Building highway through rainforests contributes to climate change

Rainforests absorb huge quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere which means that the clearance and destruction of these forests have extremely negative environmental impact. Climate change is growing in strength meaning we need our allies to fight with us, and rainforests are no doubt one of our most important allies in global fight against climate change.

The latest study from the Florida University has studied the environmental impact of building highways through rainforests and the effect of this on climate change. The study has concluded following:

1. Highway paving facilitates migration and population growth in communities. More people is often associated  with massive forest clearing and conflicts over natural resources.

2. Highway paving has left the Amazon rainforest more vulnerable to clearing with fire, which results in increase in carbon emissions and adds more impact to climate change.

Paving highways through rainforests can indeed lead to significant economic benefits but these economic benefits are very often accompanied with massive environmental damage so it is of vital importance to consider what is gained and what is lost by paving highways.

The massive environmental damage doesn't only refer to more greenhouse gas emissions but also in huge biodiversity loss because rainforests belong to areas with the richest biodiversity in the world. Paving highways through rainforests could therefore also lead to decline and extinction of many species.

Choosing side in climate change debate

If you happen to follow climate change science more closely you'll be able to read about new climate change predictions at almost a daily level. The majority of these predictions or estimates, what ever you called them, refer to negative consequences of climate change, describing climate change as the biggest environmental threat of our time, the one that could seriously jeopardize our future wellbeing.

On the other side are climate change skeptics who believe that climate change is the biggest scientific hoax of our time. They claim that there is no reason to fear climate change and doubt currently dominant climate change science by claiming it is influenced by funding and different political factors.

To an average Joe it must seem very difficult to choose side but let's look at the logic behind it all. There have been far more studies confirming ongoing climate change impact than those that deny it.

True, none of these studies is 100% accurate in future predictions simply because climate change has many factors that make total predictability almost impossible, at least given our current scientific and technological level of knowledge.

Question to climate change skeptics - how to deny the correlation between the increase in greenhouse gas emissions and the global increase in temperatures? Just a coincidence or what?

Other similar questions - how to explain more frequent droughts, floods and extreme weather events without involving the climate change issue?

Is mainstream science really capable to pull out the global hoax of these massive proportions and what's the point of it? Would so many different scientists across the globe all be lying to us and scare us with catastrophic future climate change scenarios?

What side would you choose and why?

Change in ocean salinity due to climate change

The Australian scientists have studied global ocean salinity and have concluded that there is a clear change in ocean salinity that will cause acceleration in the global rainfall and evaporation cycle.

According to scientists the water cycle has strengthened by 4% from 1950-2000, a twice as much as predicted by current global climate models. They have concluded this by studying the relationship between salinity, rainfall and evaporation in climate models.

Dr Paul Durack from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory says that „these changes (ocean salinity and water cycle) suggest that arid regions have become drier and high rainfall regions have become wetter in response to observed global warming."

If the global temperatures continue to rise they will accelerate water cycle even further, for instance the global temperature increase of 3ºC by the end of the century should accelerate water cycle by staggering 24%, causing more droughts and floods.

Why are these changes in global water cycle important? Dr Durack said that these changes will affect food availability, stability, access and utilization.

Oceans play extremely important role in global climate. They not only receive around 80% of the total surface rainfall but are also the most important carbon sinkers, preventing in the process even stronger climate change impact.

Why is climate change happening?

The science still doesn't fully agree on why exactly is climate change happening though the dominant opinion seems to be because of the increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.

The others believe this is purely the nature's cycle and humanity and industry aren't to blame for ongoing climate change.

This divided opinion among mainstream scientists is making climate change issue a very controversial question and a highly debated topic.

If we go with the majority of scientists then we should blame our industry and our dependence on fossil fuels for the growing climate change impact. Under this scenario the only solution to tackle climate change is to significantly reduce the global level of greenhouse gas emissions.

So if we do know the proper solution for tackling climate change why don't we use it to remove all fears about the future doomsday scenarios caused by climate change? This is the question we should be asking world leaders because all they do is talk.

They talk and talk and there is still no climate change deal in sight because of the difference in opinion between countries. It's like nobody wants to do the first move, and they seem to be all afraid of the potential damage to industry if they decide to go for the cuts in emissions.

What about climate change? Why aren't we afraid of it? Why aren't we afraid of frequent extreme events, extinction of species, acidity of our oceans, droughts, floods, new diseases and all the other „scary stuff“ connected with out future climate?

It seems like we are waiting for worst to happen in order to react and this is anything but a good policy, especially when climate change is involved.

The science is warning us that we must do our best to avoid the global temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius and how are we responding to it? By increasing greenhouse gas emissions even more.  The year 2009 was the only recent year when global greenhouse gas emissions went down and this was only happening because of the global financial crisis.

There are also people who believe that climate change isn't happening and that science is making this up. I don't see the purpose in science lying to us, what exactly would scientists achieve with it?

The truth seems to be very scary and could become even scarier if we fail to act immediately. Climate change must become the top issue on global political agenda. The ignorance won't do this time because we are talking about global phenomenon that could change the lives of our future generations. There's simply too much at stake to just continue business as usual scenario. Let’s act before it’s too late.

The benefits of tackling climate change

Climate change is really the biggest environmental issue of modern time and here is the comprehensive list including various benefits of tackling climate change.

1. Reduced biodiversity loss. Many plants and animals are declining in population or even becoming extinct because of climate change. Successfully tackling climate change would therefore help preserve rich biodiversity of our world.
2. The strong development of clean energy sector. Tackling climate change can be only done successfully with transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.
3. Using more renewable energy instead of coal, oil and natural gas would further help our environment by reducing the pollution in many parts of the world.
4. Less ocean acidification and much healthier marine food chain.
5. Preservation of rainforests. Deforestation of our forests and rainforests accounts for significant share of total CO2 emissions.
6. Less hunger in the world. Climate change causes droughts and droughts lead to hunger.
7. Much safer future water supply. Glaciers are the largest reservoirs of freshwater on our planet. The melting of glaciers as the result of increased climate change impact heavily decreases the total amount of freshwater resources available on our planet.
8. Less environmental refugees. It is expected that climate change will lead to millions of people becoming environmental refugees in not so distant future.
9. Preventing new disease. Climate change could easily lead to new diseases.
10.  The moral growth of our society in general. By tackling climate change our society and civilization in general would have the perfect chance to show its maturity by showing true care for our environment and our planet in general. After all, this planet is still our only home.

Climate change and hunger in Africa

Africa is continent where hunger is a very common thing for many of the Africans. In a modern world we like to believe that our society has reached certain civilization standards but one look at the Africa and thousands of children that starve to death is enough to see just how civilized our society really is.

And there's also the matter of climate change. Africa is the least responsible for global warming of our planet but will nonetheless pay the highest price. The industrialized countries of the developed world played major role in emitting massive amounts of greenhouse gases and Africa will sadly be first in line where climate change will show its scary face.

The latest report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) says that spring rains in eastern Horn of Africa are projected to begin late this year and be substantially lower than normal. This is the area with some of the poorest countries in the world such as Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.

Lower amount of rainfall would have significant impacts on crop production and would lead to even bigger hunger in this area. Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya are already experiencing severe food crises and with less rainfall things could get only worse.

Droughts will also lead to severe water shortages and many African countries will be in need of large funds for aid refuges and drought-affected communities.

The scientists believe that there is a direct link between the rapid warming in Indian and Pacific oceans and decreased amount of rainfall in Africa. They say that the combination of warmer air and increased humidity over the Indian and Pacific oceans produces more frequent rainfall over the oceans. The air then rises over the equatorial Indian and Pacific oceans, and goes west, towards the Africa. Once it reaches Africa the air has already lost moisture from rainfall over the oceans, which leads to decreased rain amounts in many parts of the eastern Africa.

Since the warming trend is expected to continue Africa can expect more droughts  in years to come. With droughts there comes more hunger, and with more hunger there comes more deaths.

UK on the right track with cutting greenhouse gas emissions?

UK is one of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in EU but the good news is that the British greenhouse gas emissions continue to decline. The UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) reports that British CO2 emissions have fallen 23 percent since 1990s and by 7% in 2011.


The main reasons for this drop in 2011 are said to be the decrease in residential gas use and a more efficient electricity generation. 


Despite the fact that UK is today using more renewable energy than ever before, renewable energy is still not one of the main factors responsible for the decrease in emissions and UK still has plenty to do before being able to talk about the switch to clean energy economy.


The weather and the spike in global energy prices still play main role in determining the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions which means that cold winter or a drop in fuel prices will likely result in emissions rising again.

The UK's long term goal includes cutting emissions at least 80 percent below 1990 levels and in order to achive this goal UK will have to lot more than just rely on the global economic downturn to curb total industrial production.

A lot of it will depend whether UK will be able to become one of the clean energy leaders or not. The offshore wind energy sector is so far the only renewable energy sector that looks good in UK and there is lot of work ahead of British government  to make sure Britain remains on the clean energy track.

Climate change, extreme weather and ecosystems

If climate change issue remains intact this will likely lead to more frequent extreme weather events in years to come. Not only will these frequent extreme events cause huge material damage but will also cause massive damage to our environment, and could further add to already big issue of global biodiversity loss.

Climate change is already one of the biggest factors behind the massive biodiversity loss and with the more frequent extreme weather such as hurricanes, torrential downpours and droughts things could become even worse, and many species might forever perish from the face of this planet.

 Flora and fauna are already becoming extinct at a rate 100–1000 times higher than normal and we are on the verge of yet another mass extinction event, this time caused mainly by humanity and not the result of some asteroid hitting our planet.

The scientists fear that the frequent extreme events will further add to extinction of many species, especially in ecosystems with rich biodiversity such as coral reefs and tropical rainforests.

The extreme weather events are only one of the many scary faces under which climate change hides. The others include ocean acidification, sea level rise, new diseases, all of which can lead to massive environmental damage.

The world is at the brink of gigantic environmental disaster, and yet the world leaders don't look too concerned about it as they continue to postpone new climate deal for some better times. Better times – what an irony…