The Amazon rainforest is now emitting more carbon dioxide than it is able to absorb, scientists have confirmed for the first time.

The emissions amount to a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, according to a study. The giant forest had previously been a carbon sink, absorbing the emissions driving the climate crisis, but is now causing its acceleration, researchers said.

Most of the emissions are caused by fires, many deliberately set to clear land for beef and soy production. But even without fires, hotter temperatures and droughts mean the south-eastern Amazon has become a source of CO2, rather than a sink.

Growing trees and plants have taken up about a quarter of all fossil fuel emissions since 1960, with the Amazon playing a major role as the largest tropical forest. Losing the Amazon’s power to capture CO2 is a stark warning that slashing emissions from fossil fuels is more urgent than ever, scientists said.

Read more via The Guardian

We are delighted to welcome a new 1% For The Planet donor, NONA!

If you’ve had a browse of our SHiFT platform, you’ll know that there are hundreds of solutions to the plastics problem…and clothespin brand NONA has come up with a brilliant new way to keep plastic from the ocean! Every day you make choices. Small choices that support your values. Small choices that build a life you want to live. Small choices that define you. The choices you make every day, no matter how small, become the foundation of your world.

NONA’s mission is to reduce ocean plastic by producing well designed, durable everyday products. The ocean plastic they use is sourced as a result of an interception program in place across various ports that reimburses fishermen for worn-out fishing gear. By choosing to use NONA clothespins you help to support the circular economies dedicated to intercepting plastic, before it enters the ocean. Made to high environmental and ethical standards in the UK from discarded fishing nets, the NONA Recycled Ocean Plastic Clothespin supports fishing communities and marine ecosystems. NONA’s ultra-durable, recycled ocean plastic clothespins are not only preventatively eco-friendly and socially responsible, but it’s sturdy, mono-form shape is practically unbreakable meaning it will do what all good products should do. Last.

Read more here exxpedition.com

Climate disaster could be curtailed within a couple of decades if net zero emissions are reached, new study shows

The world may be barreling towards climate disaster but rapidly eliminating planet-heating emissions means global temperatures could stabilize within just a couple of decades, scientists say.

For many years it was assumed that further global heating would be locked in for generations even if emissions were rapidly cut. Climate models run by scientists on future temperatures were based on a certain carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. If this remained at the current high level there would be runaway climate disaster, with temperatures continuing to rise even if emissions were reduced because of a lag time before greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere.

But more recent understanding of the implications of getting to net zero emissions is giving hope that the warming could be more swiftly curtailed.

More than 100 countries have pledged to get to net zero by 2050, which means they will emit no more carbon dioxide than is removed from the atmosphere by, for example, restoring forests. The UK, Japan and the European Union have set this net zero target and will soon be joined by the US under Joe Biden’s new administration.

Should this be achieved globally, “surface temperatures stop warming and warming stabilizes within a couple decades,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University. “What this really means is that our actions have a direct and immediate impact on surface warming. It grants us agency, which is part of why it is so important to communicate this current best scientific understanding.”

Read more on The Guardian

An international team of researchers has found that the combined environmental threat of plastic pollution and ocean acidification are having significant impacts on species living in our oceans.

The study, published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, found that after three weeks of being submerged in the ocean, the bacterial diversity on plastic bottles was twice as great as on samples collected from the surrounding seawater.

However, in areas of elevated carbon dioxide, a large number of taxonomic groups - including bacteria that play an important role in carbon cycling - were negatively impacted.

Read more

We were all barefoot and salty.

It’s a comforting combination that is usually only available when near the ocean. The wind was relentless but after a few days at sea on board the S.V. TravelEdge with eXXpedition, the sun crept out from behind the ribbons of cloud that formed over the Azores. I squinted, brushed at the salt crystals that had formed on my jacket and boots and felt warmth on my face for the first time since leaving land. I closed my eyes to embrace the sense of calm that had eluded us for so long.

I’ve found sailing to be one of the best ways to experience nature, and it is a pursuit that I have devoted my life to. The ever-changing nature of the ocean environment has provided me with constant entertainment. Chartering the shallows was never enough and my horizons exploded when I first left the shore to explore the open ocean. Here was when the seed was planted. The ocean tested me and pushed me out of my comfort zone. There have been many nights at sea when I’ve questioned my decisions while trying to get some rest. But it was here that I learnt to respect the ocean. The intensity of the love/hate relationship I have formed has influenced almost all of my decisions to date. My perspective changed as I witnessed first-hand the damage our ocean suffers. My playground had become diseased – plastic has spread on a global scale causing suffering for millions of people and animals around the world.

Read more via oceanographic

Up to one million tonnes of fishing gear is left in the ocean each year, creating “deadly” debris for marine mammals, seabirds and sea turtles, conservationists have warned.

The WWF has said “ghost gear” of lost, abandoned or broken nets, lines and ropes makes up at least 10 per cent of marine litter and is the most likely type of plastic debris to prove fatal to marine wildlife.

The wildlife charity warned in a report on the issue that ghost gear was also damaging valuable sea habitats and tourism spots, with the debris continuing to catch fish long after it had been lost.

WWF has called on more governments to join leaders from 40 countries who are supporting a UN treaty on marine plastic pollution and called for more work to control ghost gear.

Read more via The Independent

More than 10 times as much plastic has been found in the Atlantic ocean than previously estimated to be there, showing the the world’s plastic problem is likely to be much greater than realised.

New measurements of the top 200m of the Atlantic found between 12 and 21 million tonnes of microscopic particles of three of the most common types of plastic, in about 5% of the ocean. That would indicate a concentration in the Atlantic of about 200 million tonnes of these common plastics.

Previous estimates, based on calculations of the amount of mismanaged municipal waste in coastal areas, were that between 17 million and 47 million tonnes of plastic had been released into the Atlantic in total over the 65 years from 1950 to 2015.

Read on via The Guardian

Microplastic and nanoplastic particles are now discoverable in human organs thanks to a new technique.

Microplastics have polluted the entire planet, from Arctic snow and Alpine soils to the deepest oceans. People are also known to consume them via foodand water, and to breathe them in, but the potential impact on human health is not yet known.

The researchers expect to find the particles in human organs and have identified chemical traces of plastic in tissue. But isolating and characterising such minuscule fragments is difficult, and contamination from plastics in the air is also a challenge.

Read on via The Guardian

Another bottle. Yet another one. We are 200km from land, in the middle of the South Pacific, and this is the third bottle we’ve found already this morning.

Everywhere is plastic.

The plastic we use unthinkingly every single day, the plastic we throw away without a moment’s thought, it lives on, and on. Out here. Where it is killing our planet, killing our sea life, and, slowly but surely, killing us.

I am here as part of a team of researchers from the University of the South Pacific collecting seawater samples far removed from any human habitation.

My goal is to compare offshore concentrations of microplastics with those closer to shore. My hope is to put in place another piece in the Pacific puzzle.

Read on via The Guardian

The Maldives archipelago in the Indian Ocean includes 1,192 islands. In 1992, the government added one more—an artificial construct that serves as a landfill, where 500 tons of trash are dumped every day.

Two truisms of island-living everywhere are especially true in the Maldives: Most consumer goods must be shipped in, and most waste is produced by tourists. In the Maldives, a developing nation that lacks much local manufacturing, a single tourist produces almost twice as much trash per day as a resident of the capital city of Malé, and five times as much as residents of the other 200 populated islands, according to government statistics. Consequently, the tiny island nation was ranked last year as the world’s fourth largest producer per capita of mismanaged waste.

Now marine scientists at Flinders University, near Adelaide, Australia, have added another, predictable statistic to the Maldives’ trash horror story: The island chain, renowned for its rich marine biodiversity, is also home to the world’s highest levels of microplastics on its beaches and in the waters near shore.

Read on via National Geographic