The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has reported that the amounts of atmospheric greenhouse gases reached a new high in 2013, driven by rapidly rising levels of carbon dioxide.

The news is consistent with trends in fossil fuel consumption. But what comes as more of a surprise is the WMO’s revelation that the current rate of ocean acidification, which greenhouse gases (GHGs) help to cause, appears unprecedented in at least the last 300 million years.

“We know without any doubt that our climate is changing and our weather is becoming more extreme due to human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels”, said the WMO’s secretary-general, Michel Jarraud.

“The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin shows that, far from falling, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere actually increased last year at the fastest rate for nearly 30 years. We are running out of time. The laws of physics are non-negotiable.

A 34% increase in radiative forcing from 1990 – 2013

The details of growing GHG levels are in the annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, published by the WMO – the United Nations specialist agency that plays a leading role in international efforts to monitor and protect the environment.

The Bulletin reports on atmospheric concentrations – not emissions – of greenhouse gases. Emissions are what go into the atmosphere, while concentrations are what stay there after the complex system of interactions between the atmosphere, biosphere (the entire global ecological system) and the oceans.

The Bulletin shows that between 1990 and 2013 there was a 34% increase in radiative forcing – the warming effect on our climate – because of long-lived greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane and nitrous oxide.

About a quarter of total emissions are taken up by the oceans and another quarter by the biosphere, cutting levels of atmospheric CO₂.

In 2013, the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ was 142% higher than before the Industrial Revolution started, in about 1750. Concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide had risen by 253% and 121% respectively.

Reduced CO₂ absorption by the biosphere?

The observations from WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch network showed that CO₂ levels increased more from 2012 to 2013 than during any other year since 1984. Scientists think this may be related to reduced CO₂ absorption by the Earth’s biosphere, as well as by the steady increase in emissions.

Although the oceans lessen the increase in CO₂ that would otherwise happen in the atmosphere, they do so at a price to marine life and to fishing communities – and also to tourism. The Bulletin says the oceans appear to be acidifying faster than at any time in at least the last 300 million years.

Wendy Watson-Wright, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, said: “It is high time the ocean, as the primary driver of the planet’s climate and attenuator of climate change, becomes a central part of climate change discussions.

“If global warming is not a strong enough reason to cut CO₂ emissions, ocean acidification should be, since its effects are already being felt and will increase for many decades to come.”

The amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere reached 396.0 parts per million (ppm) in 2013. At the current rate of increase, the global annual average concentration is set to cross the symbolic 400 ppm threshold within the next two years.

Other potent greenouse gases

Methane, in the short term, is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than CO₂ – 34 times more potent over a century, but 84 times more over 20 years.

Atmospheric methane reached a new high of about 1,824 parts per billion (ppb) in 2013, because of increased emissions from human sources. Since 2007, it has started increasing again, after a temporary period of levelling-off.

Nitrous oxide’s atmospheric concentration in 2013 was about 325.9 ppb. Its impact on climate, over a century, is 298 times greater than equal emissions of CO₂. It also plays an important role in the destruction of the ozone layer that protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet solar radiation.

The oceans currently absorb a quarter of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions – about 4kg of CO₂per day per person. Acidification will continue to accelerate at least until mid-century, according to projections from Earth system models.

“The Bulletin provides a scientific base for decision-making”, concluded Jarraud. “We have the knowledge and we have the tools for action to try to keep temperature increases within 2°C to give our planet a chance and to give our children and grandchildren a future. Pleading ignorance can no longer be an excuse for not acting.”

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

It’s a question of fear. What secretly worries pro-fracking Conservative ministers, The Ecologist has learned, is that a Labour administration in power after 2015 might reverse the current coalition’s efforts to make widespread fracking possible across the UK.

So in order to make it as hard as possible for the next government to reverse the plans of this one, the Department for Energy and Climate Change is accelerating efforts to get ‘phase one’ of fracking – as one government source calls the current drive – completed before polling day next May.

And they may succeed: none of the three mainstream parties that hold real clout in Westminster are likely to put up much of a fight any time soon.

Labour: intensely relaxed about shale

Right now an odd sort of rapprochement is taking place in Westminster. After years of glaring at each other suspiciously across the despatch boxes, government and opposition frontbenchers might be close to securing consensus on shale gas.

Labour has been creeping towards accepting fracking for some years now. In 2012 it set out a series of regulatory tests designed to limit localised environmental impact. Then, last month, the opposition tabled amendments to the infrastructure bill detailing these.

“If the government accept our amendments we’ll be in a position where there is much more thorough regulation in place”, said Tom Greatrex MP, Labour’s Shadow Energy Minister. “But there are other issues.”

These include the monitoring of methane gas, which remains the subject of a scientific study. A good excuse for Labour to delay its final endorsement of fracking until next year. In response, ministers are considering further concessions to get Labour firmly onside.

A bit more regulation is regarded by pro-fracking Conservatives as a price worth paying to win a swift political agreement. Even the industry has made it clear that they don’t oppose the bulk of Labour’s proposals.

Fracking firms’ only serious concern with Labour’s proposed regulation is the period of time needed to establish ‘baseline’ chemical levels in groundwater before drilling begins. The opposition is calling for a 12-month timeframe, but the United Kingdom Onshore Oil And Gas (UKOOG) thinks three months is plenty.

“This is a very regulated industry already”, said a spokesman. “Whatever government is in place, the industry will be committed to proper regulation and to full consultation with local communities that are affected.”

Nixing the NIMBYs

Oddly, the biggest threat to ministers’ fracking plans comes from backbenchers representing rural constituencies across England’s green and pleasant land – most of which are Conservative. These are the Middle Englanders – the ones who oppose fracking on the time-honoured tradition of ‘not in my back yard’.

Nick Herbert, a former government minister, is among them. Herbert supports fracking nationally, but rejected a proposal for explanatory drilling in his South Downs constituency earlier this year because it involved heavy lorry movements through a pretty local village.

“It’s difficult to judge when the costs of renewable energy might fall”, he says. “What the government must do is reassure those who have concerns about the environmental impact.” He also sees an economic benefit in developing domestic gas sources, since “shale gas could substitute for gas from other countries.”

Herbert, and the NIMBYs in his constituency, are always going to be a problem for the Government. But ministers have a ‘carrot and stick’ plan to reduce the number of times their campaigning actually stops drilling taking place.

Community engagement plans are being developed to combat their concerns. And landowners’ and homeowners’ rights to obstruct fracking under their property are being addressed in the Infrastructure Bill – which will allow energy firms to drill without the owner’s permission.

Campaigners remain defiant, and confident too

Green campaigners are facing a considerable challenge. They are fighting against a firm pro-fracking consensus in Parliament, where arguments about climate change are seemingly only being voiced by a handful of MPs – most visibly the Green MP Caroline Lucas (see photo).

Herbert, in common with ministers, thinks the minority of the population that are seriously worried about fracking and its potentially severe impacts are irrelevant to the debate – and can be safely ignored

But away from Westminster the enemies of fracking remain defiant, and confident. For Hannah Martin, a coordinator of the Say No To Gas group, the imminent election in May 2015 provides the perfect opportunity to squeeze MPs seeking re-election on fracking.

Say No To Gas now comprises 200 community groups which have grown up in the last year or so to stop fracking in their areas, and more are being set up all the time. The network is providing an “unprecedented level of resistance” wherever energy companies seek permits for exploratory drilling, she says.

As for the outcome, she is sure MPs and even ministers will be eager to please concerned constituents in what is likely to be a very close-run election. “It is definitely stoppable”, she insists.

Lib Dems: forgetting the long view

A key target will be Liberal Democrat incumbents desperate to win back popular support which has ebbed away during their time in government.

The party boasted about its environmentalist priorities while in opposition – but has done very little to restrain Conservative ministers in government. Following Cameron’s promise to form Britain’s ‘greenest government ever’, the result has been eco-catastrophe – and the Lib Dems must share the blame for that.

The party insists it has wrung concessions out of the Tories. Applications for exploratory drilling now have to be accompanied by a testing ‘statement of environmental awareness’. Planning guidance makes clear drilling will be refused in sensitive areas – and if the frackers appeal, ministers can ‘call in’ the case to make a final judgement themselves.

None of these really address the fundamentals of shale gas extraction, though. They won’t ensure the carbon from Britain’s shale deposits stays in the ground. Nor will they stop the industrialisation and pollution of countryside which may not all be ‘special’ but is still hugely valued by local people.

Martin Horwood, a Lib Dem MP worried by fracking, says his concerns have shifted away from earthquakes to water contamination and the long-term impact on climate change. “There’s still a lot of scepticism in the party”, he argues.

But will it make any difference? At last year’s autumn conference, the Liberal Democrats passed a motion giving the party’s official blessing to fracking. But it did so in terms that allowed its numerous doubters to keep quiet.

Now the rush is on to implement the policy, we may see further signs of Lib Dem unrest this autumn. So watch the Lib Dem’s party conference, where concerns over fracking may surface with renewed ferocity.

The coalition’s junior partners are unlikely to trigger a big row over the issue if they can help it: on fracking, as with nuclear power, they have allowed the Conservatives to call the shots. But the whiff of a grassroots rebellion among the party ranks could change all that in the blink of an eye.

Ukraine – the joker in the pack

Another dimension is the enthusiasm of American shale gas producers to get into Europe’s gas market. Encouraged by Europe’s growing tensions with Russia, they want to take advantage of the situation and give their flagging industry a new lease of life.

One plan is to open up Europe as a huge new export market for US shale gas. But the US lacks the export infrastructure needed to do this, and realistically the necessary terminals cannot be in place for some years.

The other plan is to use gas shortages in Europe this coming winter to engineer a pro-fracking concensus – and open up Europe’s fracking grounds to US companies.

Right-wing elements in the Ukraine government have already openly advocated closing Russia’s gas pipelines to the EU, something that would suit US fracking interests down to the ground.

But either plan would be a disaster for the planet because – thanks to high energy inputs and fugitive methane emissions from fracking wells – the global warming impact of fracked gas is comparable to that of coal. Add in the impact of shipping from US ports and it only gets worse.

But how big can fracking get anyway?

The switch to low-carbon energy generation, mainly from wind and solar, means that demand for gas should fall dramatically over the next 15 years. By 2030, the International Energy Agency estimates, shale gas could only ever provide 10% of the UK’s energy mix.

Then there is the problem that Europeans will strongly resist paying as much for their gas as the Japanese and emerging-economy countries do.

Some business analysts estimate replacing Russian gas with American shale gas would result in European gas prices doubling. Domestically produced shale gas will also need sustained high prices to be economcially viable, as it costs far more to produce than conventional natural gas.

“Realistically”, says the IPPR think-tank’s Joss Garman, “it’s not going to be a significant part of the answer.”

So the news is not all grim for the anti-frackers. Never mind the political support that fracking has engineered in the three main parties. Straightforward market economics might be enough to make sure that fracking never gets far beyond the starting gate.

Meanwhile determined anti-fracking campaigning aimed at MPs keen for electoral advantage in the 2015 election could make all the difference. It’s called democracy – and since it only comes around ever five years, there’s every reason to use it while we can.

Alex Stevenson is parliamentary editor of politics.co.uk, and an occasional contributor to The Ecologist.

Bovine tuberculosis (TB) is expected to cost British taxpayers nearly £100m in 2014. Scientific evidence is a vital weapon in the fight to protect cattle from TB.

Why, then, has the government just fought and won a legal battle to avoid consulting independent scientists on its most high-profile TB control effort?

Wild badgers play a role in transmitting TB to cattle, and culling badgers seems an obvious solution. A new round of badger culls is about to start, but it is risky.

A complex interaction between badger behaviour and TB transmission means that the results of culling could, depending on various factors, increase TB levels, instead of reducing them. To add to that, badger culling is expensive.

An expert scientific body was appointed – and quite right too

This is why, in 2013, the government started a pilot that it hoped would be give them a cheap and effective way to control cattle TB. Farmers, rather than government, would pay for the culling. And, rather than being cage-trapped, badgers would be shot in the wild.

This pilot was started in just two areas – and for good reason: the whole approach was untested, and the stakes were high. Marksmen shooting at night might endanger public safety.

Shooting free-ranging badgers might cause suffering. And, worst of all for the aims of the approach, failing to kill enough badgers, fast enough, would worsen the cattle TB situation that the culls were intended to control.

In the face of such uncertainty, the government adopted a commonly used approach. It appointed an Independent Expert Panel to assess the safety, humaneness and effectiveness of the pilot project. The expectation was that this panel’s conclusions would reflect scientific evidence, whether or not they supported government policy.

What the IEP found – ineffective and inhumane

The Independent Expert Panel found that farmer-led culling was far from effective. Tasked with killing at least 70% of the local badgers within a six-week period, cull teams only managed to kill between 28% and 48%.

Culling periods were extended, but still the total kill rose to just 31-56%, according to government figures. Unless more badgers could be killed, and faster, farmer-led culling risked worsening the problem it was intended to solve.

The 2013 culls also failed to meet their targets for animal welfare. Between 7.4% and 22.8% of badgers were still alive five minutes after being shot and were assumed to have experienced “marked pain”.

Despite facing these failures, the government decided to repeat culls in the same areas in 2014. If effectiveness and humaneness could be improved sufficiently, culling might be extended to more areas in 2015. If not, the government might need to reconsider their policy.

One would think, then, that measuring effectiveness and humaneness would be a central goal of 2014’s culls.

IEP advice comprehensively ignored

The Independent Expert Panel, together with government scientists, selected the most accurate and precise ways to estimate the effectiveness and humaneness of the 2013 culls.

Measuring effectiveness is challenging because – being nocturnal and shy – badgers are hard to count. The panel overcame this problem by using genetic ‘fingerprints’ to identify badgers from hair snagged on barbed wire.

They measured humaneness primarily through independent observers recording the time that shot badgers took to die.

The panel recommended that the same approaches be used for subsequent culls. But the government rejected this recommendation.

This year there will be no attempt to count badgers in the cull areas, either before or after the culls. The time badgers take to die will not be recorded. There will be no oversight by independent scientists.

Instead, the effectiveness of the culls which start tonight will be judged using a method so utterly inadequate it was barely considered in 2013.

Key data will be collected by marksmen themselves: people with a vested interest in the cull being designated “effective” and “humane”, who in 2013 collected data so unreliable it was considered unusable by the panel.

Available information suggests that any future claim that the 2014 culls have reduced badger numbers sufficiently to control TB will be completely baseless.

Failing to collect evidence will make the 2014 a fiasco

Why the change in approach? Government cites cost, and hired some expensive lawyers to defend its position when the Badger Trust sought, and eventually lost, a judicial review of the decision to scrap independent scientific oversight of this year’s culls.

Yet the cost of pushing forward with an ineffective culling policy would far outweigh the cost of properly assessing effectiveness and humaneness.

Government has repeatedly referred to its programme of badger culling as “science-led“. One would expect a science-led policy to entail gathering reliable information on management outcomes, and using this and other evidence to inform future decisions.

Choosing – against formal expert advice – to collect inconsistent, inadequate and potentially biased data is an insult to evidence-based policymaking.

When ineffective culling can make a bad situation worse, failing to collect the evidence needed to evaluate future policy fails farmers, taxpayers and wildlife.

Rosie Woodroffe is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Zoology. She gratefully acknowledges research funding from Defra.

More about the badger cull on The Ecologist.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Bad news I am afraid. The RSPB has been campaigning to stop a development of 5,000 houses on Chattenden Woods and Lodge Hill SSSI.

This ex-MOD training ground is home to a nationally important population of nightingales – possibly the most important site in the UK for this iconic and declining species – as well as ancient woodland and rare grassland.

Last Friday, Medway Council made the decision to approve the application from Land Securities, MoD’s delivery partner.

The vote to approve the development goes against the advice of Natural England, the government’s own environmental advisors, as well as a raft of conservation organisations.

A shocking decision

If the development goes ahead it would destroy the SSSI including the home to more than 1% of our national nightingale population.

Worse – it would set the terrible precedent for future development. Under the terms of the National Planning Policy Framework (Clause 118), there is a presumption against building on SSSIs – our most important wildlife sites.

The public benefits from the development need to significantly outweigh the environmental damage. Houses which are important locally must not trump nationally important wildlife sites.

The Secretary of State, Eric Pickles, can ‘call in’ the application and make the decision himself with the national perspective it needs. In effect this would take the decision out of Medway’s hands, and allow it to be made through the rigorous process of a public inquiry.

We’ll be reminding him that if the development goes ahead, it will be one of the largest losses of SSSI land in the country – perhaps the biggest loss since the mid-1990s. This is not what we’d expect from ‘the greenest government ever’. Not only that, but it would be contrary to the Government’s own guidance on developing protected sites.

It is clear that Medway is in need of housing and employment, but these needs should be assessed through a thorough strategic review. Reliance on a single proposal at Lodge Hill is not the answer to providing a sustainable long-term solution.

The more I think about it, the angrier I get

Now, if Mr Pickles fails to call in the decision and fails to grant a public inquiry, then this would send a terrible signal to others looking to meet housing targets.

The Labour Party, for example, have said that by 2020 we should be building 200,000 new houses a year. If every block of 5,000 new houses happened to coincide with a SSSI, we could lose 40 SSSIs a year.

I know what you’re thinking – this is hyperbole, this cannot happen as not all new houses will be built on SSSIs. But, if the Lodge Hill development goes ahead then developers might just chance their arm and the consequences could be appalling for wildlife.

And, given that this is public land (Ministry of Defence), what happens to future public land of high environmental value? Can that also be sold off for development? I expect higher standards from the State.

And the Lodge Hill decision struck a discordant note after such a positive week. On Tuesday, we had been celebrating with Medway Council over the decision by The Davies Commission to rule out a Thames Estuary Airport.

And, on Wednesday, it had been a pleasure to hear positive commitments to restore nature from so many businesses, politicians and religious leaders at our Conference for Nature.

The original intention of the Today programme (which covered the Lodge Hill story on Saturday morning – see here at 7.32) had been to reflect on the juxtaposition of these events.

‘Back to the future’ on nature conservation?

But as I thought about possible responses, I felt the Lodge Hill decision was another reminder that the war continues. Fifteen years ago, we coined the phrase ‘stop the rot, protect the best and restore the rest’.

The optimists amongst us hoped that we would be spending more of our efforts recovering populations of threatened species and restoring wildlife at a landscape scale. We have done some of this (and need / want to do lots more) but the reality is we still have to fight hard to prevent even our finest wildlife sites from deteriation or destruction.

The verbal commitments made on Wednesday will ring hollow unless they are backed up by action. Our regional director in the south-east, Chris Corrigan, rightly said to me at the weekend:

“There is a housing need but if we are going to solve this by building on the 6% of our most precious land for wildlife we cannot possibly reverse the continuing erosion of nature and what kind of country we will leave for future generations.”

I am hopeful that the Labour Party will address the false conflict of housing and the environment through its Lyons review, to which the RSPB’s Head of Planning is contributing. Simon has some smart ideas which he is feeding in.

I’m also hopeful that Mark Reckless, the local Conservative MP who opposes the Lodge Hill development, will help persuade his colleague Eric Pickles to call Medway’s decision.

Time for a Nature Act – and you know who to vote for …

Decisions like Medway’s send us back to the mid-1990s when the environment movement climbed into the trees to oppose the expanding road network. We may have to do so again, but in 21st century England we deserve a different agenda.

This is why I am pleased we now have two political parties – the Liberal Democrats and, after their conference this weekend, the Green Party – promising a Nature Act after the next election. We should be investing our energies in restoring nature, rather than destroying it.

The good news is, as I found out at the ‘Vision for Nature’ conference on Friday, the next generation of environmentalists are more passionate, more determined and (from what I can tell) more impressive that the current crop.

They’ll need to be. We’re leaving our natural world in a mess and, if we carry on as we are, it will be for them to clean it up.

Martin Harper is Conservation Director of RSPB. He blogs on the RSPB website.

Please help us: tell Eric Pickles why this decision matters, and ask him to call it in.

Catch up with the whole history of the case on our Lodge Hill web pages.

This article is based on two blog posts by Martin Harper on the RSPB website.

Following recent catastrophic declines of vultures in Asia that left landscapes littered with carcasses, vultures in Europe and Africa may be set to follow, according to BirdLife International.

The warning comes following the discovery that a veterinary drug that’s lethal to vultures even at low doses is commercially available in Europe.

“Vultures play a fundamental role that no other birds do: they clean our landscapes”, said Iván Ramírez, Head of Conservation for BirdLife International in Europe and Central Asia.

And that means they are for human and animal health as they clean up the rotting remains of dead animals.

Diclofenac has already wiped out vultures in South Asia

Used to treat inflammation in livestock, diclofenac has already wiped out 99% of vultures in India, Pakistan and Nepal.

A non-steroid anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) present in many commonly used drugs that are used for treating moderate pain, diclofenac is extremely toxic to vultures in small doses. Vultures eating cattle treated with a veterinary dose of diclofenac will die in less than 2 days.

The decline of vultures in Asia was shockingly fast – quicker than any other wild bird, including the Dodo. Within a decade species such as the White-rumped Vulture fell by 99.9% as a result of diclofenac in India alone – leaving only one bird in a thousand alive.

A safe alternative drug, meloxicam, has been identified and tested on vultures and a range of other bird species. The meloxicam patent is more than 10-years old, meaning any pharmaceutical company can produce it with no royalties or licence fees to pay.

But now diclofenac has reached Europe

But despite the dangers and the availablity of alternatives, BirdLife has found that the drug is commercially available in Spain and Italy – both stronghold countries for European vulture species.

Since 1996, the EU and national governments have invested significant resources on conserving vultures, and there have been at least 67 LIFE projects related to these species. Between 2008 and 2012, nine vulture conservation projects alone received €10.7 million.

“We know what we need to do in Europe – ban veterinary diclofenac”, said Jim Lawrence, BirdLife’s Preventing Extinctions Programme Manager. “All these European conservation efforts would be useless if the use of veterinary diclofenac becomes widespread.”

Four vulture species breed in Europe: the Endangered Egyptian Vulture, the Near Threatened Cinereous Vulture, and important populations of Griffon Vulture and Bearded Vulture.

Three of the four vulture populations have been increasing steadily (except the Egyptian Vulture), partly due to the intensive conservation efforts funded by European Union budget lines.

A host of other threats in Africa

As well as the impending threat of diclofenac, a multitude of other complex threats need to be unravelled further in Africa, and investment needed to tackle them.

African vultures are facing increasing threats from poisoning (deliberate and accidental), persecution for body parts to be used in traditional medicine, habitat loss, collision with power-lines, and more.

The birds have declined in West Africa on average by 95% in three decades. Across Africa, seven of the eleven vulture species are now listed as globally threatened, with species such as Hooded Vulture recently being up-listed to Endangered in 2011.

“Three of every four old-world vulture species are already globally threatened with extinction or Near Threatened according the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species”, said Kariuki Ndanganga, BirdLife Africa’s Species Programme Manager.

“Unless threats are identified and tackled quickly and effectively, vultures in Africa and Europe could face extinction within our lifetime.”

He is now leading an effort to raise £20,000 to identify, review, prioritize and tackle the threats to vultures across the continent.

The decline is global

Of 11 vulture species found in Africa, seven (including five of the six species endemic to Africa) are globally threatened. Five of these species joined the Red List of threatened species only in the last seven years. The Hooded Vulture – a historically widespread species – was listed as Endangered in 2011.

There are 21 species of vultures in the world, five of which can be found in the American continent. The other 16 are distributed across Africa, Europe and Asia.

Of these so-called Old World vultures, 75% are globally threatened or near-threatened, with the number of threatened species expected to rise in the next conservation status assessment.