The rivers of South America’s Amazon basin are “breathing” far harder — cycling the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide more quickly — than anyone realized.

Most of the carbon being exhaled — or outgassed — as carbon dioxide from Amazonian rivers and wetlands has spent a mere 5 years sequestered in the trees, other plants and soils of the surrounding landscape, U.S. and Brazilian researchers report in the July 28 issue of Nature.

It had been hoped that regions such as the nearly 2.4 million-square-mile Amazon River basin — where tropical forests rapidly gulp carbon dioxide during photosynthesis — were holding onto that carbon for decades, even centuries, says Emilio Mayorga, University of Washington oceanographer and lead author of the Nature piece with Anthony Aufdenkampe of the Stroud Water Research Center in Pennsylvania.

As policy makers turn increasingly to carbon-credit trading as a means of grappling with the impacts of human-induced climate change, knowing how much carbon can be stored — and where and for how long — is critical, the authors say.

“Our results were surprising because those who’ve previously made measurements found carbon in the rivers that came from the surrounding forests to be 40 to more than 1,000 years old,” Aufdenkampe says. “They assumed that the return of this forest carbon to the atmosphere must be a slow process that offered at least temporary respite from greenhouse effects.

“As part of the largest radiocarbon age survey ever for a single watershed, we show that the enormous amount of carbon dioxide silently being returned to the atmosphere is far younger than carbon being carried downstream,” he said. “Previous studies failed to detect the rapid recycling of forest carbon because they never dated the invisible greenhouse gas as it is literally exhaled by the river organisms.”

“River breath is much deeper and faster than anyone realized,” says Jeff Richey, UW oceanographer and another co-author.

Carbon is carried by rains and groundwater into waterways from soils, decomposing woody debris, leaf litter and other organic matter. Once in waterways it is chewed up by microorganisms, insects and fish. The carbon dioxide they generate quickly returns to the atmosphere, some 500 million tons a year, an amount equal to what is absorbed each year by the Amazonian rainforest.

“Having established that the amount of carbon outgassing is much greater than anyone imagined, the issue then becomes, where does it come from,” Mayorga says. “If it’s young, that indicates the carbon pool is dynamic, which could make the system much more reactive to deforestation and climate change.”

For example, data from a region of active deforestation in the southern Amazon already shows that the carbon leaving rivers has an identifiable isotopic signature of pasture grasses.

“You’re changing the land use, changing vegetation and other conditions. In terms of what’s being respired, the system is responding fairly quickly,” Mayorga says. “Human and natural systems, in turn, will be impacted.”

No previous tropical study has used both radioactive carbon-14 and stable carbon-13 isotopes to address these questions. Funding from the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory made the analysis by Mayorga and Aufdenkampe possible. The samples were collected by Richey’s research group and Brazilian scientists on expeditions going back as far as 1991 that were funded by the National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Research Support Foundation for the State of San Paulo (FAPESP), Brazil.

Other co-authors are Paul Quay and the late John Hedges, both UW oceanographers; Caroline Masiello of Rice University; Alex Krusche of the University of São Paulo, Brazil; and Thomas Brown of the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Original press release: Amazon source of 5-year-old river breath (University of Washington)

600 children from around the world gathered for the UNEP Children’s World Summit for the Environment in Japan are challenging the world’s leaders to pay higher attention to energy, biodiversity, and water and recycling. At the same time they all commit themselves to environmentally friendly actions to make a difference for the future.

The world summit for children was organized by the United Nations Environment Programme, with His Imperial Highness Prince Akishino of Japan as the honorary president. The prince’s family, including two daughters, also took part in activities during the program, which was held in the Aichi Prefecture in Japan.

The 600 delegates, ages 10 to 14, came from 65 nations, many of them from developing countries. Learning and sharing experiences on important environmental issues was the main purpose of the meeting.

“We commit ourselves to saving energy and using renewable energy sources” say the children in their statement. They also challenge the leaders in a petition, asking them to “create and enforce laws to improve efficiency in production, consumption and conservation of energy”. They demand that the leaders set examples also in the issues of biodiversity, water and waste processing.

At the closing of the four-day summit on Friday, UNEP Deputy Executive Director Shafquat Kakahel promised that the children’s message would be delivered to the UN Secretary-General. He also assured the children that their message included on a 14 meter long canvas will have a prominent place in front of the UN headquarters in New York to remind the world’s presidents and prime ministers of the hope of the children for a better environment.

“It is difficult but not impossible to work for a green future”, says one of the delegates, 13-year old Marisa Tania from Indonesia. In her home town Surabaya she says she cannot see the blue sky due to air pollution and the river Kalimas is badly polluted. During the meeting in Japan she has learned about solutions on environmental issues from the many new friends she made. It has inspired her to continue work for awareness in her ecology club at home, she says.

During this final day of the summit UNEP announced that the next Tunza Children’s Conference on the environment will be held in Putrajaya, Malaysia, in August 2006. The 2008 Tunza conference will be held in Stavanger, Norway.

The meeting in Japan has also elected new junior board members who represent the children in the preparations and take responsibility for preparing the messages to the world leaders. New members are Ranjani Dharmarajan, Kenya; Oyatogun Oluwafumilayo; Nigeria Jessie Mehrhoff, USA; Arwa Omary, Lebanon; Nikolas Theofilidis, Greece; Alejandro Posada, Colombia; and Angel Chui, China. Malaysian Hana Azizan, Syaza Salen, Jes Ebrahim and Zainal Najeem will also join the junior board in preparations for the next conference.

Original press release: Children Challenge World Leaders on the Environment (UNEP)

Higher petroleum costs threaten our nation’s security, economy and the American way of life, MIT Professor John B. Heywood testified before Congress last week. There is a “strong need,” therefore, for the U.S. government to act to drive down fuel consumption, he said.

Although there are ways to improve the fuel efficiency of automobiles, those measures tend to drive the cost of vehicles above what most consumers are willing to pay, Heywood testified at the hearing on “Fueling the Future: On the Road to the Hydrogen Economy,” Wednesday, July 20.

The government needs to help get these technologies into the marketplace, said Heywood, who suggested that incentives to “all the involved stakeholders (including consumers)” would “pull and push this technology into the marketplace and ensure it is used.”

Heywood, who is director of the Center for 21st Century Energy and the Sloan Automotive Laboratory, pointed out that light-duty vehicles today consume 140 billion gallons of gasoline a year in this country, a figure projected to balloon to 220 billion gallons a year over the next 25 years, if consumption patterns do not change.

It is unclear whether petroleum resources are even available to handle such demand, but “the primary driver for [reducing consumption] is to reduce the impact that higher petroleum prices, petroleum availability concerns and shortages, and rising negative balance of payment issues could have on our security, economy and way of life,” Heywood testified.

He pointed out that while the United States needs to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, American consumers have been buying larger and heavier vehicles over the last 20-30 years, negating gains in vehicle fuel efficiency.

He proposed that the government institute “substantial fees for purchasers who buy high fuel-consuming vehicles and rebates for those who buy low fuel-consuming vehicles.” He also proposed reinforcing fuel-efficient choices by steadily raising fuel taxes.

Fuel producers, meanwhile, would be pushed to produce more low-greenhouse-gas transportation fuels.

Although the hearing centered on “the hydrogen economy,” Heywood explained that “any transition to hydrogen on a large scale is many decades away,” simply because it takes that long for new automotive technology to make its way from concept to widespread use in cars. Plus, hydrogen-fueled cars are not necessarily cleaner-fossil fuels are sometimes used to produce the hydrogen, he said.

The government needs to put more resources into the research and development of new energy sources for transportation. But, Heywood maintained, it is less important for the government to worry now about the standardization of codes that will affect hydrogen-fueled vehicles, than to implement “regulatory and fiscal policies to reduce the energy requirements of our total transportation system.”

Original press release: Heywood to US: Support fuel efficiency (MIT)

Image source: WWF

A US-led Asia-Pacific regional energy pact, expected to be announced Thursday, offers no alternative to binding caps on pollution levels, says WWF.

WWF warns that such a pact between the US, Australia, China, India and South Korea, which is designed to combat greenhouse gas emissions by developing environmentally friendly energy technology, cannot be seen as an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol.

While WWF does encourage countries to work together on technological developments, it notes that the most effective way to reduce emissions globally is for the world to work together under one agreement rather than multiple plans and agreements.

This is why the Kyoto Protocol, based on binding caps on emissions, is the first effective treaty to counteract global warming. There are 152 nations signed-up to the Protocol, excepting the US and Australia.

The Federal Government’s new climate change treaty is nothing more than a device to
cover up its refusal to reduce Australia’s burgeoning greenhouse gas emissions and
the abject failure of its policies, according to Australia Institute Executive Director
Clive Hamilton.

“By claiming that the new pact is an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol, Environment
Minister Campbell is verballing China, India and South Korea all of which have
ratified Kyoto and are committed to it”, said Dr Hamilton.

“And to suggest that Kyoto ‘exempts’ developing countries while the new agreement
includes three of them is grossly misleading as the new treaty will not commit any
party to emission reductions.”

Dr Hamilton noted that the new treaty will be no more than a technology exchange
agreement without any obligation on parties to cut their emissions. The main
beneficiaries will be Australian coal companies, some of the world’s biggest
greenhouse polluters.

“It’s a Machiavellian pact”, he said.

“Study after study has shown that voluntary agreements such as those foreshadowed
in this treaty do not work. Unlike the Kyoto Protocol in which parties take on
mandatory emission reduction targets, the new treaty will do virtually nothing to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions in participating countries”, he said.

“Senator Campbell’s wall of blather seems designed to confuse. While claiming that
the world needs to cut emissions by 50 per cent, he refuses to cut emissions by the
first one per cent.

“While saying that Kyoto would damage Australia’s economic interests, he says
Australia will meet its target anyway.

“And while saying we need more renewable energy, his Government has repeatedly
cut support for renewables in favour of coal.

“The Senator seems to live in a parallel universe in which the normal laws of logic do
not apply.”

Original press release: New climate pact a charade (Australia Institute)

In reaction to the announcement of a new Asia-Pacific Partnership on clean development, energy security and climate change, which also involves the United States , Lord May of Oxford, President of the Royal Society said:

“The science points to the need for a Herculean effort to make massive cuts in the amount of greenhouse gases that we pump into the atmosphere. So, while this encouraging new deal may play a role in this, it will only be part, and not all, of the solution.

“But we have serious concerns that the apparent lack of targets in this deal means that there is no sense of what it is ultimately trying to achieve or the urgency of taking action to combat climate change. And the developed countries involved with this agreement must not be tempted to use it as an excuse to avoid tackling their own emissions.

“All eyes should be on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Montreal at the end of November. Top of the agenda at this meeting should be the initiation of a study into what concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere we can allow without suffering the most catastrophic effects of climate change. This would allow us to plan cuts in worldwide emissions accordingly and provide direction to such efforts to tackle what is the biggest environmental threat we face today.”

Original press release: Royal Society comment on US and Asia-Pacific climate change pact (Royal Society)