Our planet is a tremendously complex set of systems that is very confusing to the average citizen. To make it simpler to understand the current state of the overall global environment, posts about the latest science found on reputable sites are listed below for each of the nine planetary systems identified in 2010 by the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
After each category title is a brief explanation of the system as written by the Stockholm Centre. The stories posted are based on hard, vetted science - not someone's personal opinion. To be considered vetted, the story is evaluated by qualified scientists to ensure that correct scientific procedures have been followed and that all and any data is included whether or not it supports the study's conclusions.
The systems that scientists agree have deteriorated to or beyond a practical tipping point based on the latest science are highlighted in red.
- About the Nine Planetary Boundaries: These were developed as a project of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, founded in 2007, as a joint project of Stockholm University and the Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics at The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The vision of the Centre is to work toward a world where social-ecological systems are understood, governed and managed, to enhance human well-being and the capacity to deal with complexity and change, for the sustainable co-evolution of human civilizations with the biosphere. The framework of Nine Boundaries was introduced in 2009, when a group of 28 internationally renowned scientists identified and quantified the first set of nine planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come.
- The nine planetary boundaries
- Climate change
- Recent evidence suggests that the Earth, now passing 390 ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere, has already transgressed the planetary boundary and is approaching several Earth system thresholds. We have reached a point at which the loss of summer polar sea-ice is almost certainly irreversible.
- Wind energy provides 8% of Europe's electricity July 24, 2015
- Abrupt climate change may have rocked the cradle of civilization July 23, 2015
- Mammoths killed by abrupt climate change July 23, 2015
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| Global Warming and Climate Change (Science Foundations) by Stephen M. Tomece Click to order |
- Are We at Risk of a Midwest Mega-flood?
- By itself, abundant shale gas unlikely to alter climate projections
- Changing climate lengthens forest fire season
- Climate Change: It's Not All Bad News
- ‘Eco-towers’ will fight climate change
- Fiction, Global Warming, and the Writer
- Global sea levels have risen six meters or more with just slight global warming
- How to engage the population with climate change? Frame it as a public health issue
- How do we talk about climate change? The need for strategic conversations
- Oceans slowed global temperature rise, until now
- Extreme wildfires in Western U.S. likely fueled by climate change
- Hiatus in global average temperatures has little effect on projected temperatures in 2100
- Introducing CLI-FI: Fiction to Prepare Us for Global Warming
- Mongol Empire Grew Because of a Mild Climate
- New study examines the media's response to the IPCC
- Reporters using more 'hedging' words in climate change articles
- Risk of major sea level rise in England, Northern Europe
- Scientists outline long-term sea-level rise in response to warming of planet
- Sea levels to continue to rise for 500 years? Long-term climate calculations suggest so
- Warming slow-down not the end of climate change
- When the Midwest U.S. Becomes Desert, What Then?
- Change in biosphere integrity (biodiversity loss and species extinction)
- The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005 concluded that changes to ecosystems due to human activities were more rapid in the past 50 years than at any time in human history, increasing the risks of abrupt and irreversible changes. The main drivers of change are the demand for food, water, and natural resources, causing severe biodiversity loss and leading to changes in ecosystem services.
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| The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert Click to order |
- A breakthrough approach to addressing the causes of biodiversity loss
- Amazon deforestation 'threshold' causes species loss to accelerate
- Are We Driving Species Extinctions?
- Biodiversity reduces human, wildlife diseases and crop pests
- Major study shows some biodiversity losses can be reversed
- Oil spills affecting fish population
- Polar bears threatened: Experience limited energy savings in summer
- Sixth mass extinction is here: Humanity's existence threatened
- Space-eye-view could help stop global wildlife decline
- Stop misuse of biodiversity offsets, conservation experts say
- Wild fish ecosystems resist impact of biodiversity loss, may be masking serious rapid decline in fish production potential
- Stratospheric ozone depletion
- The stratospheric ozone layer in the atmosphere filters out ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun. If this layer decreases, increasing amounts of UV radiation will reach ground level. This can cause a higher incidence of skin cancer in humans as well as damage to terrestrial and marine biological systems. The appearance of the Antarctic ozone hole was proof that increased concentrations of anthropogenic ozone-depleting chemical substances, interacting with polar stratospheric clouds, had passed a threshold and moved the Antarctic stratosphere into a new regime. Fortunately, because of the actions taken as a result of the Montreal Protocol, we appear to be on the path that will allow us to stay within this boundary.
- Climate change linked to ozone loss: May result in more skin cancer
- Earth's ozone layer on track to recovery, scientists report
- Four new human-made ozone depleting gases found in the atmosphere
- Gas that triggers ozone destruction revealed
- Ozone-depleting compound persists, NASA research shows
- Severe ozone depletion avoided
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| Stratospheric Ozone Depletion by Ann M. Middlebrook Click to order |
- Ocean acidification
- Around a quarter of the CO2 that humanity emits into the atmosphere is ultimately dissolved in the oceans. Here it forms carbonic acid, altering ocean chemistry and decreasing the pH of the surface water. This increased acidity reduces the amount of available carbonate ions, an essential 'building block' used by many marine species for shell and skeleton formation. Beyond a threshold concentration, this rising acidity makes it hard for organisms such as corals and some shellfish and plankton species to grow and survive. Losses of these species would change the structure and dynamics of ocean ecosystems and could potentially lead to drastic reductions in fish stocks. Compared to pre-industrial times, surface ocean acidity has already increased by 30 percent. Unlike most other human impacts on the marine environment, which are often local in scale, the ocean acidification boundary has ramifications for the whole planet. It is also an example of how tightly interconnected the boundaries are, since atmospheric CO2 concentration is the underlying controlling variable for both the climate and the ocean acidification boundaries, although they are defined in terms of different Earth system thresholds.
- Are marine ecosystems headed toward a new productivity regime?
- Carbon dioxide pools discovered in Aegean Sea
- Climate change reduces coral reefs' ability to protect coasts
- Commercial Food Fish Moving Away From Tropics
- Global sea levels have risen six meters or more with just slight global warming
- Ocean acidification may cause dramatic changes to phytoplankton
- Overfishing and the Survival of Us
- Pacific reef growth can match rising sea, study suggests
- Phytoplankton and zooplankton biomass are expected to decrease by 6% and 11% respectively by the end of century due to climate change
- Biogeochemical flows (phosphorus and nitrogen cycles)
- The biogeochemical cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus have been radically changed by humans as a result of many industrial and agricultural processes. Nitrogen and phosphorus are both essential elements for plant growth, so fertilizer production and application is the main concern. Much of this new reactive nitrogen is emitted to the atmosphere in various forms rather than taken up by crops. When it is rained out, it pollutes waterways and coastal zones or accumulates in the terrestrial biosphere. Similarly, a relatively small proportion of phosphorus fertilizers applied to food production systems is taken up by plants; much of the phosphorus mobilized by humans also ends up in aquatic systems. These can become oxygen-starved as bacteria consume the blooms of algae that grow in response to the high nutrient supply. A significant fraction of the applied nitrogen and phosphorus makes its way to the sea, and can push marine and aquatic systems across ecological thresholds of their own. One regional-scale example of this effect is the decline in the shrimp catch in the Gulf of Mexico's 'dead zone' caused by fertilizer transported in rivers from the US Midwest.
- Land-system change (for example deforestation)
- Forests, grasslands, wetlands and other vegetation types have primarily been converted to agricultural land, driving the serious reductions in biodiversity. While each incident of land cover change occurs on a local scale, the aggregated impacts can have consequences for Earth system processes on a global scale. A boundary for human changes to land systems needs to reflect not just the absolute quantity of land, but also its function, quality and spatial distribution. Forests play a particularly important role in controlling the linked dynamics of land use and climate, and is the focus of the boundary for land system change.
- The Coming War Between the Haves and Have-nots
- Changing climate lengthens forest fire season
- Continued destruction of Earth's plant life places humans in jeopardy
- Drivers of temporal changes in temperate forest plant diversity
- Ecological collapse over 6,000 years of Egyptian history
- Extreme wildfires in Western U.S. likely fueled by climate change
- Forest emissions, wildfires explain why ancient Earth was so hot
- Human-wrought environmental changes impacting crops, pollinators could harm millions
- Is Our Population Boom Creating a Permanent Underclass?
- More, bigger wildfires burning western US over last 30 years
- Wildfires and other burns play bigger role in climate change
- Wildfire Videos -- ScienceDaily
- Freshwater use
- The freshwater cycle is strongly affected by climate change and its boundary is closely linked to the climate boundary, yet human pressure is now the dominant driving force determining the functioning and distribution of global freshwater systems. Water is becoming increasingly scarce - by 2050 about half a billion people are likely to be subject to water-stress, increasing the pressure to intervene in water systems. A water boundary related to consumptive freshwater use and environmental flow requirements has been proposed to maintain the overall resilience of the Earth system and to avoid the risk of 'cascading' local and regional thresholds.
- Awareness and labeling initiatives can benefit inland fisheries
- Climate change threatens extinction for 82 percent of California native fish
- Global freshwater consumption crossing its planetary boundary
- Natural contaminants, arsenic and uranium, in one-fifth of California's groundwater
- North American freshwater fishes race to extinction: Rate of loss of species exceeds that of terrestrial animals
- Over 50% Chance of Mega-drought In Southwest U.S.
- Shorter Arctic Winters & The California Water Shortage
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| The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the Twenty-First Century by Alex Prud'homme Click to order |
- Atmospheric aerosol loading (microscopic particles in the atmosphere that affect climate and living organisms)
- An atmospheric aerosol planetary boundary was proposed primarily because of the influence of aerosols on Earth's climate system.
- Aerosols play a critically important role in the hydrological cycle affecting cloud formation and global-scale and regional patterns of atmospheric circulation, such as the monsoon systems in tropical regions.
- Aerosols have a direct effect on climate, by changing how much solar radiation is reflected or absorbed in the atmosphere. Shifts in climate regimes and monsoon systems have already been seen in highly polluted environments, giving a quantifiable regional measure for an aerosol boundary.
- Aerosols have adverse effects on many living organisms. Inhaling highly polluted air causes roughly 800,000 people to die prematurely each year.
- No limits to human effects on clouds
- Climate change scientists must turn their attention to clean skies, experts urge
- Introduction of novel entities (e.g. organic pollutants, radioactive materials, nanomaterials, and micro-plastics).
- Emissions of toxic and long-lived substances such as synthetic organic pollutants, heavy metal compounds and radioactive materials represent some of the key human-driven changes to the planetary environment. These compounds can have potentially irreversible effects on living organisms and on the physical environment. Even when the uptake and bioaccumulation of chemical pollution is at sub-lethal levels for organisms, the effects of reduced fertility and the potential of permanent genetic damage can have severe effects on ecosystems far removed from the source of the pollution. For example, persistent organic compounds have caused dramatic reductions in bird populations and impaired reproduction and development in marine mammals.
- Certain air filters using photocatalytic oxidation have dangerous by-product, study shows
- Consumers need better protection from chemicals in products, experts urge
- Emissions have declined, but sulfur dioxide air pollutant still a concern for asthmatics
- Sharp decline in pollution from U.S. coal power plants, NASA satellite confirms
- Sub-lethal exposure to neonicotinoids and colony collapse disorder
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