Tag: Carbon Sink

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Our behaviour may be still pushing the Northern right whale to extinction – entanglements may use as much energy as rearing all young

The Northern right whale was hunted to the brink of extinction – with less than 500 left when hunting ended. To put this in perspective, only 300 Southern right whales were left when hunting stopped, it is thought that there are now 3000-4000 Southern right whales.

Now, it is true that historically the Southern right whale is thought to have numbered as 55,000-70,000 individuals, suggesting that the current population is 3-5% of historic numbers.

However, the current estimate for the Northern right whale population is 386. While has the Southern right whale population grown over 1000%, and in the same time, the northern right whale population declined?

What is different?

Continue reading “Our behaviour may be still pushing the Northern right whale to extinction – entanglements may use as much energy as rearing all young”
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Another report stresses the importance of rewilding for climate change, and reintroductions

A report has calculated that the reintroduction of 9 species would do so much benefit to the ecosystems that they are found in, that these reintroductions would help us to keep global warming to 1.5° C.

While some of these would require human adaption, many would have benefits far beyond climate change.

These species are

Continue reading “Another report stresses the importance of rewilding for climate change, and reintroductions”
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Is one of our carbon sinks less reliable than we thought?

The human race has been emitting carbon at an extreme rate for several centuries. Before we started burning things for the energy locked up inside them, the worlds carbon sinks and its carbon taps were in relatively stable harmony. For long periods of the earths existence, carbon absorbed by plants equalled the carbon emitted by breathing and volcano eruptions among other sources.

There are a variety of other carbon sinks. The earths oceans absorb carbon, while they can absorb huge quantities of carbon, this acidifies the water, which means that we dont want to rely on that to to great an impact.

Continue reading “Is one of our carbon sinks less reliable than we thought?”
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Do we want to oceans to operate as a carbon sink? Then stop overexploitation

Through a number of different processes oceans can be a significant carbon sink. An increase in the carbon content of water does acidify it so this is not something we are interested in, but in healthy seas there is a great deal of plankton and that plankton does absorb carbon dioxide. It is furthermore believed that some of this carbon, locked away buy plankton, may actually make it to the ocean floor to be locked away long term at least in part. Indeed it is thought that carbon dioxide concentrations would be at least 50% higher wear it not for this part of the carbon cycle.

Continue reading “Do we want to oceans to operate as a carbon sink? Then stop overexploitation”
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Forest elephants make a significant difference to the amount of Carbon that trees hold

It is only in the last couple of decades that genetic research was done to find the forest elephants of Africa are a completely different species to the bush elephants found out on the Savanna – which is the species most people see. Talking about these elephant species, bare in mind that the forest elephant has been shown to be more closely related to the mammoth than to the African Savanna elephant. 

Continue reading “Forest elephants make a significant difference to the amount of Carbon that trees hold”
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