CLIMATE CRISIS REPORT

We now have the clearest picture yet of how different the world is today as a result of human-driven climate change. The most comprehensive report to date on the physical science of climate change was published today by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). "Climate change is a problem that is here now. Nobody’s safe, and it’s getting worse faster,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, said in a press conference today. “We must treat climate change as an immediate threat.”

Extreme events — from floods to heatwaves and droughts — have gotten worse, the report says in a nutshell. And scientists are even more certain than they were before that humans’ greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide and methane (which makes up a majority of “natural gas”), are to blame. 

“We’ve known for decades that the world is warming, but this report tells us that recent changes in the climate are widespread, rapid, intensifying, and unprecedented in thousands of years,” Ko Barrett, vice chair of the IPCC, said in an August 8th press briefing. “It is indisputable that human activities are causing climate change.”
The IPCC is considered a leading authority on climate science, and its new report has more than 230 authors from 66 countries around the world. Today’s findings are an update to a similar report in 2013, and they incorporate the body of research that’s been published in scientific journals since then.

Researchers have gotten a lot better at judging how much climate change affects individual weather events since 2013, which makes a big difference this time around. For example: in July, a record-smashing heatwave in the US Pacific Northwest and Southwest Canada buckled roads and killed hundreds of people. In less than two weeks, an international team of researchers was able to determine that the extreme heat would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.

Nearly every region of the world outside of polar regions have seen an uptick in extreme heat events since the 1950s, according to the new IPCC report. Across the globe, extreme heatwaves now occur five times more frequently than they did between 1850 and 1900 (a baseline often referred to as the preindustrial period), according to the report. Heat also exacerbates drought in some regions of the world. Droughts that previously only occurred once every decade are now 70 percent more frequent than they were in the preindustrial era.

The consequences of the climate crisis, however, are diverse and far-reaching. Severe storms and floods are another growing problem. What were previously once-in-a-decade downpours are happening 30 percent more frequently today. When it comes to tropical cyclones, there’s a greater proportion of major storms (ranked a category 3 or higher), meaning hurricanes and typhoons have grown stronger.

“Extreme weather is occurring with more frequency across the entire planet,” Paola Andrea Arias Gómez, one of the authors of the IPCC report, said during the press briefing. “We now can attribute that these changes are mainly driven by human activity.”

More bad news: without drastic action to curb the use of fossil fuels, things will get worse. Leading climate experts have set a target of limiting global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, in order to avoid some of the worst-case scenarios that climate change could create. We’ve already reached 1.1 degrees Celsius of warming, and the report says we could reach or even surpass that dreaded 1.5 degree threshold within the next couple of decades.

What does that mean for extreme weather? Get ready for more “unprecedented” events — basically, things that have never happened before. The report authors outline five ways this is expected to happen in the future: extreme events will be even more extreme. They’ll be more frequent. There’s a greater chance of extreme events happening back to back or even different kinds of disasters happening at the same time. They’ll happen in places that surprise us. And the timing of these catastrophes will be unpredictable.

There are all sorts of other problems detailed in the new report, including vanishing ice, rising sea levels, and scary tipping points that could accelerate the pace of the climate crisis. 

There are also two more key reports expected to be published by the IPCC early next year: one that details how all of these changes to the planet will affect human life as we know it and another one that outlines potential solutions. Notably, today’s report is the only one that will be ready in time for the upcoming United Nations climate conference in November when world leaders are expected to discuss ratcheting up commitments to rein in their planet-heating pollution.

“This report is a reality check,” Valérie Masson-Delmotte, co-chair of the IPCC working group responsible for the report, said in a press release. “We now have a much clearer picture of the past, present and future climate, which is essential for understanding where we are headed, what can be done, and how we can prepare.”

How Covid has affected the world

The year 2020 was defined by the coronavirus pandemic, arguably the worst pandemic the world has seen in 100 years. COVID-19 has caused more than 75 million cases and 1.6 million deaths worldwide as of mid-December. The illness has affected nearly every aspect of life, from work and school to everyday activities like getting groceries, and even our wardrobes. Here are just some of the ways COVID-19 changed the world in 2020.

New vocabulary:   Flattening the curve refers to community isolation measures that keep the daily number of disease cases at a manageable level for medical providers. A number of new words and phrases entered the general lexicon in 2020. We were told we need to "social distance," or stay six feet apart, so that we could "flatten the curve," or slow the disease's spread in order to reduce the burden on the healthcare system. People even became familiar with relatively obscure epidemiological terms like the "basic reproduction number" (R0, pronounced R-nought), or the average number of people who catch the virus from a single infected person. And of course the name of the illness itself, COVID-19, is a new term, with the World Health Organization officially naming the disease on Feb. 11.

Wardrobe addition (Cloth face masks):  The must-have fashion item of 2020 was a small piece of cloth to put around your face. With medical masks in short supply at the beginning of the year, sewing enthusiasts began churning out homemade masks for their communities. Then, clothing companies and retailers got on board, adding masks to their fashion lines. Now, in many parts of the world, you can't leave your house without putting on a mask. At first, it was unclear whether wearing cloth masks would protect against COVID-19, but as the year went on, numerous studies showed the benefits of wearing masks, for both the wearer and those around them.

Anxiety and depression: The pandemic took a serious toll on people's mental health in 2020. One study published in August by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that levels of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts skyrocketed amid the pandemic. The study could not determine the reason for the rise in mental health conditions, but factors relating to the pandemic, such as social isolation, school and university closures, unemployment and other financial worries, as well as the threat of the disease itself, may play a role, the authors said. Pandemic drinking Another insidious side effect of the pandemic was increases in alcohol consumption. A study published in October in the journal JAMA Network Open found that alcohol consumption in the United States rose 14% during pandemic shutdowns. Women in particular reported worrying increases in heavy drinking during the spring of 2020, according to the study. "In addition to a range of negative physical health associations, excessive alcohol use may lead to or worsen existing mental health problems," the authors concluded.

New normal: As businesses began to open after initial lockdowns, people needed to adjust to a new normal to reduce the risk of spreading the disease from everyday activities. Businesses implemented universal mask policies. Dining switched to outdoors only. Waiting rooms became a thing of the past. You needed a reservation to go to the gym. And large gatherings and events were banned completely in many areas. Although there is no way to ensure zero risk of catching COVID-19, officials said taking precautions could reduce the risk of spread. However, as the fall began, many areas went into lockdown again amid surging COVID-19 cases.

Rampant rumors:   From the idea that drinking bleach can kill the norovirus to a theory that the virus was created in a lab as a bioweapon, the COVID-19 pandemic has generated a flurry of misinformation. Indeed, one study, published Aug. 10 in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, found that the pandemic has hatched more than 2,000 rumors, conspiracy theories and reports of discrimination. Such false information can have serious consequences — the researchers of the new study found that COVID-19 related rumors were linked to thousands of hospitalizations and hundreds of deaths. "Health agencies must track misinformation associated with ... COVID-19 in real time, and engage local communities and government stakeholders to debunk misinformation," the authors concluded.

Pandemic puppies: With orders to stay at home as much as possible, many people decided to get a furry friend during quarantine. The coronavirus pandemic has been a boon for pet adoptions, particularly dog adoptions. Many shelters, breeders and pet stores reported a surge in applications for dogs, with the demand far exceeding supply, according to The Washington Post. Some shelters reported double the number of adoptions compared with the previous year, and needed to resort to waitlists to handle the demand. Not only is this good news for pets who need homes, but also for their humans, given that many studies show there are mental health benefits to pet ownership, according to NPR.

School closures: Children seem to be largely spared from the most severe effects of COVID-19, but they can still act as spreaders of the disease. So many schools across the U.S. and the world made the decision to close in 2020, and opt for virtual learning instead. Questions around how long to remain closed and how to safely reopen were the subject of much debate. As fall arrived with a number of schools still closed, many children seemed to be falling behind in learning. Statewide polls have found that nearly 9 in 10 parents are worried about their children falling behind at school due to the pandemic closures, according to The Educational Trust.

  Lowered emissions: Coronavirus lockdowns, which slowed the normal hustle and bustle of cities to a near halt, also appeared to dramatically lower emissions of carbon dioxide around the world. A study published May 19 in the journal Nature Climate Change found that daily global carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 17% in early 2020, compared with levels in 2019. That appears to be one of the biggest drops in recorded history. But this temporary drop is far from enough to undo the harmful effects of man-made climate change. "Although this is likely to lead to the largest cut in emissions since World War II, it will make barely a dent in the ongoing build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts Research at the Met Office Hadley Centre in England, said in a statement.

New vaccine: Developing a new vaccine normally takes years to decades. But in an unprecedented feat, researchers in the U.S. and several other countries created a coronavirus vaccine — taking it from lab bench to bedside — in just under 12 months. When 2020 began, COVID-19 and the virus that causes it, SARS-CoV-2, were unknown to science. But once the virus was identified, scientists acted quickly to begin developing a vaccine. By mid-March, early trials in humans had begun, and by late summer, the vaccines were ready for more advanced trials with thousands of participants. In December, the United States authorized two COVID-19 vaccines, from Pfizer and Moderna, after trials showed impressive results. Both vaccines used molecules known as mRNA to stimulate an immune response against the coronavirus, marking the first time that any mRNA vaccine has been authorized for use in people. The vaccines were heralded as an extraordinary scientific advancement, and the first doses were administered to healthcare workers in the U.S. in mid-December.

All we can do now is hope that we have learned the lessons of Covid 19 well ... and we will be adequately prepared for the next pandemic. And there will be another pandemic.

Where the hell is that vaccine??

Canada’s first big push for a COVID-19 vaccine may be falling victim to sour relations with Beijing, as Chinese officials continue to hold up a shipment of the drug needed to carry out promised human trials here.
CanSino Biologics of Tianjin, China signed an accord with the federal government in May to have its vaccine tested in Canada, a heavily promoted deal the government said could give Canadians early access to the serum. But more two-and-a-half months later, the Canadian trials have yet to start, because scientists have nothing to study.

Samples of the vaccine candidate – already one of the world’s most advanced in terms of the trial process – have not been approved for shipment to Canada by Chinese customs, one of the researchers confirmed Tuesday.

David Mulroney, Canada’s ambassador to China from 2009 to 2012, said it’s hard to know why the delivery has been stalled, but he has his suspicions. “It’s likely that the shipment is being delayed as part of China’s retaliation against Canada over the Meng (Wanzhou) arrest,” he said, referring to the Huawei Technologies CFO held in Vancouver on a U.S. extradition request.
“But it could also be due to the kind of sudden, unexplained delay that routinely happens when you’re dealing with China’s opaque and often uncooperative customs authorities.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the agreement between CanSino – a company with extensive Canadian ties – and the National Research Council (NRC) in mid-May, calling it “encouraging news.”
Under the accord, the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology at Dalhousie University would hold a small Phase 1 safety trial, and possibly also Phase 2 and 3 trials. If approved by regulators, it could then be manufactured at an NRC facility in Montreal, making Canadians “among the first in the world to have access to a safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19,” the council has said.

Meanwhile, CanSino has conducted its own Phase 1 and 2 trials in China, and was the first developer to publish study results in a peer-reviewed journal. They indicate the vaccine is generally safe and prompts an immune response in most recipients.
Last month, the company’s co-founder said it was in talks with Russia, Brazil, Chile and Saudi Arabia to conduct Phase 3 trials, which determine whether the vaccine actually protects people against COVID-19 infection.

Back in Canada, “we are continuing to wait for the vaccine,” said Scott Halperin, the Dalhousie scientist heading Canada’s planned Phase-1 trial. “All we know is that its awaiting customs clearance by the Chinese government for export,” he said. “We have not been able to obtain any projected time lines. Nothing much else I can say, other than we can start the trial as soon as we receive the vaccine.”
Asked if political issues might be involved, he said that was “an excellent question to pose to Global Affairs Canada.”
Guy Saint-Jacques, former Canadian ambassador to China, said Tuesday, he does not know what’s behind the delay. But he said it “could well be part of the Chinese arsenal” in the dispute over Meng’s arrest.

In an apparent response to the executive’s detention, Beijing has already imprisoned Michael Kovrig, a Canadian ex-diplomat, and Michael Spavor, a Canadian businessman, under vague espionage charges; increased another Canadian’s drug-dealing sentence from jail to death; and blocked some agricultural imports from Canada.

The federal government has said it is also looking at pre-ordering other vaccines that are advanced in their testing but, unlike the U.S. and several European countries, has yet to do so. The NRC is also collaborating with a team at the University of Saskatchewan and U.S. company VBI Vaccines on their own coronavirus vaccines.

The CanSino vaccine candidate – called Ad5-nCoV – uses a different, harmless virus as a delivery system. The “adenovirus” is modified to express part of the SARS-CoV-2 germ that causes COVID, which is meant to trigger the immune system to fend off the coronavirus.
Early studies have not been a total success, with dampened immune response in some people, likely because they’ve been exposed to the vaccine’s adenovirus backbone before and have antibodies that repel it.

For that reason, some experts have questioned Canada’s investment in the product. Others say none of the leading vaccine candidates are likely to be perfectly effective, and any vaccine is better than none.

Trump's Position on Climate Change

What Happened to the Knights?

Polar Bears follow the Dodo into extinction

Polar bears will be wiped out by the end of the century unless more is done to tackle climate change, a study predicts. Scientists say some populations have already reached their survival limits as the Arctic sea ice shrinks.

The carnivores rely on the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean to hunt for seals. As the ice breaks up, the animals are forced to roam for long distances at sea, or on shore, where they struggle to find food and feed their cubs.

Polar bears are listed as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with climate change a key factor in their decline.

Polar bears will be completely gone by the end of this century unless we take drastic measures to curb climate change.  The bear has become the "poster child of climate change", said Dr Peter Molnar of the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada.

"Polar bears are already sitting at the top of the world; if the ice goes, they have no place to go," he said.

By modelling the energy use of polar bears, the researchers were able to calculate their endurance limits. The polar bears are running out of food and are failing to adapt to  the lack of food in the much warmer Arctic. Dr Steven Amstrup, chief scientist of Polar Bears International, who was also involved in the studies said, "What we've shown is that, first, we'll lose the survival of cubs, so cubs will be born but the females won't have enough body fat to produce milk to bring them along through the ice-free season.

"Any of us know that we can only go without food for so long," he added, "that's a biological reality for all species".

Studies show that declining sea ice is decreasing polar bear numbers, substantially. The new study, published in Nature Climate Change, puts a timeline on when, in all probability, it  could happen.

  

  Polar bears rely on sea ice to catch their prey

The researchers were also able to predict when these thresholds will be reached in different parts of the Arctic. This may have already happened in some areas where polar bears live, they said.

The findings match previous projections that polar bears are likely to persist to 2100 only in a few populations very far north if climate change continues unabated.

"Showing how imminent the threat is for different polar bear populations is another reminder that we must act now to head off the worst of future problems faced by us all," said Dr Amstrup.
"The trajectory we're on now is not a good one, but if society gets its act together, we have time to save polar bears. And if we do, we will benefit the rest of life on Earth, including ourselves."

Under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario, it's likely that all but a few polar bear populations will collapse by 2100, the study found. And even if moderate emissions reduction targets are achieved, several populations will still disappear.

  

 

Sea ice is frozen seawater that floats on the ocean surface, forming and melting with the polar seasons. Some persists year after year in the Arctic, providing vital habitat for wildlife such as polar bears, seals, and walruses. Sea ice that stays in the Arctic for longer than a year has been declining at a rate of about 13% per decade since satellite records began in the late 1970s.

 

This extinction is one of thousands that are occurring, simultaneously, all around us. Each  one upsets the balance of nature a little more.

 

 

Humans teaching Orangutans to climb trees

     

 An orphan orangutan climbs high in the treetops with his caregiver

 

Orangutans are hunted for meat or sold into the illegal wildlife trade. One dedicated doctor saves and rehabilitates captured orangutans and raises orphaned babies.

While much of the world is in lockdown, youngsters in one very unusual classroom are still having lessons. At a forest school in Borneo, baby orangutans learn tree-climbing skills from their human surrogate parents.

The orphans spend 12 hours a day in the forest, preparing for a new life in the wild. With human contact routinely kept to a minimum, life goes on much as before for the animals, says Dr Signe Preuschoft, leader of ape programs for the charity Four Paws, which runs the rehabilitation centre in East Kalimantan (Borneo Indonesia).

As a precaution, the staff now have temperature checks, wear facemasks and change into uniforms on site.The pandemic has disrupted many conservation programs around the world but Dr Preuschoft says it also offers an opportunity to bring positive change.

"There are great opportunities here to protect wildlife better from illegal wildlife trade and from (consumption of) bushmeat," she says. "It's very much about education."

 

Dr Preuschoft with an orphaned orangutan

 

The young orphaned apes climb high into the treetops with their caregivers to help them acquire the skills they would have learned from their mothers in the wild. They would otherwise spend more time on the ground than is natural for a species that feeds, lives and sleeps in the canopies of trees.

Baby orangutans have a huge advantage when it comes to climbing, as they can hold on "like an octopus", says Dr Preuschoft.

"I think the orangutans were really completely thrilled when they realised that they could actually be high in the tree canopy together with one of their moms," she adds.

As soon as the rescued orangutans have moved out of quarantine, they spend long hours in the forest in as natural an environment as possible. They are taught essential forest survival skills in a large forested area between the cities of Balikpapan and Samarinda.

 

Dr Signe Preuschoft and her team are passionate about rehabilitating orphaned baby orangutans

The aim is to provide sanctuary to illegally captured or directly threatened orangutans, as well as to rehabilitate orphaned orangutans, with the goal of releasing them back into the wild.
Only about 50,000 Bornean orangutans are left in the world, with numbers plummeting over the last 70 years. Loss of rainforest to oil palm plantations or coal mining leads orangutans into conflict with humans.
Orphans are snatched from their dead mothers and are sold or held illegally as pets. Why do we wait until a species is seriously endangered before we do anything to help them?



History Made As Ocean Cleanup Successfully Collects First Plastic From The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Pacific garbage patch


Cleanup is underway
 

 

In the Pacific ocean, North East of Hawaii, there exists a giant whirlpool of plastic debris that’s accumulated by the ocean currents. It’s referred to as the North Pacific Gyre, but also commonly referred to as “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” It’s one of the largest ecosystems on Earth, made up of millions of square kilometers. The Great Garbage Patch is approximately the size of Queensland, Australia, where an enormous amount of plastic is spread throughout the ocean.

Plastic pollution in our oceans is obviously one of the biggest issues our planet faces today. We must clean up our planet, and we must do it now. Plastic pollution has also created microplastic pollution ( very tiny particles of plastic). Microplastics are a huge problem, and microplastic contamination is now extremely widespread. More than five trillion pieces of plastic, collectively weighing nearly 269,000 tons, are floating in the world’s oceans. Data collected by scientists from the US, France, Chile, Australia and New Zealand suggests a minimum of 5.25 tons of plastic particles exists in the oceans, most of them being microplastics measuring less than 5mm.

All living beings within the ocean are also suffering from microplastic pollution. The good news is  that the contraption in the video is also harvesting microplastics. This is why it was so encouraging when I came across news showing that after one year of testing, The Ocean Cleanup organization announced this week that their System 001/B vessel is capturing and collecting plastic debris in this area of the ocean, and doing so successfully. The system uses natural forces of the ocean to catch the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a principle behind the cleanup that was first presented by the creator, Boyan Slat back in October 2012.

The patch, again, is very large, representing a huge piece of trash that’s drifting halfway between California and Hawaii.

 

After discovering the patch in the 90s, scientists said it would take thousands of years to clean it up—but Slat quickly made a name for himself after he presented a TEDx talk in which he claimed that he could do it in less than ten, if he could get his special machinery built.

Though his claim caused many skeptics to raise their eyebrows, Slat dropped out of college so he could bring his plans to life. In addition to crowdfunding $2.2 million for his idea, he garnered millions more dollars through interested investors.

 

Now, the System 001/B vessel—which launched from Vancouver in June—is The Ocean Cleanup’s second attempt to prove its concept of collecting garbage from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In addition to collecting plainly visible pieces of plastic debris, as well as much larger ghost nets associated with commercial fishing, System 001/B has also successfully captured microplastics as small as 1 millimeter—a feat which the organization was pleasantly surprised to achieve.

 

It’s great to see so many young people with the desire to change the world. Often when one has such a desire, it’s easy to feel like you’re not making an impact. There are many avenues one can take to help create a positive change on this planet in the form of action, awareness, or other avenues that exist. The more people with the desire to see change and with the desire to help, the better our world will continue to be.
Yes, there is opposition from powerful people with enormous resources, who have been partly responsible for the pollution and resulting climate change we have experienced. Imagine what these people, the financial elite, with all of the billions/trillions they have, could do, if they wanted to be a positive force in saving our planet.

An oasis of cleaner skies and clearer water ... but it's temporary

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

The pandemic is creating a temporary oasis of cleaner skies and waters, but at immense health and economic costs.  

 

Carbon emissions over China before and during pandemic

The skies are clearing of pollution, wildlife is returning to newly clear waters, a host of flights have been scrapped and crude oil is so worthless that the industry would have to pay you to take it off their hands – a few months ago, environmentalists could only dream of such a scenario as the 50th anniversary of Earth Day hove into view.
But this disorientingly green new reality is causing little cheer given the reason is the coronavirus pandemic that has ravaged much of the world.
“This isn’t the way we would’ve wanted things to happen, God no,” said Gina McCarthy, former head of the US Environmental Protection Agency in the Obama administration. “This is just a disaster that pointed out the underlying challenges we face. It’s not something to celebrate.”
Wednesday’s annual Earth Day event, this year largely taking place online, comes as public health restrictions to prevent the spread of Covid-19 have resulted in a sharp dip in air pollution across China, Europe and the US, with carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels heading for a record 5% annual drop.

The waters of Venice are now clear, lions lounge on roads normally frequented by safari-goers in South Africa and bears and coyotes wander around empty accommodation in Yosemite national park in California.
Meanwhile, nearly eight in 10 flights globally have been canceled, with many planes in the US carrying just a handful of people. The oil industry, a key driver of the climate crisis and direct environmental disaster, is in turmoil, with a barrel of crude hitting an unprecedented minus-$40 on Monday.
These would perhaps be the sort of outcomes seen had stringent environmental policies been put in place in the wake of the first Earth Day in 1970, which saw 20 million Americans rally in support of anti-pollution measures.

Instead, the pain of the Covid-19 shutdown has highlighted how ponderous the world’s response has been – the expected cut in emissions, for example, is still less than what scientists say is needed every year this decade to avoid disastrous climate impacts for much of the world.
“It’s the worst possible way to experience environment improvement and it has also shown us the size of the task,” said Michael Gerrard, an environmental law expert at Columbia University.
How people react to the return of normalcy after the pandemic will help define the crises racking the environment, according to Gerrard. “A key question will be do we have a green recovery, do we seize the opportunity to create jobs in renewable energy and in making coastlines more resilient to climate change?” he said. “The current US president clearly has no inclination to do this.”

 

McCarthy, now head of the Natural Resources Defense Council, noted that some Indian people were seeing the Himalayas for the first time due to the veil of air pollution lifting.
“You wonder if people will want to go back to what it was like before,” she said. “The pandemic has shown people will change their behavior if it’s for the health of their families. This has been the lost message on climate, that it’s a human problem, not a planetary problem. We have to show you can have a stable environment and your job, too.”
The problems in the natural world haven’t suddenly vanished – this week various researchers found that the Arctic is very likely to be free of sea ice in summers before 2050, that the bushfires that torched Australia earlier this year released more carbon than the country’s annual CO2 output and that the first quarter of 2020 was the second-warmest on record.
Donald Trump has signaled that he will try to provide a bailout to the US oil and gas industry, with $25bn already handed out by the US government to prop up airlines. In China, it’s not certain that the wildlife-packed “wet markets” where Covid-19 is believed to have originated will be shut down.

Conservationists warn that returning the world to its pre-pandemic settings will quickly wipe out any environmental benefits of the shutdown.

“It’s a serious wake-up call,” said Thomas Lovejoy, an ecologist who coined the term “biological diversity”. “We bulldoze into the last remaining places in nature and then are surprised when something like this happens. We have done this to ourselves by our continual intrusion into nature. We have to re-chart our course.”

Super Plants May Slow Global Warming

 

 

Each year, we produce 18 more gigatons of CO2 than what the Earth can handle. Another observation, each year, plants suck up approximately 65 gigatons of CO2 in the air, and store it in their leaves, stems, roots. Doctor Joanne Chory develops, in her laboratory, super plants able to suck up even more CO2. 
 

Suberin, Cork and CO2 

 Suberin can be found in plants, in their stem or roots. It allows the plant a better adaptation to its environment and to maximize the absorption of nutrients and water. Cork is also mainly composed of suberin. Besides, cork is known for its ability to keep CO2 prisoner. Suberin thus plays an important role in the storage of carbon in the soil by plants. 

Ideal Plants: The Harnessing Plants Initiative

“Plants evolved to suck up CO2 and they’re really good at it. And they concentrate it, which no machine can do, and they make it into useful materials, like sugar. They suck up all the CO2, they fix it, then it goes back up into the atmosphere.” - Dr Joanne Chory

 Dr Chory's idea is to do what nature already does, but with a greater impact: creating super plants more absorbent in CO2 and more resistant to climate change. The principle consists of splicing the genes of plants like beans, corn and cotton with a new compound allowing them to better absorb carbon in the air. As a result, the roots of the super plant transfer the carbon absorbed from the leaves to the roots and finally in the soil. 



 With these super plants, Dr Joanne Chory only improves on what nature does. However, she is aware that genetic modification is often misunderstood and reduced to a negative vision of GMO. Nevertheless, farmers practise genetic modification for centuries. Corn perfectly illustrates this point. Dr Chory also reminds that there is no foreign genetic material in the super plants, unlike in most of GMOs. 

For now, Dr Chory and her team have to test the plants on the Mississippi shores in Louisiana. The SALK Institute also negotiates with seed companies to democratize the access to super plant seeds, so it will be available for any farmer in the world. 
Doctor Joanne Chory is director of the Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. 

The window for slowing global warming is getting smaller. In another ten to twelve years we will reach the tipping point, from which there is no return. That means the planet will continue to warm, regardless of what we do at that time. Wake-up EARTH!

Rare white squirrel

 



Go! Go! Greta

 

 

Teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg on Monday opened the United Nations Climate Action Summit with an angry condemnation of world leaders for failing to take strong measures to combat climate change.

Thunberg, visibly emotional, said in shaky but stern remarks at the opening of the summit that the generations that have polluted the most have burdened her and her generation with the extreme impacts of climate change.

"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you," she said.

"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words," Thunberg said.

Days after millions of young people took to the streets worldwide to demand emergency action on climate change, leaders gathered for the annual United Nations General Assembly were to try to inject fresh momentum into stalling efforts to curb carbon emissions.

 

 Greta Thunberg is a hero. She has taken on the world leaders single-handedly. She has shamed them and made their attitude seem ignorant, crass and downright criminal. She may stir enough passion and conscience to save this planet. Bless her.

Sea Turtles are gravely endangered

 

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The 'Blob' is back

 

A gigantic Heat Anomaly Brewing in The Pacific Threatens a Return of 'The Blob'. The menacing heatwave  in the Pacific Ocean has scientists worrying that the deadly 'Blob' of 2015 is back.

Roughly five years ago, a huge patch of unusually warm ocean water appeared off the coast of North America, stretching from Mexico's Baja California Peninsula all the way up to Alaska. It was nicknamed the Blob, after a horror film monster that consumes everything in sight. The heatwave, which lasted for several years, was an equally indiscriminate killer.
 

According to estimates, during this time the southern coast of Alaska lost more than 100 million Pacific cod. Thousands of seabirds were found washed up on the shore, and about half a million were decimated in total. In one year alone, populations of humpback whales dropped by 30 percent. Salmon, sea lions, krill, and other marine animals also vanished in astonishing numbers, as toxic algae bloomed.
The Blob caused ecosystems and industries alike immense losses - so much so that researchers from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are now closely tracking these events.

The current heatwave, they say, has not only popped up in the same area, it's grown in much the same way and is almost the same size. Side by side, a comparison of both their early stages is ominous. Like the blob, the current marine heat wave emerged only a few months ago, as the winds that cool the ocean's surface began to die down.
"Given the magnitude of what we saw last time, we want to know if this evolves on a similar path," says marine ecologist Chris Harvey from the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

 

 

Researchers tracking the phenomenon say the patch of ocean water is now roughly five degrees Fahrenheit above normal - just a degree or two less than temperatures during the last Blob.
Deep upwells of cold water have kept the heat wave from reaching the shore, but officials predict the event will likely have an impact on coastal ecosystems sometime this Northern Hemisphere fall.

"It's on a trajectory to be as strong as the prior event," says Andrew Leising, who developed a system for tracking and measuring marine heatwaves for NOAA.
"Already, on its own, it is one of the most significant events that we've seen."
In fact, according to records, which go back to 1981, it's the second largest marine heatwave ever recorded. And it comes just years after the last one.
Still, not all heatwaves are the same and these blobs are hard to predict. As quickly as they can emerge, they can also dissipate. Scientists say there's still a chance that weather patterns will change and that the current patch of warm water will cool down, but they're keeping their eye on it.
Research suggests that blobs and similar events are becoming more common worldwide. Earth's oceans are being heated at an unprecedented rate due to climate change.

For now, researchers at NOAA are focused on tracking, predicting and mitigating the effects of marine heatwaves. During the last Blob, for instance, many whales died by getting trapped in fishing nets, as the animals moved closer to shore to avoid the warmer waters.
If fisheries and ecologists can work together, researchers hope we might be able to reduce some of the losses in the future. In the end, though, our control of the situation is pretty limited.
"There are definitely concerning implications for the ecosystem," says NOAA meteorologist Nick Bond, who is credited with naming the Blob.
"It's all a matter of how long it lasts and how deep it goes."

New Species of Tarantula among many discoveries on our evolving planet - By Jake

Sri Lanka is home to a new species of tarantula—and its females are fuzzy, brilliantly  turquoise-tinged, and big enough to comfortably hug a donut.

Scientists found the arachnids within an isolated patch of southwestern rainforest, ringed by tea and rubber plantations. Living in tubular, silk-lined burrows, they are fast and aggressive, seizing unlucky insects that wander too close to their underground lairs. Measuring roughly five inches from tip to tip, these spiders are not exactly small, nor are their brilliant blue patches particularly subtle.
 

In fact, it’s these snazzy blue colors that first caught biologist Ranil Nanayakkara’s attention, and flagged the critters—now named Chilobrachys jonitriantisvansicklei—as potentially new to science.

“When we first spotted them I was in awe, lost for words,” Nanayakkara says of the decked-out females. “The males,” he notes, “are smaller and are mossy brown in color.”
 

The fluorescent blue tarantula is only the second species to be found in Sri Lanka; the first, a drab brown arachnid called C. nitelinus, was identified 126 years ago. Why this brand new genus has evolved no one knows and why so brightly colored, scientists can't explain although, there are other brightly colored species of spider. They are usually the male gender, brightly dressed to attract females. In this case the female is colorful. Perhaps it is a reversal of roles.
 

There has been a rise in the discovery of new species on the planet in the past decade. Perhaps nature has speeded up evolution to adapt to the changing climate.

A new species of venomous swarming spider was discovered in India recently when a swarm of thousands attacked a village leaping on people, biting them and making them seriously ill. They still have not been identified.
 

 Tarantulas can live for thirty years and have been known to grow to a leg span of eleven inches. Some of them make great pets and are harmless. Although they could bite if they felt threatened, they are not venomous. Females are larger than the males and usually eat the male after mating. You would think the males would learn to get away quickly after mating but they are either too slow or not too bright. Not many male tarantulas survive to mate again.

 

Favorite new species discovered in the last ten years

 

Micro Chameleon. Just over half an inch long - discovered in 2012

 

The Stabbing Shark discovered in 2011.  It's small but aggressive

 

Joker Crab discovered in the Philipines in 2012


Pig Nosed Vampire Rat from Indonesia


World's first glow-in-the-dark sea turtle discovered in 2016

By Jake Mahood

Scary loss of Greenland ice sheet

 

Published Aug 2019

Greenland's ice sheet just lost 11 billion tons of ice -- in one day. After months of record temperatures, scientists say Greenland's ice sheet experienced its biggest melt of the summer on Thursday, losing 11 billion tons of surface ice to the ocean -- equivalent to 4.4 million Olympic swimming pools.

Greenland's ice sheet usually melts during the summer, but the melt season typically begins around the end of May; this year it began at the start. It has been melting "persistently" over the past four months, which have recorded all time temperature highs, according to Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist with Danish Meteorological Institute.

This July alone, Greenland's ice sheet lost 197 billion tons of ice -- the equivalent of around 80 million Olympic swimming pools -- according to Mottram. She told CNN the expected average would be between 60-70 billion tons at this time of year.

The weather conditions that brought a heat wave to Europe last week have reached the Arctic, where scientists say they could trigger one of Greenland's biggest ice melts.

Scientists recorded unconfirmed temperatures of 2.7C at 3,000 meters above sea level, which would be a new record if confirmed.

It came on the same day as meteorologists reported that globally, this July has been the hottest month in recorded history.

 

 Where sled dogs raced across ice, they now slosh their way through water

 

 

Researchers say they're "astounded" by the acceleration in melting and fear for the future of cities on coasts around the world. The ice sheet stores so much frozen water that if the whole thing melted, it would raise sea levels worldwide by up to 7m.

 

 European weather model showed temperature over parts of Greenland peaked at 40 DEGREES above normal in June. Melting observed on 45% of Greenland ice sheet that day,  a record so early in season.

 

Greenland ice sheet

The Greenland ice sheet is a vast body of ice covering 1,710,000 square kilometres, roughly 80% of the surface of Greenland. It is the second largest ice body in the world, after the Antarctic ice sheet. The ice sheet is almost 2,400 kilometres long in a north-south direction, and its greatest width is 1,100 kilometres at a latitude of 77°N, near its northern margin. The mean altitude of the ice is 2,135 metres. The thickness is generally more than 2 km and over 3 km at its thickest point. In addition to the large ice sheet, isolated glaciers and small ice caps cover between 76,000 and 100,000 square kilometres around the periphery. If the entire 2,850,000 cubic kilometres of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 m. The Greenland Ice Sheet is sometimes referred to under the term inland ice, or its Danish equivalent, indlandsis. It is also sometimes referred to as an ice cap.

 

Area: 1.710 million km²

Length: 2,400 km

Thickness: 3,000 m

Favorite climate change memes

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remote South Pacific island has highest levels of plastic rubbish in the world

 

The beaches of World Heritage-listed Henderson Island, in the Pitcairn Group off South America, contain an estimated 37.7 million items of debris together weighing 17.6 tons, a new study has revealed.
Australian researcher Dr Jennifer Lavers said it meant the island had the highest density of plastic rubbish anywhere in the world.
"I've been fortunate in my career as a scientist to travel to some of the remote islands in the world, but Henderson was really quite an alarming situation … the highest density of plastic I've really seen in the whole of my career," she said.
Annual production of plastic has increased from 1.7 million tonnes in 1954 to 311 million tons in 2014.
This has resulted in an estimated five trillion plastic items — mostly less than five millimetres in size — circulating in the surface layer of the world's oceans.

 

To understand how much debris was accumulating on the remote island, Dr Lavers, a conservation biologist at the University of Tasmania's Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, and Dr Alexander Bond at the Centre for Conservation Science in the UK surveyed the island's North and East Beach for three months in 2015.

The team calculated there were 671.6 items per square metre on the surface of the beaches, with approximately 68 per cent of debris buried less than 10 centimetres in the sand. Each day, 17 to 268 new items washed up on a 10-metre section of North Beach, representing a daily accumulation rate of 1.7 to 26.8 items per metre.

 

Plastic is a major threat to many marine species.

Henderson Island is in an area of the ocean that is rarely traversed and is not near any shipping lanes or fisheries, with no major land-based industrial facilities or cities within 5,000 kilometres.
"The majority of items appear to be coming from land originally, which made its way into the ocean and that really falls on our shoulders to make a difference and to reduce our demand for these products," she said.
The nearest settlement is Pitcairn Island with a population of 40 people.

 

This turtle was caught in a tangle of plastic rope.

Everyday items make up bulk of garbage

Dr Lavers said only around 7 per cent of the junk on the beach was connected to fishing-related activities.
She said most of the items found on the beaches were everyday household items such as cigarette lighters, plastic razors, toothbrushes, plastic scoops used in detergents or baby formula, and babies' soothers .
"It speaks to the fact that these items that we call "disposable" or "single-use" are neither of those things, and that items that were constructed decades ago are still floating around there in the ocean today, and for decades to come," Dr Lavers said.

Dr Lavers said their study showed "there is nowhere left in the world that is safe — plastic is ubiquitous".
Just over a quarter of the rubbish came from South America and was the result of the movement of currents in the South Pacific gyre, which flows anti-clockwise after travelling north up the continent.

The estimates were "alarmingly" conservative, as the survey did not include items buried deeper than 10 centimetres or debris on cliff areas or rocky sections.
Plastic pollution is a major threat to marine species, Dr Lavers said, with a study released in the past two months suggesting about 1,200 species were negatively impacted.

On Henderson Island the rubbish created a barrier for sea turtles attempting to enter the beach and led to a reduction in sea turtle-laying numbers, while also affecting two native seabird species.
However, Dr Lavers said plastic pollution was also a major threat to human health as the toxic impact of plastic-related chemicals in the food chain were well documented.

"At a very minimum, 25 per cent of world's marine fish species are consuming plastic and we know with that plastic comes a suite of chemical pollutants," she said.
"Those fish are the base of the food web ... and we know humans are at the top of the food web.

"It is not a big leap to say the whole of the marine food web is contaminated and we are putting ourselves at grave risk."

The findings of this study, published on Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a wake-up call to the world that plastic pollution is as grave a threat to humanity as climate change.

Information gathered from
 Dani Cooper
 Many thanx

Why Is There So Much Oil in the Arctic?

An illustration of an oil platform in the Arctic Ocean. 
(Image: © Shutterstock) 
By Emma Bryce 
In 2007, two Russian submarines plunged down 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) into the Arctic Ocean and planted a national flag onto a piece of continental shelf known as the Lomonosov Ridge. Rising from the center of the Arctic Basin, the flag sent a clear message to the surrounding nations: Russia had just laid claim to the vast oil and gas reserves contained in this underwater turf.

Russia's dramatic show of power had no legal weight — but it isn't the only nation that's trying to stake claims to the Arctic's vast depository of oil and gas. The United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland and China are all trying to cash in. It's no wonder: Projections show that the area of land and sea that falls within the Arctic Circle is home to an estimated 90 billion barrels of oil, an incredible 13% of Earth's reserves. It's also estimated to contain almost a quarter of untapped global gas resources.

Most of the oil that's been located in this region so far is on the land, just because it's easier to access. But now, countries are making moves to start extracting offshore, where the vast majority — 84% — of the energy is believed to occur. But long before this oil race began, how did the Arctic become so energy rich? [How Does Oil Form?] 

"The first thing you realize [if you look at a map] is that the Arctic — unlike the Antarctic — is an ocean surrounded by continents," Alastair Fraser, a geoscientist from Imperial College London, told Live Science. Firstly, this means there's a huge quantity of organic material available, in the form of dead sea creatures such as plankton and algae, which form the basis of what will ultimately become oil and gas. Secondly, the surrounding ring of continents means that the Arctic Basin contains a high proportion of continental crust, which makes up about 50% of its oceanic area, Fraser explained. That's significant because continental crust — as opposed to ocean crust, which makes up the rest of the area — typically contains deep depressions called basins, into which organic matter sinks, he said.

Here, it gets embedded in shale and preserved in 'anoxic' waters, meaning they contain little oxygen. "Normally, in a shallow sea with lots of oxygen, it would not be preserved. But if the sea is deep enough, the ocean will be stratified, meaning the oxygenated waters at the top will be separated from the anoxic conditions at the base," Fraser explained. Conserved within these oxygen-deprived basins, the matter maintains compounds that ultimately make it useful as an energy source millions of years in the future.

The geography of the Arctic         (Image credit: Alistair Fraser) 
As mountains erode over millennia, the continents also provide a wealth of sediment, transported via huge rivers into the sea. This sediment flows into the basins, where it overlays the organic material, and over time, forms a hard but porous material known as "reservoir rock," Fraser said. Fast-forward millions of years, and this repeated layering process has put the organic material under such immense pressure that it has begun to heat up.
"The temperature of the sediments in basins increases roughly 30 degrees Centigrade [54 degrees Fahrenheit] with every 1 kilometer [0.6 miles] of burial," Fraser said. Under this intensifying pressure and heat, the organic material very gradually transforms into oil, with the highest temperatures forming gas.

Because these substances are buoyant, they begin moving upward into the gaps within the porous sedimentary rock, which becomes like a storage container — the reservoir — from which oil and gas are extracted.

So it's the combination of these ingredients — huge quantities of organic matter, abundant sediment to lock in the oil and gas, the ideal underlying geology and the huge scale across which these occur — which makes the Arctic Ocean so unusually energy rich. (On land, where a smaller percentage of the Arctic's overall oil and gas lies, these reserves were most likely formed in a time when the land was covered by sea.)
Into the wild
However, just because the energy is there doesn't mean it should be extracted, many conservationists and scientists say. The Arctic's remoteness, its dense, moving sea ice and drifting icebergs will make it a huge logistical challenge to safely extract oil and gas. [How Are Oil Spills Cleaned?]
"I really don't support it, because the industry does not have the technology to do it safely and in an environmentally friendly way," Fraser said. "Some people will argue that you never can do it in the Arctic in an environmentally friendly way."

Even on land, plans to expand oil and gas development in the Arctic are treated with concern. This year, the United States government intends to start leasing land in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy companies, because the refuge contains a vast, 1.5 million-acre (607,000 hectares) coastal plain that's rich in oil. But, it's also a biodiverse landscape that's home to huge migratory herds of caribou, hundreds of bird species and polar bears. "It's been called America's last great wilderness; it's one of the ecologically richest landscapes in the U.S.," said Garett Rose, an attorney with the Alaska Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The coastal plains of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.  (Image credit: Garett Rose) 
It's not just the increased risk of oil spills if drilling goes ahead that's concerning; conservationists also worry about seismic exploration, which "involves running these giant trucks over the landscape to send shock waves into the ground that return information on the underlying geology," Rose told Live Science. That would cause obvious disruption to wildlife. Construction of roads and pipelines will slice up this intact landscape and bring in increasing numbers of people — which will intensify the pressure on wildlife.
"[The refuge] is a dynamic and interconnected landscape that's extremely sensitive to change," Rose said. He also said he was concerned about the U.S. government's recent (but failed) attempt to open the Arctic off Alaska's coast to offshore drilling, too. "This is part of a wholesale attempt to expand oil and gas development across the Arctic," Rose said.

Indeed, the situation in the Alaskan Refuge provides just a taster of what could unfold in other parts of the Arctic, if oil and gas extraction projects forge ahead. The risk of oil spills is enlarged offshore, because they'd be impossible to contain — with untold potential effects on sea life. And some scientists say the greatest ultimate threat is climate change. Bringing these fossil fuels to the surface would only lead to more fuel use, and more emissions being pumped into our atmosphere.

We're not there yet: Countries need to ratify an international United Nations agreement if they want to extract fossil fuels from parts of the continental shelf that fall beyond their offshore jurisdiction. That's slowing the Arctic rush. Still, international pressure is mounting, with countries like Russia having already staked out their claim on the seafloor.
And it could be a hard sell to make countries see that those reserves should remain untapped. Inshort, said Fraser, "I hope this region doesn't become too important [for energy production] 
Thanx  Emma Bryce
Knight Sha