This is the ecological modernization idea for saving rainforests we were unable to watch in class:
"Willie Smits restores a rainforest"
http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html (20 min)
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The below relates to this week's topic of politicized materials as one rationale why we see the above solutions only rarely...despite many solutions for ecological modernization existing for all manners of environmental and economic problems.
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Ecological Modernization Success Story in Spain (and Political Consumptive Infrastructural Change in Spain)
3. Spain gets 45% of its electricity from wind power, now. (Meanwhile, the U.S. gets around 55% of its energy from coal, and little change in the oil regime at all.)
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Spain reaches new wind record: 45.1% of Spain’s total electricity demand
08 de noviembre de 2009
Wind energy in Spain reached a new record last night, providing at its peak 45.1% of Spain’s total electricity demand – 2.1% greater than the previous record set in November last year.
Spain reaches new wind record: 45.1% of Spain’s total electricity demand
Spanish electricity grid, Red Eléctrica, said that today’s record is a first since it was sustained over several hours during last night. Between 00.40 and 06.20 on 5 November wind met over 40% of electricity demand.
“There have been several peaks over 40% in Spain, but this new one – lasting nearly six hours compared to around one hour the previous time - shows the huge part that wind can play in meeting Spain’s electricity demand,” Jacopo Moccia, regulatory affairs adviser for EWEA said.
The surge in wind power last night triggered water pumping stations which transport water into reservoirs. This store of water will then be released over the day generating electricity via water turbines at times of peak demand.
The Spanish Wind Energy Association said the sustained peak in wind powered electricity production proves that “wind energy is no longer marginal”. By 2020 Spain is expected to double its wind-power producing capacity from the current level of 16 gigawatts to 40 GW. “With this expected growth in capacity we could envisage wind meeting the vast majority of demand during times of peak supply by 2020,” Moccia said.
On average throughout the year, wind energy meets 12% of Spain’s electricity demand. The largest producer of wind power in Spain is Iberdrola, with 27 percent of capacity, followed by Acciona on 16 percent and Endesa with 10 percent. Spain's wind farms are on track to meet a government target of 20,000 MW in capacity by 2010.
Installed wind capacity in Spain reached 16,740 MW in 2008 with the addition of 1,609 MW. Expectations for the Spanish wind energy industry for 2009 are very high, with 18,500 MW of total capacity will be installed.
The wind sector expected this growth after the 3,500-MW increase in 2007, a special year in which companies made an effort to start up the greatest number of wind farms so they could benefit from the previous support system. The total of 16,740 MW establishes Spain as the third country in the world in terms of installed capacity and will allow the 2010 objective (20,155 MW set by the Renewable Energies Plan 2005–2010) to be reached.
The addition of 1,609 MW in 2008 is an increase of 10.63%, the third highest increase in absolute terms in the short history of wind energy in Spain. The only higher annual increases were in 2007 (3,505 MW or 30%) and 2004 (2,297.51 MW or 37%).
Electrical energy demand in 2008 was 266,485 GWh, a growth of 1.21% over 2007. Wind energy met 11% of this demand and was the fourth largest contributing technology in the generation system, besting hydropower (7% of demand). The other contributors to the system were gas combined-cycle power plants (32% of total demand), nuclear power plants (20%), and coal power plants (16%).
On several occasions in 2008, wind energy covered more than 40% of hourly demand, and for several days it supplied more than 30% of daily electricity demand. For instance, on November 24, wind energy supplied more than 35% of the total electricity demand. And on several occasions, production of wind energy reached more than 40% of hourly demand.
Wind energy in Spain has also emerged as a driving force for industrial development. In 2008, investment was more than 2,250 million €, and about 50% of Spanish wind energy equipment production is dedicated to the export market. According to the “Macroeconomic Study on the Impact of the Wind Energy Sector in Spain,” the number of jobs related to wind power reached more than 40,000 in 2008. Of this total, the number of direct jobs in operation and maintenance of wind farms, manufacturing, assembly, research, and development is estimated at more than 21,800. The number of indirect jobs (linked mainly to components) is estimated to be more than 17,000.
The industrial sector participating in the Asociación Empresarial Eólica, or (Spanish Wind Energy Association) has established a new objective of 40,000 MW for 2020. Use of wind power has lowered CO2 emissions by about 18 million tons just during 2008. Furthermore, wind generation has saved up to 6 million tons of conventional fuels. Wind production has supplied the electrical consumption of more than 10 million households.
Gamesa installed more than 50% of new capacity, according to the Spanish Wind Energy Association’s Wind Observatory, with more than 9,480 MW (including the subsidiary company MADE) in Spain, which consolidates its leadership among manufacturers. VESTAS, the second largest manufacturer, installed more than 15% of new capacity in 2008, adding 242.2 MW.
www.ewea.org/
www.aeeolica.es/en/
demanda.ree.es/eolica.html
TAGS: AEE, Asociación Empresarial Eólica, wind energy, Spain, wind power, Spanish Wind Energy Association
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http://www.evwind.es/noticias.php?id_not=2148
Anna Maislinger
ReplyDelete"My year of living without money"
The following article caught my attention. “My year of living without money” is about a man who decided to give up money. He’s talking about his thoughts and his challenging experiment. To me it seemed to be impossible to live without money these days, but this man actually shows that I was wrong.
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The first step in the process was to find a form of sustainable shelter. For this I turned to the amazing project Freecycle, through which I located a caravan that someone else didn't want any more. I also needed somewhere to put this new home, so I decided to volunteer three days a week at an organic farm near Bristol in return for a place to park my caravan. Had I equated this in terms of my previous salary, it would be like paying penthouse apartment rent for what was effectively a little tin box. But that was the type of thinking I was now trying to get away from.
Having no means of paying bills, the next challenge was to set this home up to be off-grid. For heating I installed a wood-burner I'd converted from an old gas bottle, using a flue pipe I had salvaged from the skip. I fuelled it using wood from trees we coppiced on the farm, meaning fuel miles became fuel metres.
A local member of the Freeconomy Community (the alternative economy which I founded in 2007), then showed me how to make a "rocket stove" from a couple of old olive oil catering tins that were destined for landfill. This meant that for the next 12 months, I was going to have to cook outside […] surprisingly, it has become one of the joys of my life.
[...] Birds in the trees around my kitchen became my new iPod, and observing wildlife taught me much more about nature than any documentary I'd seen on the television.
The one thing I did spend money on (about £360) before beginning the experiment was a solar panel to supply me with enough electricity for a light, my laptop and my phone (on which I could only receive calls). Solar isn't ideal because of the embodied energy involved, but at the start of what might be a lifelong journey, I couldn't expect everything to be perfect straightaway. And the solar panel has always provided me with light – although in winter my phone and laptop time were severely restricted (frustrating, but only because my expectations were based on having infinite energy at the touch of a button).
The last piece of my off-grid puzzle was a compost toilet. This should really be the symbol of the entire sustainably living movement, in the way the spinning wheel became a symbol of Swadeshi in India. Representing sanity and a respect for the earth, I made my alternative loo out of old pallets from a nearby hardware store. As I can no longer buy toilet roll, I relieve the local Bristol newsagents of some of the newspapers that fill their bins every day, and use them instead. It's not double-quilted but it quickly seems normal, and I even used a story about myself once . . .
I wash in a river or under a solar shower (better in the summer), and rarely use soap, but if I do I go for home-grown soapwort. For toothpaste I use a mixture of cuttlefish bone, which gets washed up on the UK's shores, and wild fennel seeds.
Food was my only other real necessity: I think of there being four legs to the food-for-free "table". Growing your own, which is obviously what I've been doing here on the organic farm; wild food foraging, which is nutritionally exceptional and beautifully gentle on the environment; and also securing waste food and other goods from local restaurants and shops. This is an incredible resource to draw on, and although its existence is, of course, dependent on industrialised society, I feel like I have an obligation to consume it before using up any more energy producing food.
[...]
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/mark-boyle-money
1. Mark Whitaker
ReplyDelete2. The flu vaccine as a political infrastructure
3. Think its just a neutrally imposed vaccine accepted equally by all? Not in Canada, where there is science that is causing some institutions once allied to the flow of the vaccine to question its effectiveness. Different provinces in the same countries start to have different sociological sponsorship of the same vaccine. This is an object lesson on how materials are socially animated, politically.
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Why is Canada Changing Its Flu Vaccine Policy?
Posted by: Dr. Mercola
November 10 2009 | 127,522 views
Many countries are pouring millions into orders for swine flu vaccine from pharmaceutical companies. But one country is taking a different approach.
The Irish Independent reports that some Canadian provinces have suspended the 'normal' seasonal flu shots for anyone under 65 in response to a recent study there. However, the vaccine suspensions do not apply for people over 65. [though other things I have read shows it doesn't really have any proven effectiveness on people above that age anyway...]
The study suggests that people vaccinated against seasonal flu are actually twice as likely to catch swine flu.
But plans vary across the provinces of Canada. Last month, British Columbia announced it is suspending seasonal flu shots for anyone under 65 years old, joining Quebec, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia in halting the immunizations.
Quebec's Health Ministry announced it would postpone vaccinations until January, clearing the autumn months for health professionals to focus on vaccinating against H1N1, which is expected to the more severe influenza strain this season.
"By the time the H1N1 wave is over, there will be ample time to vaccinate for seasonal flu," said Dr. Ethan Rubinstein, head of adult infectious diseases at the University of Manitoba.
Other provinces, including Manitoba, are still pondering a response to the research. New Brunswick, one of the lone holdouts, made an announcement in September that it would forge ahead with seasonal flu shots for all residents in October, as originally planned.
Yet according to an even more recent posting by PreventDisease.com, some provinces are still recommending co-administration of both vaccines in as little as 60 days, according to a staggered schedule.
An international panel is currently scrutinising the controversial study's data. Dr Ethan Rubinstein, who has read the study, said it appeared sound.
"There are a large number of authors, all of them excellent and credible researchers," he said. "The sample size is very large, at 12 or 13 million people."
...
... (continued) [on the issue of different raw material sets of solutions, in the category of medicine]
ReplyDeleteIt was back in 1981 that R. Edgar Hope Simpson proposed that a principal cause of seasonal influenza is linked with the deficiency of solar radiation which triggers the production of vitamin D in the skin. Vitamin D deficiency is common in the winter, and vitamin D is crucial in allowing your immune system to defend itself against invading organisms.
In addition to vitamin D, studies have suggested that people who exercise moderately suffer fewer and less severe colds and flu infections.
In a new study, researchers found that when they had a group of mice regularly run on a treadmill over 3.5 months, the animals developed less-severe symptoms when infected with the flu virus.
Additionally, mice that exercised right before flu infection, but not regularly over the preceding months, also showed some protection against severe symptoms -- which in mice means dampened appetite and weight loss. Those benefits, however, were only apparent in the couple days after infection, whereas regular long-term exercise reduced flu symptoms over the whole course of infection.
Sources:
Independent.ie October 26, 2009
Homeland1.com September 29, 2009
CBS News September 25, 2009
PreventDisease.com October 26, 2009
Reuters October 23, 2009
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http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/10/
Canadian-Provinces-Suspend-Seasonal-Flu-Shots-and-Recommend-Vitamin-D.aspx
Nicole Niedermeier
ReplyDelete„Green fuel“
This article is about one so called green fuel – ethanol. An alcohol based fuel that is derived from fermenting and distilling crops that are broken down into simple sugar. But this production has really shady sides. Ethanol is mainly produced with coal power, which is one of the dirtiest forms of energy which heavily pollutes the air. So how can this fuel can be called “green”? Furthermore do these ethanol plants excessively pollute by sewing out chemicals that are dangerous to the environment and are known as cancer causes. It is a necessary idea to try to move away from oil dependence but doing such things is substituting one form of dirty fuel with another.
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“What is green fuel and why is it surrounded by so much controversy recently? Isn't it touted as the answer to all our gas price dilemmas?”
“Ethanol fuel is mainly produced in the U.S. by a company called Archer Daniels Midland- an agricultural giant with lots of experience.
The issue seems to be that ethanol produced by this company is partially produced with coal power, which is one of the dirtiest forms of energy. Green activists wonder why the air is being polluted to make what has been hailed as a clean fuel. The EPA has even had to get involved in recent years to tighten down restrictions on these ethanol plants that are excessively polluting by spewing out chemicals that are dangerous to the environment, and known to cause cancer.”
“Many companies insist that they are looking for cleaner methods to produce ethanol, but in 2004, one ethanol plant in Iowa produced 200 times the level of what the EPA terms as a "major source of pollution".”
“So where does our country stand? What are we doing to find independence from oil? Are we radically increasing our budget for alternative energy? Not much (..) enough is enough, we need innovation and the American spirit that our country seems to have lost.”
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http://www.energyrefuge.com/archives/green-fuel.htm
Alexandra Vorobyova
ReplyDeleteCan Geoengineering Help Slow Global Warming?
This is an interesting article from Time Magazine's site, about how we can use Geoengineering to SOLVE the problems we created due to... geoengineering. It seems a bit counter-intuitive to me, but I think it can potentially be interesting and productive, as long as certain limits are observed and the people in charge of these projects abide to worldwide conventions and rules. I believe that the main problem is that the geoengineers don't think on a long-term basis; they just want to solve the problems as quickly as possible, not thinking about the repercussions in the long run. But the solutions provided by this article (to reduce global warming with sulfur) seem to be viable enough, and hopefully promising on a long-term basis as well.
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"There are a number of potential approaches to geoengineering, but the most popular ones focus on controlling the amount of solar radiation that reaches the earth's surface. Climate — in its simplest terms — is the rough relationship between the amount of solar energy that strikes the earth and the amount that is retained by the atmosphere, as opposed to being radiated or reflected back into space. In this sense, the greenhouse effect is not all bad. Without a little bit of it, the earth would be a cold, dead place, with an average temperature as low as -0.4°F. Unfortunately, by adding CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, we have, in a sense, thrown another quilt on the planet when we were perfectly comfortable to begin with.
One way to turn down the thermostat would be to spread sulfur particles into the atmosphere, either through artillery or with airplanes, thickening the air enough so that it would bounce some sunlight back. We know that process does reduce global temperatures: when Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted in 1991, it threw millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, causing global temperatures over the following months to drop by nearly 1°F. Geoengineering would work much the same way — only it would need to be done continuously, to keep up with the intensifying greenhouse effect."
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http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1916965,00.html
Greetings from Hong Kong.
ReplyDeleteChristoffer Grønlund
Poor nations vow low-carbon path
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This article shows (to me at least) initiative for making things change. The fact that it is some of the poorest countries in the world, that is pro-active concerning Co2 is both surprising and wonderful to me since these has so many other troubling issues at hand.
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Poor countries considered vulnerable to climate change have pledged to embark on moves to a low-carbon future, and challenge richer states to match them.
The declaration from the first meeting of a new 11-nation forum calls on rich countries to give 1.5% of their GDP for climate action in the developing world.
It also calls for much tougher limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
The forum was established by Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed to highlight the climate "threat" to poor nations.
The declaration contends that man-made climate change poses an "existential threat to our nations, our cultures and to our way of life, and thereby undermines the internationally protected human rights of our people".
There is another reality that trumps domestic political realities
Saleemul Huq, IIED
Copenhagen: Where they stand
The Maldives are threatened principally by rising sea levels, as are other other nations within the Climate Vulnerable Forum (V11) such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and the Pacific island of Kiribati.
President Nasheed recently held a cabinet meeting underwater to highlight the issue.
The forum also includes nations likely to be impacted by melting glaciers essential to freshwater supplies (Bhutan and Nepal) and by drought (Kenya and Tanzania).
Domestic row
The V11 declaration is in part an appeal for richer nations to promise more at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen next month, which is supposed to agree a new global treaty on climate change.
Whereas a loose consensus has emerged around the idea of limiting greenhouse gas concentrations to the equivalent of 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide, this group thinks that is too much and calls for a target of 350ppm.
The forum's members also think they will feel impacts so sharply - perhaps rendering some countries uninhabitable - that the west has a duty to pay more substantial sums of money than are currently on the negotiating table for Copenhagen.
They want rich nations to pledge 1.5% of their GDP, as well as meeting the widely accepted target for aid of 0.7% of GDP.
Many poor countries maintain that in the run-up to Copenhagen, rich governments are paying more attention to their domestic political concerns than to the international implications of their decisions.
"The key message to rich countries is that what seems like them to be a domestic political difficulty is for the vulnerable nations an existential problem," said Saleemul Huq, senior fellow in climate change at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), which gave technical support to the Maldives meeting.
"They're saying 'getting a good deal for us means survival, but you seem to be coming to the table only with what's feasible domestically' - and there is another reality that trumps domestic political realities," he told BBC News.
The declaration commits the 11 signatory nations to a goal of carbon neutrality, even though their collective carbon emissions are a tiny fraction of the global total.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8354872.stm
Sam Wijnants
ReplyDeleteSince about 2005, West African nation of Guinea-Bissau has become a key hub for drug traffickers who move cocaine from South America, especially Colombia, to Europe. The country's extreme poverty, corrupt bureaucracy and relative proximity to South America — only five days by boat — make it especially vulnerable to the cartels that control the flow of the drug. The volume of drugs passing through the tiny coastal nation has multiplied many times over since the cartels arrived. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that a quarter of all cocaine consumed in Western Europe — worth $18 billion on the streets — passes through West Africa, most of it via Guinea-Bissau. With the drugs and money have come an extraordinarily rapid rise in violent crime. Since about 2007, abductions, murders and threats have become commonplace in a country where internationally organized crime was unknown before. In the conclusion of the article, the author emphasizes the problem by addressing the problem in a long term as well to our society: “In a globalized world we are living in, not even remote and usually forgotten Guinea Bissau is immune from its negative forces. In the end the solution to the narcotics problem in Guinea Bissau lies in making the country a viable and prosperous state were its people have the minimum of hope. If the world, particularly the develop world fails to address this issue, the globalized nature of our world society will ensure that Guinea Bissau’s problems will soon be knocking at our doors, as the children of Europe have their life’s ruined.”
Sam Wijnants (part II)
ReplyDeleteIn the West coast of Africa sandwich between Senegal to the North and Guinea Conakry to the South is the small and impoverished nation of Guinea Bissau. Nino Vieira ruled as President for 18 years until a military rebellion in 1998 put an end to his regime. The desperate situation of the country and the inability of Nino Vieira’s successors to address the most basic needs of the people created the necessary conditions for the return of Vieira as President in 2005. However, the country remains one of the 10 poorest nations in the world.
Consequences of the civil war and resulting instability was the collapse of most government institutions. The judicial system is completely none existent with judges and other legal stuff being paid miserably and most of the infrastructure such as court buildings and prisons still lie in ruins. The army plagued by internal strife and personal and tribal loyalties is more a collection of various warlords than a real national military institution. Guinea Bissau is defenseless for the storm that lays a head.
A state with no ability to protect its territory, a struggling economy, no policy force to speak of and an overbearing and corrupt military is the ideal place for narco traffickers and other criminal elements to run their illicitly activities. Apart from the fragility of the state, Guinea Bissau as attracted the attention of the Colombian drug cartels due to its proximity to Europe. The cartels have in the past three years been using the country as a major transit point in the illicitly cocaine trade between Latin America and Europe. To transfer drugs from South America to Europe is a major logistic operation that involves crossing the entire length of the Atlantic Ocean with the risk of early interception due to the long period at sea allowing authorities to monitor ships and apprehend them once they near Europe.
Conclusion
Abject poverty, state collapse, lack of means and endemic corruption have made Guinea Bissau a heaven for the Colombian drug lords. In a globalized world we leave in, not even remote and usually forgotten Guinea Bissau is immune from its negative forces. In the end the solution to the narcotics problem in Guinea Bissau lies in making the country a viable and prosperous state were its people have the minimum of hope. If the world, particularly the develop world fails to address this issue, the globalized nature of our world society will ensure that Guinea Bissau’s problems will soon be knocking at our doors, as the children of Europe have their life’s ruined. At the time of this writing Guinea Bissau’s problems are already spilling into neighboring Senegal, Guinea, Conakry and Mauritania.
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http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/guinbisauhorta.html
See also for some striking pictures:
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1933291_1975637,00.html
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteYoung Han
ReplyDeleteCan they handle electric cars?
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This is a sort of extension to the film what we watched. Nashville seems to be a targeted city to be a focal point for electric vehicles as some of the car manufacturer are coming up with new electric cars that are managed solely by electricity. Also, the state is implanting a program that would help Nashville to be a prominent city with infrastructres that electric cars will require such as charging stations, etc.
However, there are still some obstacles that they have to overcome. One of the biggest is that they are still not sure weather their electric capacity is large enough to hold all the households that would be charging their cars. They said it is a major headache, but they are going to get there.Electric cars don't necessarily mean that there is no pollution involved, because our social infrastructure still leaves us with only choice of using fuel burning energy plants, however, they also say switching to electric cars will reduce air pollution by 30 percent.
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But getting to the point where electric vehicles are common will take time and work, said Joe Hoagland, TVA's vice president for environmental policy, science and technology.
"If every one of us had a car or two in the garage that was charging every night, could that be handled?" Hoagland said. "I'm not sure."
A slow charge on a vehicle, referred to as trickle charging, wouldn't be a problem. But if people wanted to fast charge at the same time — pulling more power than a house could handle — transformers could blow.
Many environmentalists are opposed to burning coal to generate electricity, but they say battery-powered cars still offer a better alternative to gasoline.
Carbon dioxide emissions are about 30 percent less with an electric car than a traditional, all gas-powered car, even if the electricity is generated completely by a coal-fired power plant, Knipping said.
Overall, the benefits for electric vehicles are even larger when cleaner sources of fuel than coal are used for the electricity, Knipping said.
They increase with natural gas and can go up to a 100 percent improvement — no global warming gases — with nuclear, wind or solar power.
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http://www.tennessean.com/article/20091112/NEWS01/911120348/Electric%20cars%20face%20obstacles%20to%20consumer%20acceptance
Sujin Kwon
ReplyDelete"Plastic Roads Offer Greener Way to Travel in India"
I'm so happy to hear it. Plastic is really a big problem in India. Maybe India is not the biggest consumer of plastic in the world but the way of disposal is way lagging behind. Trash in the running train? Throw it away out of the window whatever it is. The Khan’s company now provides several great aspects of keeping India green. First they reuse plastic waste, Second plastic-mixed pavement lasts much longer than the conventional one, Third they pay great to the garbage (plastic) collectors so they will find every single plastic bottle around, Last they are actually improving India’s poor pavement system into really good one, that is water-resistant, that is necessarily needed in India in Monsoon season. I really hope the Khan’s company grows more and extends their business to other parts of India.
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Mr. Khan, 60, is trying to solve two of the biggest problems in India: battered roads and overflowing landfills. His solution: streets made with recycled plastic.
Mr. Khan’s company, K.K. Plastic Waste Management, which he founded with his brother, Rasool Khan, has built more than 1,200 kilometers, or 745 miles, of roads using 3,500 tons of plastic waste, primarily in Bangalore, India’s technology and outsourcing hub.
Mixing plastic with asphalt, Mr. Khan forms a compound called polymerized bitumen. When used in roads, it withstands monsoons and everyday wear and tear better than traditional pavement.
...
The plastic in Mr. Khan’s roads is collected by garbage collectors, who form the backbone of the Indian recycling industry. These workers collect trash from homes and offices and sort through it for material that can be sold to specialized middlemen, who sell it to recycling companies. Typically, an average garbage collector is paid less than a dollar a day, making as much as 8 rupees, or 17 cents, a kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, depending on the quality of the plastic. But Mr. Khan offers them 8 to 10 rupees a kilogram, ensuring a steady supply. With the help of the Bangalore government, he is also setting up collection points in residential areas.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/business/global/14plastic.html?pagewanted=1&ref=energy-environment
Hyun-deok,Park
ReplyDeleteAntarctica Glacier Retreat Creates New Carbon Dioxide Store; Has Beneficial Impact On Climate Change
The research that carbon-absorbing phyplankton is blooming as antatctica glacier melts is reported in the journal Global Change Biology.
The most interesting point in the research is this bloom is the second largest facter easing global warming following new forest growth on land in the Arctic. I sometimes have felt gloom for rapid speed of global warming and limitation of the human's struggle for nature. However after reading, I felt a little hope and really wondered how far the mysteries of nature reach at the same time.
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Reporting recently in the journal Global Change Biology, scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) estimate that this new natural 'sink' is taking an estimated 3.5 million tonnes* of carbon from the ocean and atmosphere each year.
Lead author, Professor Lloyd Peck from BAS says, "Although this is a small amount of carbon compared to global emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere it is nevertheless an important discovery. It shows nature's ability to thrive in the face of adversity. We need to factor this natural carbon-absorption into our calculations and models to predict future climate change. So far we don't know if we will see more events like this around the rest of Antarctica's coast but it's something we'll be keeping a close eye on."
Professor Peck and his colleagues compared records of coastal glacial retreat with records of the amount of chlorophyll (green plant pigment essential for photosynthesis) in the ocean. They found that over the past 50 years, melting ice has opened up at least 24,000 km2 of new open water (an area similar to the size of Wales) -- and this has been colonised by carbon-absorbing phytoplankton. According to the authors this new bloom is the second largest factor acting against climate change so far discovered on Earth (the largest is new forest growth on land in the Arctic).
Professor Peck continues, "Elsewhere in the world human activity is undermining the ability of oceans and marine ecosystems to capture and store carbon. At present, there is little change in ice shelves and coastal glaciers away from the Antarctic Peninsula, but if more Antarctic ice is lost as a result of climate change then these new blooms have the potential to be a significant biological sink for carbon."
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091109121117.htm