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ENVIRONMENT: From Mosques to Mollusks, No Haven From Rising CO2

Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Nov 10 2006 (IPS) - Three hundred and eighty parts per million. That’s the current concentration of carbon dioxide going into your lungs with each breath. Our parents or grandparents’ first breaths at birth contained about 290 parts per million (ppm), as it was for everyone born before them.

What does it really mean when in the not so distant future our children or grandchildren will inhale 450, perhaps 500 ppm or more of carbon dioxide?

Evidently, breathing in a bit more carbon dioxide (CO2) isn’t bad for human health – oxygen at sea level is 200,000 ppm, after all – but the changing atmosphere is having profound impacts on the climate of the planet.

The changing climate has many consequences, among them the potential loss of ancient ruins in Thailand, coral reefs in Belize, 13th century mosques in the Sahara, the Cape Floral Kingdom in South Africa and other irreplaceable natural and historic sites around the world, experts reported this week.

“Climate changes are impacting on all aspects of human and natural systems, including both cultural and natural World Heritage properties, “said Koichiro Matsuura, director-general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, which hosts the World Heritage Centre.

Increased ocean temperatures are bleaching coral reefs, while growing acidification of the oceans could lead to their mass extinction. The warming atmosphere has caused the melting of glaciers worldwide and biodiversity may be affected as species are forced to relocate to survive, Matsuura said in a statement.

It turns out that a tiny bit more CO2 matters quite a bit. The 90 ppm of extra CO2 in the atmosphere has trapped enough additional heat from the sun to warm the Earth by an average of nearly one degree C. That extra heat energy trapped in the atmosphere is responsible for more frequent and more intense rainfalls, increased storminess, warmer oceans, and rising sea levels and more extreme weather.

Three hundred and eighty ppm of CO2 is the highest concentration seen in the atmosphere for at least a million years, perhaps 30 million years, Professor Sir David King, Britain’s chief scientific adviser, has said.

“Mankind is changing the climate,” David told the BBC earlier this year.

Another 100 ppm could boost global temperatures an average of two to four or five degrees higher.

“Three degrees C higher and we don’t know if ecosystems can cope. At four degrees, we’ll be in big trouble,” says Andreas Hamann, a forestry expert at the University of Alberta, Canada.

Climate change is already impacting many cultural and nature-based heritage sites, says Kirstin Dow of the University of South Carolina.

“Charles Darwin’s favourite barrier reef in Belize is suffering from bleaching, [and] snow and ice on Mount Everest has retreated five miles compared to when Sir Edmund Hilary made the first successful ascent in 1953,” Dow told IPS.

Dow and Tom Downing, a director at the Stockholm Environment Institute, document actual and potential impacts of climate change in their new book, “The Atlas of Climate Change: Mapping the World’s Greatest Challenge” released this week at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Nairobi, Kenya.

“We wanted to look at the impacts of climate change, and in particular the many things that we value but hadn’t been measured before now,” Dow said.

Flooding across Europe in 2002 damaged concert halls, theatres, museums and libraries. An estimated half a million books and archival documents were damaged. Climate change may bring more flooding and further losses, the Atlas shows.

The future sites at risk include:

The monuments of Alexandria, Egypt, including the 15th-century Qait Bey Citadel, which are threatened by coastal erosion and the inundation of the Nile delta region linked with climate change.

In Scotland, some 12,000 archaeological sites are thought to be vulnerable to erosion and sea-level rise, including medieval salt workings in Brora, Sutherland, an Iron Age site at Sandwich Bay, Unst and a Viking site at Baileshire, north Uist.

The more than 550,000-hectare Cape Floral Region in South Africa, home to an outstanding array of plant diversity, is threatened by changes in soil moisture and winter rainfall.

Accelerated melting of glaciers Huascaran National Park in Peru is increasing the risk of glacial lake flooding, threatening a nearby cultural site called Chavin de Huantar, home to pre-Inca treasures including 900 BC temples.

Mosques, cathedrals, monuments and artefacts at ancient sites are threatened by changes in historic and local climatic conditions. These in turn may lead to subtle but damaging shifts in moisture levels affecting structures directly, or the chemistry and stability of the soils in which they are found, said Dow.

And there is the potential risk of infestations by new pests that have been able to migrate because of the changing climate.

The Atlas reveals “how all-encompassing the threats are and how all-embracing and inclusive must be the global response to managing the world’s greatest challenge,” said Downing.

Sharply curbing emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is in fact that “greatest challenge”.

“We have the technology right now to make those reductions through energy efficiency, and many are cost-effective,” said Dow, who is also an expert on environmentally friendly construction. “We just need to start.”