Saving endangered species - do choices have to be made?

White Tiger Cub

A question which often arises with ecology and the protection of endangered species is whether it's actually possible to save all the species now at risk or rather only focus on those where there is a better than even chance of success of preservation. It is only since 2004 that the full extent of the potential level of extinctions has been quantified with the figure of 15,589 total of plants, birds and mammals (a quarter of all the existing mammal species) being ascertained at risk by major environmental and science organisations. This is an extraordinary figure and it's almost certainly impossible to determine the number of species for whom conservation and protection will succeed. Despite international agreement on the importance and value of conservation and mechanisms such as the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the stark reality is that the very existence of human activity (loss of habitat, mining, agriculture, economic development and so on) is driving extinction despite the best efforts of governments, communities and scientists. The uncomfortable option therefore may now be one of selecting which endangered species has the best chances of survival. This is an almost unthinkable proposition for many in the environmental movement but time is not on anyones' side.

How hot will the Earth become with Climate Change ?

Various models of climate change provide an indication of what the actual temperature of the planet may reach however, as observed in a number of studies,including those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) not all factors are included. For example, the impact of melting of permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere and the subsequent release of methane gas is not included yet this may and probably will have a significant impact. The concept of 'hyper-warming' is becoming more of a mentioned consequence which could include a warming of 10 degrees Celsius across the globe. Hyper warming would occur not only due to the release of additional GHG emissions through melting but also would be an effect of the continuous burning of fossil fuels which still continues well above all possible CO2 reduction targets.  The tipping point for climate change remains the magical figure above 2 degrees C yet this will occur regardless so hyper warming may be the end result.

Nuclear energy - a much vexed question

Source: World Nuclear Association

The question of the use of nuclear power continues to be a central issue of debate particularly given the increasing share of power generation which the sector continues to grow and the need to reduce and finally remove reliance on fossil fuel consumption (oil and coal).

The industry points out that clean electricity from 'new renewables' (viz solar, wind, biomass and geothermal power) has the capacity to produce electricity in the decades ahead only in  limited amount. The International Energy Agency projects that, even with continued subsidy and research support, these new renewables can only provide around 6% of world electricity by 2030. That is actually a questionable figure and quotation as currently, in some economies, 6% or close to it has already been reached.

Further the industry argues that while environmentalists have played a valuable role in warning that catastrophic climate change is a real and imminent danger, it is also crucially important that they be equally realistic about solutions. Even with maximum conservation - and a landscape covered by solar panels and windmills - the world's community would still need large-scale source of around-the-clock electricity to meet much of the world's energy needs. Nuclear power, it is argued - like wind, hydro and solar energy - can generate electricity with no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions. The critical difference is that nuclear energy is the only proven option with the capacity to produce vastly expanded supplies of clean electricity on a global scale. 

However this position while on a superficial basis appears accurate, it overlooks a variety of related issues which impact on the nuclear power generation. The cost of waste management and disposal of highly dangerous radioactive waste is not presented nor accounted. The actual cost of power generation per kilowatt is actually more expensive than the dirty coal fired generators and of the different nuclear technologies, only one has a modicum of safety over the long term.

Source: World Nuclear Assocation

The melting of the permafrost - another risk of climate change

Percolating through seawater

Among the multitude of impacts of climate change, rising temperatures and increased CO2 emissions, one of the other lesser known results is the release of methane from the permafrost regions of the Northern hemisphere. Research in 2010 in the East Siberian Artic Shelf identified methane concentrations eight times higher than the rest of the Artic Ocean and almost a hundred locations of higher methane release. The unlocking of methane in the permafrost, should it occur at a higher rate due to higher temperatures would lead to a warming in the atmosphere which would be impossible to stop.

Are wind turbines the answer for renewable energy?

Wind Turbine Farm, Bungendore, New South Wales, Australia

An article from New Scientist has raised an interesting question surrounding possible limitations on renewable energy sources other than solar and actually going backward rather than solving one of the critical energy issues.

Axel Kleidon of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, says that efforts to satisfy a large proportion of our energy needs from the wind and waves will sap a significant proportion of the usable energy available from the sun. In effect, he says, we will be depleting green energy sources. His logic rests on the laws of thermodynamics, which point inescapably to the fact that only a fraction of the solar energy reaching Earth can be exploited to generate energy we can use.When energy from the sun reaches our atmosphere, some of it drives the winds and ocean currents, and evaporates water from the ground, raising it high into the air. Much of the rest is dissipated as heat, which we cannot harness.

At present, humans use only about 1 part in 10,000 of the total energy that comes to Earth from the sun. But this ratio is misleading, Kleidon says. Instead, we should be looking at how much useful energy - called "free" energy in the parlance of thermodynamics - is available from the global system, and our impact on that.

Humans currently use energy at the rate of 47 terawatts (TW) or trillions of watts, mostly by burning fossil fuels and harvesting farmed plants according to Kleidon's calculations. This corresponds to roughly 5 to 10 per cent of the free energy generated by the global system.

"It's hard to put a precise number on the fraction," he says, "but we certainly use more of the free energy than [is used by] all geological processes." In other words, we have a greater effect on Earth's energy balance than all the earthquakes, volcanoes and tectonic plate movements put together.

Like so much of the current research into energy and environmental alternatives, considerable additional data needs to be gathered, but if correct, this model poses a considerable barrier to be overcome if fossil fuel reliance is to be fully replaced by alternative renewable energy sources.

Executive salaries - where greed is not good

With the continuing and argueably expected poor economic conditions worldwide, the focus again has come onto the issue of executive and Board pay given its' scale and magnitude. The various rounds of Annual General Meetings of listed companies means that share/stockholders are presented with remuneration reports detailing the various levels of base pay, bonuses and share options.  A snapshot from Annual Reports reveals the data for CEOs of major Australian Corporations:

• ANZ Bank: $10.86M
• BHP Billiton: $10.84M
• Commonwealth Bank: $8.64M
• Crown: $7.71M
• Macquarie Group: $8.69M
• National Australia Bank: $7.73M
• Rio Tinto: $12.75M
• Westpac: $9.59M
• Woodside: $7.77M

Non executive Board directors of listed companies typically can expect between $200K to $300K in directors fees per company together with share options. But how realistic are these pay levels if the returns to shareholders are stagnant at best or most likely falling at worst (apart from the mining boom in Australia) ?

The War Without End - Shadows of Vietnam

The war is Afghanistan shows no sign of any abatement as this description of events in Kabul from StratFor  demonstrates. The reality is the Taliban could only operate with such a high degree of mobility within restricted zones with the cooperation of persons within the current Afghan security forces.

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A team of as many as 10 Afghan Taliban militants armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades mounted an assault Sept. 13 in a high-security zone in the capital Kabul against the U.S. Embassy among other targets. At least four of the attackers were likely suicide bombers and detonated themselves during the attack. The attack began at 1:30 p.m. local time and has been underway for close to two hours.

The militants took over a building in an area near Abdul Haq Chowk Square, a location in close proximity to Afghan government and Western security installations, including NATO headquarters. While there have been many attacks in Kabul, this incident is one of the rare occasions that militants have demonstrated the capability to get extremely close to the heart of the Western military and intelligence presence in the Afghan capital. The ability to get numerous operatives armed with explosives and heavy guns into this area could not have been possible without the Taliban obtaining aid from Afghan security personnel posted in high-security areas.

The attackers are unlikely to succeed in doing much damage, and they will likely be overpowered by coalition forces — a fact the planners of the attack knew in advance. The light weapons the attackers were armed with simply could not cause significant damage to a hardened facility such as the U.S. Embassy. Therefore, the attack was meant to be more of a psychological operation than a physical one. This attack, likely the work of the Haqqani network, is designed to undermine U.S. efforts to negotiate with the senior leadership of the Afghan Taliban movement.

The sobering truth about preventing climate change

Listening to the various Government announcements (including the UN) and international science debates on climate change and the reduction of Green House Gas (mainly CO2) emissions, a very subtle difference in tone has occured in recent years. Although much of the rhetoric is still focussed on reducing carbon emissions to prevent more than a 2 degree C climb in temperature, increasingly the terminology has shifted to "adaptation" and "transformation". In essence although the focus has remained on message, slowly but surely there is a dawning realisation that turning around carbon emissions from the current production-oriented world cannot occur in sufficient time and with the required level of magnitude to prevent a change in the world's climate. Therefore the direction has moved to adapting to a warmer and more unpredictable climate with changes in building design, settlement patterns, agricultural crop location, choice  of crop species and so on. 'Sustainability' has in reality become a cover word for survival.

Svalbard: Securing the world's food supply - optimism or faint hope ?

Svalbard - Courtesy: Norwegian Ministry of Food and Agriculture

Svalbard is not a name which evokes much recognition apart from the novels of Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials trilogy) and polar bears, however it has special significance being the largest and most ambitious of the world's seed banks, located at this desolate spot managed by the Norwegian Ministry of Food and Agriculture as part of the arrangements under the UN Convention on Biodiversity. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a backup for all the world's seed banks (around 1,400 of them) and holds samples of all of the planet's food crop seeds stored in vaults deep inside the permafrost of a sandstone mountain, where even global warming cannot reach them.Svalbard has an isolated position far out in the ocean, between 74° and 81° N and only 1000 kilometres from the North Pole. and the archipelago is characterised by an undisturbed nature. Of note, the vault was originally established by conservationist Cary Fowler and is still supported by a not-for-profit foundation which has redoubled its efforts this year to search the earth for the last remaining wild relatives of wheat, rice, barley, lentils and chickpeas to arm agriculture against climate change.

How important is Svalbard? Immeasurably. The world's population will cross the 7 billion mark in September 2011 and food security (and 'scarcity') has never been more pronounced. Coupled with this continuing demand is the sobering fact that the number of plant species available for food sources has been in near catastrophic decline with fewer and fewer varieties of fruit and vegetable available. In 1983 the Rural Advancement Foundation International concluded, after surveying listings of seeds sold in commercial seed houses in the US, that 93 % of varieties had gone extinct. Humans are now dependant on a handful of commercial varieties of fruit and vegetables and many of these are susceptible to changes in climate.

Biofuels - CO2 emissions may increase

One of the key planks in reducing both CO2 emissions and reliance on traditional fossil fuels for energy use has been the development of the biofuel industry as a substitute but how effective is this alternative in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions ? The European Union has adopted an ambitious target of reducing GHG emissions by 20 % by 2020 including replacement of 10 % of transport fuel with biofuels. However the Institute for European Environment Policy has estimated that 4.1 to 6.9 million hectares of land must be cleared to meet these target which would correspondingly lead to an 80 % to 169 % increase in carbon emissions during the 2011 to 2020 period (than if conventional fossil fuels were retained). The various energy options to replace current fossil fuel consumption are continuously appearing to have greater pitfalls than first thought. The food famine of a few years ago in parts of the World was partly attributable to the conversion of previous food crop land to biofuel crops mainly in South America and served as one example of the complex challenges of reorienting the world to a new reality.