Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The European Parliament is supporting proposals for an emissions trading scheme for air travel. Despite the air industry's substantial contribution to global warming, the Kyoto Protocol exempted the sector from emissions reductions targets in the expectation, that has not been realised, that a voluntary scheme would be established. The European initiative will, it is hoped, curb the growth in emissions from the region's aircraft, which stood at 85 per cent between 1994 and 2004. During its initial phase, the air travel scheme will run alongside the existing European emission trading scheme.

The industry response to the proposed scheme has been mixed. British Airways supports an emissions trading scheme, preferring this approach to, for example, a tax on fuel. Sylviane Lust, director general of the International Airline Carrier Association, claims, however, that "the recommendation to set up a separate... scheme for aviation is totally unrealistic." Jos Dings of the European Federation for Transport and Environment welcomed the development. "It is high time Europe got its head out of the clouds, got the aviation sector in line with other polluters and started demanding emissions cuts," he said.

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Background

• Guardian Unlimited
• edie
• New Zealand Herald
• IACA statement
• T&E statement

• Travel emissions calculator, World Land Trust
• Aviation and the Global Atmosphere, IPCC

The increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the air is making the oceans more acidic. According to a new report from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder in the United States, the trend is "dramatically altering ocean chemistry and threatening corals and other marine organisms that secrete skeletal structures." Ken Caldeira from Stanford University reported that the ocean is more acid than it has been for "many millions of years." "What we're doing in the next decade will affect our oceans for millions of years," he said. "Carbon dioxide levels are going up extremely rapidly, and it's overwhelming our marine systems."

Christopher Langdon, from the University of Miami, has shown that corals grew half as fast in aquaria when exposed to carbon dioxide levels that might prevail by the middle of the present century. He fears that corals might not be able to survive by the end of the century. "These organisms probably don't have the adaptive ability to respond to this new onslaught," he warns. John Guinotte at the Marine Conservation Biology Institute in Redmond is concerned that plankton and marine snails may suffer. "These are groups everyone depends on, and if their numbers go down, there are going to be reverberations throughout the food chain," he said. "When I see marine snails' shells dissolving while they're alive, that's spooky."

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• Seattle Times
• Terra Daily
• ENS

• Press release, NCAR
• Download report (9Mb), NCAR

A recent study suggests that salps, transparent jellyfish-like creatures, may be carrying substantial amounts of carbon down into the ocean, limiting the rise in atmospheric concentrations. "Salps swim, feed, and produce waste continuously," according to Laurence Madin of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the United States. "They take in small packages of carbon and make them into big packages that sink fast."

In field studies in the Mid-Atlantic Bight, the researchers found that one species, Salpa aspera, multiplied into dense swarms that lasted for months. One swarm covered 100,000 square kilometres, consuming up to 74 per cent of microscopic carbon-containing plants from the surface water each day. Sinking waste then took up to 4,000 tons of carbon a day down to deep water.

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Background

• Science Daily

• Discover