CO2 levels in atmosphere reaching 400ppm for first time in 3 million years

Carbon dioxide concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere are on the cusp of reaching 400 parts per million for the first time in 3 million years.

The daily CO2 level, measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, was 399.72 parts per million last Thursday, and a few hourly readings had risen to more than 400 parts per million.

''I wish it weren't true but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400 ppm level without losing a beat,'' said Ralph Keeling, a geologist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the US, which operates the Hawaiian observatory.

''At this pace we'll hit 450 ppm within a few decades.''

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The 450 ppm level is considered to be the point at which the world has a 50 per cent chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. Any higher and the odds of avoiding searing temperature rises of 4 or 5 degrees by the end of the century become prohibitively risky.

The last time CO2 reached the symbolic milestone of 400 parts per million in the atmosphere - in the Pliocene era - temperatures rose by between 3 and 4 degrees and sea levels were between five and 40 metres higher than today.

The rise in greenhouse gases corresponds with the extra amount of CO2 known to have been emitted by human activities, such as burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests. More greenhouse gases means more heat builds up at the Earth's surface.

The last time CO2 reached the symbolic milestone of 400 parts per million in the atmosphere - in the Pliocene era - temperatures rose by between 3 and 4 degrees and sea levels were between five and 40 metres higher than today. Carbon dioxide levels have been rising steadily since constant measurements began at the Hawaiian observatory in 1958, when the level was about 317 parts per million.

Levels of more than 400 parts per million have been recorded at a few polar monitoring stages in the past year but the Mauna Loa Observatory readings are considered the most definitive.

The finding comes as Australia's Climate Commission was set to issue a new report into global action to reduce emissions.

The US and, particularly, China are starting to move into leadership positions on greenhouse gas reductions, the report, titled The Critical Decade: Global Action Building on Climate Change, says.

The rise in coal use in China had slowed substantially and renewable energy had expanded on a massive scale, the report said. Wind power generation in China had increased almost 50-fold between 2005 and 2012, and new solar power capacity had risen by 75 per cent last year and was expected to triple by 2015.

Australia had doubled its renewable energy capacity between 2001 and 2012 but was at some risk of being left behind by other nations, Climate Commission chief commissioner Tim Flannery said.

"There are a lot of opportunities for Australia but the world is changing quickly and we need to be prepared,'' Professor Flannery said. ''We are the 15th largest emitter in the world, larger than 180 other countries. We are more influential than most of us think."

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Back in 2011, researchers at MIT developed an artificial leaf technology that could produce energy from water and sunlight. The artificial leaf is essentially a silicon solar cell that has different catalytic materials bonded to each side that allow it to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen, the latter of which could be stored and used as clean fuel. While that technology is groundbreaking enough, the project team, led by Daniel G. Nocera, Ph.D., has announced that the technology now has the ability to self-heal and produce energy from dirty water.

Gizmag reports, "Because bacteria can build up on the leaf’s surface and stop the energy production process, previous versions of the device required pure water. Now Nocera’s team has found that some of the catalysts developed for the artificial leaf actually heal themselves, meaning the process can work with dirty water."

“Self-healing enables the artificial leaf to run on the impure, bacteria-contaminated water found in nature,” Nocera said. “We figured out a way to tweak the conditions so that part of the catalyst falls apart, denying bacteria the smooth surface needed to form a biofilm. Then the catalyst can heal and re-assemble.”

This feature will make the device even better suited for use in developing countries where clean water (and a reliable energy source) isn't always accessible.

The artificial leaf is designed to be a cheap energy source and it's made from abundant materials like silicon, cobalt and nickel. It's also opens the door to solar technology that produces a clean fuel that can be stored and used at night.

Ultimately the research team wants to combine the artificial leaf with technology that converts the hydrogen into a liquid fuel to power everything from traditional portable electric generators for homes to cars.

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Why unlocking cell phones is a green issue

People are talking a lot about cell phone unlocking in the news this week. Until recently, unlocking mostly flew under the radar—a common technique used by consumers who need to use their phones with more than one carrier. But late last year the Librarian of Congress banned the practice, catapulting cell phone unlocking into the national spotlight.

Unlocking is a software tweak that disables a device’s SIM lock. So, once the contract is over, owners of unlocked devices can switch to the carrier of their choice. Carriers including AT&T and Verizon argue that unlocking a cell phone without permission is a violation of copyright under the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act—a law originally designed to prevent piracy. For the past three years, cell phone unlocking has been exempted from the DMCA. When the Librarian of Congress lifted the exemption, he made it illegal to unlock a phone.

Immediately after the ban took effect on January 26, the internet lit up in protest. Digital rights activists and personal property proponents mobilized forces, and a petition on We the People—the White House’s official petitioning forum—garnered the support of thousands. Their demand: legalize cell phone unlocking.

On Monday, the fervor prompted a White House response. In no uncertain terms, the administration backed legalizing the unlocking of both cell phones and tablets.

“It's common sense, crucial for protecting consumer choice, and important for ensuring we continue to have the vibrant, competitive wireless market that delivers innovative products and solid service to meet consumers' needs,” wrote R. David Edelson, the White House’s senior advisor on the internet.

And while cell phone unlocking is absolutely an issue of consumer and digital rights, something important has been ignored in this conversation: unlocking also a green issue. 426,000 cell phones are decommissionedevery single day in the United States; many of them will end up banished to junk drawers and rotting in landfills. One billion cell phones are sitting idle in drawers and closets, losing value while they are waiting to be put back into service.

Swapping old phones is a common practice; just this week my brother borrowed an old phone from me after his failed. The catch? Swapping only works if you both use the same carrier—an artificial limitation that has created a huge barrier to a sharing economy. Re-legalizing unlocking will keep more devices in service and out of the national waste stream.

Cell phones and the environment

Wireless technology is a big business in the United States. There are more wireless devices in the US than there are people. As of late 2012, Apple had sold more than 85 million iPhones and 34 million iPads. To date, Samsung has produced 800 million mobile phones. Those numbers grow every single day—and that has environmental consequences.

Electronics manufacturing isn’t a clean industry. A single cell phone houses within it over half of the elements on the period table—many of which can’t be recovered in recycling. Pit mining—fueled by the demand for more electronics—is savaging the environment, causing water pollution that leads to birth defects. Conflict minerals, like coltan, are required to make every single cell phone—and warlords use mining profits to fund conflicts that tear apart places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Beyond the harmful effects of conflict minerals, there’s the very real threat of e-waste. Every year, the world tosses out between 20 to 50 million metric tons of electronics—only 18% of which is recycled. As a result, e-waste is piling up in landfills around the world. The more electronics we consume, the worse the problem gets.

How can unlocking help?

The best shot we have of stemming the environmental damage caused by electronics manufacturing is to make our gadgets more reusable. Unlocking is part of that solution. The average cell phone customerchanges carriers every 4 years. Locked devices can’t travel from carrier to carrier, so—even if fully functioning—they become obsolete with every carrier switch. It’s all too easy to throw obsolete devices into the trash: only 8 percent of cell phones are recycled.

Reuse is key to extending the life of electronics. Let’s take a lesson from free market economics: the larger the potential market, the more value your product has. While locked phones can only be sold to people who have the same carrier, unlocked phones have a bigger market and hold more value over time, sometimes doubling or tripling the resale value of a device. Moreover, refurbishers need to unlock cell phones in order to sell them to new users. Unlocking means a phone lives beyond the first user to the second, third, and fourth. And the longer electronics stay in service, the less demand there is to manufacture more.

Taking away our right to unlock our phones isn’t about protecting creative work through copyright; it’s about protecting corporate profit at the expense of the consumer and the environment. The White House supports restoring our right to legally unlock our phones and, right now, Congress is listening.

Happy Unlocking guys

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Orphaned tiger given goat to eat, befriends it instead

In 2009, a Bengal tiger cub was rescued from India's Dhaba forest range, left helpless after the disappearance of its mother. Over the next few years, keepers at the Bor Wildlife Sanctuary raised the orphan, named Bhangaram, to adulthood in hopes of one day releasing him back into the wild.
But, as it turns out, not only was the tiger out of the jungle, the jungle seemed to be out of it.
Staff at the wildlife sanctuary recently released a live goat into the now full-grown male tiger's enclosure as a way of triggering its predatory instincts. However, as opposed attacking the helpless animal, the unusually docile tiger did quite the opposite.
From the Times of India:

[Keepers had] hoped the beast would make a quick kill. To their astonishment and horror, the tiger instead decided to make friends with its intended meal. For two days, the tiger did not kill the goat despite being hungry. Instead it played with it; at one point even playfully dumping it in an artificial waterhole. Finally, the goat was shifted out and the tiger was given beef to eat.

Although the thought of a normally ferocious tiger 'befriending' its intended meal might seem like an adorable turn for the predator, conservationists say there is nothing cute about the big cat's unwillingness to kill. In fact, Bhangaram's temperate behavior may mean he will never be reintroduced to the wild where tiger numbers are in decline.
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"I fear the male tiger is not fit for release," says veteran conservationist MS Chouhan
Since the early 1970s, the Indian government has established wildlife sanctuaries and rehabilitation centers in hopes preserving Bengal tigers, driven to near extinction from poaching and other conflicts with humans. But, as conservationists have learned, when young cubs are rescued after the loss of their mother, they often lack the hunting skills only she can teach them.
Sadly, even once rescued tigers are returned to the wild, they are more prone to the same violent run-ins with humans that may have befallen their parent. Tiger experts say that animals which have lived in captivity are more likely to prey on cattle, which in turn puts them at risk of being killed by farmers. In other words, the loss of even a single tiger can have ramifications lasting for generations.
Despite these challenges, conservationists have reported that the number of tigers in India has increased by over 15 percent in recent years. All told, however, tiger populations throughout the world have dropped 96.8 percent over the last two decades from poaching and habitat loss.

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New infrared camera detects greatest cause of acid rain

 A new infrared camera technology can detect and measure major pollutants like sulfur dioxide, which is the greatest cause of acid rain. The pollutants, which also include CO, NOx, SF6, hydrocarbons and more, are usually invisible to the human eye, but the technology is able to detect them and measure their individual concentrations because they each have a unique infrared signature.

The Universidad Carlos III de Madrid's Laboratorio del Infrarrojo (LIR)developed the camera and says it's better than other devices that exist for detecting these compounds because it can measure them individually in a mix and it can do so from hundreds of meters away and in real time, none of which is possible with any of the other instruments available today.

The camera can be used to detect these pollutants from things like highly polluting vehicles, power plants or industrial chimneys. Especially in industrial and energy production settings, the camera could serve as a monitoring device.

"They can be installed and easily handled by workers in all kinds of factories or industries and can even be part of a permanent monitoring system that automatically activates an alarm when it detects the leak of a specific gas, such as SO2", says the CEO of SENSIA Solutions, a spin-off of the laboratory that has patented the device. "The cost of these systems would not be greater than that of any classic infrared camera, although it may vary based on certain parameters, such as the required detection distance, the concentration or expected time of the gas, among other factors."

The camera could automatically detect leaks or excessive emissions so that companies could make necessary changes to get the pollution in check.

For vehicles, the university says that "studies have shown that only a small proportion of the motor pool is responsible for most of the polluting emissions that are produced by automobiles. Therefore, to reduce the pollution caused by transportation, it is essential to detect and control the offending vehicles; this new generation of infrared cameras could play an important role in this task."

"Due to the device's extreme sensitivity, it is possible to detect even very low levels of emissions, and it can be adapted to the new legal limits that may be set for new models of automobiles in the future," says Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, an LIR scientist.

In India, China and Japan, acid rain is a significant problem due to the fact that the region has the highest amount of SO2 pollution in the world. When moisture in the air mixes with SO2 and nitrogen oxides (both detected by the camera), resulting precipitation comes down as acid rain, which can have major negative impacts to aquatic life, vegetation and corrode marble and limestone infrastructures.

Having technology that can accurately detect and measure these types of pollutants is the first step to being able to stop them at the source.

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DNA Fingerprinting Used to Fight Illegal Logging

Illegal logging is a huge problem that contributes to all kinds of environmental damage and social unrest. Fighting it is hard because paperwork can be forged and officials can be bribed, making even wood with a legit-looking paper trail suspect. Tree DNA cannot easily be falsified, though, and that makes it an ideal 'fingerprint' to verify the true origin of imported wood. That's exactly what companies like Double Helix Tracking, a firm based in Singapore, offer. They test wood DNA and then match it against their DNA library which contains many species of wood with their geographical distribution. It's still early day, so a detailed global map exists only for about 20 species, but over time it could become possible to know with great certainty where wood is coming from.

The Economist writes:

John Simon, the boss of Simmonds Lumber, another DoubleHelix client, explains how it works. His firm, an Australian timber importer, used to rely on masses of paperwork when buying merbau, a pricey hardwood from Indonesia. Given the ease with which proof-of-origin papers can be faked, it was hard to tell where any of it really came from. Now, thanks to DoubleHelix, Simmonds can show that a piece of merbau decking assembled in Australia comes from a specific (and legit) stump in Indonesia.

“We do it for both moral and business reasons,” says Mr Simon. Customers like to know that their decking is not destroying the planet. And company bosses want to stay out of trouble. Conservation laws are growing fiercer, especially in America, where businessfolk who break them may be jailed even if they did not know their wood was illegally sourced. (source)

As prices for DNA sequencing costs keep falling, and as DNA species maps plug their holes, it seems logical that this tool should become the default way of verifying the origin of wood. It could made a huge difference and help fight the $30 billion/year illegal wood harvesting industry.

Something similar is also being done to fight poaching: CSI Wildlife: DNA Forensics Used to Prevent Elephant Poaching and CSI Wildlife Part Two: 2 Eco-Crimes Unmasked by DNA Forensics.

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NASA's Global Hawk Completes First Science Flight

 NASA has successfully completed the first science flight of the Global Hawk unpiloted aircraft system over the Pacific Ocean. The flight was the first of five scheduled for this month's Global Hawk Pacific, or GloPac, mission to study atmospheric science over the Pacific and Arctic oceans.

The Global Hawk can fly autonomously to altitudes above 60,000 feet -- roughly twice as high as a commercial airliner -- and as far as 11,000 nautical miles. Operators pre-program a flight path, and then the plane flies itself for as long as 30 hours. (Credit: NASA/Dryden/Carla Thomas)

The Global Hawk is a robotic plane that can fly autonomously to altitudes above 18,288 meters (60,000 feet) -- roughly twice as high as a commercial airliner -- and as far as 20,372 kilometers (11,000 nautical miles), which is half the circumference of Earth. Operators pre-program a flight path, then the plane flies itself for as long as 30 hours, staying in contact through satellite and line-of-site communications links to a ground control station at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California's Mojave Desert.

"The Global Hawk is a revolutionary aircraft for science because of its enormous range and endurance," said Paul Newman, co-mission scientist for GloPac and an atmospheric scientist from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "No other science platform provides the range and time to sample rapidly evolving atmospheric phenomena. This mission is our first opportunity to demonstrate the unique capabilities of this plane, while gathering atmospheric data in a region that is poorly sampled."

GloPac researchers plan to directly measure and sample greenhouse gases, ozone-depleting substances, aerosols and constituents of air quality in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. GloPac's measurements will cover longer time periods and greater geographic distances than any other science aircraft.

During Wednesday's flight, the plane flew approximately 8,334 kilometers (4,500 nautical miles) along a flight path that took it to 150.3 degrees West longitude, and 54.6 degrees North latitude, just south of Alaska's Kodiak Island. The flight lasted just over 14 hours and flew up to 18,562 meters (60,900 feet). The mission is a joint project with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

The plane carries 11 instruments to sample the chemical composition of the troposphere and stratosphere, including two from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.. The instruments profile the dynamics and meteorology of both layers and observe the distribution of clouds and aerosol particles. Project scientists expect to take observations from the equator north to the Arctic Circle and west of Hawaii.

Although the plane is designed to fly on its own, pilots can change its course or altitude based on interesting atmospheric phenomena ahead. Researchers have the ability via communications links to control their instruments from the ground.

"The Global Hawk is a fantastic platform because it gives us expanded access to the atmosphere beyond what we have with piloted aircraft," said David Fahey, co-mission scientist and a research physicist at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. "We can go to regions we couldn't reach or go to previously explored regions and study them for extended periods that are impossible with conventional planes."

The timing of GloPac flights should allow scientists to observe the breakup of the polar vortex. The vortex is a large-scale cyclone in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere that dominates winter weather patterns around the Arctic and is particularly important for understanding ozone depletion in the Northern Hemisphere.

Scientists also expect to gather high-altitude data between 13,716 and 19,812 meters (45,000 and 65,000 feet), where many greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting substances are destroyed. They will measure dust, smoke and pollution that cross the Pacific from Asia and Siberia and affect U.S. air quality.

Global Hawk will make several flights under NASA's Aura satellite and other "A-train" Earth-observing satellites, "allowing us to calibrate and confirm what we see from space," Newman added. GloPac is specifically being conducted in conjunction with NASA's Aura Validation Experiment.

GloPac includes more than 130 researchers and technicians from Goddard, Dryden Flight Research Center, JPL, and Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. Also involved are NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory; the University of California, Santa Cruz; Droplet Measurement Technologies of Boulder, Colo.; and the University of Denver.

NASA Dryden and the Northrop Grumman Corp. of Rancho Bernardo, Calif., signed a Space Act Agreement to re-fit and maintain three Global Hawks transferred from the U.S. Air Force for use in high-altitude, long-duration Earth science missions.

For more on GloPac, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/global-hawk.html

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