#exclimate

[lets-talk-cacti]

So I made a side blog, @bees-climate-change-and-guilt to use as a sort of notebook for an online class I’m taking on climate change. Give it a follow if you’re interested in looking at my homework (I’d understand if you didn’t) or maybe learning something new about the science of climate change.

[learnclimate]

Technology Strategy Board

A fairly comprehensive guide to the types of changes we can make and strategies we can use to build for a changing climate!

I find it interesting that they quoted all kinds of information on the hot end of building comfort, but not as much for what’s considered too cold. I know this is a bit of a gendered issue, especially in offices.

And as someone whose body is not good at regulating it’s own temperature, it’s quite a personal issue, too. I literally can’t just throw on another layer and expect to get warmer. Poor circulation and dysautonomia say it doesn’t work that way. I wonder where it’s going to leave me as far as productivity goes.

[learnclimate]

FutureLearn Climate Change Course Week 6 Reflections

The main themes this week were climate changes effects on human development, with an emphasis on the problem of heat islands created by cities, and on agriculture.

I think the most interesting part of the week was learning how pathogens like fungi are the biggest threat to agriculture. Personally, I’m not so big on the genetic modification as a solution; I think that itself will only create more problems. But I am big on crop diversification and the end to monoculture crops as a solution. 

I came across a lot of organizations working to fight climate change and a lot of good resources this week:

Elsevier Global Food Security Journal

Sustainia

100 Resilient Cities

Sustainable Cities Collective

C40 Cities

Growing Underground

These groups give me hope that we can change climate change, that we can take action and make a difference, and that it isn’t too late to have an impact!

[learnclimate]

Organic farms have around a third more species than conventionally-farmed ones, according to new research

One of the keys to addressing the impact of climate change is managing food security. As more species are threatened, biodiversity could be the answer.

[learnclimate]

Cities, Heat Islands, and Climate Change

According to the EPA’s webpage on climate change indicators,

“Overall, a total of more than 9,000 Americans have died from heat-related causes since 1979, according to death certificates.”

According to the NASA page on heat islands, 

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that, between 1979 and 2003, heat exposure has caused more than the number of mortalities resulting from hurricanes, lightning, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes combined.”

That’s staggering, and staggering that the crisis doesn’t get more action and attention!

Heat is an even bigger issue for cities, because cities are usually heat islands. In fact, according to the same NASA page, 

“Summer land surface temperature of cities in the Northeast were an average of 7 °C to 9 °C (13°F to 16 °F) warmer than surrounding rural areas”

And according to Climate Smart Cities, 

“Cities are the places where most of the world’s population now lives and where most of its production and consumption now takes place. Cities are responsible for most of the world’s energy consumption and most of the world’s carbon emissions, and they are growing quickly. As a result, cities are central to the world’s efforts to shift to a lower carbon development path.”

An article from Scientific American concurs, 

“It is citizens of cities who are responsible for at least half of all greenhouse gas pollution—through demand for heating and cooling, food, lighting, entertainment and transportation. As a result, city action (or inaction) on climate change may determine the ultimate outcome of global warming.”

Fortunately, cities are rising to the challenge, both in the developed and the developing world! With groups like C40 cities and 100 Resilient Cities, and collaborations like Sustainia city solutions, cities are taking matters into their own hands when it comes to reducing emissions and tackling global warming.

[learnclimate]

Summer land surface temperature of cities in the Northeast were warmer than surrounding rural areas due to the urban heat island effect.

Two biggest ironies - more deaths from heat happen at night rather than during the day, and running air conditioners makes heat islands worse!

I wish they had provided more information about heat island solutions. The two they named, increased vegetation and painting dark surfaces white seem pretty simple and obvious, so I wonder why they aren’t being put into effect more often.

[learnclimate]

Climateprediction.net is a volunteer computing, climate modelling project. We run climate models on people’s home computers to help answer questions about how climate change is affecting our world, now and in the future – Sign up now and help us predict the climate. Evidence of how our climate is changing is vital to encourage investment in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as coping with inevitable change. You can help discover how the climate could look by running our free software on your computer. The data generated is sent back to us and incorporated into the climateprediction.net projects.

This was an optional week 5 activity, so I’m posting it here in case I want to check it out later!

[learnclimate]

FutureLearn Climate Change Course Week 5 Reflections: Toxic Sunscreen

The important themes this week were global warming’s effect on the cryosphere (leading to melting) and the ocean (leading to ocean acidification).

I found learning about the chemistry of ocean acidification to be a little difficult this week. It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a chemistry course, so having to remember the basics (pun intended) of the Ph scale and what ions are and such was a bit of a stretch for my brain.

I found both topics, ice sheets and ocean acidification to be very interesting. I already posted some links related to the ice sheets, so I’ll limit this post to sharing the information that this week’s lesson led me to about ocean acidification.

First the NRDC’s video Acid Test (narrated by Sigourney Weaver) is a great place to start learning about ocean acidification:

There’s also the much shorter and sillier video produced by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority: 

Scientists are concerned that ocean acidification will harm coral reefs, as the the GBR Marine Park Authority explains, 

“Although the chemistry of ocean acidification is simple and well understood, its effect on marine life is much less well-known as the process has only been recognised for less than a decade. Even relatively small increases in ocean acidity decrease the capacity of corals to build skeletons, which in turn decreases their capacity to create habitat for the Reef's marine life.”

Coral bleaching is an increasing problem, but scientists are only just beginning to understand its causes, and it wasn’t what they thought!

Again, the GBR Marine Park Authority is a good place to start for understanding coral bleaching:

“Rising sea surface temperatures from climate change are already affecting the Great Barrier Reef and have the potential for significant effects across the whole ecosystem.

Temperature plays a critical role in determining the distribution and diversity of marine life. It is critical to reef building and controls the rate of coral reef growth.

Like all marine life, corals have evolved over many thousands of years within limited temperature ranges.

When these limits are exceeded, corals are put under thermal stress, causing them to expel the tiny algae that live within their tissues – it's this algae that gives corals their colour and most of their food and energy.

This results in coral bleaching, and if conditions don't ease within weeks, the corals eventually starve and die.”

So what’s the issue? Ocean acidification, rising temperatures, a little bit of both? The scientific research is conflicting.

Take the article “Ocean acidification may be impacting coral reefs in the Florida keys” on the research conducted by the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science. It states very clearly that ocean acidification harms reefs:

“For two years, the researchers collected water samples along the 200-kilometer (124-mile) stretch of the Florida Reef Tract north of Biscayne National Park to the Looe Key National Marine Sanctuary. The data provide a snapshot on the health of the reefs, and establish a baseline from which future changes can be judged.

The results showed that reef dissolution is a significant problem on reefs in the upper Keys with the loss of limestone exceeding the amount the corals are able to produce on an annual basis. As a result these reefs are expected to begin wasting away leaving less habitat for commercial and recreationally important fish species. Florida Keys' reefs have an estimated asset value of $7.6 billion.”

And this article, “Enhanced macroboring and depressed calcification drive net dissolution at high-CO2 coral reefs”. 

From their abstract, to whet your appetite:

“Ocean acidification (OA) impacts the physiology of diverse marine taxa; among them corals that create complex reef framework structures. Biological processes operating on coral reef frameworks remain largely unknown from naturally high-carbon-dioxide (CO2) ecosystems. For the first time, we independently quantified the response of multiple functional groups instrumental in the construction and erosion of these frameworks (accretion, macroboring, microboring, and grazing) along natural OA gradients. We deployed blocks of dead coral skeleton for roughly 2 years at two reefs in Papua New Guinea, each experiencing volcanically enriched CO2, and employed high-resolution micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) to create three-dimensional models of changing skeletal structure. OA conditions were correlated with decreased calcification and increased macroboring, primarily by annelids, representing a group of bioeroders not previously known to respond to OA.”

So ocean acidification is clearly detrimental to coral reefs, but what else is going on? 

There’s this groundbreaking study, Toxicopathological Effects of the Sunscreen UV Filter, Oxybenzone (Benzophenone-3), on Coral Planulae and CulturedPrimary Cells and Its Environmental Contamination in Hawaii and the U.S. Virgin Islands, first published in October 2015, that identifies another threat to coral reefs - sunscreen!

From their abstract:

“Benzophenone-3 (BP-3; oxybenzone) is an ingredient in sunscreen lotions and personal-care products that protects against the damaging effects of ultraviolet light. Oxybenzone is an emerging contaminant of concern in marine environments-produced by swimmers and municipal, residential, and boat/ship wastewater discharges. We examined the effects of oxybenzone on the larval form (planula) of the coral Stylophora pistillata, as well as its toxicity in vitro to coral cells from this and six other coral species. Oxybenzone is a photo-toxicant; adverse effects are exacerbated in the light. Whether in darkness or light, oxybenzone transformed planulae from a motile state to a deformed, sessile condition. Planulae exhibited an increasing rate of coral bleaching in response to increasing concentrations of oxybenzone. Oxybenzone is a genotoxicant to corals, exhibiting a positive relationship between DNA-AP lesions and increasing oxybenzone concentrations. Oxybenzone is a skeletal endocrine disruptor; it induced ossification of the planula, encasing the entire planula in its own skeleton.”

Not only is this chemical harmful to coral reefs,

“In mammals, BP-3is renowned for having estrogenic and anti-androgenic activities, causing activation of estrogen receptor proteins and inhibition of androgen receptors (Morohoshi et al.2005; Suzuki et al. 2005; Kunz et al. 2006; Molina–Molinaet al. 2008; Nashez et al. 2010). Topical application of BP-3 to the skin has been shown to be absorbed and transferred to breast milk, creating risk to breast-fed neonates (Hanyand Nagel 1995). In addition, an association between exposure to benzophenones and an increased occurrence of endometriosis in women was recently found by Kunisueet al. (2012).”

If it’s so harmful, then why the hell is it 

“often... used as an active ingredient in sunscreen lotions and personal-care products, such as body fragrances, hair-sty-ling products, shampoos and conditioners, anti-aging creams, lip balms, mascaras, insect repellants, as well as dishwasher soaps, dish soaps, hand soaps, and bath oils/salts (CIR 2005;http://www.goodguide.com/ingredients/184390-oxybenzone).”

So when 

“Between 6000 and 14,000 tons of sunscreen lotion, many of which contain between 1 and 10 % BP-3, are estimated to be released into coral reef areas each year, putting at least 10 % of the global reefs at risk of exposure, and approximately 40 % of coral reefs located along coastal areas at risk of exposure (Shaath and Shaath 2005;UNWTO2007; Danovaro et al.2008; Wilkinson 2008).”

it’s no wonder the reefs are dying!!!

And imagine how disgusted I was to learn that not only is this chemical an obvious culprit, but that this isn’t the first study putting the blame on suncreens. “Sunscreens Cause Coral Bleaching by Promoting Viral Infections” was published in 2008 (7 years earlier!!!!).

They stated very clearly that, 

“Sunscreens cause the rapid and complete bleaching of hard corals, even at extremely low concentrations. The effect of sunscreens is due to organic ultraviolet filters, which are able to induce the lytic viral cycle in symbiotic zooxanthellae with latent infections.”

and, 

“In all replicates and at all sampling sites, sunscreen addition even in very low quantities (i.e., 10 μL/L) resulted in the release of large amounts of coral mucous (composed of zooxanthellae and coral tissue) within 18–48 hr, and complete bleaching of hard corals within 96 hr (Figure 1; Table 1). Different sunscreen brands, protective factors, and concentrations were compared, and all treatments caused bleaching of hard corals, although the rates of bleaching were faster when larger quantities were used (Table 1). ... Bleaching was faster in systems subjected to higher temperature, suggesting synergistic effects with this variable (Table 1; Figure 2).”

And that’s where the rising temperatures plays a role. So coral reefs are facing a trifold assault: ocean acidification destroying their structures, chemicals in sunscreen leading to bleaching, and rising temperatures making both effects worse.

So what can we do about it? Well, here in Hawaii, they are trying to pass legislation banning the sale of sunscreens containing the harmful ingredients and encouraging people to use the non-toxic alternatives. Unfortunately, the bills face opposition from special interests groups, specifically the companies that SELL the toxic sunscreen, under the guise of “consumer protection.” On the bright side, “some businesses have voluntarily stopped carrying sunscreens that contain oxybenzone, including the concession at Hanauma Bay, the most popular snorkeling site in Hawaii.” And informed consumers always have the option of using their purchasing power! 

I’m committing to switching to non-toxic alternatives and spreading the word!