Eliot Hester, a new age instrumentalist, has conceived The Beauty Lost Project, his effort to bring attention and contemplation to beauty in danger of being lost from the world, irreversibly, due to climate change. Each original composition incorporates, interwoven with contemplative melodies produced by a unique blend of instrumentation (cello, bassoon, clarinet, guitar, keyboards) natural sounds of an environment in peril.
In advance of the upcoming release of his The Beauty Lost album, Eliot and The 5th Records are releasing TODAY a single from the album, “Tranquility (The Amazon).” Look for it on iTunes or wherever you go for digital music. Eliot is donating 20% of the proceeds from sales related to The Beauty Lost Project to scientific research and political action to stop climate change. The Beauty Lost album will be released on Earth Day, April 22, 2018. See Eliot’s blog for more information.
Eliot is right to bring attention to the Amazon rainforest. A 2013 study by an international research team led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory analyzed detailed satellite data collected over the Amazon between 2000 and 2009. This study linked rainfall data with spacecraft measurements of the moisture content and structural changes in the rainforest’s canopy, finding that the Amazon suffered a severe drought around 2005. The 2005 drought was directly attributed to long-term warming of the tropical Atlantic sea surface.
“In effect, the same climate phenomenon that helped form hurricanes Katrina and Rita along U.S. southern coasts in 2005 also likely caused the severe drought in southwest Amazonia.”
-Sassan Saatchi, researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and lead author of the 2013 study
Before the Amazon could recover from the 2005 drought, the rainforest suffered a second megadrought around 2010. A 2009 study of the drought effects concluded that repeated cyclical droughts could be expected to destroy 20-40% of the Amazon, converting it irreversibly to savanna within 100 years, if global warming could be limited to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (the current goal of the Paris Climate Agreement). If global temperatures increased as much as 4 degrees Celsius, the authors projected up to an 85% loss of the Amazon.
This is also a classic example of a positive feedback (“positive” meaning “negative” for humanity). Loss of the Amazon would turn one of the Earth’s greatest carbon sinks into a carbon contributor as dead trees rot.
“Ecologically it would be a catastrophe and it would be taking a huge chance with our own climate. The tropics are drivers of the world’s weather systems and killing the Amazon is likely to change them forever. We don’t know exactly what would happen but we could expect more extreme weather.”
-Peter Cox, professor of climate system dynamics at the University of Exeter and co-author of the 2009 study
A new study published last month documents the most recent Amazon megadrought in 2015, which was worse than the previous two and affected an area of the rainforest doubled in size compared with the 2005 event.
There is still time to prevent the worst of it, but time is running out.
#rescuethatfrog