Category Archives: Environment

Hurricane Dorian was also a catastrophe for the Bahamas’ unique birds

Hurricane Dorian was the second most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record and the fifth to reach the highest hurricane category (five) in the past four years. After it first made landfall, it hovered over the northern Bahamas for more than 50 hours.

The human death toll is currently around 50 but more than 1,000 people are still missing and at least 70,000 have been left homeless. Many residents have lost everything, including their tourism industry, and are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.

At a time of such immense human tragedy, it may seem too soon to mourn the loss of wildlife. But, as a conservation biologist who specialises in island ecology, I am also worried about the Bahamas’s unique birdlife – several species may have have been severely harmed or even lost, literally overnight.

Just this time last year, my UEA master’s students, Matthew Gardner and David Pereira, spent several months researching birds on Grand Bahama island and were able to announce the rediscovery of a species that had not been seen since Hurricane Matthew in 2016: the Bahama nuthatch (Sitta insularis). One of several bird species endemic to these islands – that is, it lives nowhere else – the nuthatch is a tiny bird that nests in tree cavities.

The nuthatch was already suffering from habitat fragmentation, invasive predators such as snakes and cats and the local extinction of a native woodpecker species, the West Indian woodpecker, in the 1990s. This woodpecker had previously created tree holes subsequently used by the nuthatch, which likes to nest in small cavities.

Matthew, David and others from the University of the Bahamas played a recording of the nuthatch’s call in order to attract and observe it – they found the bird was alive after all. However, we feared numbers may be as low as just one or two individuals.

Sadly, the species is unlikely to have survived Dorian.

In fact, Dorian may have not only sealed the fate of the nuthatch but also severely impacted other birds endemic to these islands, particularly the Bahama warbler and the Abaco parrot. Also known as the Bahama Amazon parrot, this subspecies uniquely nests in limestone cavities on the ground which are likely to have been flooded by the storm surge.

Other birds we’re worried about include the Bahama yellow throat, Olive-capped warbler, the Bahama woodstar hummingbird and the Bahama swallow.

Nowhere to hide

Scientists don’t know exactly how different birds try to escape the strong winds and heavy rainfall associated with hurricanes. It’s not the easiest thing to study in nature, for obvious reasons. We do know that previous storms have blown species like the swallow and woodstar as far as Florida or even Pennsylvania, so it’s possible that some individuals particularly the swallows may have escaped by flying to other islands ahead of the hurricane. But for most birds, the best chance of survival would have been to seek shelter in the pine forest.

Once covering much of the islands, this native ecosystem had evolved alongside Atlantic hurricanes and should in theory provide native birds with protection from a major storm. However, throughout the 20th century much of the Bahama pine forest was lost to industrial logging or urban development, and what remains is highly fragmented. More recently, major hurricanes have caused direct wind damage and storm surges that have sent salt water far inland, killing trees.

For the birds, all this is a disaster. Not only has much of their native habitat disappeared, but going down from trees to hide in ground cover would not be an option if the ground was flooded by the torrential rain.

All this is compounded by a further environmental impact of Dorian: an oil spill from a large storage facility on Grand Bahama island which is reported to have been holding 1.8m barrels at the time. That, along with the fact a hurricane usually dumps lots of plastic into the ocean, means even surviving birds may struggle to find feed and fresh water.

Island species are under threat

Globally, as many as 182 bird species are thought to have become extinct over the past five centuries. Of these, an astonishing 92% have been island species. We can blame most of these historical extinctions on habitat destruction and introduced species such as rats and cats. But in future, endangered birds on oceanic islands must also contend with stronger and more frequent hurricanes driven by climate change.

The lesson from Dorian is that we must conserve and restore as much native plant habitat as possible. On islands like the Bahamas, native plants often themselves now endangered, provide crucial habitats for threatened species, and conserve freshwater and soils thus protecting against erosion and landslides.

The Caribbean has a wealth of endemic plants and animals, many of which are threatened by human activities. It has therefore been recognised as a global biodiversity hotspot.

It’s hard to say for certain what climate change and more frequent strong hurricanes will mean for this biodiversity, but the avifauna and habitat surveys conducted by Matthew and David in 2018 provide a crucial baseline for us to determine the ecological impact of Dorian on the Bahamas. What has just happened may represent the irreplaceable loss of a small but nonetheless precious part of the planet’s biological heritage.

The UEA research on Grand Bahama was done in collaboration with the Bahamas National Trust and Birdlife International.

source: The Conversation: Environment

Humanity and nature are not separate – we must see them as one to fix the climate crisis

From transport and housing to food production and fashion, our civilisation is driving climate and ecological breakdown.

It’s no coincidence that almost every single sector of industry is contributing to the planet’s downfall, either. A deeper issue underlies each one’s part in the malaise enveloping the planet’s ecosystems – and its origins date back to long before the industrial revolution. To truly bring ourselves into harmony with the natural world, we must return to seeing humanity as part of it.

Though a varied and complex story, the widespread separation of humans from nature in Western culture can be traced to a few key historical developments, starting with the rise of Judeo-Christian values 2000 years ago. Prior to this point, belief systems with multiple gods and earth spirits, such as paganism, dominated. They generally considered the sacred to be found throughout nature, and humanity as thoroughly enmeshed within it.

When Judaism and Christianity rose to become the dominant religious force in Western society, their sole god – as well as sacredness and salvation – were re-positioned outside of nature. The Old Testament taught that God made humans in his own image and gave them dominion over the Earth.

As historian Lynn White famously argued, such values laid the foundations of modern anthropocentrism, a system of beliefs that frames humans as separate from and superior to the nonhuman world. Indeed, those who hold literal beliefs in the Bible tend to express significantly more concerns over how environmental degradation affects humans than animals.

In the early 17th century, French father of modern philosophy René Descartes framed the world as essentially split between the realm of mind and that of inert matter. As the only rational beings, Descartes saw humans as wholly separate from and superior to nature and nonhuman animals, who were considered mere mindless machines to be mastered and exploited at will. Descartes’ work was hugely influential in shaping modern conceptions of science and human and animal identities in Western society.

White and philosopher Val Plumwood were among the first to suggest that it is these attitudes themselves that cause the world’s environmental crises. For example, when we talk of “natural resources” and fish stocks”, we are suggesting that the Earth’s fabric holds no value apart from what it provides us. That leads us to exploit it recklessly.

According to Plumwood, the opposition between reason and nature also legitimised the subjugation of social groups who came to be closely associated with nature – women, the working class, the colonised, and the indigenous among them.

Life as entanglement

Scholars such as Timothy Morton and Bruno Latour remind us that viewing the natural world as separated from humans is not only ethically problematic but empirically false. Microorganisms in our gut aid digestion, while others compose part of our skin. Pollinators such as bees and wasps help produce the food we eat, while photosynthetic organisms such as trees and phytoplankton provide the oxygen that we need in order to live, in turn taking up the carbon dioxide we expel.

Read more:
Nature is being renamed ‘natural capital’ – but is it really the planet that will profit?

In the Anthropocene, we are seeing more and more how the fates of humanity and nature are intertwined. Governments and corporations have developed such control over the natural systems they exploit that they are destabilising the fundamental chemistry of the global climate system. As a result, inhospitable heat, rising seas, and increasingly frequent and extreme weather events will render millions of humans and animals refugees.

Reconnecting the dots

The good news is that the perceived separation from nature is not universal among the planet’s human inhabitants. Australian, Amerindian, and countless other indigenous belief systems often portray nonhumans as kin with intrinsic value to be respected, rather than external objects to be dominated or exploited.

Eastern philosophies and religions such as Zen Buddhism also entangle humanity and nature, emphasising that there is no such thing as an independent self and that all things depend on others for their existence and well-being. For example, strongly influenced by Mahayana Buddhism, Bhutan has enshrined ecological resilience into its constitution. Mandating that at least 60% of the nation remain forested, the country is one of just two in the world to absorb more carbon than it emits. It measures progress not by GDP but against a “gross national happiness” index, which prioritises human and ecological well-being over boundless economic growth.

Of course, entanglement with nature exists in the Western world too. But the global socioeconomic systems birthed by this region were founded on the exploitation of the natural world for profit. Transforming these entrenched ways of working is no easy feat.

It will take time, and education is key. Higher education textbooks and courses across disciplines consistently perpetuate destructive relationships with nature. These must be redesigned to steer those about to enter the world of work towards care for the environment.

Read more:
A climate change curriculum to empower the climate strike generation

However, to bring about widespread fundamental change in worldviews, we need to start young. Practices such as nature journaling in early primary school – in which children record their experiences of the natural world in written and art form – can cultivate wonder at and connection to the natural world.

Schools should use every opportunity in the curriculum and playtime to tell children a new story of our place within the natural world. Economist and philosopher Charles Eisenstein calls for an overarching “Living Earth” narrative that views the earth not as a dead rock with resources to exploit, but as a living system whose health depends on the health of its organs and tissues – its wetlands, forests, seagrass, mangroves, fish, corals, and more.

According to this story, the decision of whether to fell a forest for cattle grazing is not merely weighed against carbon accounting – which allows us to offset the cost by installing solar panels – but against respect for the forest and its inhabitants.

Such a world might seem unthinkable. But if we use our imagination now, in a few decades we might find our grandchildren creating the story we want them to believe in.

This article is part of The Covering Climate Now series

This is a concerted effort among news organisations to put the climate crisis at the forefront of our coverage. This article is published under a Creative Commons license and can be reproduced for free – just hit the “Republish this article” button on the page to copy the full HTML coding. The Conversation also runs Imagine, a newsletter in which academics explore how the world can rise to the challenge of climate change. Sign up here.

Heather Alberro does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

source: The Conversation: Environment

Climate change is too middle class – here’s how to fix that

Researchers working in the field of climate change communications have, for many years, been confronted with the same puzzle: why, when there is widespread recognition of the importance of climate change, has there not been any sustained demand for action? In opinion polls, people said they cared about climate change, but compared with issues such as immigration, the economy and more recently in the UK, Brexit, they didn’t care that much.

In the past year, however, we have witnessed a genuine shift – a growth in momentum which can be traced variously to the power of a unique Swedish schoolgirl, the social disruption of Extinction Rebellion, and a hard hitting David Attenborough documentary all building on the decades of work done by scientists, NGOs and activists. Public concern about climate change is at an all time high, a number of councils as well as the Scottish government are calling for a climate emergency to be declared, and the liberal media, most notably the Guardian and the BBC, are changing the language of climate to talk of crisis, emergency and catastrophe.

But this is not a balanced shift across all of society. While researchers and the media often discuss political polarisation of climate attitudes, and more recently the generational divide, there is far less discussion of what might be described as climate’s class problem.

The class divide is real

One side of this is clear cut: climate change will disproportionately affect those in the most disadvantaged groups. The other is empirically trickier to pin down, not least because social class itself is subject to a range of different and disputed measures. And while, broadly speaking, climate engagement tends to increase with education and income, these variables are affected by a range of regional, socio-economic and political alignments, and are forever shifting.

In my own research, I have found correlations between regional media consumption and climate belief that cut across income-based groups in unpredictable ways. So, for example, readers of The Sun (a right-wing tabloid) showed much higher levels of scepticism than those loyal to the left-leaning Scottish Daily Record, but with no clear link between income and climate belief. Maybe partly because of this, researchers have tended to focus on questions of identity and values rather than class (or race).

But I and many others have a strong sense of this divide. The environmental movement has always had a middle class aura to it and, in spite of attempts to use the language of inclusivity, it has never quite lost this tag. In my research I have seen, among those in the lower economic groups, a marked tendency to use distancing terminology such as “middle class tree-huggers” and “green lobby”. This is fed by a mainstream media that positions environmentalism as the privilege of the wealthy who don’t need to worry about bread and butter issues – as one of my respondents noted, it feels like “fiddling while Rome burns”.

People need to trust the experts

Engaging those in lower income groups is clearly a distinct challenge. In this respect, work I carried out with Chatham House on climate change and willingness to give up meat is enlightening. This research involved focus groups categorised by income across the UK, US, China and Brazil.

We found widespread collapse in public trust across all different groups in both the US and the UK. This extended beyond political actors to the range of voices which feed into public decision making – scientists with an agenda; economists who led us into the financial crisis; lawyers who let politicians off the hook and so on. The result is a real lack of faith in the political process, and a sense of a dysfunctional democracy. And while this crisis in trust was widespread and existed across all groups, the tendency was exaggerated among those in the lowest income groups – those who have been most impacted by decades of neoliberal policies.

Climate change, reliant on expert evidence, is to some degree impacted by this decline in trust. And this becomes more acute when it comes to the framing of solutions – in this case, eating less meat – where people were particularly aware of hypocrisy and the need for climate action to be fair. Who should be forced to eat less steak? And who has the authority and expertise to say so? We found a sense that solutions should not be imposed from on high without any consideration of the challenges of getting through everyday life.

In our focus groups there would be an initial bristle at the mention of measures which might increase the price of meat (of “nanny stateism”), but then fuller discussion of how lives are structured in ways which impose unhealthy diets. Eventually, almost all groups welcomed a meat tax, as long as they would have access to cheap, healthier alternatives which also benefited the planet.

Another example of more effective framing is politician Caroline Lucas’s “frequent flyer levy” which is rooted in the fact of flying is a middle-class addiction (with 15% of the UK population taking 70% of all flights).

And this reframing of climate as about everyday fairness and social justice is embodied in the Green New Deal taking root in the US and all over the world. As US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said: “You want to tell people that their desire for clean air and clean water is elitist?”

This is about a fair and just transition to clean energy with prioritisation of public health, security, housing and jobs at the centre of it. Scotland has now set up a Just Transition Commission aimed at bringing about a transition which also promotes “social cohesion and equality”. This is the seed of a political reframing, which moves climate change from a side issue to one which is integrated into every discussion, every decision and concerns every group. It’s up to a future-thinking media to translate this new political discourse into messaging that reframes the climate action from an exclusive movement to one which is by and for everyone.

This article is part of The Covering Climate Now series

This is a concerted effort among news organisations to put the climate crisis at the forefront of our coverage. This article is published under a Creative Commons license and can be reproduced for free – just hit the “Republish this article” button on the page to copy the full HTML coding. The Conversation also runs Imagine, a newsletter in which academics explore how the world can rise to the challenge of climate change. Sign up here.

Catherine Happer received funding for this project from the Avatar Alliance Foundation.

source: The Conversation: Environment

2050 is too late – we must drastically cut emissions much sooner

One of the last things that Theresa May did before she left office as the UK prime minister in July 2019 was to commit the country to a net zero carbon target in 2050. Weaning the entire economy off carbon-based fuels on this sort of timescale sounds ambitious, but several advanced economies have set targets considerably sooner than this.

Sweden and New Zealand are aiming for 2045, Finland for 2035 and Norway for 2030 – the most ambitious of any government. Extinction Rebellion has called for the UK to eliminate all carbon emissions by 2025. Our recent working paper explores the justification for these various targets.

The starting point is the global carbon budget calculated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is the total amount of carbon that can be emitted into the atmosphere from now until the end of this century. The most recent estimate of a global budget that would offer a 66% chance of limiting climate warming to within 1.5C above the pre-industrial average is 420 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Working from here to a carbon budget for each country is both a technical and an ethical question. Using the UK as a detailed example, a simple proportional allocation would give the UK a budget of approximately 2.9 billion tonnes. But given the UK’s historical responsibility for carbon in the atmosphere and the undeniable need for development in the poorest countries in the world, there is a very strong argument that the UK should adopt a fair carbon budget somewhat lower than this. So, for example, if the poorer countries in the world were to have an allowable carbon budget just one-third higher than the richer countries, this would lead to a fair carbon budget for the UK of around 2.5 billion tonnes.

The question of how long this budget might last has no simple answer, because it depends how fast carbon emissions are cut over time. Remaining within any given budget depends inherently on the emissions pathway the country follows. If we cut emissions faster, we can afford a later target. If we cut too slowly, the budget will be exhausted, and we would be faced with the task of installing uncertain and costly negative emissions technologies to take carbon out of the atmosphere for the rest of the century.

The UK’s carbon footprint in 2018 was about 590m tonnes, measured on a “consumption basis”, which includes the carbon in imports but excludes that of exports. This footprint has been falling slowly (at around 1.5% a year) since 2010. But if it continued to fall this slowly, the carbon budget would be exhausted by 2023, in just four years’ time (Scenario a).

Even if we assume a straight-line reduction to zero emissions in 2050 (Scenario b), we would still generate a carbon overdraft approximately three times our allowable budget. In fact, the latest date by which we could draw a straight line from our current level of emissions to zero and still remain within the budget would be 2025 (Scenario c).

A target later than 2025 is possible only if the UK reduces emissions faster than the straight line pathway in the early years. In order to extend the target date for zero carbon to 2050, emission cuts would need to be in the region of 24% every year for the next three decades (Scenario d).

What is notable about this pathway is that, within little more than a decade, carbon emissions must already have fallen to a very low level. With a 24% annual rate of reduction, UK emissions in 2030 would only be 22m tonnes – less than 5% of the current level of emissions. Only a small programme of negative emissions technologies would be needed to achieve net zero at this point.

Clearly the challenge is still colossal. A 24% reduction in emissions amounts to a cut of 140 million tonnes in the very first year alone. The UK has never achieved anything close to this since its carbon footprint was first measured in 1990. In 2009, when the economy was in recession, the carbon footprint fell by 80m tonnes, while its best post-crisis reduction saw a fall of only 38m tonnes in 2016.

It is dangerously misleading for advanced nations to set target dates as far out as 2050. Doing so ignores the importance of staying within a fair carbon budget and gives a false impression that action can be delayed. In reality, the only way to ensure that any developed country remains within its fair budget is to aim for an early net zero target. For the UK, that means bringing forward the government’s target by at least two decades.

This might all seem daunting, but every year that progress is delayed, the challenge only gets bigger. Remaining within a fair carbon budget for the rest of this century requires deep and early decarbonisation. Anything else will risk a climate catastrophe.

This article is part of The Covering Climate Now series

This is a concerted effort among news organisations to put the climate crisis at the forefront of our coverage. This article is published under a Creative Commons license and can be reproduced for free – just hit the “Republish this article” button on the page to copy the full HTML coding. The Conversation also runs Imagine, a newsletter in which academics explore how the world can rise to the challenge of climate change. Sign up here.

Tim Jackson receives funding from ESRC.

source: The Conversation: Environment

Five climate change science misconceptions – debunked

The science of climate change is more than 150 years old and it is probably the most tested area of modern science. However the energy industry, political lobbyists and others have spent the last 30 years sowing doubt about the science where none really exists. The latest estimate is that the world’s five largest publicly-owned oil and gas companies spend about US$200m each year on lobbying to control, delay or block binding climate-motivated policy.

This organised and orchestrated climate change science denial has contributed to the lack of progress in reducing global green house gas (GHG) emissions – to the point that we are facing a global climate emergency. And when climate change deniers use certain myths – at best fake news and at worse straight lies – to undermine the science of climate change, ordinary people can find it hard to see through the fog. Here are five commonly used myths and the real science that debunks them.

1. Climate change is just part of the natural cycle

The climate of the Earth has always changed, but the study of palaeoclimatology or “past climates” shows us that the changes in the last 150 years – since the start of the industrial revolution – have been exceptional and cannot be natural. Modelling results suggest that future predicted warming could be unprecedented compared to the previous 5m years.

The “natural changes” argument is supplemented with the story that the Earth’s climate is just recovering from the cooler temperatures of the Little Ice Age (1300-1850AD) and that temperatures today are really the same as the Medieval Warm Period (900–1300AD). The problem is that both the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warming period were not global but regional changes in climate affecting north-west Europe, eastern America, Greenland and Iceland.

A study using 700 climate records showed that, over the last 2,000 years, the only time the climate all around the World has changed at the same time and in the same direction has been in the last 150 years, when over 98% of the surface of the planet has warmed.

2. Changes are due to sunspots/galactic cosmic rays

Sunspots are storms on the sun’s surface that come with intense magnetic activity and can be accompanied by solar flares. These sunspots do have the power to modify the climate on Earth. But scientists using sensors on satellites have been recording the amount of the sun’s energy hitting Earth since 1978 and there has been no upward trend. So they cannot be the cause of the recent global warming.

Galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) are high-energy radiation that originates outside our solar system and may even be from distant galaxies. It has been suggested that they may help to seed or “make” clouds. So reduced GCRs hitting the Earth would mean fewer clouds, which would reflect less sunlight back into space and so cause Earth to warm.

But there are two problems with this idea. First, the scientific evidence shows that GCRs are not very effective at seeding clouds. And second, over the last 50 years, the amount of GCRs have actually increased, hitting record levels in recent years. If this idea were correct, GCRs should be cooling the Earth, which they aren’t.

3. CO₂ is a small part of the atmosphere – it can’t have a large heating affect

This is an attempt to play a classic common-sense card but is completely wrong. In 1856, American scientist Eunice Newton Foote conducted an experiment with an air pump, two glass cylinders and four thermometers. It showed that a cylinder containing carbon dioxide and placed in the sun trapped more heat and stayed warmer longer than a cylinder with normal air. Scientists have repeated these experiments in the laboratory and in the atmosphere, demonstrating again and again the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide.

As for the “common sense” scale argument that a very small part of something can’t have much of an effect on it, it only takes 0.1 grams of cyanide to kill an adult, which is about 0.0001% of your body weight. Compare this with carbon dioxide, which currently makes up 0.04% of the atmosphere and is a strong greenhouse gas. Meanwhile, nitrogen makes up 78% of the atmosphere and yet is highly unreactive.

4. Scientists manipulate all data sets to show a warming trend

This is not true and a simplistic device used to attack the credibility of climate scientists. It would require a conspiracy covering thousands of scientists in more than a 100 countries to reach the scale required to do this.

Scientists do correct and validate data all the time. For example we have to correct historic temperature records as how they were measured has changed. Between 1856 and 1941, most sea temperatures were measured using seawater hoisted on deck in a bucket. Even this was not consistent as there was a shift from wooden to canvas buckets and from sailing ships to steamships, which altered the height of the ship’s deck – and these changes in turn altered the amount of cooling caused by evaporation as the bucket was hoisted onto deck. Since 1941, most measurements have been made at the ship’s engine water intakes, so there’s no cooling from evaporation to account for.

We must also take account that many towns and cities have expanded and so that meteorological stations that were in rural areas are now in urban areas which are usually significantly warmer than the surrounding countryside.

If we didn’t make these changes to the original measurements, then Earth’s warming over the last 150 years would have appeared to be even greater than the change that has actually been observed, which is now about 1˚C of global warming.

5. Climate models are unreliable and too sensitive to carbon dioxide

This is incorrect and misunderstands how models work. It is a way of downplaying the seriousness of future climate change. There is a huge range of climate models, from those aimed at specific mechanisms such as the understanding of clouds, to general circulation models (GCMs) that are used to predict the future climate of our planet.

There are over 20 major international centres where teams of some of smartest people in the world have built and run GCMs containing millions of lines of code representing the very latest understanding of the climate system. These models are continually tested against historic and palaeoclimate data as well as individual climate events such as large volcanic eruptions to make sure they reconstruct the climate, which they do extremely well.

No single model should ever be considered correct as they represent a very complex global climate system. But having so many different models constructed and calibrated independently means that we can have confidence when the models agree.
Taking the whole range of climate models suggests a doubling of carbon dioxide could warm the planet by 2˚C to 4.5˚C, with an average of 3.1˚C. All the models show a significant amount of warming when extra carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere. The scale of the predicted warming has remained very similar over the last 30 years despite the huge increase in the complexity of the models, showing it is a robust outcome of the science.

By combining all our scientific knowledge of natural (solar, volcanic, aerosols and ozone) and human-made (greenhouse gases and land-use changes) factors warming and cooling the climate shows that 100% of the warming observed over the last 150 years is due to humans.

There is no scientific support for the continual denial of climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up by the United Nations to openly and transparently summarise the science, provides six clear lines of evidence for climate change. As extreme weather becomes more and more common, people are realising that they do not need scientists to tell them the climate is changing – they are seeing and experiencing it first hand.

This article is part of The Covering Climate Now series

This is a concerted effort among news organisations to put the climate crisis at the forefront of our coverage. This article is published under a Creative Commons license and can be reproduced for free – just hit the “Republish this article” button on the page to copy the full HTML coding. The Conversation also runs Imagine, a newsletter in which academics explore how the world can rise to the challenge of climate change. Sign up here

Mark Maslin is a Founding Director of Rezatec Ltd, Director of The London NERC Doctoral Training Partnership and a member of Cheltenham Science Festival Advisory Committee. He is an unpaid member of the Sopra-Steria CSR Board. He has received grant funding in the past from the NERC, EPSRC, ESRC, Royal Society, DIFD, DECC, FCO, Innovate UK, Carbon Trust, UK Space Agency, European Space Agency, Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme Trust and British Council. He has received research funding in the past from The Lancet, Laithwaites, Seventh Generation, Channel 4, JLT Re, WWF, Hermes, CAFOD and Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.

source: The Conversation: Environment

How diving seals plan ahead to save oxygen – new research

Seals, dolphins and otters share the same physiological constraints as humans do when we return to our evolutionary home – the sea. The most instantly identifiable of these is the inability to breathe when we put our heads under water.

The difference between where an animal spends most of its time and where it can breathe has had an amazing impact on the physiological capacities of diving mammals – some of the most exceptional athletes on Earth.

For instance, the colossal elephant seal is capable of holding its breath for two hours and swimming 2km to find food, before covering that distance again for its next breath.

One important physiological tool that enables this lifestyle is greater total body oxygen stores. But oxygen stores alone don’t make a great diver.

What does make a great diver are the cardiovascular responses to diving – regulating the use of oxygen to give prolonged supply to vulnerable parts of the body, such as the brain. The most classic feature of the dive response is a reduction in heart rate, known as bradycardia.

It happens in humans too. If you put your face into a full sink, stimulation of sensors in your face, upper airways and throat trigger the deepest and most primal parts of your brain to slow your heart, as well as to pump less blood.

But reduction in heart rate by itself does not reduce the rate of oxygen consumption. It is this, linked to a major redistribution of blood around the body, focusing delivery on the most vital organs, which really conserves oxygen.

This blood redistribution is the essential tool that allows prolonged diving – and so far it has been a difficult thing to study. Because of the nature of diving animals (they dive and swim), technology has to be wearable and non-invasive for an animal that is free to choose where it goes. For it is in this voluntary free-diving state that we can learn the true dynamics of the cardiovascular system and understand how diving animals manage it.

Basically, what we want to do is to let the animals tell us their physiological “story” with minimal interference. And now they can.

A new piece of equipment offering a fresh insight into blood redistribution is a remarkable non-invasive, wearable application of optical technology called “near-infrared spectroscopy” or NIRS.

NIRS uses light emitted in contact with the skin (like a FitBit) to measure blood volume and oxygenation in the underlying tissue. The new kit has provided a remarkable new insight in to the dynamics of blood redistribution in diving seals.

Using NIRS on juvenile harbour seals, one of the two species of UK seals, we were able to capture for the first time a level of cardiovascular control that we did not know seals possessed (and frankly, didn’t know existed at all).

Specifically, we found that in seals the blood redistribution component of the “dive response” is under some degree of cognitive control.

The seals we observed start to move blood away from their peripheral tissues (in this case blubber and skin) around 15 seconds before they began each dive. This allows seals to prepare for a dive and actually enter into the oxygen conservation state before they go under water, so that when they dive they are not wasting oxygen in the early stages.

As seals spend 90% of their time at sea diving, these seemingly small savings total up to very significant savings over days, weeks and even months of diving at sea.

Free diving

In that sense, the finding of cognitive control of moving blood around the body makes a lot of sense, particularly considering that cognitive control of heart rate has been demonstrated in seals. Seals have already been shown to be able to drop their heart rate on command and also match the reduction in heart rate for the anticipated duration of the following dive.

Astoundingly, when a seal intends to make a longer dive, the reduction in heart rate is greater and matches the intended dive duration quite well. Anticipatory redistribution of blood and control of heart rate demonstrate a simply incredible level of physiological control, which is used to prepare and manage their body to suit their anticipated behaviour.

This is quite an amazing concept. Seals can reduce their rate of oxygen consumption by as much as 70% – a huge amount even compared to a hibernating bear, which can reduce the rate by 25%, or a sleeping human, about 10%.

As I mentioned, the difference between where some animals spend most of their time, and where they can breathe has had a wondrous impact on the physiological capacities of diving animals.

Non-invasive technology in the bio-medical world has allowed us to begin to understand just how wondrous their physiology really is. Away from the constraints of laboratory settings or simulated dives, seals can wear a small instrument, dive and behave as they like, and then tell us their physiological story.

So next time you jump into a swimming pool, consider the physiological changes your body is making to protect your brain against asphyxia, all automatically and without thought. Then imagine being able to control and regulate those changes – that’s what those amazing seals can do when you see them bobbing around the sea.

Chris McKnight receives funding from NERC, BEIS and United States Office of Naval Research.

source: The Conversation: Environment

Volcanoes kill more people long after they first erupt – those deaths are avoidable

You may think of volcanic eruptions as spectacular but brief explosions. But in reality, these destructive forces wreak havoc before headlines are made and continue long after they fade. As our new research shows, it is the drawn-out nature of volcanic eruptions that can be most fatal – and understanding why is the key to saving lives.

Most commonly, volcanoes will emit pulses of gas and solids for six to seven weeks, with quiet fizzling and rumbling punctuated by more intensive bouts of activity. Some go on for years and even decades. The recent fatal explosion in the Italian island of Stromboli is part of an eruptive sequence that officially began in 1934) but stretches back millennia – the Romans referred to the island as the “lighthouse” of the Mediterranean).

But despite this sustained risk, many who live within the reach of volatile volcanoes choose to stay in high hazard zones during an eruption, risking their lives. Studies report that between 15 and 85% of evacuated populations revisit dangerous areas while warnings are still in place.

However, research examining why so many choose to do so is limited. To better understand how to protect lives and livelihoods in the wake of eruptions, we investigated the impacts of past eruptions on the communities around volcanoes with a three-pronged approach.

Reporting on what happens to entire populations during eruptions can be a bit patchy, but what is usually well covered is when people died and where and what they were doing. We examined the circumstances of human deaths from all eruptions globally with available data over a 30-year period. We also conducted detailed interviews with people who had experienced prolonged volcanic activity in Latin America and the Caribbean. Finally, we compiled and analysed existing case studies of communities affected by recent eruptions, to understand the relevant data they had uncovered.

Data on deaths showed that where warnings were in place, about 75% of the fatalities happened inside a zone where people had been asked to to leave, or stay away from. More than 90% of these were people who were either protecting their assets or engaged in activities that contributed to their livelihoods – farming for instance. More than 70% of all fatalities happened a week or more after the initial eruption, despite warnings being in place.

Interviews gave us more insight into the pressures that might have led to those risky decisions. Most people who chose to return to evacuation zones were aware of the risks, but pressures to protect livelihoods and well-being override those considerations. Many returned to look after property, animals or crops. Some people simply wanted to protect and be with their community and seek solace in their home. Few just returned out of curiosity.

Difficult conditions in evacuation shelters also contribute. After the Soufrière Hills Volcano on Montserrat began to erupt in 1995, some people lived for months in refuges where supplies of fresh vegetables were in short supply. By 1997, some were returning to the evacuated zone to tend to crops in an attempt to provide for not only their families but others too. In June of that year, 19 people died during an upsurge in activity in the exclusion zone.

Saving lives and livelihoods

What ours and and the other studies we analysed show is that promoting awareness of the sustained risks of volcanoes is a good start, but it’s not enough to ensure people’s safety. Evacuation strategies also need to find ways of minimising long-term impacts on livelihoods and well-being – especially when they last for more than a few days. For example, authorities could provide alternative pasture for animals, or ensure market prices don’t fall if they have to sell them.

Allowing populations at risk to anticipate sudden changes in activity would also be helpful. The better we can forecast sudden upsurges in activity, the less disruption there will be to affected populations. Scientists are hopeful that new technologies such as drones, space-based monitoring and better micro-analyis of erupted rocks will soon allow us to better detect when unrest turns to more violent eruptions and, just as importantly, when a volcano will settle for a longer period of time. Improving communication networks in at-risk areas is also crucial for improved forecasting to be useful.

Of course, most important of all is that strategies are designed by working collaboratively with and for communities at risk. There are already some wonderful examples where scientists, authorities and communities collaborate to share and rapidly transmit information when activity changes. For example, at Tungurahua in Ecuador, “watchers” have direct radio contact with the local observatory and are trusted members of their community. This network enabled populations to respond rapidly when the volcano started generating pyroclastic flows between 2006 and 2014.

All of this applies not just to volcanoes, but other protracted hazards such as flooding, coastal erosion and landslides too – many of which we will face with increased frequency in the future. By truly understanding and addressing what drives people to return to dangerous zones, and helping them anticipate times of extreme risk, we can save countless lives and countless more livelihoods.

Jenni Barclay receives funding from The UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Economic and Social Research Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Global Challenges Research Fund and the Royal Society.

Roger Few receives funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the British Academy and the Royal Society.

Teresa Armijos B. receives funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).

source: The Conversation: Environment

‘Ancestors’: a new game provides insights into how the first humans evolved

As an academic scientist who researches human evolution, I was surprised to receive an email one day from Patrice Désilets, a top computer game designer responsible for the first two Assassin’s Creed games. He was working on a new game based on our early evolution in Africa, he said, and was using my book The Cradle of Humanity as one of the key reference texts. Would I like to be involved?

Patrice invited my family to Montreal in early 2018 to play and comment on an early beta version. He was greatly amused that my youngest daughter is a true gamer while I always toggle the wrong way (I’m sorry but … up should mean up). But despite my dodgy controlling, I enjoyed a stunning game with a unique subject matter, and one which I believe offers some key insights into human evolution.

The newly released Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is an open world survival game where you control a group of “hominins” – our first ancestors – and explore, expand, and lock in new knowledge so your “clan” can evolve. It takes the players from 10m years ago, and the common ancestor of both chimpanzee and hominins, to 2m years ago, when you can play as an early version of Homo erectus. The aim of the game is ultimately to evolve to the point when humans began to leave Africa.

My own research has shown how climate changes in Africa prompted waves of human evolution, so I was delighted to see the landscape in the game is particularly detailed. From the dense forest where our ancestors originated to the drier open plains you can almost smell Africa. The game also shows us how dangerous life would have been because everything wants to kill you – whether it is leopards, giant snakes, eagles, crocodiles, hippos, hyenas, or a poisonous plant you try to eat.

Even today, on safari or doing fieldwork, in these parts of Africa you can feel the continual threat of the environment around you. This is because humans are really weak when compared with other animals: we are not particularly fast and we have no natural weapons. Teamwork and technology are what allow us to thrive today, and the game tracks the start of our evolution from prey to the world’s apex predator.

This is where the novelty of the game comes in. For instance, it has a very cool mechanism of locking new knowledge into your synapses. All your exploring and encounters give you experiences that can be made into new skills – evolutionary changes such as tool making and team work, both essential to deal with nasty predators. But these new skills can only be locked into your clan’s “DNA” if you complete the task with a baby or an infant with you, which mimics the passing of knowledge between generations.

Some early reviewers have complained it is hard to understand how to evolve. There are minimal instructions, the game is not linear, players are driven by their own curiosity, and different players will prioritise different skills and abilities. For example you can “win” the game and leave Africa without ever evolving to walk upright if you decide to prioritise other skills. But again, this is just like real life evolution, which has no direction and is driven by random events and encounters.

However, there are already excellent walkthroughs available online so, to some extent, this gaming issue has been sidestepped by a unique human characteristic – teaching – and an innovation that came much more recently: language. But I really hope most players use these sparingly, as the joy of the game comes from discovering new things for yourself.

One major reviewer complaint is that if your clan dies you lose everything – unlike many other computer games, there is no reboot. Patrice again put this in because it is exactly like reality. Evolution is full of dead-ends and new species which simply died out, such as the diminutive Homo nadedi in South Africa or Homo floresiensis in Indonesia, or the Neanderthals who only survive in European and Asian DNA due to briefly interbreeding with Homo sapiens as we emerged from Africa.

For me, Ancestors provides a new and novel way of envisaging the past landscapes of Africa which our ancestors had to survive and thrive within. It portrays the danger of that landscape and how key attributes such as tool making and team work helped us cease to be prey and to become a feared predator that regularly took down giant mammoth after leaving Africa. It also provides a unique way of engaging a totally different audience in the excitement and intrigue of human evolution.

For those of us who research early human evolution, this is an exciting moment, a game that illustrates all our research that anyone can play. I’m now looking forward to Ancestors 2, as once proto-humans have left Africa the real fun begins.

Mark Maslin is a Founding Director of Rezatec Ltd, Director of The London NERC Doctoral Training Partnership and a member of Cheltenham Science Festival Advisory Committee. He is an unpaid member of the Sopra-Steria CSR Board. He has received grant funding in the past from the NERC, EPSRC, ESRC, Royal Society, DIFD, DECC, FCO, Innovate UK, Carbon Trust, UK Space Agency, European Space Agency, Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme Trust and British Council. He has received research funding in the past from The Lancet, Laithwaites, Seventh Generation, Channel 4, JLT Re, WWF, Hermes, CAFOD and Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.

source: The Conversation: Environment

The Amazon’s tallest tree just got 50% taller – and scientists don’t know how

Sometimes even the largest natural wonders can remain hidden from human view for centuries. The Amazon is a dense place, full of life with new species of flora and fauna being discovered every other day. Now, using the same technology that takes driverless cars from A to B, we – led by Eric Gorgens and Diego Armando da Silva, and along with colleagues from Brazil, Swansea, Oxford and Cambridge – have discovered the tallest tree in the rainforest.

At 88m tall, it dwarfs the previous record holders by almost 30m. And it’s not alone either. The Guiana Shield of north-eastern Amazonia, which accounts for nearly 9% of the world’s remaining tropical forests, may contain lots of these gigantic trees. With each one able to hold as much carbon as an average hectare of rainforest, our discovery means that the vast jungle may be a greater carbon sink than previously thought.

We didn’t just stumble upon these trees while strolling in the forest. Between 2016 and 2018, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research coordinated a project to laser scan large swaths of the Amazon. This project scanned 850 randomly distributed patches of forest, each 12km long and 300m wide. Seven of these patches contained evidence of trees taller than 80m. Most of them were located in the area surrounding the Jari river, a northern tributary of the Amazon.

Even we were surprised by the mammoth tree heights that the scans reported, so we set out on a journey to confirm the findings with our own eyes, determine their species and, of course, climb them.

The journey

We set off by boat from Laranjal do Jari in north-eastern Brazil, in humid 35℃ heat. The first stage of our journey took us to the village of São Francisco do Iratapuru, a community who produce sustainable brazil nuts. The community provided four boats and 12 people to guide us up the river and through the dense and unforgiving forest.

Without their expert assistance we wouldn’t have cleared the hurdles that followed – the first of which was the Itacará waterfall. It took us all of the second day to haul the heavy wooden boats and all of our gear around over land carpeted with thick vegetation to avoid it.

Beyond Itacará, the river ranged from 300m wide and serene to 30m with rocks and rapids. We were relieved to see that someone had packed plenty of spare propellers for the outboard motors – by the end of the trip we had used every single one. At one point our propeller hit a submerged rock and snapped, leaving us without power or steering just as we were trying to force our way upstream through a section of rapids.

We crossed the equator on the third day and covered 70km, before spending most of the next day waist deep in the river, hauling the boats up through eight kilometres of rapids and rocks with ropes and hands.

Having travelled 240km in total, we finally arrived at base camp on the sixth day. Many of the tall trees were pretty close to the river, so we could visit them quite easily from our camp – although cutting through the dense undergrowth was such tough work that we didn’t have time to visit all of the target sites revealed by the laser data.

We spent the next few days collecting samples and taking measurements of the trees. The highlight was our climber, Fabiano, shooting straight up the trees to measure their height the old-fashioned way – by dangling a rope from the top.

We found at least 15 giant trees, all of which were over 70m tall and some easily topping 80 m. Surprisingly in this diverse tropical forest, all these trees were of the same species – Angelim vermelho (Dinizia excelsa). This species is common in the Amazon, often used for timber because of its strong, albeit smelly wood. Previously, hoever, it was thought to grow to only 60m.

We don’t yet know how these trees managed to grow so much higher. As pioneer species – the first to grow into any new areas or gaps in vegetation – it’s possible that they took advantage of some past disturbance that cleared part of the forest, perhaps caused by a storm or by human habitation. The fact that they have survived so long and grown so tall must be at least in part thanks to their sheer remoteness from urban areas and industry.

Carbon colossus

The laser scanning technology that has enabled this and other recent mammoth tree discoveries isn’t just a plaything for tree lovers. It allows scientists to map forest structure and carbon storage in amazing detail and at unprecedented scales, and so better assess their importance in the global carbon cycle. A number of projects are also collecting repeat data, which will allow us to monitor the changing health in vital forests like these.

In this case, our research suggests that the north-east of the Amazon could store far more carbon than previously thought. Each Angelim vermelho can store as many as 40 tonnes of carbon – that’s between 300 and 500 smaller trees, while occupying the space of only 20. And although we only visited 15 trees, this was a small proportion of the trees the laser scanning data revealed, which was itself covered only a tiny proportion of the Guiana Shield. So, there are likely to be many more giant trees out there – and some may be even taller than our record-breaker.

Read more:
Amazon fires: eight ways you can help stop the rainforest burning

In the current political climate, there are plenty of reasons to worry about the Amazon, but there is also still room for wonder. The fact that discoveries like these are still being made – even while parts of the forest are being destroyed by logging, burning and agricultural expansion – demonstrates how much there is still to learn about this amazing and mysterious ecosystem.

Sadly, it is likely that many unknown species in the Amazon will become extinct before we even discover them. We must do all we can to protect this majestic rainforest and the treasures – both known and undiscovered – it holds within.

Tobias Jackson receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council.

Sami Rifai receives funding from The Oxford Martin School, The Nature Conservancy & The Met Office.

source: The Conversation: Environment