropods need to build their shells. SK/N207.12) STATES NEWS SERVICE, June 9, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Rising carbon dioxide levels from emissions increase ocean acidity, endangering coral reefs and other marine life. b. ACIDITY IS DESTROYING MARINE LIFE SK/N207.13) Jessica Shugart, SCIENCE NEWS, October 19, 2013, p. 22, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. For example, as global CO2 levels rise, increases in the acidity of the ocean are expected to have dramatic impacts on sea life. SK/N207.14) Paul Rogers, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (California), April 30, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. In a troubling new discovery, scientists studying ocean waters off California, Oregon and Washington have found the first evidence that increasing acidity in the ocean is dissolving the shells of a key species of tiny sea creature at the base of the food chain. The animals, a type of free-floating marine snail known as pteropods, are an important food source for salmon, herring, mackerel and other fish in the Pacific Ocean. Those fish are eaten not only by millions of people every year, but also by a wide variety of other sea creatures, from whales to dolphins to sea lions. If the trend continues, climate change scientists say, it will imperil the ocean environment. SK/N207.15) Paul Rogers, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (California), April 30, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. "These are alarm bells," said Nina Bednarsek, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle who helped lead the research. "This study makes us understand that we have made an impact on the ocean environment to the extent where we can actually see the shells dissolving right now." Scientists from NOAA and Oregon State University found that in waters near the West Coast shoreline, 53 percent of the tiny floating snails had shells that were severely dissolving -- double the estimate from 200 years ago. SK/N207.16) Paul Rogers, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (California), April 30, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. More acidic water can harm oysters, clams, corals and other species that have calcium carbonate shells. Generally speaking, increasing the acidity by 50 percent from current levels is enough to kill some marine species, tests in labs have shown. SK/N207.17) Craig Welch, LOS ANGELES TIMES, May 11, 2014, p. A16, LexisNexis Academic. For the first time, scientists have documented that souring seas caused by carbon-dioxide emissions are dissolving pteropods in the wild right now along the U.S. West Coast. That is damaging a potentially important link in the marine food web far sooner than expected. "What we found was just amazing to us," said Richard Feely, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory who helped collect the live samples. "We did the most thorough analysis that's ever been done and found extensive impacts on marine life in the field from ocean acidification." SK/N207.18) Craig Welch, LOS ANGELES TIMES, May 11, 2014, p. A16, LexisNexis Academic. This is the broadest and most detailed indication ever that acidification is already damaging native creatures in the wild. It raises many new questions about whether other sea life, too, might already be harmed -- directly by acidifying seas, or by subtle shifts in parts of the food chain. "These changes are happening years earlier than we had projected," said Nina Bednarsek, a research fellow with NOAA who inspected the pteropods to identify shell scarring. "It is really a first indication of what is going on in our ecosystem." SK/N207.19) Craig Welch, LOS ANGELES TIMES, May 11, 2014, p. A16, LexisNexis Academic. Because of this upwelling phenomenon, some pteropods near shore almost certainly had their shells dissolve even before the industrial revolution, the study says. But those incidents have doubled in the last several hundred years and could triple by 2050. In fact, the amount of water in the top 300 feet of West Coast ocean that may be inhospitable to some shelled organisms has increased sixfold since the industrial revolution. SK/N207.20) Craig Welch, LOS ANGELES TIMES, May 11, 2014, p. A16, LexisNexis Academic. Today's study examined a vast section of water up and down the coast, from close to the beach to many miles out to sea, and found damage to marine snail shells here across a far greater area of water. Outside experts said the discovery was significant. "This is a surprising result," said Mark Ohman, a zooplankton ecologist who oversees a long-term research program examining the West Coast marine system for UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "Effects of this magnitude were not anticipated this early in the 21st century." SK/N207.21) Craig Welch, LOS ANGELES TIMES, May 11, 2014, p. A16, LexisNexis Academic. Dave Mackas, a scientist who recently retired from Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans after years of surveying pteropods off Vancouver Island, said Bednarsek's findings were disturbing. "I think she's got a pretty ironclad case that damage to the shells and the extent of the damage is proportional to how corrosive the water is that they're caught from," he said after reading the study. "It's a bit scarier than you might have expected. "It's an outcome you expected to happen eventually, but it's surprising how severe it is so soon." SK/N207.22) Craig Welch, LOS ANGELES TIMES, May 11, 2014, p. A16, LexisNexis Academic. Most troubling, scientists said, are the implications for the future. Bednarsek and Feely [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory] projected that by 2050 at least 70% of pteropods close to shore up and down the West Coast will see severe shell damage. SK/N207.23) Editorial, THE WASHINGTON POST, June 23, 2014, p. A14, LexisNexis Academic. Then there is the issue of ocean acidification, driven by the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The ocean is absorbing huge amounts of the greenhouse gas, which will, over time, kill coral, shellfish and other creatures sensitive to a lower pH. The problem demands worldwide effort, led by the United States, to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the air. c. CORAL REEFS WILL BE DEVASTATED SK/N207.24) Dennis Small, PACIFIC ECOLOGIST, Winter 2011, p. 19, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. A huge concern is the rapid decline in the health of coral reefs around the world, mainly due to global warming. Back in 1971, ocean visionary Jacques-Yves Cousteau wrote of the Red Sea, comparing it with what he and his team had found in 1953. He noted the damage to coral: "If such destruction can take place in only a few years, then the future seems bleak indeed." SK/N207.25) James Vlahos, POPULAR SCIENCE, August 2013, p. 29, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The world is clobbering coral reefs, home to 25 percent of all marine species. Agricultural runoff pollutes the water around them; coastal developments tear them up; overfishing kills their inhabitants; and carbon dioxide emissions make the oceans too hot and acidic. In a provocative op-ed for the New York Times last year, Roger Bradbury, an ecologist at Australian National University, declared that reefs are "zombie ecosystems ... on a trajectory to collapse within a human generation." SK/N207.26) James Vlahos, POPULAR SCIENCE, August 2013, p. 29, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The slightly more hopeful consensus statement from last summer's International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS), attended by 2,000 scientists, noted that while 25 to 30 percent of the world's reefs were already "severely degraded," they could still be saved through "global action to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and via improved local protection." SK/N207.27) Peter Thomson [Permanent Representative of Fiji to the United Nations], UN CHRONICLE, April 2013, p. 4, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The combined impacts of climate change, namely, sea-level rise, increased sea surface temperature and intensified storm activity, and the adverse effects of ocean acidification caused by increased absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans, are among the biggest threats to the health of oceans and coastal areas. Coral reef ecosystems are particularly susceptible to climate change and ocean acidification, and they may be the first marine ecosystems to collapse unless mitigation and adaptation efforts are significantly increased. We have numerous studies on the impacts of climate change on our coral reefs through temperature rise, and are only beginning to see how acidification will doubly impact them. These corals are global treasures that need safeguarding from cultural, social, economic and environmental factors. Deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are a global imperative. d. CORAL REEF LOSS WILL DESTROY DIVERSITY SK/N207.28) Sindya N. Bhanoo, THE NEW YORK TIMES, June 3, 2014, p. D4, LexisNexis Academic. The fish that live off the Malay Archipelago, between Southeast Asia and Australia, are among the most diverse in the world. Now researchers are reporting that the area owes its diversity to the stability of coral reefs over the past three million years. The reefs provided fish a safe home and the means to diversify and evolve into new species, said Peter F. Cowman, an evolutionary biologist at Yale and an author of the new research, which appears in the journal Science. e ECONOMIC LOSSES WILL BE MASSIVE SK/N207.29) STATES NEWS SERVICE, June 4, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The global economic impacts of acidification's harm to coral reefs alone could total $870 billion annually within the next eight decades, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The U.S. mollusk shellfish industry could see losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars by 2060, according to one study, while the $818- million-a-year North Pacific salmon fishery could see major losses from acidification's impacts on a snail that makes up the bulk of juvenile salmon's diet, according to another study. Download 0.49 Mb. Share with your friends:
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