How do different forms of pollution including increased nutrients and changes in the trophic dynamics of marine ecosystems affect the oceans ability to regulate climate?

Oceans are the key driver of climate change globally, yet pollution into marine and coastal waters continues as does over-exploitation – if we are to address all of these issues in an integrated way, then we need to know how these activities impact on climate change processes now and in the future.

How can we understand and best manage the feedbacks between (a) the growth and closer integration of the global economy and (b) changes in the biosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere?

While it is important to understand environmental changes that are independent of human behavior, the most fundamental research questions facing us concern the large-scale environmental changes induced by human behavior, and that in turn induce an alteration in that behavior. These are the changes over which human societies have some control. The sustainability of global demographic and economic change depends on this set of feedbacks.

Demographic and economic changes have multiple and interconnected environmental impacts, but our understanding of these impacts is typically partial. The global change research programs, for example, tend to address subsets of impacts. At the same time human adaptation to environmental change tends to be problem specific – focusing separately on, for example, climate, biodiversity or disease risks. Understanding the interconnections between environmental changes and human responses to those changes is critical to the development of management strategies at the appropriate scale. It requires a research effort that spans the global change programs, and that embeds the adaptation and mitigation strategies adopted by human societies within that research effort.

Can we quantify the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) as a function of space and time?

The MOC moves 90% of the heat and dissolved gases around the planet yet it is very poorly quantified in space and time.

The MOC is changing markedly as the drivers in the polar regions change ever faster (sea ice formation, ice-shelf distribution, temperature and salinity changes etc.).

Understanding and quantification is very low at present, partly because it has been very difficult and expensive to measure but new technology provides important new opportunities to establish an appropriate long term monitoring network. Data from such a global network would offer fundamental improvements to models and hence increase the accuracy of projections.

Is a direct carbon tax the best way of reducing the carbon footprints of individuals, compared with more indirect taxes?

Direct taxation of the critical issue. Do we give subsidies (see UN-EP on feedback on subsidies) to essential transport activities. Such a tax could be used to subsidise other ecological activities.

Pr Michael Spedding,
Deputy Director Research,
Chairman NC-IUPHAR,
Experimental Sciences
Institute of Research Servier
11 Rue des Moulineaux
92150 Suresnes
France; michael.spedding@fr.netgrs.com

What are the consequences of land cover and land use change for human societies and the sustainability of ecosystems?

The environment of the Earth has many close connections and relationships with human activity. It is also now more widely recognized that a profound transformation of the Earth’s environment is taking place and that many of these changes are the result of human action. Growing world population and increasing wealth are driving demands for more food production. Croplands and pastures occupies today roughly 40% of the land surface and global land cover and is according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) the main modification humanity makes to land cover, and therefore a main driver of ecological change, and biodiversity loss at the global scale.

Current trends in land use allow humans to appropriate an ever-larger fraction of the biosphere’s goods and services while simultaneously diminishing the capacity of global ecosystems to sustain food production, maintain freshwater and forest resources, regulate climate and air quality, and mediate infectious diseases…
Modern landuse practices, while increasing the short-term supplies of material goods, may undermine many ecosystem services in the long run, even on regional and global scales. Confronting the global environmental challenges of land use will require assessing and managing inherent trade-offs between meeting immediate human needs and maintaining the capacity of ecosystems to provide goods and services in the future. Assessments of trade-offs must recognize that land use provides crucial social and economic benefits, even while leading to possible long-term declines in human welfare through altered ecosystem functioning.
…

How can we rapidly develop carbon negative energy systems and deploy them globally?

Sub-questions: What options for carbon negativity are there? What are the thermodynamic limitations on the various carbon negative alternatives? How can we break the linkage of large grants going to unproductive and ineffective entities? How can small farmers become the engine for carbon negativity that Sir James Lovelock suggests they must? Are there alternatives to the current IPO model for this kind of development cycle? What are the real time constraints for effective activity in the carbon negative arena? How can we explain these constraints to the general public?

Sir James Lovelock has identified the apparent only real carbon negative energy opportunity – processing organic residues into stable biochar and using that char as a soil enhancement near where the residues occur globally and enabling small farmers to profit from this activity. He has not connected this to distributed energy generation and there are many factors that would benefit from both rapid documentation and codification for global use. The recent changes in Arctic thermal profiles raise serious questions about how long we really have to react. There is no question that lowering the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere can only be accomplished with either massive reduction of emissions for an extended period so that normal carbon negative processes can catch up with the past emissions or we will have to find ways of accelerating the removal of CO2 with thermodynamically beneficial systems. What alternatives do we really have?

At the same time we need to also put in place a series of practices that will be stable over the long haul – ie: they must become sustainable. It appears that Sir James has hit on a realistic possibility to do many of these things at once, and he has seen that the normal corporate practice of enriching a few by doing things that we all should be doing for ourselves is no longer a tenable solution. How do we get to real sustainable practices in time to do things right?

What is the role of ground temperature change in earth system processes?

The earth system is a dynamic system encompassing interactions across atmosphere, oceans, and lands. In principle, all the interactions involve energy exchange that is accompanied by a temperature variation. Tremendous efforts have been devoted to understand the causes and consequences of temperature changes in the atmosphere and oceans. In comparison, very little has been done to address the role of ground temperature in earth system and climate change. It has been recognized that subsurface temperature records represent an important archive of global climate change. Recent studies show that subsurface temperature could affect soil respiration, and hence greenhouse gas fluxes at the land-atmosphere interface. Seasonal ground temperature fluctuation on a regional scale is a controlling factor of monsoon. Ground water temperature might carry rich information about the deep geological and shallow environmental processes. These are just some examples illustrating the importance of a good understanding of ground temperature. However, routine temperature monitoring in soils and rocks are not only sparse, but also made mostly for other original objectives rather than weather/climate research. I propose continued and coordinated long-term subsurface temperature monitoring on regional and global scales to foster both fundamental science and practical application of climate system research.

How will agricultural biodiversity losses predicted by climate change impact agriculture, rural development and food security?

Agricultural biodiversity (agrobiodiversity) as an important component of biodiversity provides a number of benefits associated with production and productivity, agro-ecosystem function, and human well-being. At the same time it is well known that the climate change will be the main driver of loss of biodiversity in general and of agrobiodiversity in particular. This impact will be different for the different components of agricultural biodiversity. Thus the undertaking predictive modelling of impact of possible losses and distribution of agricultural biodiversity most important to food security on agriculture and rural development will significantly contribute to address food security needs in face of global warming.

What are the heat content and net thermal flux of the ocean basins, and how are they changing over time?

The answers are necessary for accurate climate modeling. The difficulty will be the expense of placing and monitoring the large number of sensors required (at least tens of thousands, perhaps many more).

What is the magnitude of climate change in a given micro ecosystem? And by what magnitude does it change every 25 years

Macro climates of the world are made up of micro climates. The small variations eventually result in the major change. A given country may have different micro ecosystems. Different micro ecosystems are habitats to different plants and animals. What is the size of the change in there ecosystems?