View previous stories
	The Pacific Ocean the biggest waste dump in the World by Ed Cumming The Telegraph   March 16, 2010   As large as the USA, the great pacific waste dump keeps getting bigger, and may very well be poisoning us all.   The world’s biggest rubbish dump keeps growing. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch – or the Pacific Trash Vortex – is a floating monument to our culture of waste, the final resting place of every forgotten carrier bag, every discarded bottle and every piece of packaging blown away in the wind.   Dr Simon Boxall, a physical oceanographer at the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, says: “It’s the size of North America. But although the patch itself is extremely large, it’s only one very clear representation of the much bigger worldwide problem.”   Plastic is the main issue. Fifty years ago, most flotsam was biodegradable. Now it is 90 per cent plastic. In 2006, the United Nations Environment Programme estimated that there were 46,000 pieces of floating plastic in every square mile of ocean. With its stubborn refusal to biodegrade, all plastic not buried in landfills – roughly half of it – sweeps into streams and sewers and then out into rivers and, finally, the ocean.   Some of it – some say as much as 70 per cent – sinks to the ocean floor. The remainder floats, usually within 20 metres of the surface, and is carried into stable circular currents, or gyres “like ocean ring-roads”, says Dr Boxall.   Once inside these gyres, the plastic is drawn by wind and surface currents towards the centre, where it steadily accumulates. The world’s major oceans all have these gyres, and all are gathering rubbish. Although the North Pacific – bordering California, Japan and China – is the biggest, there are also increasingly prominent gyres in the South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. Our problems with plastics are only just beginning.   Dr Boxall says: “People imagine it as a kind of football pitch of rubbish you can go and walk on – it’s not like that.” As most of the plastic has been broken down into tiny particles, floating beneath the surface, it is impossible to photograph from aircraft or satellites, or even really to see until you are right in its centre.   As a result, it is difficult to convey the grave danger this 100 million tons or so of rubbish – and counting – presents. Some might be tempted to argue that the rubbish has to end up somewhere, and that the ocean is no worse than landfill.   Herein lies the main danger: plastic does not biodegrade, but when exposed to sunlight it photo-degrades, breaking down into smaller and smaller particles, and finally to “nurdles”, the industry name for the tiny grains that are the building blocks of most modern plastics. These tiny particles are not harmful on their own, but they are very absorbent, and soak up waterborne toxins, such as pesticides and cooling agents. These nurdles, now saturated in poisons, are eaten by filter-feeders at the very bottom of the food chain, and then make their way up it.   The scale of the toxin problem is unknown. Although plastics have now been around for a century, their use has only been really widespread for 50 years. Also, the threat is not only from food – marine extracts are used in countless other products too: particularly cosmetics. Since there are so many possible routes for toxins from these plastics to enter our food chain, there has yet to be an in-depth scientific study of their possible effect on humans.   But these particles are certainly killing marine life: the UN estimates that more than one million birds and 100,000 mammals die every year from plastics – by poisoning, entanglement and choking. There are also studies under way investigating the possible connection between a rise in fertility problems and cancers, and the proliferation of plastic in the ocean.   The solution is equally confounding – there is just so much junk. Most experts agree that the real change needs to come above ground, from people taking more responsibility for their dumping.   The four worst-offending plastics are carrier bags, bottle-tops, bottles and styrofoam.There are some – led by the renowned American environmentalist and National Geographic Explorer-at-large Sylvia Earle– who think that we should simply try not to use plastics at all. Others would like the US government to embark on an operation to clean the ocean manually, using tankers to retrieve the plastic, which could then be used as fuel.   Dr Boxall is decidedly less optimistic: “There is nothing we can do,” he says. “It’s too big. It’s here to stay. It’s like nuclear waste. Even an oil spillage, disastrous as it is, eventually breaks down. Plastic doesn’t. We’ve simply got to become better about how we dispose of waste.”
	CSIRO boss says climate change is real by CSIRO, ANU & agencies Australia   Aug 2010   Scientists say global warming is undeniable.   The world will be hotter by 2100 than at any time in the past few million years if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, the Australian Academy of Science warns in a new report.   Global emissions would need to peak within the next 10 years, and then decline rapidly for the world to have a better than 50-50 chance of avoiding a temperature rise of 2 degrees, it concludes.   Produced and reviewed by two expert panels, the 24-page report, The Science of Climate Change, Questions and Answers, acknowledges there are still scientific uncertainties about some of the details of climate change.   These include its impact at specific locations, the precise timing and size of future changes, and when high-risk tipping points might be reached.   But broad conclusions about the impact of high emissions are based on strong evidence and rigorous scientific scrutiny, its authors said. "We are very confident that human-induced global warming is a real phenomenon."   A former academy president, Kurt Lambeck, said the report was aimed at clarifying often contradictory comments from non-scientific "instant experts".   The report refutes many of the claims made by climate change sceptics, such as that the globe has been cooling since 1998, the sun is mainly to blame for recent warming, recent warming is part of natural variability, and volcanoes emit more carbon dioxide than human activities.   The report "unambiguously" supported the conclusion that a continued reliance on fossil fuels would lead to a warmer world, with predictions ranging from a 2 to 7 degree increase by 2100.   Mar 2010   In a joint CSIRO/Bureau of Meteorology statement, Australia’s two lead climate science agencies have said the observed changes showed climate change was real.   “Australia holds one of the best national climate records in the world,” head of the Bureau of Meteorology Dr Ayers said.   “The Bureau’s been responsible for keeping that record for more than a hundred years and it’s there for anyone and everyone to see, use and analyse.”   CSIRO Chief Executive Dr Megan Clark said there"s absolutely no doubt there"s a link between humans and climate change.   She says the evidence of global warming is unquestionable and in Australia it"s backed by years of robust research. She says climate records are being broken every decade and all parts of the nation are warming.   Dr Clark said "we are seeing significant evidence of a changing climate. If we just take our temperature, all of Australia has experienced warming over the last 50 years.   We are warming in every part of the country during every season and as each decade goes by, the records are being broken. Our records of the 70s were broken in the 80s, broken in the 90s. So we are seeing some very significant long-term trends in Australia"s climate., We are also seeing consistency. I think the consistency between our temperatures, what we are seeing in our rainfall, what we are seeing in the increase of carbon dioxide and methane in our atmosphere and of course, what we are now seeing in our oceans. So it is not just one measurement that is telling us.   It is our observations and science that we are seeing in many areas being consistent. We know two things. We know that our CO2 has never risen so quickly. We are now starting to see CO2 and methane in the atmosphere at levels that we just haven"t seen for the past 800,000 years, possibly even 20 million years. Visit the related web page
	View more stories