Geese Fly to Exhaustion in Race Against Climate Change

By Kimberly Hickok, Staff Writer | July 24, 2018  
Barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis) are arriving in the Arctic exhausted after their rushed migration.Credit: Shutterstock 

Every spring, thousands of barnacle geese make a grand migration from their temperate winter habitat in northern Europe and northwestern Russia to their summer nesting grounds in the Arctic. It's a journey of more than 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) that usually takes about a month, but new research has found that rising temperatures in the Arctic are pressuring the geese to make the trip in a grueling one-week sprint.

Barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis) are medium-size water birds found in Europe, Russia, the United Kingdom, Wales and the Arctic, according to the National Audubon Society. Until recent years, the timing of the birds' spring migration meant they arrived in the Arctic right as the snowmelt exposed their nesting sites and initiated plant growth. The birds would almost immediately lay their eggs, which would then hatch 30 or so days later, right at the peak season for plant growth — perfect timing for hungry, growing goslings. [Photos: Birds Evolved from Dinosaurs, Museum Exhibit Shows]

But in the past few decades, scientists noticed that things have changed. Temperatures in the Arctic have been getting warmer earlier and earlier in the season — by about a day per year — and this is putting significant pressure on the migrating barnacle geese.

The geese are trying to keep up with these environmental changes, but they're struggling. Scientists have found that the geese still leave at about the same time every year, but the animals have shortened their travel time to the Arctic. A trip that used to take about a month now takes the geese only about a week, as the birds will spend less time at their stopover sites or will skip them altogether and just keep flying. 

Instead of promptly laying their eggs as they usually do when they arrive at their Arctic nesting grounds, the exhausted geese need more than a week to recuperate and build up enough energy before they can start nesting. By the time the animals are ready to lay their eggs, the grasses and plants the birds feed on have been growing for a few weeks. As a result, goslings emerge from their eggs after the peak growing season rather than during it, and that's causing the young birds' survival rate to decline. 

The researchers predicted that barnacle geese may not be able to keep up with a continually warming climate and, as a consequence, their population may suffer. However, the researchers also pointed out that geese are a social species, and if enough individuals leave earlier, the rest may follow.
The study was published online July 19 in the journal Current Biology.
Original article on Live Science.

Crusader Jenny , Nanook & Mika

What Climate Change Looks Like In 2018

A man cools off in the spray of a fire hydrant during a heatwave in Philadelphia this month. JESSICA KOURKOUNIS / GETTY IMAGES
By Christie Aschwanden is FiveThirtyEight's lead wriyyer for Science@cragcrest
It’s only July, but it has already been a long, hot spring and summer. The contiguous U.S. endured the warmest May ever recorded, and in June, the average temperature was 1.7 degrees Celsius (3.0 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 20th century average. Iowa, New Mexico and Texas set record highs for their minimum temperatures in June, and as of July 3, nearly 30 percent of the Lower 48 was experiencing drought conditions. And it’s not just the U.S. During the first five months of 2018, nearly every continent experienced record warm temperatures, and May 2018 marked the 401st consecutive month in which temperatures exceeded the 20th century average.

Land & Ocean Temperature Percentiles May 2018
NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information 
Data Source GHON-M version 3.3.0. & ERSST version 4.0.0

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201805
Climate change, in other words, is not a hypothetical future event — it’s here. We’re living it. And at a major science conference this month, some of the world’s leading climate scientists said it was changing our world in ways beyond what they’d anticipated.

“The red alert is on,” Laurent Fabius, who was president of the 2015 international climate change negotiations in Paris, told an audience last week at the EuroScience Open Forum, Europe’s largest interdisciplinary science meeting. As of 2015, global temperatures had risen about 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels. “It’s a race against time,” Fabius said, and the political challenge is to avoid acting too late.

A draft of a forthcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that leaked earlier this year concludes that global temperatures are on track to rise in excess of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by about 2040. The 2015 Paris climate agreement set limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius as a sort of stretch goal, with the less ambitious target being 2 degrees Celsius. The IPCC report, which is expected to be released in October, says that even if the pledges made under the Paris agreement are fulfilled, warming will still exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius. The report also says that the differences between the present day and just 0.5 degrees more warming are “substantial increases in extremes,” including hot temperatures, “heavy precipitation events” and extreme droughts.

We don’t have to look to the future to see what climate change can do. At the EuroScience Open Forum, Camille Parmesan,1 a professor and member of IPCC, discussed her research showing that 90 percent of the 490 plant species examined at two sites, one in Washington, D.C., the other in Chinnor in the U.K., are responding to climate change in measurable ways. Some plants she’s studied require winter chilling to thrive, and that’s a problem, because winter is warming more than spring.

And temperatures aren’t rising uniformly. Areas at higher latitudes are warming faster than other places, and that has allowed outbreaks of infections from Vibrio, a bacteria genus that thrives in warm waters, to happen in places like the Baltic Sea area. “We’ve underestimated the impact of climate change thus far,” Parmesan said.

The accelerating consequences of climate disruption will be a major theme when COP24, the next iteration of the climate conference that produced the Paris agreement, meets in Poland in December. Another focus of discussion will be the progress that each country has made toward its “nationally determined contributions,” the voluntary goals for reducing emissions that nations set for themselves in Paris. Progress is not in line with these goals in many countries, Fabius said. “Germany is not fulfilling its [NDCs], and in France last year, CO2 emissions were up,” he said.

If decision-makers can’t agree on politics, they might be persuaded by economics, said Thomas Stocker, a climate scientist and a longtime member of IPCC. De-carbonizing our energy systems is “the biggest opportunity in the 21st century,” he told the EuroScience Open Forum.

Some local and state governments in the U.S. are exploring that opportunity. “The Trump White House is not just failing to do climate,” Parmesan said. “It’s doing its best to stop every advance we’ve made in the last 20 years, but what’s happening is a reaction from the ground level up that’s countering that national-level resistance.” (The White House did not respond to FiveThirtyEight’s request for comment.) As an example, she pointed to Georgetown, Texas, a city north of Austin. The electric company there is owned by the city, which has just switched to 100 percent renewable energy. “The mayor is quite conservative, and he got mad when people said it was for climate change,” she said. “He said, ‘No, no — it just makes economic sense.’”
Thanx  Christie Aschwanden 
Knight Jonny C.

Report: 2017 was deadliest year for environmental activists

By Ray Downs  |  July 24, 2018 A view of the Anavilhanas Islands, formed by the Amazonas River in Brazil, where heavy deforestation has taken place over the years. Since then, Brazil has become the deadliest country in the world for environmental activists, a new report said Tuesday. File Photo by Marcelo Sayao/EPA
July 24 (UPI) -- At least 207 land and environmental activists around the world were killed in 2017, making it the deadliest year on record, British organization Global Witness said in a report Tuesday.

The report, At What Cost?, shows the rise in killings has been linked to an increased demand for consumer products like palm oil and coffee.

A growing number of attacks are carried out against people who refuse to give up their land to grow these products, Global Witness said. But demand in other industries, such as mining, also result in killings against indigenous leaders, community activists and environmentalists trying to protect their land.

"Local activists are being murdered as governments and businesses value quick profit over human life," said Ben Leather, a senior campaigner at Global Witness. "Many of the products emerging from this bloodshed are on the shelves of our supermarkets. Yet as brave communities stand up to corrupt officials, destructive industries and environmental devastation, they are being brutally silenced. Enough is enough."

Latin America accounted for about 60 percent of the killings. The deadliest country for land activists was Brazil, where 57 died last year. Mexico and Peru saw dramatic increases in killings, from 3 to 15 and 2 to 8, respectively. And Nicaragua, with a population of 6 million people, saw 4 homicides of land activists, making it the deadliest country per capita.

John Knox, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, told Al Jazeera Latin America's population and corruption make it dangerous ground for environmental activists.

"You see indigenous peoples who are still directly dependent on natural resources in forests or sometimes fisheries who are already discriminated against or marginalized," he said. "When conflicts between the companies and governments that want to profit from natural resources and the people who depend upon them occur in countries or regions that have a weak rule of law, then they are much more likely to result in violence and killing."

The Philippines was the deadliest country in Asia and second-deadliest in the world. Culprits vary, with criminal gangs blamed for at least 90 deaths last year, and government forces for at least 53.

The deadliest industry was agribusiness, in which 46 land activists were killed. At least 40 were killed in the mining sector and 23 in the logging industry.

Data limits means the numbers of those killed could be much higher. It also doesn't include people attacked in other ways, including death threats, arrests, intimidation, cyber-attacks, sexual assault and lawsuits, the organization said.

"The appalling stories of women threatened with rape, homes burnt down, and families attacked with machetes are shocking at an individual level," said writer and environmental activist Margaret Atwood, a supporter of Global Witness. "Collectively, they show an epidemic of violence visited upon defenders of the earth. This violation of human rights calls for vigorous protest."
Thanx Ray Downs

Knight Sha  C.

Before and After Global Warming

Glaciers

 

 

 Picture of Muir  glacier taken in 1882 and picture taken of same spot in 2005

 

 

 

FOREST

 

  Rocky National Park before global warming

 

 Rocky National Park after  higher temperatures brought about population explosion in pine tree devouring Pine Beetles

 

REEFS

 Great Barrier Reef before leap in rising ocean temperatures

 

 Now... enormous areas of the reef have been bleached as coral creatures die from too warm temperatures

 

Coral reef in Dibba off coast of Emirates before jump in ocean temp

 

Same reef today after death was caused by Red Tide Algae. Massive growth of the algae due to global warming and greenhouse gases

 

Danube River Before

 

 Danube after two year drought lowered water levels so much, ships were stranded in mid stream

 

SAN BLAS ARCHIPELAGO BEFORE

 

SAN BLAS ARCHIPELAGO AFTER SEA LEVEL RISE

 

'A picture is worth a thousand words', so they say.

 What do you say??

What can teenagers do to fight climate change?

An email came in recently from H.H., a thirteen-year-old on a “year long quest to find out how I can make a difference” in the fight against climate change. The email included a list of questions. They’re good questions, so I’ll answer them here as best as I can. 

1. Is it possible to stop climate change?
Not entirely, but it should be possible to stop the worst effects of climate change.

The climate reacts slowly to all the carbon dioxide we’ve been adding to the atmosphere. It will take decades or even hundreds of years for the full effects of the fossil fuel we’ve already burned to be felt. So it isn’t really possible to fully stop climate change.

But most scientists think it is possible to avoid the worst effects of climate change. We have a short time in which to act. If we can hold emissions down — and then gradually eliminate them — we should be able to prevent the really bad scenarios that scientists are warning us about.

2. Do we need to have a global government to address climate change or does local governments work too?
We don’t need a global government, but we do need a global agreement between governments. There is only one climate, so the nations of the earth need to cooperate to reach the common goal of reducing carbon emissions. The good news is that we’ve cooperated before. For example, over twenty years ago, 186 nations agreed to a treaty to address the hole in the ozone layer. Climate change is a much bigger problem, but at least we know what needs to be done.

3. How did you first come to know or get interested in climate change?
Scientists have been studying climate change since before I was born, but like most people, I didn’t pay much attention until the issue started becoming more urgent in the 1990s. Once I started to learn about climate change, I realized that it’s a much bigger problem than most, because it affects every aspect of the environment and the economy.

TerraPass began as a school project in 2004. Since then, of course, I’ve learned more than ever about the causes of climate change and — more importantly — the potential solutions.

4. How has knowing about climate change influenced your life?

I spend every day working on climate change, so it’s influenced my life quite a bit! And, like a lot of people, I take steps to conserve energy usage. Beyond those obvious things, here are some other ways climate change has influenced my life:

Good (yes, there are some good things): I enjoy working in an area that I feel is important to the future health and wealth of the planet. I’m a science geek, and science of climate and energy turns out to be completely fascinating. I’m also a politics geek, and the politics of climate change are also fascinating — and totally frustrating. These days, I’m feeling optimistic that we’re starting to move in the right direction. So that’s nice.

Bad: I wish climate change would go away! I would prefer to live in a world where we had access to cheap, clean energy. But we don’t, so I worry in particular about some of the potentially irreversible effects of climate change, such as biodiversity loss.

5. What do you think is the best way to convince people that climate change is happening?

Good question. I’m pretty sure the answer lies in helping people understand that climate change isn’t only a threat, but also an opportunity. In 50 years, we will all be healthier and wealthier than we are now — and the environment will be safe. But only if we start acting now.

Of course, some people will never be convinced, so we should focus most of our energy on motivating the people who do understand the problem (the majority of Americans) to push for solutions.

6. Can you suggest other sources — media, places to visit, activities to take part in, or people I could contact to help me understand and fight against climate change?

There’s so much information available online that I hardly know where to begin. You might want to check out this list of the top 50 green blogs, and find the ones that interest you most.

There’s also an interesting study guide related to the movie An Inconvenient Truth. One of the best ways for you to get involved is through your school.

Of course, you can also get involved by finding ways to reduce your carbon footprint. You don’t drive yet, so you’re already doing a good job on that front. Perhaps you can find ways to green your home.

Update: Via this Grist post, I found this area of the Clinton Global Initiative web site that lists out ideas for “commitments” that young people can take to fight climate change. Lots of ideas in there.

7. Why do you think people don’t believe that climate change is happening?

This is a complicated topic. I think there are a few reasons. The first is that the science of climate change is difficult. The second is that climate change is scary. A third reason — and this may be the most important one — is that the politics of climate change are a mess. I know that’s a vague answer, but you could write a whole book about this.

8. What do you think I should do after I finish college to help save earth?
This question is easy: don’t worry about it. Here’s why:

You won’t graduate from college for eight years. In eight years, the world will be very different. We’ll have a different government. We’ll have new technologies. We’ll have new laws and new international agreements. No one can predict what the world will look like in eight years, so just study hard and see what opportunities arise.

More importantly, what you should do depends entirely on what you like to do. All sorts of people are needed to help fight climate change: scientists, engineers, legislators, educators, entrepreneurs, businesspeople, financiers, activists, and the list goes on. The best thing for you to do is whatever you most enjoy, because that’s where you’ll make the greatest difference. And the only way to find that out is to try out a bunch of different things, talk to people who do work you find interesting, and learn as much as possible.

It’s really difficult to convey the sheer breadth and diversity of opportunities available to someone interested in the environment. (See here if you want a taste.) Fortunately for you, this is one question you can put off answering for a few years.

Knight  Sha  C .

GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Wagner Calls Teen 'Naive' After Climate Change Question

 

 Videos circulating on social media show Republican nominee for Pennsylvania governor Scott Wagner telling a teenager that she's young and naive after asking about climate change.



Fossil fuel industry spent nearly $2 billion to kill U.S. climate action, new study finds Industry has out-lobbied environmentalists 10-to-1 on climate since 2000.

JOE ROMM      JULy  19, 2018
ACTIVISTS RALLY IN NEW YORK CITY TO SUPPORT THE STATE'S INVESTIGATION INTO WHETHER OIL GIANT EXXON COVERED UP ITS KNOWLEDGE ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE, FEBRUARY 22, 2017. CREDIT: SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES
Legislation to address climate change has repeatedly died in Congress. But a major new study says the policy deaths were not from natural causes — they were caused by humans, just like climate change itself is.

Climate action has been repeatedly drowned by a devastating surge and flood of money from the fossil fuel industry — nearly $2 billion in lobbying since 2000 alone.

This is according to stunning new analysis in the journal Climatic Change on “The climate lobby” by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle.

The most important conclusion of Brulle’s is that spending by those in favor of climate action was dramatically overwhelmed by the big fossil fuel suppliers and users: “Environmental organizations and the renewable energy sector lobbying expenditures were dwarfed by a ratio of 10:1 by the spending of the sectors engaged in the supply and use of fossil fuels.” 

The study serves to help put to rest notion that the effort to pass climate legislation has ever been a fair fight. But then, the big corporate producers and consumers of fossil fuels have hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue — thus dwarfing the funds available to major environmental groups and the emerging clean energy sector.

Brulle analyzed the “countervailing power ratio,” which is the total lobbying expenditures by the big fossil fuel trade associations along with the transportation, electric utility, and fossil fuel sectors divided by the total lobbying expenditures of the renewable energy sector along with environmental organizations (see the chart below).

The ratio of lobbying expenditures by opponents of climate action compared to proponents. CREDIT:Climatic Change
THE RATIO OF LOBBYING EXPENDITURES BY OPPONENTS OF CLIMATE ACTION COMPARED TO PROPONENTS. CREDIT:CLIMATIC CHANGE
“Special interests dominate the conversation, all working for a particular advantage for their industry,” as Dr. Brulle told ThinkProgress in an email. “The common good is not represented.”

Indeed, the other key point of the study is that a truly staggering amount of money has been spent lobbying Congress on climate change this century, more than $2 billion.

The biggest surge came, unsurprisingly, during the 2009-2010 period — when Congress came the closest it ever did to passing serious climate legislation

US national climate change lobbying expenditures total by year 2000–2016 (green) and as a percent of total lobbying (blue). CREDIT: Climatic Change.

US NATIONAL CLIMATE CHANGE LOBBYING EXPENDITURES TOTAL BY YEAR 2000–2016 (GREEN) AND AS A PERCENT OF TOTAL LOBBYING (BLUE). CREDIT: CLIMATIC CHANGE.
During 2009 and 2010, total lobbying expenditures on climate change accounted for a whopping nine percent of all lobbying expenditures.

The House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, often called the Waxman-Markey bill, by a slim margin in June 2009. At that point, the fossil fuel industry launched an all-out — and ultimately successful — lobbying push to undermine any effort by the Senate to  pass their own version of the climate bill over the next 12 months. 

Indeed, of the top nine energy companies with the biggest lobbying expenditures between January 2009 and June 2010, six were Big Oil companies (led by ExxonMobil), and the other three were a coal producer and two coal-intensive utilities.

“It’s clear that when the greatest threat presents itself — like when Congress and the Executive branch are aligned and favorable to and recognize climate change as a major issue,” explained Brulle, “these corporations that engage in the supply and use of fossil fuels work the hardest to upend legislative efforts by increasing their lobby spending ten-fold.”

Finally, it’s worth noting, as Brulle does, that electric utilities, which collectively have spent vast sums lobbying on climate change, were not all lobbying uniformly against the climate bill in 2009 and 2010.

But the biggest carbon polluters at the time, such as Southern Company and American Electric Power (AEP), were among the very biggest spenders.

Also, as the study notes, “several corporations’ apparent support for climate policy is a sophisticated strategy to simultaneously attempt to appear to support such legislation, while actually supporting efforts to undermine it.”

To do this, some companies had memberships in coalitions that both supported climate legislation (U.S. Climate Action Partnership) and that opposed it (American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity).

And it appears to be the case that the opponents of the climate bill were very actively trying to kill the bill, while many of the so-called proponents were mainly lobbying to shape the bill “as a hedge against unacceptable climate legislation in case their first preference (no action) is defeated,” as the study notes.

Post 2010,  the fossil fuel industry has maintained its consistent large edge in  lobbying over environmentalists and clean energy companies.

Sadly, brand new IRS rules from the Trump administration “will no longer force Kochs and other groups to disclose donors,” as the New York Times reported Tuesday. That means major anti-climate groups, like Americans for Prosperity, will  not have to report that it is heavily backed by the Koch brothers, who are billionaire fossil fuel barons.

In short, tracking the role of dirty money in politics just got a lot harder.

The bottom line is that one major reason for the lack of action on climate change is that, for nearly two decades, the opponents of serious action have been vastly outspending the proponents.
Thanx  #CLIMATE, #CONGRESS, #FOSSIL FUELS, #LOBBYING, #POLITICS

Crusader  Jenny , Nanook & Mika

Kids' Global Warming Posters

 My Favorite all time poster...We should use it

#ThisIsZeroHour ..... Youth Climate March

We are the
ones we've been waiting for

 

July 21. Washington, D.C. RSVP NOW for The Youth Climate March.
 

 

 

 

 

 

    
 

 

 

  

The mission of the Zero Hour movement is to center the voices of diverse youth in the conversation around climate and environmental justice. Zero Hour is a youth-led movement creating entry points, training, and resources for new young activists and organizers (and adults who support our vision) wanting to take concrete action around climate change.

 

Together, we are a movement of unstoppable youth organizing to protect our rights and access to the natural resources and a clean, safe, and healthy environment that will ensure a livable future where we not just survive, but flourish.

The Zero Hour movement started with our founder, 16-year-old Jamie Margolin, a fierce climate justice advocate, who has been working tirelessly for the last few years to move her home state of Washington to adopt common sense climate change laws. Frustrated by the inaction of politicians and the fact that youth voices were almost always ignored in the conversation around climate change and the profound impact that it would have on young people, Jamie started gathering several of her friends in the summer of 2017 to start organizing something big, something hard to ignore!

Jamie was inspired by the mass mobilizations like the Women’s March that had occurred in early 2017 and realized that a national day of mass action, led by youth, would be an ideal platform to ensure that young voices were not only centered in this conversation, but that politicians and adults would hear their voices loud and clear!

By the end of the summer, young activists from across the country, from diverse backgrounds, had joined the team and the Zero Hour movement had started taking shape.

At the start of 2018, a few founding members traveled to Washington, D.C. to lay key groundwork for this growing movement—and meet each other in person for the very first time! With the help of key partners who have come onboard to support our vision, we are well on our way to organizing a movement that will ensure that our elected officials and leaders at every level of society stop ignoring the needs of young people and their right to a safe, healthy, and clean environment.

 

Our team of youth leaders and adult mentors are more than just a collective—we have become a movement family! This vision depends on people like you willing to support and uplift youth by making this vision your own. We would love for you to join our family and come write the next chapter of our story together, as we plan our march and advocacy day in Washington, D.C.

 

Our Vision

Enough is enough. We, the youth, believe that #thisisZeroHour to act on climate change. We cannot afford to wait any longer for adults to protect our right to the clean and safe environment, the natural resources we need to not just survive, but flourish. We know that we are the leaders we have been waiting for!

 

We believe that every individual, from every community should have access to clean air, water, and public lands. We believe in putting the needs and health of our communities before corporate gain.

We believe that the leadership of youth in this space is essential since we have inherited a crisis that we had no hand in creating. We will strive to hold our adults and elected officials accountable for their legacy of destruction and inaction when it comes climate change. We believe in a solutions-based approach that addresses the real needs of our communities.

 

While climate change is a phenomenon that will impact all of us —if it has not already—we believe that the impact of the climate crisis is profoundly unequal. Frontline communities across the globe and within the United States have been directly impacted by climate change to a degree greater than others. We believe, however, that those closest to the problem are also often closest to the solution. These communities have been actively working to create just solutions and transitions. Our goal is to center the unique wisdom, experience, and leadership of these communities in our efforts to make impactful change.

 

We also recognize that a movement for climate and environmental justice cannot be successful without building meaningful coalitions and cross-sector alignment with other movements for social justice. We believe in harnessing the power of youth-led organizing and leadership by youth from different backgrounds and experiences in forging our path towards a more equitable and safe future for all of us.

Our Partners

We can’t do this alone. We want to build this movement with all of you! If your organization would like to partner with Zero Hour, please reach out to us at:

 

infothisiszerohour.org.@

March with us July 21, 2018.

Join the Movement

 

 

A youth-led
call for
climate action.

 

#ThisIsZeroHour

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Climate inaction will leave our kids a trillion dollar debt



Kids' Climate Change Posters

Children have a better  understanding of Climate Change than their
mega-carbon-producing parents.






 I am so impressed by the purity and the honest artistry straight from the heart



  Kids want  a harmonious happy world where we all work together to save the earth




This is my favorite. The evil looking bee. Canadian children are aware that  the bees in our country are in deep crisis







 I think this one says it all