Posts Tagged ‘Climate Change’
Whaling: an inconvenient truth – the hunters are not only killing whales, they are killing us too.
As we hope for an end to the coronavirus crisis, we should reflect on another existential threat – the climate change – a threat which is advancing even as we isolate ourselves at home to protect one another. One has to hope that the selfish approach of some governments to the pandemic will come to…
Read MoreEU Commission asked to do more to tackle climate change
EU Heads of State have taken the unprecedented step of asking the European Commission to propose policy options to tackle the impacts of climate change on the ocean. The move represents a significant step forward for the protection of the marine environment, and in making the ocean more resilient to face the inevitable changes it…
Read MoreFinancial worth of whales revealed
Policymakers and economists at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have placed a substantial value on the benefits of having healthy whales in the ocean. The report looks at the economic benefits whales provide to industries such as ecotourism, and also the environmental benefits (such as how much carbon they remove from the atmosphere by absorbing…
Read MoreInternational scientific congress talks whale poo
Whale poo and its contribution to marine productivity and climate change mitigation will be part of the agenda of the 28th International Congress for Conservation Biology, which opened July 23 in Cartagena, Colombia. Scientists will consider how a range of eco-friendly services provided by whales could underpin conservation decisions made by large organisastions that determine…
Read MoreWhales could help save Arctic Seed Vault
Recently, Norway announced that the entrance to the Global Seed Vault in the Arctic was flooded after very high temperatures caused the permafrost to melt. The vault, a storage facility deep inside a mountain on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, is designed to preserve the world’s crops from future disasters. The store holds seeds from c.5,000 crop…
Read MoreManaging or Recovering Leviathan
Is it time to reframe the conversation? A recent article published in Oceanography by Dr. Phillip Clapham is entitled Managing Leviathan: Conservation challenges for the great whales in a post-whaling world. In the article, Dr. Clapham reviews the history of modern whaling (i.e. industrial, commercial whaling) and its removal of nearly 3,000,000 whales in the 20th Century alone, reducing some…
Read MoreWhy whales can help save our planet – if we let them
As Icelanders spend today assessing the damage caused by last night’s “double hurricane force” winds which battered their island, and people in north west England and southern Scotland begin the grim process of mopping up after widespread flooding in the wake of Storm Desmond, few are likely to link these extreme weather events with whales…
Read MoreNew pollution study warns of drastic change to ocean food chain
The latest study into carbon dioxide emissions, and the changes in the world’s oceans that they cause, suggests that pollution could drastically transform the entire ocean food chain. The ocean absorbs about a third of the carbon dioxide emissions generated by human activity. The result is acidification which, according the study by scientists in the…
Read MoreClimate Change data versus “parallel science”- it’s time for us to face the facts
When a representative of the office of U.S. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) called to invite WDC to participate in a Congressional Briefing on climate change, we were both honored and eager to attend. Living at the Extremes: Geoscience Research at the Coolest Places on Earth, was co-sponsored by Senator Reid and Senator Ed Markey’s (D-MA)…
Read MoreIs Climate Change causing whales to relocate?
When a Gray whale was spotted off the coast of Israel in 2010 and then three weeks later off the coast of Spain (almost 2,000km away) it set the whale and dolphin community into a spin. Gray whales are considered to be extinct in the north Atlantic Ocean so where had this whale come from…
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