English references

The Senate is on the verge of taking up a bill with the Orwellian title “Fix Our Forests Act.” It is designed to do the opposite, as Dan Galpern and I describe in an op-ed published yesterday in the Boston Globe, which is copied below with permission of the Globe. The bill would result in swaths of the public’s national forests becoming “categorical exclusion” zones open to logging exempt from any environmental review. Thus, the bill would override the purposes for which national forests were set up, including “outdoor recreation, range…watershed, and wildlife and fish purposes.” This sin is rationalized under the pretense that the Act will reduce wildfire risk and improve forest health by “thinning” the forest. This is nonsense, as our op-ed discusses.

Logging and mining are destroying swathes of the Congo rainforest, with the result that African forests went from being  a carbon sink to a carbon source in 2010 to 2017

Four key parts of the Earth’s climate system are destabilising, according to a new study with contributions from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Researchers analysed the interconnections of four major tipping elements: the Greenland ice sheet, the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), the Amazon rainforest and the South American monsoon system. All four show signs of diminished resilience, raising the risk of abrupt and potentially irreversible changes.

Suspension of Soy moratorium could open up area of rainforest the size of Portugal to destruction

Climate sensitivity is substantially higher than IPCC’s best estimate (3°C for doubled CO2), a conclusion we reach with greater than 99 percent confidence. We also show that global climate forcing by aerosols became stronger (increasingly negative) during 1970-2005, unlike IPCC’s best estimate of aerosol forcing. High confidence in these conclusions is based on a broad analysis approach. IPCC’s underestimates of climate sensitivity and aerosol cooling follow from their disproportionate emphasis on global climate modeling, an approach that will not yield timely, reliable, policy advice.

Forests have historically acted as a reliable planetary thermostat. They regulate Earth’s temperature by removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and locking it in trees, roots and soil — carbon that is emitted if trees are cut down. In a typical year, forests and other vegetation absorb roughly 30% of the carbon that humans emit from burning fossil fuels — a vital climate service performed at virtually no cost by trees around the world, from tropical rainforests to temperate and boreal forests.

For more than three decades, Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre has warned that deforestation of the Amazon could push this globally important ecosystem past the point of no return. Working first at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research and more recently at the University of São Paulo, he is a global authority on tropical forests and how they could be restored.

Brazil records 62% jump in area burned by forest fires: monitor

Identifying the socio-economic drivers behind greenhouse gas emissions is crucial to design mitigation policies. Existing studies predominantly analyze short-term CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, neglecting long-term trends and other GHGs. We examine the drivers of all greenhouse gas emissions between 1820–2050 globally and regionally. The Industrial Revolution triggered sustained emission growth worldwide—initially through fossil fuel use in industrialized economies but also as a result of agricultural expansion and deforestation. Globally, technological innovation and energy mix changes prevented 31 (17–42) Gt CO2e emissions over two centuries. Yet these gains were dwarfed by 81 (64–97) Gt CO2e resulting from economic expansion, with regional drivers diverging sharply: population growth dominated in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, while rising affluence was the main driver of emissions elsewhere. Meeting climate targets now requires the carbon intensity of GDP to decline 3 times faster than the global

Researchers found that between 2002 and 2015, a 3.2% reduction in Brazilian forest cover led to a 5.4% reduction in precipitation levels.

Tipping elements within the Earth system are increasingly well understood. Scientists have identified more than 25 parts of the Earth’s climate system that are likely to have “tipping points” – thresholds where a small additional change in global warming will cause them to irreversibly shift into a new state. The “tipping” of these systems – which include the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the Amazon rainforest and the Greenland ice sheet – would have profound consequences for both the biosphere and people. More recent research suggests that triggering one tipping element could cause subsequent changes in other tipping elements, potentially leading to a “tipping cascade”. For example, a collapsed AMOC could lead to dieback of the Amazon rainforest and hasten the melt of the Greenland ice sheet.

Donald Trump has ordered that swathes of America’s forests be felled for timber, evading rules to protect endangered species while doing so and raising the prospect of chainsaws razing some of the most ecologically important trees in the US. The president, in an executive order, has demanded an expansion in tree cutting across 280m acres (113m hectares) of national forests and other public lands, claiming that “heavy-handed federal policies” have made America reliant on foreign imports of timber.

Il y a vingt-cinq ans, l'Union of Concerned Scientists et plus de 1700 scientifiques indépendants, dont la majorité des lauréats scientifiques du prix Nobel d’alors, ont scellé l'Avertissement des scientifiques du monde à l'humanité de 1992 (voir le texte en annexe S1). Ces scientifiques s’adressaient à l'humanité afin d’endiguer la destruction de l'environnement et avertissaient « Si nous voulons éviter une misère humaine à grande échelle, il est indispensable d’assurer un changement profond de notre gestion des ressources et de la vie sur Terre ».

The USDA has begun removing references to climate change on its webpages and sites, including the U.S. Forest Service website.

Natural sinks of forests and peat were key to Finland’s ambitious target to be carbon neutral by 2035. But now, the land has started emitting more greenhouse gases than it stores

The signs of weakening resilience raise concerns that the world’s greatest tropical forest – and biggest terrestrial carbon sink – is degrading towards a point of no return. It follows four supposedly “one-in-a-century” dry spells in less than 20 years, highlighting how a human-disrupted climate is putting unusually intense strains on trees and other plants, many of which are dying of dehydration.

SAO PAULO, Aug 1 (Reuters) - The number of fires in Brazil's Amazon rainforest region surged to a record high for the month of July in almost two decades, government data showed on Thursday, amid a drought in the region fanned by climate change. The Amazon, the world's largest rainforest, plays a vital role in curbing global warming because of the vast amounts of greenhouse gas it absorbs.

La destruction de l'Amazonie est un phénomène qui s’étend au-delà de la déforestation mais les neuf pays qui partagent cette ressource naturelle sont engagés à la protéger.

The EU Observatory on deforestation and forest degradation aims to monitor changes in the world’s forest cover and related drivers. Besides providing access to global forest maps and spatial forest and forestry-related information, this Observatory will facilitate access to scientific information on supply chains, linking deforestation, forest degradation and changes in the world’s forest cover to Union demand for commodities and products. Data and information provided on this Observatory play a supporting role but do not assure compliance or imply non-compliance with EU Regulations, other legal frameworks or commitments, or international agreements.

Huge patches of forest in Tasmania have rapidly turned brown over recent months, with many trees dying after a dry summer. As climate change causes hotter and drier weather, can we expect more tree deaths in the future?