The future of the Earth could rest on potentially dangerous and unproven geoengineering technologies unless emissions of carbon dioxide can be greatly reduced, the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of science, said today.

Photo courtesy NASA

"Unless future efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are much more successful than they have been so far, additional action in the form of geoengineering will be necessary if we are to cool the planet," the Royal Society says in a report, "Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance and Uncertainty."

"Geoengineering and its consequences are the price we may have to pay for failure to act on climate change."

"It is an unpalatable truth that unless we can succeed in greatly reducing CO2 emissions we are headed for a very uncomfortable and challenging climate future, and geoengineering will be the only option left to limit further temperature increases," says Professor John Shepherd, who chaired the geoengineering study.

"Our research found that some geoengineering techniques could have serious unintended and detrimental effects on many people and ecosystems--yet we are still failing to take the only action that will prevent us from having to rely on them.

"Geoengineering and its consequences are the price we may have to pay for failure to act on climate change."

Carbon Dioxide Removal vs. Solar Radiation Management

The report assesses the two main kinds of geoengineering techniques--Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) and Solar Radiation Management (SRM).

"CDR techniques address the root of the problem--rising CO2--and so have fewer uncertainties and risks, as they work to return the Earth to a more normal state," the Royal Society says in a news release about the report. "They are therefore considered preferable to SRM techniques, but none has yet been demonstrated to be effective at an affordable cost, with acceptable environmental impacts, and they only work to reduce temperatures over very long timescales.

"SRM techniques act by reflecting the sun's energy away from Earth, meaning they lower temperatures rapidly, but do not affect CO2 levels.

"They therefore fail to address the wider effects of rising CO2, such as ocean acidification, and would need to be deployed for a very long time.

"Although they are relatively cheap to deploy, there are considerable uncertainties about their regional consequences, and they only reduce some, but not all, of the effects of climate change, while possibly creating other problems."

The report concludes that SRM techniques could be useful if a threshold is reached where action to reduce temperatures must be taken rapidly, but that they are not an alternative to emissions reductions or CDR techniques.

Plan B: No Magic Bullet

"None of the geoengineering technologies so far suggested is a magic bullet, and all have risks and uncertainties associated with them," Professor Shepherd said,

"It is essential that we strive to cut emissions now, but we must also face the very real possibility that we will fail. If Plan B is to be an option in the future, considerable research and development of the different methods, their environmental impacts and governance issues must be undertaken now.

"Used irresponsibly or without regard for possible side effects, geoengineering could have catastrophic consequences similar to those of climate change itself."

"Used irresponsibly or without regard for possible side effects, geoengineering could have catastrophic consequences similar to those of climate change itself. We must ensure that a governance framework is in place to prevent this."

Of the CDR techniques assessed, the Royal Society said, the following were considered to have most useful potential:

• CO2 capture from ambient air: This would be the preferred method of geoengineering, as it effectively reverses the cause of climate change. At this stage no cost-effective methods have yet been demonstrated and much more research and development is needed.
• Enhanced weathering: This technique, which utilizes naturally occurring reactions of CO2 from the air with rocks and minerals, was identified as a prospective longer-term option. "However more research is needed to find cost-effective methods and to understand the wider environmental implications."
• Land use and afforestation: The report found that land use management could and should play a small but significant role in reducing the growth of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. However the scope for applying this technique would be limited by land use conflicts, and all the competing demands for land must be considered when assessing the potential for afforestation and reforestation.

Should temperatures rise to such a level where more rapid action needs to be taken, the Royal Society report says, the following SRM techniques are considered to have most potential:

• Stratospheric aerosols: These were found to be feasible, and previous volcanic eruptions have effectively provided short-term preliminary case studies of the potential effectiveness of this method. "The cost was assessed as likely to be relatively low and the timescale of action short. However, there are some serious questions over adverse effects, particularly depletion of stratospheric ozone."
• Space-based methods: These were considered to be a potential SRM technique for long-term use, if the major problems of implementation and maintenance could be solved. At present the techniques remain prohibitively expensive, complex and would be slow to implement.
• Cloud albedo approaches (eg. cloud ships): The effects would be localised and the impacts on regional weather patterns and ocean currents are of considerable concern but are not well understood. The feasibility and effectiveness of the technique is uncertain. A great deal more research would be needed before this technique could be seriously considered.

The following techniques were considered to have lower potential:

• Biochar (CDR technique): The report identified significant doubts relating to the potential scope, effectiveness and safety of this technique and recommended that substantial research would be required before it could be considered for eligibility for UN carbon credits.
• Ocean fertiliization (CDR technique): The report found that this technique had not been proved to be effective and had high potential for unintended and undesirable ecological side effects.
• Surface albedo approaches (SRM technique, including white roof methods, reflective crops and desert reflectors): These were found to be ineffective, expensive and, in some cases, likely to have serious impacts on local and regional weather patterns.

All 800 surviving pages from Codex Sinaiticus, the earliest surviving Christian bible, are now freely available for viewing on the Internet.

Bound copy of Codex Sinaiticus picture courtesy British Library

"For the first time, people around the world will be able to explore high resolution digital images of all the extant pages of the fourth-century book, which was written in Greek on parchment leaves by several scribes and had its text revised and corrected over the course of the following centuries," the British Library said in a statement.

Codex Sinaiticus is the world's oldest Bible and regarded as the most important Biblical manuscript. It was written by hand in the mid-fourth century around the time of Constantine the Great. Though it originally contained the whole of the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha in Greek, half of the Old Testament has since been lost, according to the British Library.

Codex Sinaiticus is named after the Monastery of St Catherine in Sinai, Egypt, where it was found in the 19th Century.

Built at the foot of Mount Moses, Sinai, on the traditional site of Moses' Burning Bush, it is one of the oldest, continuously active, Christian monastic communities in the world and traces its origins back to the fourth century.

Codex Sinaiticus picture courtesy British Library

The Monastery was as constructed by order of the Emperor Justinian between 527 and 565 to house the bones of the Christian martyr St Catherine. It is a Greek Orthodox holy place connected with the Prophet Moses and the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, the British Library said.

The virtual reunification of Codex Sinaiticus is the culmination of a four-year collaboration between the British Library, Leipzig University Library, the Monastery of St Catherine (Mount Sinai, Egypt), and the National Library of Russia (St Petersburg), each of which hold different parts of the physical manuscript.

 

The world's oldest surviving Christian Bible was found at St. Catherine's Monastery, at the foot of Mount Sinai on the traditional site of Moses's Burning Bush.

NGS photo of St Catherine's Monastery by Robert Sisson

"By bringing together the digitised pages online, the project will enable scholars worldwide to research in depth the Greek text, which is fully transcribed and cross-referenced, including the transcription of numerous revisions and corrections," the British Library said.

NGS photo of St Catherine's Monastery by Robert Sisson

"The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world's greatest written treasures," said Scot McKendrick, head of Western Manuscripts at the British Library. "This 1600-year-old manuscript offers a window into the development of early Christianity and first-hand evidence of how the text of the bible was transmitted from generation to generation.

"The project has uncovered evidence that a fourth scribe--along with the three already recognised--worked on the text; the availability of the virtual manuscript for study by scholars around the world creates opportunities for collaborative research that would not have been possible just a few years ago."

Great British Bustards! That's how The Great Bustard Group, a charity striving to re-establish a self-sustaining population of the world's heaviest flying bird in the UK, greeted this week's news that years of hard work had paid off with the sighting of hatchlings in the wild.

Photo courtesy The Great Bustard Group

"For the first time since 1832, the great bustard--one of Europe's most threatened birds has ... nested in the UK with two females successfully hatching chicks," the charity said in a news release yesterday.

"This is a tremendous step forward for the Great Bustard Reintroduction Project, the wildlife of the UK, great bustards, and for me," said David Waters, founder and director of the Great Bustard Group. "It has been a hard struggle to get this far. I am exhausted and nearly broke, but to see great bustards breeding after an absence of 177 years is brilliant."

Said Mark Avery, conservation director for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds,"This fantastic news marks another chapter in the struggle to bring back England's lost wildlife."

Tamas Székely, of the University of Bath--a partner of the Great Bustard Consortium--said: "The Great Bustard is a difficult species to reintroduce as it is a long-lived, slow-maturing bird. But this is a very encouraging sign that the reintroduction trial will be successful."

Photo courtesy The Great Bustard Group

The cause of the hubbub was the sighting this week of great bustard chicks following their mother and being fed. A day later another female was seen feeding a chick. During May a female great bustard was observed incubating a clutch of eggs.

The nest sites, on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, are being kept secret.

The great bustard is the only bird nesting in the UK that is facing global extinction, according to the RSPB's Mark Avery. "Establishing a new population here should ensure a brighter future for this Globally Threatened bird, which continues to decline across parts of Europe."

The successful hatching of the eggs marks a huge milestone for the project to reintroduce the great bustard to Britain, according to the Great Bustard Group. "The last wild great bustard chick to hatch in the UK was in 1832, when a female was seen with a single chick in Suffolk."

The Great Bustard Group was formed in 1998. The reintroduction effort began in 2004 with annual releases of between six and 32 birds each autumn. The birds are released under a licence issued by UK authorities to the Great Bustard Consortium (the Great Bustard Group and the University of Bath).

The reintroduction trial uses great bustards reared from eggs rescued from cultivation in Saratov Oblast, southern Russia. The chicks are reared in the Russian Federation in a partnership with the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Evolution and Ecology--a branch of Russia's Academies of Science.

When the chicks are about six weeks old they are imported into the UK and after a period of quarantine they are released on to Salisbury Plain.

"The first known nest from this project was in 2007, and there was at least one further nest in 2008," the news statement said. "However, the eggs from these clutches were found to be infertile, most likely due to the young age of the males. It is widely considered that male Great Bustards become fertile at an age of four or five years, so 2009 is the earliest that eggs were expected to hatch."

David Waters added: "The Great Bustard is a slow bird to mature, so it has been a long wait to get this far, but this could not be speeded up. A small UK population of about 18 birds has been built up, but it is only when this population begins to produce its own young and becomes self-sustaining that the project can be judged as successful. The indications are extremely positive".

The reintroduction project is essentially self-supporting, funded by membership subscriptions, private donations and self-generated income.

Photo courtesy Scottish Wildlife Trust

Beavers are a familiar sight to millions of people across North America. The tree-felling rodent is a common resident (some would say nuisance) in wetlands, ponds, and waterways.

But in the UK, beavers have not been seen in the wild since they were extirpated four centuries ago, about the time King Henry VIII of England was still married to the first of his eight wives. Scotland was a separate state, under its own monarch.

After four long event-filled centuries, all that may be changing. In what has been described as the first formal reintroduction of a mammal to the UK, the first beavers to live in Scotland for over 400 years were released into the wild last Friday.

The Scottish Beaver Trial (SBT), a partnership project run by Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT), the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS), and host partner Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS), launched officially on May 29.

Three European beaver families of eleven animals were released at carefully selected sites in Scotland's Knapdale Forest. The beavers, originally from Norway, were chosen because they are considered to be the closest type to those once found in the UK and have all completed a six-month statutory quarantine period, according to a news statement published on the Scottish Beaver Trial Web site.

Photo of beaver waiting for release courtesy Scottish Wildlife Trust

"Welcoming beavers back to Scotland marks a historic day for conservation," said Scotland's Minister for the Environment, Roseanna Cunningham. "These charismatic creatures are not only likely to create interest in Scotland from further afield but crucially can play a key role in providing good habitat for a wide range of wetland species.

"And while a great deal of research has already gone into the reintroduction this work is far from over. Observations and data collection over the next five years will play a crucial role in assessing the long-term future for beavers in the Scottish landscape."

The release is for a limited trial period and comes after years of lobbying by ecologists and conservation experts who believe that the beaver has been a missing part of Scotland's wetland ecosystems since being hunted to extinction in the 16th Century, the news statement said.

The project, funded mostly by private donations and grants, has popular support. Public consultation showed that 73 percent of respondents were in favour of the trial.

"Our critics worry that beavers might pose a risk to migratory fish numbers, including salmon. This has not been found to be the case anywhere else in Europe."

-- Allan Bantick, chairman of the Scottish Beaver Trial partnership

But not everyone is happy about the reintroduction of beavers.

"Our critics worry that beavers might pose a risk to migratory fish numbers, including salmon," said Allan Bantick, chairman of both SWT of the Scottish Beaver Trial partnership. "This has not been found to be the case anywhere else in Europe.

"However, the notion cannot be tested with this trial because there is no Atlantic salmon present in the trial site. Our beavers will be released within a designated trial area, which should be large enough to sustain the natural expansion of their population over the next five years."

Watch this Scottish Government video about the reintroduction of beavers to Scotland:

Beavers are a species worth having in any ecosystem as their presence is known to bring a vast number of benefits to other native Scottish wildlife as well as wetland and waterside habitats, Bantick elaborated. "Our reintroduction follows in the footsteps of 24 other European countries, who have already reintroduced beavers to over 150 different sites."

It is vital that the project is recognised as a time-limited trial with the purpose of assessing the effect beavers have on the local environment and how well they settle into their new habitat here in Scotland, Bantick stressed.

Release Went "Extremely Well"

The release of the beaver families went extremely well, said Scottish Beaver Trial Project Manager Simon Jones. "They were placed into purpose-built artificial lodges at carefully selected points around the trial site. They will now gradually gnaw their way out of the lodge at a pace that is comfortable for them before exploring their new surroundings.

"Now that our beavers have been released into the wild, the real work of our trial can begin. First and foremost, this is a scientific study of how the beavers cope naturally in the Scottish environment and what effect they have upon it. We will be closely tracking the beavers' activities and collecting data over the next five years to help inform the independent scientific monitoring, co-ordinated by Scottish Natural Heritage. This will help the Scottish Government in making any final decisions on the future of beavers in Knapdale Forest or elsewhere in Scotland.

"We will also be continuing to engage with the local community as well as trying to inspire Scots to support this exciting conservation project. We hope to see many people visiting the trial site over time, but the beavers do need time to settle in before meeting the neighbours."

Photo by Chris Gomersall

Britain's largest bird of prey, the sea eagle, may be re-introduced to England next summer, nearly a century after being persecuted to extinction.

Natural England, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and Anglian Water, have been investigating the feasibility of re-introducing the bird, also known as the white-tailed eagle, to East Anglia, a part of England rich in wetlands adjacent to the North Sea.

The fourth largest eagle in the world, the sea eagle is a scavenger and generalist predator that feeds on fish, birds and rabbits.

British engineers and other experts are hoping to build a rocket-powered vehicle capable of reaching more than 1,000 mph, faster than a bullet fired from a handgun.

The Bloodhound supersonic car (SSC ) will be driven by Andy Green, who set the current land speed record of 763 mph on October 15, 1997.

The vehicle that will attempt to break the 1,000 mph barrier will have the first ever mixed power plant of a hybrid rocket motor and a jet engine that is currently used on the Eurofighter Typhoon. It is hoped that the car will be ready for testing in 2011.

As tall as a deer and weighing up to 45 pounds (20 kilograms)--equivalent to over two wild turkeys--the great bustard was hunted to extinction in England by the 1840s.

Photo courtesy Great Bustard Group