The Environment Thread

[Mark F]

conditions are too extreme for trees to survive. drought, followed by  flood, weakens them, and then  they are vulnerable to attack by insects and diseases.

it is cascading. as people have said for a long time, it is all linked. 

speaking of trees

"A First Nation’s Aggressive Logging Has Some Members ‘Heartbroken’

The McLeod Lake Indian Band clear cut almost all its northern BC treaty lands, leaving lots of stumps and questions. A special report."

In just three years, much of the McLeod Lake Indian Band’s treaty lands were stripped of their bountiful and valuable trees in a surge of logging that included one clearcut almost 3,000 hectares in size, nearly eight times larger than Vancouver’s Stanley Park.

The treaty agreement stipulated that the newly designated treaty lands were to be nurtured to ensure that sufficient forests were there for future generations of the McLeod Lake Indian Band, which counts about 515 members, most of whom do not live in McLeod Lake.

The agreement went on to say that the band would regularly submit forestry plans to the B.C. government; that a professional forester hired by the band would determine appropriate logging rates, and that whenever logging did occur it would be in a “reasonable” or “gradual” manner that ensured “a smooth transition” for future generations.

 

https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/07/10/Logging-in-McLeod/

lots of discussion here about other examples of the same thing. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/britishcolumbia/comments/14w94wl/a_first_nations_aggressive_logging_has_some/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1

 

Edited July 11, 2023 by Mark F

[Mark F]

further to this subject.

The Holocene extinction, or Anthropocene extinction,[3][4] is the ongoing extinction event during the Holocene epoch. The extinctionsspan numerous families of plants[5][6][7] and animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates, and affecting not just terrestrial species but also large sectors of marine life.[8] With widespread degradation of biodiversity hotspots, such as coral reefs and rainforests, as well as other areas, the vast majority of these extinctions are thought to be undocumented, as the species are undiscovered at the time of their extinction, which goes unrecorded. The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates,[9][10][11][12][13] and is increasing.[14]

During the past 100–200 years, biodiversity loss and species extinction have accelerated,[10] to the point that most conservation biologists now believe that human activity has either produced a period of mass extinction,[15][16]

 

water surface temp... florida keys..... 35 c.  going to be some epic hurricanes.

Edited July 11, 2023 by Mark F

[Tracker]

1 hour ago, Mark F said:

conditions are too extreme for trees to survive. drought, followed by  flood, weakens them, and then  they are vulnerable to attack by insects and diseases.

it is cascading. as people have said for a long time, it is all linked. 

speaking of trees

"A First Nation’s Aggressive Logging Has Some Members ‘Heartbroken’

The McLeod Lake Indian Band clear cut almost all its northern BC treaty lands, leaving lots of stumps and questions. A special report."

In just three years, much of the McLeod Lake Indian Band’s treaty lands were stripped of their bountiful and valuable trees in a surge of logging that included one clearcut almost 3,000 hectares in size, nearly eight times larger than Vancouver’s Stanley Park.

The treaty agreement stipulated that the newly designated treaty lands were to be nurtured to ensure that sufficient forests were there for future generations of the McLeod Lake Indian Band, which counts about 515 members, most of whom do not live in McLeod Lake.

The agreement went on to say that the band would regularly submit forestry plans to the B.C. government; that a professional forester hired by the band would determine appropriate logging rates, and that whenever logging did occur it would be in a “reasonable” or “gradual” manner that ensured “a smooth transition” for future generations.

 

https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/07/10/Logging-in-McLeod/

lots of discussion here about other examples of the same thing. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/britishcolumbia/comments/14w94wl/a_first_nations_aggressive_logging_has_some/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1

 

If history teaches us anything, it is that we do not learn from history.

[Wideleft]

Floods, fires and deadly heat are the alarm bells of a planet on the brink

By Sarah Kaplan

 

July 12, 2023 at 7:49 p.m. EDT

The world is hotter than it’s been in thousands of years, and it’s as if every alarm bell on Earth were ringing.

The warnings are echoing through the drenched mountains of Vermont, where two months of rain just fell in only two days. India and Japan were deluged by extreme flooding.

They’re shrilling from the scorching streets of Texas, Florida, Spain and China, with a severe heat wave also building in Phoenix and the Southwest in coming days.

They’re burbling up from the oceans, where temperatures have surged to levels considered “beyond extreme.”

And they’re showing up in unprecedented, still-burning wildfires in Canada that have sent plumes of dangerous smoke into the United States.

 

Scientists say there is no question that this cacophony was caused by climate change — or that it will continue to intensify as the planet warms. Research shows that human greenhouse gas emissions, particularly from burning fossil fuels, have raised Earth’s temperature by about 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. Unless humanity radically transforms the way people travel, generate energy and produce food, the global average temperature is on track to increase by more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit), according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — unleashing catastrophes that will make this year’s disasters seem mild.

The only question, scientists say, is when the alarms will finally be loud enough to make people wake up.

“This is not the new normal,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at the Imperial College London. “We don’t know what the new normal is. The new normal will be what it is once we do stop burning fossil fuels … and we’re nowhere near doing that.”

The arrival of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and the return of the El Niño weather pattern, which tends to raise global temperatures, are contributing to this season of simultaneous extremes, Otto said. But the fact that these phenomena are unfolding against a backdrop of human-caused climate change is making these disasters worse than ever before.

What might have been a balmy day without climate change is now a deadly heat wave, she said. What was once a typical summer thunderstorm is now the cause of a catastrophic flood.

And a day that is usually warm for the planet — July 4 — was this year the hottest ever recorded. Earth’s global average temperature of more than 17 degrees Celsius (62.6 Fahrenheit) may well have been the hottest it has gotten in the last 125,000 years.

Otto is the co-leader of the World Weather Attribution network — a coalition of scientists who conduct rapid analyses to determine how climate change influences extreme weather events. Since 2015, the group has identified dozens of heat waves, hurricanes, droughts and floods that were made more likely or more intense by human-caused warming. Several events, including the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave that killed more than 1,000 people, were found to be “virtually impossible” in a world untouched by human greenhouse gas emissions.

At this point, researchers say, the links between climate change and weather disasters are abundantly clear. When the planet’s average temperature is higher, heat waves can reach previously unheard of extremes. This was the case during recent heat waves in southeast Asia, southern Europe and North Africa, World Weather Attribution researchers found.

When temperatures soar past about 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), or when they are compounded by extreme humidity, it becomes more and more difficult for people’s bodies to keep cool through sweating. Kids and the elderly, as well as outdoor workers and people with preexisting medical conditions, are especially vulnerable.

This week, as more than 100 million people across the southern United States face exactly those conditions, climate researchers like Jennifer Francis fear the escalating heat may exact a deadly toll.

“We’re seeing temperatures exceed those that can support life,” said Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. “Certain places are becoming uninhabitable.”

“All of these records are being broken left and right, and my hope is people will start to put this together in their heads,” she continued. “These things shouldn’t be happening. It’s all connected to the fact that we’re warming the planet.”

The warmer the air, the more water it can hold — turning the atmosphere into a thirsty sponge that sucks moisture out of vegetation and soil. This exacerbates droughts and sets the stage for wildfires like those that have ravaged Canada this summer. Temperatures in the Northwest Territories spiked to 100 degrees over the weekend, intensifying fires that were already burning out of control.

The flip side of this phenomenon is that a warmer, wetter atmosphere also increases the amount of rain that can fall during a given storm. In Vermont and New York this week, about two months’ worth of precipitation fell in just two days — far more quickly than it could be absorbed by the region’s saturated ground and mountainous terrain.

The effects of extreme rainfall are even more disastrous in poorer countries, where people and governments have far fewer resources to cope. Rachel Bezner Kerr, a Cornell University sociologist who works with farming communities in Malawi, lost two close colleagues this spring when flash floods struck the north of the country.

Penjani Kanyimbo and Godfrey Mbizi drowned while conducting a surveys for a sustainable agriculture nonprofit, Soils, Food and Healthy Communities.

“It’s one of those bitter ironies,” Bezner Kerr said. “They were trying to work on a solution. … But these parts of the world that are contributing so little to the problem are facing many of the worst impacts.”

The severity of recent extremes on land has been matched only by the scorching conditions in the world’s oceans. Global average sea surface temperatures hit a record high this spring, and they remain nearly a degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) higher than the average for this part of summer.

 

“In a way it’s more concerning” than the record-hot atmosphere, said Ted Scambos, a polar researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder. While the land — and the air above it — warm up and cool down fairly easily, the ocean conducts heat far more slowly.

“This means we’re storing a lot of heat in the ocean,” Scambos said. “The longer we wait [to act on climate change], the longer it’s going to take to have the ocean heat return to whatever normal is.”

In the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, bathwater ocean temperatures will probably add fuel to this year’s hurricane season, making storms wetter and more intense.

And near the South Pole, where Scambos works, the record-hot oceans seem to have disrupted the current of cold water that typically surrounds Antarctica. This February, for the second year in a row, the extent of sea ice around the continent hit a record low. Now, even as Antarctica is immersed in the bitter cold of the months-long polar night, the ice has been distressingly slow to recover. That’s bad news for Antarctica’s glaciers, which need sea ice as a protective buffer from the jostling of ocean waves.

 

 

“This is unlike any behavior we’ve seen in the past in the Antarctic sea ice world,” Scambos said.

He tried to find words to express how it felt to watch the planet careen into such uncharted territory. “It’s ... ” he started. “Ahh ... ”

He shook his head. “This is more or less the picture that we’ve been describing for decades,” he said. “And for as long as we can stand it, we’re in for this kind of climate and worse, until we address the problem.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — which includes hundreds of the world’s top climate experts — has called for countries to roughly halve emissions by the end of the decade and eliminate planet-warming pollution by the middle of the century. Humans can unleash only about 500 more gigatons of carbon dioxide to have an even shot at keeping warming below a manageable threshold.

 

 

But global carbon dioxide emissions hit a record high last year, and governments continue to approve new fossil fuel projects that would make it almost impossible for the world to meet its climate goals, scientists said.

Bezner Kerr recalled her dismay at seeing President Biden approve the Willow Project — an Alaska oil development projected to generate 239 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over its 30-year lifetime — shortly after the deaths of her Malawian colleagues.

“It was really like, what will it take for people to see that we are creating an unlivable planet?” she said. “I felt there was not the political will in this country to face the reality of what was happening.”

Then smoke from Canada’s wildfires descended on her hometown of Ithaca, N.Y., staining the skies orange, and Bezner Kerr’s friends and colleagues started asking her for help processing their fear.

Maybe, she thought, this would be a turning point. Maybe people are finally realizing: The alarm bells are ringing for us.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/07/12/climate-change-flooding-heat-wave-continue/
 

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

Here is an excellent illustration as to why huge dumps of rain after a heat wave is so dangerous:

 

 

[Jpan85]

Having a living root in the ground at all times is the best thing to help with water infiltration. 

[WildPath]

8 hours ago, Wanna-B-Fanboy said:

Here is an excellent illustration as to why huge dumps of rain after a heat wave is so dangerous:

 

 

I think that video misrepresents what is actually going on when mass amounts of water fall after a heatwave. The health grass in both cases is allowing water to come into the cup from outside rather than making a seal like is happening in the third frame. While having actively living plants in an area is great for preventing landslides and erosion, this video shows something else. The same effect would be observed by placing a cup upside down on a table and putting a few coins under parts of it. A better way to create the video would be to completely strip the above-ground foliage to illustrate the effect of having living roots in the area. Though having life above the soil also greatly improves soil loss and erosion as well.

If anyone is interested, there is a lot of stuff about how the loss of tall grass prairie in Manitoba (and surrounding areas) has changed how water percolates through soil. We currently have 1% of the original tall grass prairie that previously existed. There are a few isolated places in Winnipeg where tall grass prairie remains, including the Living Prairie Museum that is worth the visit.

Edited July 14, 2023 by WildPath

[Tracker]

Effects of heat wave in Bulgaria yesterday:

 

[Rich]

1 hour ago, Tracker said:

Effects of heat wave in Bulgaria yesterday:

 

Do you really think a heatwave would melt a street light?

[Tracker]

2 hours ago, Rich said:

Do you really think a heatwave would melt a street light?

Depends on what the streetlight cover was made of- crappy plastic would melt like that.

[Rich]

14 minutes ago, Tracker said:

Depends on what the streetlight cover was made of- crappy plastic would melt like that.

If they were using crappy plastic, wouldn't it melt both?

[Tracker]

11 minutes ago, Rich said:

If they were using crappy plastic, wouldn't it melt both?

The body of the traffic light may have been made of a different material altogether- ie: metal

[Rich]

8 minutes ago, Tracker said:

The body of the traffic light may have been made of a different material altogether- ie: metal

I mean the whole other traffic light beside it that didn't melt.

Upon further digging...

https://factly.in/old-photo-from-italys-milan-city-shared-as-the-picture-of-a-melted-traffic-light-in-lucknow/

[Tracker]

                                                 

[Fatty Liver]

13 hours ago, Tracker said:

                                                 

Microplastics are an example of a relatively new technology that needs to be banned immediately before it causes irreparable harm.  

Edited July 23, 2023 by Fatty Liver

[Tracker]

People In Phoenix Are Getting Third-Degree Burns From Pavement As Heat Wave Fries City

A Phoenix burn doctor is warning of the severe injuries people are experiencing after making contact with pavement as the city contends with a brutal heat wave.

“We are seeing lots of patients who are falling down onto the concrete, pavement, asphalt, and suffering really, really deep burns as a result of that,” Dr. Kevin Foster, the director of the Arizona Burn Center, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in an interview that aired Thursday.

[WildPath]

Ottawa announces plan to phase out 'inefficient' fossil fuel subsidies | CBC News

Quote

Ottawa published its plan for eliminating inefficient fossil fuel subsidies today — making Canada the first country among wealthy, heavy-emitting nations to do so, according to the federal government.

In 2009, the countries that make up the G20 publicly promised to "phase out and rationalize ... inefficient fossil fuel subsidies" over the "medium term."

Such subsidies "encourage wasteful consumption, reduce our energy security, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with the threat of climate change," said the G20 communique.

Doesn't go far enough, as expected, but at least it is something?

[Tracker]

'We’ve fallen off a cliff': Scientists warn Atlantic currents could collapse as early as 2025

"It is very plausible that we've fallen off a cliff already and don't know it," said one researcher.

The system of Atlantic Ocean currents that drive warm water from the tropics toward Europe is at risk of collapsing in the coming decades, an analysis of 150 years of temperature data published Tuesday concluded.

"The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which includes the Gulf Stream, is a major tipping element in the climate system and a future collapse would have severe impacts on the climate in the North Atlantic region," states the study, which was published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

Although the analysis notes that "assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based on the Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) model simulations suggest that a full collapse is unlikely within the 21st century," the study's authors "estimate a collapse of the AMOC to occur around mid-century under the current scenario of future emissions."

"We show that a transition of the AMOC is most likely to occur around 2025-2095," the paper states with "95% confidence."

https://www.alternet.org/weve-fallen-off-a-cliff/

[JohnnyAbonny]

34 minutes ago, Tracker said:

'We’ve fallen off a cliff': Scientists warn Atlantic currents could collapse as early as 2025

"It is very plausible that we've fallen off a cliff already and don't know it," said one researcher.

The system of Atlantic Ocean currents that drive warm water from the tropics toward Europe is at risk of collapsing in the coming decades, an analysis of 150 years of temperature data published Tuesday concluded.

"The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which includes the Gulf Stream, is a major tipping element in the climate system and a future collapse would have severe impacts on the climate in the North Atlantic region," states the study, which was published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

Although the analysis notes that "assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based on the Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) model simulations suggest that a full collapse is unlikely within the 21st century," the study's authors "estimate a collapse of the AMOC to occur around mid-century under the current scenario of future emissions."

"We show that a transition of the AMOC is most likely to occur around 2025-2095," the paper states with "95% confidence."

https://www.alternet.org/weve-fallen-off-a-cliff/

We’re fuc*ed

Edited July 26, 2023 by JohnnyAbonny

[Mark F]

24 minutes ago, JohnnyAbonny said:

We’re fuc*ed

Semi fic*ed

 

"So that brings us back to where we started. Yes, we have failed to prevent dangerous climate change. It is here. What remains to be seen is just how bad we’re willing to let it get. A window of opportunity remains for averting a catastrophic 1.5C/2.7F warming of the planet, beyond which we’ll see far worse consequences than anything we’ve seen so far. But that window is closing and we’re not making enough progress.

We cannot afford to give in to despair. Better to channel our energy into action, as there’s so much work to be done to prevent this crisis from escalating into a catastrophe. If the extremes of this summer fill you with fears of imminent and inevitable climate collapse, remember, it’s not game over.

It’s game on."

 

Michael Mann, eminent climate scientist.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/19/heatwave-climate-omen-change-course-weather-models

I volunteered all winter feeding at a salmon hatchery, van. island. there are people there who have spent sixty years working on this project.  we released the fish into a few streams. yesterday we were asked to get ready to move them, by buckets, cause the one of the streams has dried up, due to record low rainfall. 

very disturbing.  how awful to see your life work, selflessly spent helping others, destroyed for the sake of billionaire oil company owners like the kochs. who are investors in Alberta I think.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Mark F

[WildPath]

It is hard not to lose all optimism regarding our future climate. To get into a mental space of despair is easy with all the news and projections. I've shared it before, but one book that helped me have some optimism is The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. It is science-based fiction, but it is well researched and shows a fictional account of how climate disasters, some of which we are seeing already, can cause huge changes in behaviour (which we are not seeing).

Unfortunately we are experiencing the hottest temperatures recorded and we are actually seeing some regression from climate pledges. P&G have recently cut their forestry pledge (Focus: P&G drops forest pledge, drawing ire of green groups, investors | Reuters) and other organizations are going back on carbon neutral pledges. I am hugely skeptical of any corporate announcements of carbon neutral by 2050 pledges. Both because it is too little too late, but also because it is easy to take the advantages of those announcements and then walk them back as it becomes obvious that it is too financially lucrative to abandon them.

Edited July 26, 2023 by WildPath

[Wideleft]

Not sure where to put this, but the implications are huge (not hyperbole).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TrueBlue4ever]

The only thing that gives me hope is that when the world went into a form of lockdown for COVID, some noticeable climate repair was suggested pretty quickly, showing that the planet has the capability of healing itself if humans can stay out of the way. So the planet can be saved, the question is if it will exterminate humans first to get there.

[Fatty Liver]

3 hours ago, Wideleft said:

Not sure where to put this, but the implications are huge (not hyperbole).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emphasises just how bad Twitter is for communicating ideas of this magnitude.  It is a silly medium.

[Fatty Liver]

1 hour ago, TrueBlue4ever said:

The only thing that gives me hope is that when the world went into a form of lockdown for COVID, some noticeable climate repair was suggested pretty quickly, showing that the planet has the capability of healing itself if humans can stay out of the way. So the planet can be saved, the question is if it will exterminate humans first to get there.

I have zero hope any real action will be taken, take a story as serious as the one posted below, then go read the hundreds of disparaging comments left by idiots in denial.  People who are willing to make the necessary changes for the betterment of the eco-system and life on earth are surrounded by selfish fucktards who aren't. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/heat-round-up-1.6918191

Waters off the coast of Florida as hot as a hot tub.