| From The Newspaper (11) Environment (1) |
December 1, 2022
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| There were two articles in the newspaper on September 21st, which were about the earth's environment, of course, about how bad it was. The first article's title was, "Climate change will negatively affect up to 90% of sea creatures by the end of this century ~A Canadian-led research team." It read that if climate change proceeds, 90% of creatures in the sea will be negatively affected by the end of this century. The team from Dalhousie University in Canada and others wrote in a report published September 20th. There will be changes in the ecosystem, a loss of creature diversity, and a disruption to marine products' stable supply. The effects depend on how much greenhouse gas will be emitted. The team examined about 25,000 kinds of sea creatures, fish and plants living in the sea up to 100m deep, where the rise of the temperature of sea water was clearest. They classified the creatures by their risk of sensitivity from environmental change, in four grades: 'serious', 'high', 'middle', and 'low'. If the rate of greenhouse gas emissions are kept at the current pace, 2.7% of all sea creatures will be listed in the 'serious' category, and 84.4% of them will become in  the 'high' category. This means that about 90% of all of the creatures may not be able to live in their current habitable zones and areas. Sharks and rays make up more than 75% of the animals that are listed in 'serious' or 'high' category. However, if emissions of gasses decrease, and the average temperature rise is within 1.5℃, the percentage of sea creatures in the 'serious' category will be 1.5%, and the sea creatures in the 'high' category will be 54.3%. Recently, he listened to a radio program relating to the sea environment. The radio program host commented on a "red tide" that happened offshore of Hokkaido and killed a lot of sea urchins and yellowtails. The "El Nino" phenomenon caused the red tide. In this case, the temperature of the sea rose, which caused poisonous plankton to grow and that led to the mass die off of the fish around those waters. This news was rather shocking because Hokkaido is located in the north and has cooler temperatures. The other article's title was, "This year's 'The Environmental Doomsday Clock' is 'Extremely Concerning'. ~by specialists, reflecting upon climate change." The article read that Asahi Glass Foundation announced that the "Environmental Doomsday Clock", with specialists from various countries, showed their concerns with a clock reading 9:35. It went back 7 minutes from the previous year. It has improved for two consecutive years; but, it is still within the "severe situation" zone. The questionnaire was done with about 1,800 specialists from 127 countries. He didn't know that the foundation, which is located in this country, was doing this activity and checked about this 'clock' on the internet. On their website, there was a picture of the clock, which was divided by colors and varying degrees. From 12 o'clock to 3 o'clock, it is the color green, headlined with, 'Barely Concerned'. From 3 o'clock to 6 o'clock, a yellow color, headlined with, "Slightly Concerned". From 6 o'clock to 9 o'clock, an orange color, headlined with, "Fairly Concerned". And, from 9 o'clock to 12 o'clock, a red color, headlined with, "Extremely Concerned". In the middle of the clock, there was a digital time readout, which read '9:35'. And, the hands of the clock which pointed between the '9' and the '10'. There were four other clocks, which showed different years' times- 1992 : 7:49; 2001 : 9:08; 2011 : 9:01; and, 2022 : 9:35. He could see that in these 30 years, it worsened by about two hours. There were also times concerning each international geographical area in 2022:: Japan: 9:33, Oceania: 10:08, North America: 10:17, Mexico/Middle America/the Caribbean Countries: 9:32, South America: 9:43, Asia (except for Japan): 9:25, Western Europe: 10:09, Africa: 9:01, Middle East: 9:35, Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union: 9:37. He clicked on the '1992' title, this appeared:: Japan: 7:38, Oceania: 9:58, North America: 8:35, Middle & South America: 8:57, Asia (except for Japan): 8:10, Western Europe: 8:54, Africa: 8:10, Middle East: 8:10, Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union: 9:27. At first, he thought that the study was lenient with Japan, so he researched the composition of the researchers. There were 1,876 people from different backgrounds, including universities (36%), NGOs/NPOs (19%), corporations (23%), federal government and/or local municipalities (10%), as well as others. There were researchers from Japan (26%) as well as from other countries (74%), so maybe there was no biasness. Anyways, he really hoped that this clock would return as soon as possible to the safety zone. |
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No. 498
*disruption :途絶
*habitable :生息の、住むのに適した
*ray :エイ
*make up :構成する
*red tide :赤潮
*yellowtail :ブリ
*doomsday :終末
*consecutive :連続した
*readout :読み取り
*lenient :甘い
*composition :構成