By Leonardo DiCaprio

Thank you, Mr Secretary General, your excellencies, ladies and gentleman, and distinguished guests. I’m honored to be here today, I stand before you not as an expert but as a concerned citizen, one of the 400,000 people who marched in the streets of New York on Sunday, and the billions of others around the world who want to solve our climate crisis.

As an actor I pretend for a living. I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems.

I believe humankind has looked at climate change in that same way: as if it were a fiction, happening to someone else’s planet, as if pretending that climate change wasn’t real would somehow make it go away.

But I think we know better than that. Every week, we’re seeing new and undeniable climate events, evidence that accelerated climate change is here now. We know that droughts are intensifying, our oceans are warming and acidifying, with methane plumes rising up from beneath the ocean floor. We are seeing extreme weather events, increased temperatures, and the West Antarctic and Greenland ice-sheets melting at unprecedented rates, decades ahead of scientific projections.
 
None of this is rhetoric, and none of it is hysteria. It is fact. The scientific community knows it, Industry and governments know it, even the United States military knows it. The chief of the US navy’s Pacific command, admiral Samuel Locklear, recently said that climate change is our single greatest security threat.

My Friends, this body – perhaps more than any other gathering in human history – now faces that difficult task. You can make history ... or be vilified by it.

To be clear, this is not about just telling people to change their light bulbs or to buy a hybrid car. This disaster has grown BEYOND the choices that individuals make. This is now about our industries, and governments around the world taking decisive, large-scale action.

I am not a scientist, but I don’t need to be. Because the world’s scientific community has spoken, and they have given us our prognosis, if we do not act together, we will surely perish.

Now is our moment for action.

We need to put a pricetag on carbon emissions, and eliminate government subsidies for coal, gas, and oil companies. We need to end the free ride that industrial polluters have been given in the name of a free-market economy, they don’t deserve our tax dollars, they deserve our scrutiny. For the economy itself will die if our ecosystems collapse.

The good news is that renewable energy is not only achievable but good economic policy. New research shows that by 2050 clean, renewable energy could supply 100% of the world’s energy needs using existing technologies, and it would create millions of jobs.

This is not a partisan debate; it is a human one. Clean air and water, and a livable climate are inalienable human rights. And solving this crisis is not a question of politics. It is our moral obligation – if, admittedly, a daunting one. 


We only get one planet. Humankind must become accountable on a massive scale for the wanton destruction of our collective home. Protecting our future on this planet depends on the conscious evolution of our species.

This is the most urgent of times, and the most urgent of messages.

Honoured delegates, leaders of the world, I pretend for a living. But you do not. The people made their voices heard on Sunday around the world and the momentum will not stop. And now it’s YOUR turn, the time to answer the greatest challenge of our existence on this planet ... is now.

I beg you to face it with courage. And honesty. Thank you.



Source:http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/23/leonarodo-dicaprio-un-climate-change-speech-new-york

By Elahe Izadi 

Something odd is happening in Northern Pacific waters: They're heating up. In fact, it hasn't been this warm in parts of the Gulf of Alaska for this long since researchers began tracking surface water temperatures in the 1980s, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The warming began last year in the Gulf of Alaska and has since been dubbed "The Blob" by Nick Bond, of the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean. Temperatures have been as high as about 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 Celsius) above average.

Normally storms and winds roll through to cool off the surface of the Northern Pacific, but a weather pattern popped up for a few months in winter 2013 that inhibited those storms from developing, said Nate Mantua, a NOAA research scientist. Then, from October 2013 through January, the weather pattern came back as a ridge of high pressure (the same one connected to the California drought). All of that made the already warm waters in the Alaskan gulf even warmer, a layer about 100 meters thick, Mantua said.

In the spring, warm water started to develop in other Northern Pacific waters, namely the Bering Sea. There's also a chunk of warm water developing off the coast of California.

"You have lots of warm water, and it's due to weather patterns that basically don't take heat out of the ocean," Mantua said. "They are letting the ocean warm up rapidly, and stay warm."

The change in surface water temperature doesn't appear to be a manifestation of global warming, but rather the result of weather and wind patterns that change quickly and vary year to year, Mantua said.

Take a look at this map of surface water temperatures. The deeper the red, the higher the above the average temperature: (see photo below)

And now, strange fish are showing up. In the past year, there have been "unusual fish occurrences" in Alaskan waters, according to NOAA research biologist Joe Orsi, such as the skipjack tuna in the photo above. The last documented skipjack tuna in Alaska was in the 1980s.

In August, a thresher shark was caught in the Gulf of Alaska, Orsi noted.  Those sharks are more typical off the coasts of British Columbia and Baja California. Two other threshers were spotted in the past four years in the more southern waters of the Alaskan gulf.

An ocean sunfish, the world's largest bony fish, has been spotted on the surface of the Prince William Sound off Alaskan shores, Orsi said. Further south, a 7-foot-long ocean sunfish washed up on the shore in Washington state in August.

The warm water could throw the food chain into a bit of disarray. Just as warmer water fish have been showing up, salmon could be finding less of the high-fat food they need to chow down on. That's important because the Northern Pacific is considered a "fish basket," and most American salmon comes from the Alaskan gulf.

"The fish migrated out of rivers in June, got to the gulf by August, and they will have arrived expecting to find cold water and abundant feed," said Bill Peterson, a senior scientist with NOAA fisheries. "They're going to find nothing to eat, is what we suspect.... It won't be pretty."

It's possible that the fish could dive down deeper and feed in the colder waters below the surface, Peterson said. Either way, fisheries won't feel the impact until the salmon return in another two to three years.

Around 2005, when similar warming occurred in Northern Pacific waters, particularly in Northern California, "Pacific salmon died in extremely high numbers," Mantua said. "Fisheries, three years later, curtailed or even shut down in California for the first time ever."


But it's still an open question as to how these warmer waters will affect salmon populations. Mantua isn't convinced that "The Blob" means loads of dead fish. He points to past warm years that resulted in high salmon returns. "It's unsettled whether this is bad news" for salmon, he said. "We have to wait until the adults come back, and we'll have to see."

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2014/09/15/the-gulf-of-alaska-is-unusually-warm-and-weird-fish-are-showing-up/

By Damian Carrington

A starved polar bear found found dead in Svalbard as "little more than skin and bones" perished due to a lack of sea ice on which to hunt seals, according to a renowned polar bear expert.

Climate change has reduced sea ice in the Arctic to record lows in the last year and Dr Ian Stirling, who has studied the bears for almost 40 years and examined the animal, said the lack of ice forced the bear into ranging far and wide in an ultimately unsuccessful search for food.

"From his lying position in death the bear appears to simply have starved and died where he dropped," Stirling said. "He had no external suggestion of any remaining fat, having been reduced to little more than skin and bone."

The bear had been examined by scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute in April in the southern part of Svalbard, an Arctic island archipelago, and appeared healthy. The same bear had been captured in the same area in previous years, suggesting that the discovery of its body, 250km away in northern Svalbard in July, represented an unusual movement away from its normal range. The bear probably followed the fjords inland as it trekked north, meaning it may have walked double or treble that distance.

Polar bears feed almost exclusively on seals and need sea ice to capture their prey. But 2012 saw the lowest level of sea ice in the Arctic on record. Prond Robertson, at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, said: "The sea ice break up around Svalbard in 2013 was both fast and very early." He said recent years had been poor for ice around the islands: "Warm water entered the western fjords in 2005-06 and since then has not shifted."

Stirling, now at Polar Bears International and previously at the University of Alberta and the Canadian Wildlife Service, said: "Most of the fjords and inter-island channels in Svalbard did not freeze normally last winter and so many potential areas known to that bear for hunting seals in spring do not appear to have been as productive as in a normal winter. As a result the bear likely went looking for food in another area but appears to have been unsuccessful."

Research published in May showed that loss of sea ice was harming the health, breeding success and population size of the polar bears of Hudson Bay, Canada, as they spent longer on land waiting for the sea to refreeze. Other work has shown polar bear weights are declining. In February a panel of polar bear experts published a paper stating that rapid ice loss meant options such the feeding of starving bears by humans needed to be considered to protect the 20,000-25,000 animals thought to remain.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the world's largest professional conservation network, states that of the 19 populations of polar bear around the Arctic, data is available for 12. Of those, eight are declining, three are stable and one is increasing.

The IUCN predicts that increasing ice loss will mean between one-third and a half of polar bears will be lost in the next three generations, about 45 years. But the US and Russian governments said in March that faster-than-expected ice losses could mean two-thirds are lost.

Attributing a single incident to climate change can be controversial, but Douglas Richardson, head of living collections at the Highland Wildlife Park near Kingussie, said: "It's not just one bear though. There are an increasing number of bears in this condition: they are just not putting down enough fat to survive their summer fast. This particular polar bear is the latest bit of evidence of the impact of climate change."

Ice loss due to climate change is "absolutely, categorically and without question" the cause of falling polar bear populations, said Richardson, who cares for the UK's only publicly kept polar bears. He said 16 years was not particularly old for a wild male polar bear, which usually live into their early 20s. "There may have been some underlying disease, but I would be surprised if this was anything other than starvation," he said. "Once polar bears reach adulthood they are normally nigh on indestructible, they are hard as nails."

Jeff Flocken, at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said: "While it is difficult to ascribe a single death or act to climate change it couldn't be clearer that drastic and long-term changes in their Arctic habitat threaten the survival of the polar bear. The threat of habitat loss from climate change, exacerbated by unsustainable killing for commercial trade in Canada, could lead to the demise of one of the world's most iconic animals, and this would be a true tragedy."

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/06/starved-polar-bear-record-sea-ice-melt

By Aviva Shen 

Unusually hot, dry weather in Alaska is wreaking havoc on fisheries, as thousands of fish perish in overheated waters. Last month, 1,100 king salmon died on their way up to the Crystal Lake hatchery due to water temperatures around 80 degrees Fahrenheit and lack of oxygen. That’s the bulk of the 1,800 adult salmon that were expected to return to the hatchery this season.

Earlier in the summer, another hatchery lost hundreds of grayling and rainbow trout in a Fairbanks lake where water temperatures reached 76 degrees. Alaska’s heat wave broke records last week, with 14 days straight above 70 degrees in Anchorage and 31 days of 80 degrees in Fairbanks.

Officials cited a number of factors affecting the fish, but observed that the die-off coincided with the hottest weather of the season. While die-offs are not uncommon, Doug Fleming, a sportfish biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, suggested the magnitude of the die-off was surprising.

“And so, getting through till Wednesday which appeared to be the hottest day, then on Thursday I was conducting an aerial survey just to get a grip on how many fish may have been killed by the warm water, not expecting to see a large die-off but some, and I was shocked to see the numbers of fish that we lost,” he told the Associated Press.

Besides the sheer heat, lack of rainfall is also contributing to the die-off. Many streams are too low to accommodate the fish waiting at the mouths, which essentially suffocate as more fish get backed up. The enormous salmon die-off in July was partly because large numbers of fish were trapped at the shallow Blind Slough rapids.

Alaska’s commercial fisheries are among the largest in the world. Salmon is the state’s largest export product after oil and natural gas.

While Alaska’s heat wave is expected to subside soon, the state has warmed up twice as fast as the rest of the nation in the past 50 years, and climate change is worsening extreme weather. Wildfires raged through subarctic forests as late as Friday, consuming more than a million acres and prompting emergency evacuations across the state. Thawing permafrost is also sinking villages, threatening fish stocks and water supplies that the communities rely on to survive.

Source: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/08/05/2410921/extreme-heat-is-killing-off-thousands-of-fish-in-alaska/

Like most people, Bill (environmentalist and co-founder of 350.org), is not an activist by nature. There’s really not that many people whose greatest desire it to go out and fight the system. His theory of change was that he’ll write his book, people will read it and they’ll change. But that’s not how change happens. What is required is to make a little noise, be a little uncomfortable, and push other people to be a little uncomfortable. The moment has come where we have to take a real stance, because we’re reaching limits.

The biggest limit that we’re running into may be that we’re running out of atmosphere into which to put the waste products of our society, particularly the carbon dioxide that is the ubiquitous byproduct of burning fossil fuels. We burn coal, or oil, or gas, we get CO2 and the atmosphere is now filling up with it.

We know what the solutions for dealing with this trouble are; we know many of the technologies we need to get off fossil fuel and onto something else. The thing that is preventing us from doing it is the enormous political power wielded by those who have made and are making vast windfall profits off of fossil fuels.

One of the things that humanity is facing is the need to dramatically reduce its carbon footprint over the next 40 years. We’re no longer at the point of trying to stop global warming. It’s too late for that. We’re at the point of trying to keep it from becoming a complete and utter calamity.

The most important climatologist, Jim Hansen, had his team at NASA do a study to figure out how much carbon in the atmosphere was too much. The paper they published may be the most important scientific paper of the millennium to date, said we now know enough to know how much is too much. Any value for carbon in the atmosphere greater than 350 parts per million is not compatible with the planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.

That’s pretty strong language for scientists to use. Stronger still if you know that outside today, the atmosphere is 395 parts per million CO2. And rising at about 2 parts per million per year. Everything frozen on earth is melting. The great ice sheet of the arctic is reduced by more than half; the oceans are about 30% more acidic than they were 30 years ago because the chemistry of sea water changes as it absorbs carbon from the atmosphere. And because warm air holds more water vapor than cold, the atmosphere is about 5% wetter than it was 40 years ago. That’s an astonishingly large change.

Source: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/do-the-math/

Honduras de acuerdo al Index Global de Riesgos Climáticos, es el país mas afectado por el cambio climático entre 1992 al 2011. Ante el estado fallido en que nos encontramos, la gravedad de la problemática ha sido totalmente desatendida. Mientras las playas se las come el mar, la mayor preocupación de la elite de poder, es ver como rematan el país por pedazos.

La pérdida acelerada de las playas del Caribe hondureño, como consecuencia del incremento de la erosión costera y el cambio climático, han colocado en peligro a buena parte de las comunidades Garífunas. El avance de la linea más alta de las mareas y la ausencia de las barreras naturales de protección, colocan en riesgo aquellas comunidades localizadas en cordones litorales y deltas.

La desaparición del coco en la gran mayoría del litoralCaribe, como consecuencia de la enfermedad viral conocida como amarillamiento letal del coco, es una de las mayores problemáticas que ha sufrido el pueblo Garifuna, sin que se logrará concretar un plan de recuperación de las 6.000 hectáreas de coco que existían en Honduras.

El coco fue introducido a la costa del caribe mesoamericano por los españoles, los cuales importaron la nuez desde Africa occidental y paulatinamente remplazó a las especies vernáculas, como los icacos y las uvas de mar. Durante siglos las plantaciones de coco fueron uno de los pilares de la economía informal Garifuna, además de conformar la barrera natural mas importante de protección del litoral.

El Huracán Mitch, la desaparición del coco y de las playas.
Podemos señalar el arribo del huracán Mitch, como el inicio de la hecatombe en el caribe mesoamericano. A partir de noviembre de 1998, comenzaron a aflorar una serie de graves indicios en relación al desequilibrio de los habitats costeros y marítimos, que reflejaron el ecocidio existente durante décadas. La enorme deforestación y sedimentación de los ríos del istmo, causó miles de muertos además de las pérdidas económicas.

No obstante la destrucción causada por el Mitch, el Estado de Honduras poco o nada ha hecho para remediar la deforestación y lograr la recuperación de cuencas hidrográficas. De ahí que cualquier fenómeno meteorológico, tenga resultados catastróficos.

A partir del Mitch, se hizo efectiva la desaparición de los cocos, comenzado a concretarse un avance de la linea mas alta de las mareas y algunas de las comunidades sufrieron marejadas de forma mas frecuente. El paulatino fenómeno de erosión costera, en muchas ocasiones ha pasado desapercibido, y es solamente cuando se presentan las mareas de tormentas, cuando la alarma cunde entre nuestro pueblo.

Estrategias de adaptación y mitigación al cambio climático
El fenómeno de erosión costera no ha sido estudiado adecuadamente en Honduras. A nivel de Centroamérica Cathalac ha realizado un estudio sobre el mismo; no obstante, las comunidades desconocen la gravedad de la problemática que confrontan y la cual se agudizará a medida que los niveles oceánicos aumenten. En el informe "Bajemos la Temperatura" del Banco Mundial (BM) indica que en zonas tropicales el aumento de los niveles oceánicos será de un 20% mayor que en otras regiones del globo. El interesante documento del BM es una contradicción con la política de esa institución financiera de apoyar plantas de energía sucia.

El pronóstico sobre la costa caribe mesoamericana no es halagüeño: buena parte de las comunidades Garífunas se encuentran en cordones litorales, los que ya sufren además del embate de la erosión costera y el aumento de los niveles oceánicos, un proceso de salinización de los humedales costeros, ante la disminución de los caudales de los ríos que discurren hacia la costa. Las lagunas de Tocamacho, Bacalar, Micos y Alvarado, se encuentran en enorme peligro, al ceder la fina barrera que separa a las lagunas del mar, lo que generará resultados desastrosos.

Ante la ausencia de un plan concreto de replantación de los cocos, proyecto que fue abandonado por el estado y la cooperación, la OFRANEH viene creando viveros de icacos y uvas de mar como una respuesta rápida a la perdida de las playas, con la intención de crear barreras naturales de protección. El proyecto es en una escala mínima, ante el imperativo existente de proteger el hábitat costero.

Desde los bejucos de playa (ipomea pes capare y la canavalia rosae) los que cumplen una función de estabilización de las playas - y que se encuentran casi en extinción-, pasando por el espartillo y la hierba de costa (Jouvea pilosa, Heliotropium curassavicum), los diferentes tipos de mangles (Avicennia germinanis, Laguncularia racemosa, Rhizophora mangle), los icacos y uvas de mar (Chrysobalanus icaco, Coccobola uviera), y los almendros de malabar (Terminalia catappa), son herramientas necesaria para lograr frenar el avance de la erosión costera.

Desafortunadamente en Honduras cuando se habla de cambio climático, el Estado simplemente se refiere a las falsas soluciones como los Mecanismos de Desarrollo Limpio (alias destrucción de los ríos) y los proyectos de Reducción de las Emanaciones creadas por la deforestación y degradación del Bosque (REDD).

En cuanto a los pueblos indígenas, el Estado ha iniciado un proyecto piloto, el que fue municipalizado, por ende politizado. De ahí que de antemano se diluyó las buenas intenciones ya que las alcaldías en ningún momento responden a los intereses de los pueblos indígena, sino de aquellos vinculados con las caricaturas de caudillos que controlan el país.

Honduras de acuerdo al Index Global de Riesgos Climáticos, es el país mas afectado por el cambio climático entre 1992 al 2011. Ante el estado fallido en que nos encontramos, la gravedad de la problemática ha sido totalmente desatendida. Mientras las playas se las come el mar, la mayor preocupación de la elite de poder, es ver como rematan el país por pedazos. 
Ecoportal.net

OFRANEH 
Organizacion Fraternal Negra Hondureña
http://www.ofraneh.org

Recurso: http://www.ecoportal.net/Eco-Noticias/Erosion_Costera_y_los_Efectos_del_Cambio_Climatico_devoran_a_las_comunidades_Garifunas

Por Miprv.com

El camarógrafo francés Eric Rotuerau estuvo de visita en Puerto Rico recientemente y captó en imágenes la dramática erosion en el sector oeste de la playa de Isla Verde en Carolina, cerca del cementerio y detrás de los condominios Surfside y Galaxy.

En esta área de la playa, que antes contaba con hasta 100 pies de arena, apenas se puede caminar y las palmeras, de unos 30 años, están al borde de desplomarse.

“Esta situación se repite en otras playas de la isla, como en Luquillo (Fortuna), Rincón (Córcega), Ocean Park y muchos otros sitios donde la alta energía del oleaje, la interrupción del transporte litoral de sedimentos y la construcción sobre dunas ha afectado el balance de sedimentos de muchas celdas litorales”, le explicó en un correo electrónico un representante del Departamento de Recursos Naturales a un residente del área que le envió el video.

Ante el cambio climático, Puerto Rico enfrenta un grave reto de proteger sus zonas costeras de las subidas en el nivel del mar que pintan un escenario dantesco para todo el Caribe si a nivel mundial no se toman medidas para limitar las emisiones de carbono a la atmósfera.

El alza en el nivel del mar por el cambio climático representa un reto muy serio para Puerto Rico y el Caribe.


“En un escenario de incremento del nivel del mar (real, constatable y en proceso de aceleración), con temperaturas superficiales del mar más elevadas que alimentan tormentas tropicales y huracanes, así como tormentas de invierno en el noreste de los EE.UU. que generan oleaje fuerte durante esta temporada (“winter swells”) tenemos todos los ingredientes para acelerar la erosión de las costas. Todavía hay opciones para adaptarnos a nuevos escenarios pero deben generarse consensos sobre las alternativas y mecanismos de financiamiento para proteger vida y propiedad, así como para proteger procesos naturales y recursos de alto valor turístico y ecológico, como las playas, humedales y arrecifes de coral”, asegura el portavoz del DRNA.

Dicha agencia ha analizado múltiples sectores costeros en Puerto Rico y “resulta evidente que en los sitios donde hay construcciones próximas a la costa hay mayor erosión y en sitios corriente abajo de esas celdas hay acreción (interesantemente, la palabra existe, DRAE). En otros casos la arena se pierde al salir de la plataforma insular cuando las corrientes las sacan del veril afectando aún más el “sediment budget” (sedimento)”.

Esta situación no va a mejorar mágicamente y “urge poner en marcha estrategias de protección y adaptación que requieren ingeniería de costas, financiamiento y voluntad política y de las comunidades”, concluye el correo electrónico.

Source: http://www.miprv.com/alerta-por-la-erosion-en-la-playa-de-isla-verde/

By Janet Raloff
Welcome to the new climate; it’s keeping those Weather Channel reporters pretty busy with field reports on everything from a crop-slaying U.S. drought to windy deluges and coastal floods. Without question, 2012 ushered in wild and worrisome weather across the planet. The year was among the 10 hottest on record and included a surprising number of record-hot days. Climatologists refer to such events as extremes, and new analyses show that global warming is behind an uptick in some, albeit not all, kinds of extreme events.

The strongest evidence has emerged in Earth’s surface temperatures. Two analyses published this summer documented a shift toward hotter temperatures that seemed to kick off around 1981 (SN: 9/8/12, p. 10). Neither of those studies attempted to prove a link to global warming, but other analyses looking at notable 2011 events did probe for such a connection — and in July 2012 indicted climate change for exaggerating most of these events (SN: 8/11/12, p. 14), including Texas’ epic heat wave (shown). The heat had been aggravated by the state’s worst drought in recorded history (SN: 11/17/12, p. 22).

In 2012, most of the rest of North America began desiccating. By the end of August, moderate to extreme drought savaged almost two-thirds of the contiguous United States.

From January through early December, the United States saw nearly 33,000 new record high temperatures. A stable climate sets as many record highs as lows in a typical year. But record hot days outnumbered record cold ones by about 5 to 1 during that period, in line with a trend of increasing highs relative to lows that has been going on since the 1980s.

And then there was the unprecedented melting of the Arctic Ocean’s ice cover. Since 1979, the extent of sea ice at summer’s end has fallen by 13 percent per decade. What remains is also getting thinner (SN: 10/6/12, p. 5). This year’s September minimum plummeted to 3.41 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles) — about 20 percent below the previous record, set in 2007.

As for Hurricane Sandy, it’s not clear whether global warming helped fuel the storm’s power or set up the high-pressure system over Greenland that turned it landward. Despite maxing out as only a Category 2, Sandy devastated Haiti and part of the eastern U.S. seaboard. Data indicated that rare meteorological conditions in the Caribbean and eastern Atlantic combined to spawn a once-in-a-lifetime hybrid superstorm: part hurricane and part nor’easter (SN Online: 10/31/12).

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/347004/description/Climate_change_goes_to_extremes

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service is seeking to add more than 60 coral species to the endangered list, citing climate change.

In the wide-sweeping proposal announced Friday, the Fisheries Service said 59 species in the Pacific and seven in the Caribbean would be listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The Fisheries Service is also proposing that two Caribbean species, the elkhorn and staghorn corals, already listed under the ESA, be reclassified from threatened to endangered.

"Climate change and other activities are putting these corals at risk," said Jane Lubchenco, head of NOAA.

"This is an important, sensible next step toward preserving the benefits provided by these species," Lubchenco added.

Lubchenco says corals provide habitat that support fisheries, generate jobs through recreation and tourism, and protect coastlines.

The proposal is in response to a 2009 petition from the Center for Biological Diversity seeking to have 83 species listed.

NOAA considered listing 82 of the species, and ultimately decided 66 met the criteria. Friday’s action is the result of a court-approved settlement between the agency and the environmental group.

Last April, NOAA scientists reported that more than half of those 82 species were "more likely than not" to face extinction by 2100.

“It’s a bittersweet victory to declare these animals endangered. I’m deeply saddened that our extraordinary coral reefs are on the brink of extinction, but there’s hope that protection under the Endangered Species Act will give them a powerful safety net for survival,” said Miyoko Sakashita, the ocean director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Climate change is the most important threat to these key ocean species, with more than 97 percent of reefs predicted to experience severe thermal stress, which can cause massive bleaching and mortality, according to the proposal.

Corals are very sensitive to disease and temperature change, and the fact that seas have warmed and become more acidic as carbon dioxide emissions have risen, led to NOAA's proposal and focus on climate change. The acidity weakens the skeletal structure of coral.

The polar bear is the only other species listed under the Endangered Species Act because of climate change, and that's because of shrinking sea ice.

NOAA had never before analyzed so many species over such a wide geographic range. The closest in scope was a review of 30 West Coast salmon and steelhead species in 1994.

Source: http://www.examiner.com/article/noaa-seeks-to-add-over-60-coral-species-to-endangered-list-due-to-climate-change

Por Miprv.com

Según advirtió el Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente (PNUMA) en un informe divulgado ayer, el derretimiento del permafrost puede causar un mayor calentamiento global del estimado hasta hoy.

El documento señala que hasta el momento, las proyecciones de calentamiento del planeta no habían tomado en cuenta que la capa del suelo que se encuentra congelada permanentemente en las regiones polares –o permafrost– ha empezado a fundirse y señaló que esto puede acelerar el cambio climático.

El PNUMA explicó que al derretirse, el permafrost causará grandes emisiones de dióxido de carbono y metano, lo que alteraría los ecosistemas y causaría daños graves de infraestructura dado que el suelo sería cada vez más inestable.

Ante este panorama, el estudio insta al panel intergubernamental sobre cambio climático a evaluar la magnitud del fenómeno y a crear redes nacionales de monitoreo.

Además, exhorta a elaborar planes de adaptación para afrontar los impactos de las emisiones.

El permafrost cubre casi la cuarta parte del hemisferio norte y contiene 1.700 gigatones de carbón, dos veces la cantidad que hay actualmente de ese elemento en la atmósfera.

El 2011 es el noveno año con las temperaturas más altas desde que comenzaron a registrarse globalmente.

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Recurso: http://www.miprv.com/advierten-sobre-efectos-de-derretimiento-del-permafrost-debido-al-cambio-climatico/