White Water Kayaking wallpaper
Nature loss ‘dwarfs bank crisis’
The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.
It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.
The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.
The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern Review into the economics of climate change.
As a public relations problem it is a little difficult to get people even in ordinary times to see nature as something that provides valuable services. In what seems to be a world wide financial crisis it makes explaining the value of preservation and research even more difficult.
Satellites collect data on sea temperatures, reefs
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday its Coral Reef Watch network has been expanded from 24 to 190 locations, including sites in the Florida Keys, the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, the Indian and Pacific oceans, Indonesia, Australia and Hawaii.
[ ]…A mere 2-degree rise in typical summertime water temperature can stress corals, causing the tiny marine creatures that form reefs to expel algae living in their tissues. The so-called bleaching upsets the symbiotic nature of the ecosystem by exposing their white skeletons.
The Coral Reef Watch site here.
Nice National Geographic photo of a bed of Table coral with diver here. Corals are animals, Table corals belong to the Family Acroporidae. Just guessing on the species of the one in the photo is Acropora clathrata. Some more information on table corals here
Green Meltdown: Credit Crunch Whacks Renewable Energy, Too.
The financial meltdown isn’t just giving fits to Wall Street, homeowners, and the oil market. It’s throwing a wrench into wind power’s breakneck growth, too.
Renewable energy should be celebrating, after Congress included an extension of clean-energy tax credits in the bailout package. But solar power has been reeling. Wind power, which managed a one-year extension of its vital tax credits (solar power got an eight-year reprieve), isn’t doing much better. The problem? The credit crunch.
Capital for wind power projects is drying up as banks turn skittish (or disappear outright) and there aren’t enough other players to pick up the slack. As Dow Jones Clean Tech Insight reports (sub reqd.), the double-whammy of tighter debt markets and a dearth of “tax equity” investors spells trouble for the sector in 2009
Usually I’m not that much into making predictions, but it is relatively safe to say that Congress and the next president will be tinkering with that bailout/rescue package and at some point they’ll extend tax credits for solar energy.
tangledwing 