350 -The Most Important Number in the World

Hi,

I was listening to Bill McKibben recently. He is the author of "End of Nature", a book he wrote in 1989. It seems he was was the first to warn of global warming, 20 years ago!

View the short video below, which is deliberately wordless so that it needs no translation. It has proved very effective in mobilising the communities around the world into taking responsibility for their actions. Now they can go out there and make the necessary impact. They can do something to change the course and momentum of the global warming. Activists like Mr McKibben are calling for changes in attitude, cultures, efficiencies in energy consumption in homes, production lines to becoming central parts of our lives.

He first raised an alarm about global warming in 1989 but, he says, he never dreamed the crisis would come as soon as it has. Even 18 months ago the scientific view was not as bad as it is today. Click on the link below to learn about the movement Mr McKibben and 6 of his friends founded.

An increase of 1⁰C so far has already caused the following:

1. new diseases in some countries. eg dengue fever in Bangladesh


2. changes in hydrological cycles arid land experiencing drying out faster and wetter areas, getting inundated with frequent heavy rainfalls and flooding


3. rivers drying out and bigger and more frequent forest and bush fires


4. tens of millions of pine forests killed off by pine bark beetles as they did not die in the cold winters as winters are so warm nowadays


5. 80% of sunlight energy falling on polar ice caps is reflected. But no more now. when sunlight is absorbed, it melts the permafrost (permanently frozen ice, ie ice that does not melt in summer). This releases millions of tons of methane which usually lies below the permafrost. Methane is many times more powerful green house gas than carbon dioxide.


6. For 10,000 years, since the civilisation of man, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has remained at around 275 ppm. In Jan 2008 it has been found to be 350 ppm. Anything above this concentration will not be tolerated. It means the planet is "sick". The symptoms are already seen in Arctic ice melting, rivers drying up etc.


7. Global warming and cooling are not new to the planet. However, this time it is caused by man and it is happening way too fast. This does not allow the organisms (plants and animal species) to adapt to these changes as it is happening too fast.

The tipping point is - or was - the number '350'. This is the level in the atmosphere of CO₂ in parts per million that will cause global warming to go beyond our control. And we are reaching this number... just... about... NOW! This is why McKibben calls 350 The Most Important Number in the World

Watch this space around October 24 this year, and look out for events focused on 350 that you can get involved in between now and then - or organise an activity of your own.

To listen to songs on the environment by Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil, click on the link below:

http://asal-sakti.blogspot.com/search/label/Peter%20Garrett



Cheers

What is wrong with what we eat?

Hi,

Mark Bittman has been writing about food for more than 30 years. He is also a fiery and funny speaker.

View the short video below to find out about what is wrong with the way we eat now.

Meat production produces the highly toxic greenhouse gas methane, more powerful than carbon dioxide in causing global warming. Half the antibiotics manufactured is used to keep our livestock alive. Bittman says that life style diseases such as cancers, heart disease, diabetes and obesity can be reduced by eating less meat.

10 billion animals a year (cattle, lambs, chicken, and pigs) are slaughtered in the USA alone. Meat production increasd by 5 times when human population only doubled in the last few decades.

Mr Bittman traces in our eating habits in the last 50 years and how it has brought all the health woes that we are expericing now.

Processed food is spicier, sweeter, fattier and more convenient. More and more agricultual land is used to grow corn and soya to feed these lifestock. This is leading up to environmental risks.

We would all be more healthy if we eat more plants, less meat and less junk/processed food. Our carbon footprint would decrease if we ate locally produced fresh food instead of processed food in styrofoam packaging flown thousands of miles from another part of the world.

Cheers

United Nations forum and REDD

Hi,

For the next two weeks the United Nations Forum is meeting in Poznan, Poland, on how to battle climate change. Their main agenda being:

Protect the remaining tropical rainforests

How?

Stop or slow down the cutting of forests for timber and agriculture

Why?

Trees are known as "carbon dioxide sinks" as they soak up and store CO₂ in their tissues during photosynthesis. This carbon dioxide will be released back to the atmosphere when trees are burnt or when they rot, as when they are cut down and the leaves and branches touch the soil. The decomposers in the soil, soil bacteria and soil fungi, will cause decay to take place. The organic molecules (carbohydrates, proteins and fats or oils) will be broken down to release energy for the decomposers. The wastes will be CO₂, which goes back into the air.

What is the problem with CO₂ going into the air?

1. The normal concentration of CO₂ in the air has been 0.03% for millions of years. Since the advent of man's penchant for burning fossil fuels, the concentration has been increasing alarmingly.


2. Cutting down of tropical rainforest further exacerbates the increase in CO₂ concentration in the air. Deforestation contributes to 20% of CO₂ emissions from human activities.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. This means that it is like a warm blanket on the earth, not allowing the heat on earth from escaping into the space. Heat come to the earth from the sun in the form of light energy/solar energy. Most of this light energy is used to warm up the air, the soil and the ocean. Only about 1% is absorbed by plants and phytoplankton(algae in the oceans and water bodies) during photosynthesis to convert light energy into chemical energy. Glucose is formed in this process. Glucose is then changed by the metabolic processes in the plant/algae into organic molecules that the plant need for its energy, growth and reproduction needs. (Remember that plants do not have mouths; they get their energy in the form of light energy. Animals have mouths. [vaay illa jeevan ;-)] Animals eat their energy in the form of chemical energy i.e. food molecules ( carbohydrate, proteins and fats).

Since burning of fossils fuels in large quantities releases CO₂, the plants cannot remove the excess quickly enough. This build up of CO₂ causes the warm blanket to become better and better at keeping the warmth in the atmosphere. This in turn causes climate change.

United Nation countries have agreed to cut greenhouse gases by 5% by 2012 during a meeting in 1990 in Kyoto, Japan. This agreement or treaty will expire in 2012.

The Poznan meeting this week will consider "pay-to-preserve forest scheme". This scheme is also known as REDD or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation.

What is REDD?

In this is scheme the richer countries would pay to maintain forests in tropical regions in poorer countries to prevent global warming.

Billions of dollars will be collected from donor countries and be given to developing countries/poor countries so that they will protect their rainforests.
The money will go towards:

1. preventing illegal logging


2. preventing forest fires


3. settling land disputes due to loss of livelihood of peoples who depend on the forest

A trial REDD programme will be starting with Indonesia. 70% of Indonesia's original forests have already been cut down. But it still has 91 million hectares. However, it is also the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter! Forest protection is important to prevent deforestation in this large S. E. Asian country.

We are familiar with the haze that we get in Singapore around June to August almost every year when the forests fires in Indonesia produces smoke, which the winds will blow towards Singapore.

The rich countries of the world have to help, with Australia coming forward to help in Indonesia:

1. an Australian company, Carbon Conservation teamed up with Aceh government.


2. Fauna and Flora International together with Australia's Macquarie Financial Services teamed up with three REDD projects in West Kalimantan and Papua governments.


3. New Forests, Australia teamed up with Papua government.


4. The government of Australia pledged $29m to protect, rehabilitate and drain peat swamps in Kalimantan. Peat swamps are wet throughout the year but during the dry seasons will catch fire spontaneously. The fire will start sweep through the forest quickly and are difficult to put out. (Peat is low grade coal and if found on the surface ie no need to mine for it, as in Kalimantan. This also means that they are easily combustible if dry. Since it is found on large areas of the ground, it will take months of arduous effect to put out these fires.)

The above projects if managed properly will not only preserve the forests, but also empower the locals to breathe clean air, maintain soil fertility and provide employment.

Quiz time: match the answers to the questions

1. Plants that photosynthesise are called... (remember, not _all_ plants do)


2. An example of 'heterotrophes' is...

Answers:

1. Mushrooms


2. Autotrophes

Click here to hear a song on Youtube by Midnight Oil on the issues of deforestation.......

Song lyrics: River Runs Red

So you cut all the tall trees down,
you poisoned the sky and the sea
You've taken what's good from the ground
But you've left precious little for me

You remember the flood and the fall,
we remember the light on the hill
There should be enough for us all,
but the dollar is driving us still

River runs red, black rain falls, dust in my hand
River runs red, black rain falls, on my bleeding land

So we came and we conquered and found
Riches of commons and kings
Who strangled and wrestled the ground
But they never put back anything

Now i'm trapped like a dog in a cage
Wherever the truth is pursued
It must be the curse of the age
What's taken is never renewed

(hirst/moginie)

Cheers

Be a flexitarian and do your bit for the environment

Hi,



'Baa-d' news for all you meat eaters! I have a cutting of the Weekend Today dated 24th Nov with me now. I would like to share what I have gleaned from the article entitled "Eating Green" (as well as some of my own thoughts on the issue). It was authored by Carol Leong.

In this article she states Al Gore met up with President-elect Barack Obama to "begin an emergency rescue of human civilisation". Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao reminded rich nations of their responsibility to ditch their "unsustainable way of life".

The world's finest brains are arguing that our unsustainable and excessive lifestyle is at the heart of climate change that is affecting the earth.

The head of the United Nations inter-governmental panel on climate change, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, suggests that we may try to give up meat on at least one day a week and slowly increase it to more days if possible.

Dr Rajendra points out that if we halved our meat consumption, it would do more to reduce carbon dioxide emission than if we halved our car usage.

Raising animals for food causes deforestation, soil erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, loss of biodiversity, social injustice that destabilise communities and increase spread of diseases. (Singaporeans ate 90 kg of meat and fish per person in 2007 — only 700g less than the Americans.)

I would like to list 6 reasons for eating more vegetables and fruits and less flesh of animals:

1. One-fifth of greenhouse gas emission come from livestock farming. Cows fart and belch methane which is 23 times more poisonous than carbon dioxide. Animal dung, when it decays, produces nitrous oxide which is 296 time more effective as a green house gas than CO2.
   
   Herbivorous animals like cows and sheep have more than one stomach. These animals depend on bacteria to digest cellulose for them. They do not produce cellulase enzymes to digest cellulose that forms the cell wall of all plant cells. The various stomachs contain lots of bacteria which live in a symbiotic relationship with the mammal. The end product of cellulose digestion will be glucose. Glucose will be absorbed into the blood of the cows and used for energy.
   
   Do you notice that many totally herbivorous animals like cows, buffaloes, hippos, and rhinos have large bodies which are built like tanks? This is related to the fact that they have to eat large amounts of plant material and quickly send the cropped plant material to the first two of their four stomachs. (In the wild, herbivorous animals are prey animals, always on the look out for predators and hence the haste in eating their food.) Most of these animals will then "cough up" or regurgitate the food back into their mouths and re-chew ('chew the cud') before sending it into the third stomach. Then the food has to be mixed with the resident bacteria to form glucose, which is fermented by yet other bacteria. The small and large intestines that follow the stomachs are very long as well.
   
   

   SIDE NOTE: All the herbivores I mention above are called 'even-toed ungulates'. You probably are saying to yourself, "Hey! wait a minute, what about horses and rabbits? — they eat grass too." Yes, and they have only one stomach like ours but their caecum (part of the large intestine) forms a large pouch where bacteria further break down the food. Elephants also use a system like this. Horse belong to the odd-toed group including tapirs and rhinos but all three types — horse, elephant and rabbit — independently 'discovered' the same digestive system. It may sound yucky but rabbits go one step further and eat (re-ingest) some of their own droppings for extra digestion.

   Digestion takes time and the process produces lots of gases, farts(through the anus) and belches(through the mouth).


2. Every year, 32 million acres of rainforest is destroyed to provide land for livestock farming.


3. Growing food for the livestock requires land. Grass for the cows, goats and sheep; corn, soya bean, seeds and other plant materials to feed the chicken, duck, pigs, etc. This requires 14 times more water than growing rice, wheat and other grains and fruits and vegetables for human consumption.


4. Fish farming returns only one pound of farmed salmon for 3 pounds of fish food given to the salmon, a return of only 33%. The tiniest of fish are harvested from the ocean, dried and fed to the farmed salmon. This is destroying the ocean ecosystem. (These tiny organisms are part of the natural food chain in the ocean ecosystem.)


5. Animals should not be treated cruelly even if they are raised by man for his consumption. They are also fellow inhabitants of this earth and they deserve to be treated humanely. Most animals are kept in extremely crowded environments with horrendous living conditions and little ventilation. They are injected with hormones to fatten them quickly for the table, some are force-fed and some are even pumped to their eye-balls with antibiotics to prevent them from falling ill. If you are interested to read more on this, click this link on factory farming.


6. In the case of mad cow disease, the herbivorous cows were fed with high protein animal body parts (of other cows from the abattoirs) ground and processed into pellets. This resulted in them getting the "prions"or denatured protein molecules in the brain. Prions will affect the other neighbouring protein molecules in the brain and it spreads just like an infection except that the disease is not due to any pathogenic organism, but due to misbehaving protein molecules. The result is formation of holes or lesions in the brain tissue, described as "spongiform" or looking like sponge, ie with numerous tiny holes.

Swine flu, measles, SARS and avian/bird flu (and AIDS, which I will write about in another post) are all diseases that spread from animals to man. These are new diseases (meaning they are actually animal diseases but some how the mutated pathogen had jumped species and is affecting Man now). Mutations in the pathogens give rise to new variants, or individuals who possess genetic material which allow them to infect a different species from their usual host.

Man has evolved over millions of years to combat and destroy pathogens that infect the human body. His immune system is primed to recognise and kill them and protect him from dying. When he is faced with pathogens that his white blood cells do not recognise as pathogens, then it will result in people dying in large numbers. This has happened many times in the history of mankind. (In 1918, the bird flu swept the whole world and killed more than 50 million.)

What we can do to be a GREEN EATER?

We can reduce on the meat component of our meals to slow down climate change.

Why not become a "flexitarian" i.e. a flexible vegetarian or semi-vegetarian? Lets return to our great-grandmother's healthy diet of treating meat like a very precious commodity.

We seem to have forgotten the real price of eating meat for all our three meals.


If you want to listen to songs on the environment by Peter Garrett of Midnight oil, click on the link below:

http://asal-sakti.blogspot.com/search/label/Peter%20Garrett

Cheers