Category Archives: Environment

Everest: I journeyed into the ‘death zone’ to install the world’s highest weather station

Perched at almost 8,500 metres on Everest, we paced back-and-forth, attempting to stave off frostbite as temperatures hovered close to -30°C and our drill batteries became too cold to work. Our ambition to install the highest automatic weather station in history looked destined for failure.

We were at the end of an almost two-month expedition to conduct a hugely ambitious scientific survey of the 8,848-metre Mount Everest. I am a climate scientist who specialises in extreme environments, and together with Baker Perry (a geographer at Appalachian State University), I was trying to install the highest weather station in the world.

Weeks of sickness had plagued the expedition (from diarrhoea to full-on Influenza-A), but we had so far succeeded. Four stations were under our belt, including at Everest Basecamp (5,315 metres), and Camp II (6,464 metres) – perched high above the infamous Khumbu Icefall.

The day before we had celebrated installing the highest operating weather station in the world, near Camp IV at almost 8,000 metres. Only one team of Italian scientists had deployed equipment this high before.

Any celebrations, however, were short-lived.

We filled the rest of that day eating, melting snow and sleeping, squeezing in about two hours of sleep before climbing out of Camp IV as midnight approached. We were determined to get our final station as close to the summit as possible, capturing the first continuous measurements of the weather in the thin air of the “death zone” above 8,000 metres.

Such data increases our understanding of the climates possible on Earth. Were we going to find the strongest near-surface winds on the planet? Just how cold and oxygen deprived is it up there during a winter storm? Could a human theoretically survive these conditions? Beyond this frontier meteorology and insight into life at the extremes, the station data could help improve weather forecasts on the mountain, hopefully making Everest climbers less susceptible to deadly surprises from extreme events.

Led by a superhuman Sherpa team from the nearby village of Phortse – carrying the disassembled weather station, other science equipment and the normal climbing paraphernalia – we made good progress from Camp IV, climbing faster than we had all expedition. The atmosphere, however, was tense.

Above 8,000 metres there is little room for failure, and the 2019 Spring climbing season provided too many reminders of our vulnerability. Unfavourable weather concentrated a record number of climbers into just a few days for summit attempts, making parts of the mountain unusually crowded. Tragically, many more climbers than normal would never make it back down alive.

Read more:
Everest: 11 climbers dead in 16 days – how should we deal with the bodies on the mountain?

These crowds also impacted our expedition.

After around three hours of good progress towards the summit, we hit the back of a queue of climbers all clipped to the rope above. Our pace was cut by more than half. Hands and feet began to cool. The fear of frostbite grew. After hours more of shuffling, collective frustration was palpable. Our lead Sherpa (Panuru) – a charismatic veteran of 14 successful Everest summit – declared that we must reassess our options. So it was there, at Everest’s “Balcony” (8,430 metres), that we peeled off from the back of the pack and found a spot for the weather station.

Continuing any higher would have been a dangerous gamble against the odds. Ours was not a typical climbing expedition: we needed to perform hours of work on the summit and, given the slow progress, it was extremely unlikely our oxygen supplies would have lasted the round trip.

Our Sherpa team leapt into action at the Balcony. They had trained with us over the past two months for this very moment. For Baker and I this represented the climax of almost eight months’ preparation.

We were desperate when the drill (that was needed to help bolt the station to the rock) refused to be coaxed to life.

It was only with the sustained body heat from our warmest Sherpa that the batteries eventually warmed enough for the drilling and installation to commence.

The Sherpa were immense: a lifetime spent at high altitude meant they were quicker witted in the low oxygen environment, stronger, with hands more tolerant of the cold. It was thanks to their efforts that we successfully broke new ground with the installation of this weather station – nearly half a vertical kilometre higher than anything that had gone before.

Now safely back at sea-level, Baker and I have been watching the near-real time, satellite-streamed weather data with interest. We have already seen winds near Camp IV equivalent to a category 2 hurricane – and this is the period normally known for its settled weather.

These stations owe their severe winds to the subtropical jetstream – a high-altitude ribbon of fast-moving air which influences weather across large swathes of the Northern Hemisphere. Placing a weather station at such height means scientists can now monitor the jet directly and learn more about it. And the fact it is on the relatively well-trodden Mount Everest means passing climbers and Sherpas may be able to help with maintenance.

If the new weather stations can survive the extreme conditions long enough, we hope that they will also give us a more complete picture of the high-altitude Himalayan climate, including how it may be changing. This is urgent because it is here that glaciers – the source of freshwater to hundreds of millions of people – are retreating, and as we improve our understanding of the climate, we increase our ability to outline the changes (and challenges) that may be ahead.

There is of course much to do, with far more monitoring needed to understand the spatial diversity in climate and its rate of change across the Earth’s mountains. It is difficult and risky to install weather stations in high-altitude locations, but the stakes are now very high. As scientists we must therefore accept the challenge and continue venturing upward.

Tom Matthews's expedition to Everest was led by National Geographic in partnership with Tribhuvan University and Rolex.

source: The Conversation: Environment

US military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries – shrinking this war machine is a must

The US military’s carbon bootprint is enormous. Like corporate supply chains, it relies upon an extensive global network of container ships, trucks and cargo planes to supply its operations with everything from bombs to humanitarian aid and hydrocarbon fuels. Our new study calculated the contribution of this vast infrastructure to climate change.

Greenhouse gas emission accounting usually focuses on how much energy and fuel civilians use. But recent work, including our own, shows that the US military is one of the largest polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries. If the US military were a country, its fuel usage alone would make it the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, sitting between Peru and Portugal.

In 2017, the US military bought about 269,230 barrels of oil a day and emitted more than 25,000 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide by burning those fuels. The US Air Force purchased US$4.9 billion worth of fuel, and the navy US$2.8 billion, followed by the army at US$947m and the Marines at US$36m.

It’s no coincidence that US military emissions tend to be overlooked in climate change studies. It’s very difficult to get consistent data from the Pentagon and across US government departments. In fact, the United States insisted on an exemption for reporting military emissions in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. This loophole was closed by the Paris Accord, but with the Trump administration due to withdraw from the accord in 2020, this gap will will return.

Our study is based on data retrieved from multiple Freedom of Information Act requests to the US Defense Logistics Agency, the massive bureaucratic agency tasked with managing the US military’s supply chains, including its hydrocarbon fuel purchases and distribution.

The US military has long understood that it isn’t immune from the potential consequences of climate change – recognising it as a “threat multiplier” that can exacerbate other risks. Many, though not all, military bases have been preparing for climate change impacts like sea level rise. Nor has the military ignored its own contribution to the problem. As we have previously shown, the military has invested in developing alternative energy sources like biofuels, but these comprise only a tiny fraction of spending on fuels.

The American military’s climate policy remains contradictory. There have been attempts to “green” aspects of its operations by increasing renewable electricity generation on bases, but it remains the single largest institutional consumer of hydrocarbons in the world. It has also locked itself into hydrocarbon-based weapons systems for years to come, by depending on existing aircraft and warships for open-ended operations.

Not green, but less, military

Climate change has become a hot-button topic on the campaign trail for the 2020 presidential election. Leading Democratic candidates, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren, and members of Congress like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are calling for major climate initiatives like the Green New Deal. For any of that to be effective, the US military’s carbon bootprint must be addressed in domestic policy and international climate treaties.

Our study shows that action on climate change demands shuttering vast sections of the military machine. There are few activities on Earth as environmentally catastrophic as waging war. Significant reductions to the Pentagon’s budget and shrinking its capacity to wage war would cause a huge drop in demand from the biggest consumer of liquid fuels in the world.

It does no good tinkering around the edges of the war machine’s environmental impact. The money spent procuring and distributing fuel across the US empire could instead be spent as a peace dividend, helping to fund a Green New Deal in whatever form it might take. There are no shortage of policy priorities that could use a funding bump. Any of these options would be better than fuelling one of the largest military forces in history.

Click here to subscribe to our climate action newsletter. Climate change is inevitable. Our response to it isn’t.

Benjamin Neimark conducted this research with sustainability consultant Cara Kennelly.

Oliver Belcher and Patrick Bigger do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

source: The Conversation: Environment

To tackle the climate crisis we need more democracy, not less

As the climate crisis is increasingly felt across the globe, protesters take to the streets and politicians scrabble to respond, a crucial question is beginning to emerge. How can governments develop climate strategies which build public support for action? An announcement by six UK parliamentary committees that they will hold a citizens’ assembly on the climate emergency is a crucial step toward answering that question.

There are no shortage of prescriptions for climate action. From economists calling for an economy-wide carbon tax, to scientists advocating “earth system governance” at the planetary level, there are experts assuring us that they have strategies to cut greenhouse gas emissions quickly and effectively. But there’s a dangerous illusion sitting behind these prescriptions – what the social scientist Maarten Hajer called the illusion of “cockpitism”. Cockpitism describes the assumption that you can dictate climate solutions the same way a pilot might fly a plane, sitting in the cockpit charting the most efficient course, with perfectly calibrated instruments and levers.

This illusion is very problematic – and not just because the climate system is an entity far more complex than a plane. It is problematic because it cuts people out. It is a seemingly apolitical view that self-defined “experts” can decide what is best for people and impose those solutions. At its most extreme, it suggests that democracy is the problem, not the solution – as veteran earth scientist James Lovelock once said, “climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.”

My own research suggests that the opposite is true. To tackle the climate crisis, we need more, and better, democracy, not less. My interviews with politicians showed that they were convinced of the need for action on climate, but did not know what support there would be from the electorate. As one told me: “I’ve had tens of thousands of conversations with voters, and I just don’t have conversations about climate change.”

But this may be about to change, as we know from polling data that generalised concern about climate change is now at an all-time high. Yet how does this translate into support for far-reaching climate action? Would people be more likely to support locally based programmes, with powers given to cities and towns to cut emissions? Would there be support for introducing a ban on petrol and diesel vehicles, over the next decade? Would people support higher taxes on carbon, if the money was invested in low-carbon solutions and support for vulnerable households? And crucially, how could this all link together into a credible, effective climate strategy that would build the mandate for further action toward a net-zero carbon target?

This is where processes such as a citizens’ assembly, or other deliberative processes such as citizens’ juries or deliberative workshops, can help. These processes allow a representative group of citizens to meet with experts on equal terms, assess evidence, debate and suggest solutions. They are not a substitute for electoral politics, but they provide a more nuanced and detailed understanding of voters’ viewpoints than traditional political polling or focus groups.

At the recent Citizens’ Assembly on climate change held in Ireland, citizens offered up a surprisingly radical and confident set of suggestions, most of which the government is now taking forward. In the UK, many local areas are now setting up deliberative processes to decide their own next steps on climate.

Done well, such processes can help to develop a more inclusive, less divisive politics, countering the distrust of “experts” and allowing a constant interplay between the views and values of the public and politicians.

A citizens’ assembly is not a panacea. Deliberation won’t, in and of itself, solve the problem. We need far-reaching action which will require radical policy and confrontation of vested interests. But this policy and action will only be achievable if people understand and support it. The more we find out about how to build a public mandate for climate action, and the more we include people in genuine debate and deliberation, the more likely we are to find a way through the climate crisis. If it’s not democratic, it’s not realistic.

Click here to subscribe to our climate action newsletter. Climate change is inevitable. Our response to it isn’t.

Rebecca Willis receives funding from the ESRC. She is affiliated with Green Alliance and the New Economics Foundation.

source: The Conversation: Environment

Utopia isn’t just idealistic fantasy – it inspires people to change the world

Climate breakdown, mass extinctions, and extreme inequality threaten the earth’s rich tapestry of life and leave our own fate increasingly uncertain. At a time of such social, political and ecological upheaval, it’s natural to dream of a utopian world in which these problems are no more – in fact, people have been doing it for centuries.

Such visions are often dismissed as nothing more than pointless flights of fancy, yearnings for impossibly perfect societies. But these assumptions are largely incorrect. Utopianism is the lifeblood of social change, and has already inspired countless individuals and movements to change the world for the better.

Utopia is not, as its Greek etymological roots suggest, a “no-place”. The name may derive from Thomas More’s classic 16th-century fictional work, Utopia, but it is not confined to literature depicting distant or fantastical ideal worlds.

Utopianism is in fact a philosophy that encompasses a variety of ways of thinking about or attempting to create a better society. It begins with the seemingly simple yet powerful declaration that the present is inadequate and that things can be otherwise. Present in communities, social movements, and political discourse, it critiques society and creatively projects futures free of the strangleholds of the time. Put simply, it embodies a longstanding human impulse towards self-improvement.

Utopianism is manifest in countless historical examples of those that have dared to challenge the status quo and assert that things can – and indeed, must – change. Take Martin Luther-King’s dream of a world free of racial segregation for example, or the strivings of the suffragettes for gender equality.

Ecological utopia

Now, our relationship with the natural world is humanity’s defining challenge – and utopian ideas have shifted to meet it. “Ecotopian” aspirations are already in full view in community networks attempting to create more conscious ways of living such as the Transition Network, social movements such as Extinction Rebellion, and bold policy proposals such as the USA’s Green New Deal. What’s more, many of the ideas put forth by these projects were long since imagined in prominent ecotopian literary works.

In the ideal worlds sketched in Ernst Callenbach’s Ecotopia and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Pacific Edge for example, resources are renewably sourced and communally owned. Healthcare, education, and meaningful employment are available to all. Extreme wealth disparities have been eradicated through income caps and minimum earnings schemes. These ideas are reflected in many aspects of the Green New Deal, which aims to transition the USA towards communal ownership of energy systems and a 100% renewable energy system by 2030, as well as enshrine into law rights to single-payer healthcare, guaranteed work at a living wage, affordable housing, and free university education.

It’s not clear whether Alexandro Ocasio-Cortez, the leading figurehead for the grand policy package, was directly inspired by these works. But judging from the way she has been promoting the Green New Deal, she certainly sees the value in painting visions of utopia. For example, her viral video, titled “A Message from the Future”, creatively imagines a more socially and ecologically resilient society just a few decades on from now – and, crucially, helps us to believe that it is possible.

As a decentralised global movement that gives its members autonomy and demands politics in which citizens lead, Extinction Rebellion also echoes ideals from ecotopian novels. In Ecotopia and many other similar works, most aspects of life are decentralised, from small-scale agriculture to neighborhood-specific healthcare. In Pacific Edge, the direct brand of politics Extinction Rebellion advocates is central to social and ecological wellbeing.

Extinction Rebellion urges efforts of wartime proportion to decarbonise by 2025 – a utopian target that has been met with scepticism in some quarters. But whether or not it is achievable, such a demand has been crucial in highlighting that what is presently deemed politically possible is not sufficient to stop catastrophic climate breakdown.

Their radical visions have shifted the climate and ecological crises to the forefront of the political agenda. And, crucially, they have switched millions on to the idea that fundamental transformations in the way we organise and power our societies are possible.

To some, the serious political proposals outlined by Extinction Rebellion and in the Green New Deal might seem as unrealistic as the literary works that imagine their realisation. But living examples of ecotopian imagination can already be found in the world we live in.

Thousands of intentional communities across the globe are already creating spaces with social and ecological justice at their heart. Many of these eco-communities have been directly inspired by the communities imagined in ecotopian novels. For example, hundreds of eco-villages in the Baltic region were set up according to the concept laid out in Vladimir Megre’s The Ringing Cedars of Russia.

Some movements, such as the Transition Network – whose co-founder describes himself as a “vision harvester” – are even working to transform existing settlements across the world, with great success. As just one example among initiatives in nearly 1,000 towns and cities, Transition Marlborough’s Bee Roadzz project in south-west England has drawn together local residents, businesses and organisations to link habitats and combat the rapid decline of bees and other pollinators.

In shattering the perceived rigidity of the present, utopianism paves the way for change. Perfect worlds may not be realisable or even desirable, but that doesn’t mean we should shy away from imagining and striving for a better future. Societies without extreme inequality and environmental degradation are surely within the bounds of possibility. Whether in the form of a creative novel, a social movement, or a political proposal, dreaming can help us get there.

Click here to subscribe to our climate action newsletter. Climate change is inevitable. Our response to it isn’t.

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

source: The Conversation: Environment

Six amazing facts you need to know about ants

Have you have seen ants this year? In Britain, they were probably black garden ants, known as Lasius niger – Europe’s most common ant. One of somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000 species, they are the scourge of gardeners – but also fascinating.

The small, black, wingless workers run around the pavements, crawl up your plants tending aphids or collect tasty morsels from your kitchen. And the flying ants that occasionally appear on a warm summer’s evening are actually the reproductive siblings of these non-winged workers. Here’s what else you need to know:

1. Most ants you see are female

Ants have a caste system, where responsibilities are divided. The queen is the founder of the colony, and her role is to lay eggs. Worker ants are all female, and this sisterhood is responsible for the harmonious operation of the colony.

Their tasks range from caring for the queen and the young, foraging, policing conflicts in the colony, and waste disposal. Workers will most likely never have their own offspring. The vast majority of eggs develop as workers, but once the colony is ready the queen produces the next generation of reproductives which will go on to start own colonies.

A female ant’s fate to become a worker or queen is mainly determined by diet, not genetics. Any female ant larva can become the queen – those that do receive diets richer in protein. The other larvae receive less protein, which causes them to develop as workers.

2. Male ants are pretty much just flying sperm

Unlike humans, with X and Y chromosomes, an ant’s sex is determined by the number of genome copies it possesses. Male ants develop from unfertilised eggs so receive no genome from a father. This means that male ants don’t have a father and cannot have sons, but they do have grandfathers and can have grandsons. Female ants, in comparison, develop from fertilised eggs and have two genome copies – one from their father and one from their mother.

Male ants function like flying sperm. Only having one genome copy means every one of their sperm is genetically identical to themselves. And their job is over quickly, dying soon after mating, although their sperm live on, perhaps for years.
– essentially their only job is to reproduce.

3. After sex queens don’t eat for weeks

When the conditions are warm and humid, the winged virgin queens and males leave their nests in search of mates. This is the behaviour seen on “flying ant day”. In L. niger, mating takes place on the wing, often hundreds of meters up (hence the need for good weather). Afterwards, queens drop to the ground and shed their wings, while males quickly die. Mated queens choose a nest site and burrow into the soil, made softer from recent rain.

Read more:
The amazing secrets behind ‘flying ant day’

Once underground, the queens will not eat for weeks – until they have produced their own daughter workers. They use energy from their fat stores and redundant flight muscles to lay their first batch of eggs, which they fertilise using sperm stored from their nuptial flight. It is the same stock of sperm acquired from long dead males that allows a queen to continue laying fertilised eggs for her entire life. Queens never mate again.

4. Home-making the ant way: cooperation, death and slavery

Sometimes two L. niger queens unite to found a nest. This initially cooperative association – which increases the chance of establishing a colony – dissolves once new adult workers emerge and then the queens fight to the death. More sinister still, L. niger colonies sometimes steal brood from their neighbours, putting them to work as slaves.

Slave-making has evolved in a number of ant species, but they also display cooperation at extraordinary levels. An extreme example of this is a “supercolony” of Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) which extends over 6,000km of European coastline from Italy to north-west Spain, and is composed of literally billions of workers from millions of cooperating nests.

5. Queen ants can live for decades, males for a week

After establishing her colony, the queen’s work is not done and she has many years of egg-laying ahead of her. In the laboratory, L. niger queens have lived for nearly 30 years. Workers live for about a year, males little more than a week (although their sperm live longer). These extraordinary differences in longevity are purely due to the way their genes are switched on and off.

6. Ants can help humans and the environment

Ants have a major influence in ecosystems worldwide and their roles are diverse. While some ants are considered pests, others act as biological-control agents. Ants benefit ecosystems by dispersing seeds, pollinating plants and improving the quality of soil. Ants might also benefit our health, as a potential source of new medicines such as antibiotics.

So when you next see an ant, before you think to kill her, consider how fascinating she really is.

Charlie Durant receives funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

Max John receives funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), and the Genetics Society.

Rob Hammond receives funding from NERC, BBSRC, The Genetics Society.

source: The Conversation: Environment

Why people in a flooded British town were told to stop flushing the toilet

The British town of Wainfleet in Lincolnshire is underwater. After two months rain in two days, the River Steeping burst its banks, and 580 homes were evacuated. Curiously, the advice to the town’s remaining residents is to avoid flushing the toilet or using the washing machine whenever possible – advice that is more usually associated with drought rather than flood.

The request suggests that Wainfleet’s sewer system is dangerously close to capacity. Using the loo and washing machine not only puts a demand on the water supply system, but it also adds to the flows in the local sewer, which is likely to be very full.

Like most towns in Europe, Wainfleet’s town centre was constructed before the 1950s, and will be served by a “combined sewer” that takes both the waste water from toilets and showers, and the rainwater from roofs and roads. This resulting dilute waste water then needs to be treated before it is discharged into the environment. If the volume of water is too much for the treatment plant to handle then a “combined sewage overflow” will release dilute sewage into rivers and oceans. It is because of combined sewage overflows that it’s not a good idea to bathe in rivers or beaches after there has been rainfall.

An additional problem in Wainfleet (and many low-lying areas like London, much of the Netherlands or New Orleans in the US) is that the sewer system is lower than the level of the river or sea. This means that the wastewater/rainwater combination does not just need treatment, but it also needs pumping. If there is too much water for the treatment works or pumps to process at any one moment, then water from streets or homes will be unable to enter the sewer system, and dirty water, including dilute sewage, can overflow into rivers, streets and homes.

A dramatic example of this happened in Hull in 2007. Just like in Wainfleet, heavy summer rainstorms put pressure on treatment systems and pumps. More than 8,000 homes were flooded, and some people were out of their homes for over a year. Such flooding causes huge physical disruption and challenges people’s mental health. Imagine unexpectedly losing most of your possessions, simultaneously needing to find a new place to live for an unpredictable length of time, having to manage the family routines from a different location, and meanwhile having to negotiate with insurers and builders about the renewal of your home.

As climate change threatens to bring more sudden rainstorms, many places are becoming more vulnerable to problems like those in Wainfleet and Hull. One way to address these problems is to slow down the flow of rainwater. The hard surfaces of roads, pavements and pipes, for example, speed up the flow of water. Some agricultural drainage practices may also encourage water to flow rather than waterlog the land. What this all means is that all the water from the rainstorm arrives at the treatment and pumping facilities at the same time.

We can address these problems – in Wainfleet as elsewhere – but it will take many small changes to the way people manage their water.

Wetlands and rain gardens

All over the world, local authorities are exploring how they can repurpose parks and other open spaces to help to store the water from heavy rainfall. In Firs Farm Park in the London borough of Enfield, for example, playing fields have been raised and others transformed into wetland to hold back the water and prevent flooding downstream. This work has helped to stimulate the involvement of local people in maintaining the park, while the wetlands provide a nature resource for schoolchildren.

Similar projects are being explore as far apart as Bergen, Norway, and Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

On a smaller scale, water can be held back in street rain gardens. These small patches of planting combined with dropped kerbs offer opportunities for infiltrating water and greening the streets. Residents may have to sacrifice some local parking spaces, but such investments can make a neighbourhood more pleasant for everyone, as well as reducing the flows downstream.

The request to minimise household inputs to the sewer system is one small immediate way to mobilise local residents to help address the threat of flooding. But residents with a garden can help in other ways too. Most UK houses have gutters that discharge directly to the sewer. Depending on the local geology, garden soakaways (stone-filled ditches which can soak up water if it rains), retain the water so it drains more slowly to the ground or the sewer.

Another way to accomplish this task is with a raintank. Most people think of raintanks (or water butts) as a way to protect against droughts. But as long as a tank has some space in it, it also has the potential to provide added protection for a neighbourhood from flooding. My research team is currently exploring whether we can make “leaky raintanks”. The idea here is that as well as storing water for use in the garden, the tank will also have a space which is able to fill up in a storm and then drain slowly into the sewer. If every household in a neighbourhood had a “leaky raintank”, it could make a significant difference to the amount of water storage during a storm.

Whether helping to replan the local park, participating in discussing which parts of the street can form a rain garden, or through managing a soakaway or raintank on your private land, water management is increasingly seen as something which is too big and too important to leave just to technical experts. We are all part of the water system, and those that manage water are recognising that people are able and willing to undertake actions to improve the water system.

Meanwhile, technical experts more widely need to recognise that water is part of lived in and natural landscapes – and this must be reflected in sewers and streets. In a time in which water-related threats are worsening, society needs to look beyond isolated problems of floods or droughts, and to consider how wise water management can deliver local benefits as well as a more resilient landscape for everyone.

Liz Sharp receives funding from the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EP/N010124/1), the EU's Intereg funding for the North Sea Region (https://northsearegion.eu/begin/) and the UK Research's Climate Resilience fund (NE/S016589/1). Her work on climate resilience in Hull is also supported by in kind contritions from the Living With Water Partnership, incorporating Yorkshire Water Services, Hull City Council, East Riding Council and the Environment Agency.

source: The Conversation: Environment

Birds: we studied 4,000 ‘alien introductions’ to find out why some were successful

Species introduced by humans to areas where they don’t naturally occur are a worldwide problem. These “alien species” can cost a lot of money to deal with, and they’re the number one driver associated with recent extinctions worldwide. The rate at which new populations of alien species are establishing is increasing rapidly, and ideally we’d like to stop the process in its tracks.

But first we need to answer two key questions: firstly, what features of species make them good at becoming alien? For instance why has the Indian myna bird managed to establish itself across the world while its relative the crested myna has not? And, secondly, what is it that makes some locations more susceptible to aliens establishing there? While we have made progress in answering the first question, we haven’t done nearly so well with the second.

The reason for this is that the environment is very complicated and so many elements of it might be important for an arriving alien species. For instance the climate at a new location is likely to matter, not just in absolute terms, but in how well it matches what the alien is used to back home. Climatic extremes may be as or more important than averages in this regard.

Which species are already present at the location is also likely to be important. Too many and the alien may get easily outcompeted or eaten, too few might mean there wasn’t enough food in the area. Again, the identity of the alien matters in these regards. Habitat will matter, as will the extent to which humans have modified it. Finally, all of these features of the location vary over space and time, and which species get introduced as aliens also is not random, all of which introduces a range of complications.

In collaboration with colleagues in Australia and the US, my research group set out to attempt a rigorous global analysis of why some locations are more susceptible to alien establishment. We first assembled a catalogue of more than 4,000 alien bird introductions, featuring everything from Australian magpies in New Zealand to Southeast Asian zebra doves in Hawaii.

We then overlaid it with information on features of the local environment, species traits, and how many individuals got introduced (important because small founding populations can easily fail by accident), and used complex statistical methods to assess the impacts of all these different factors.

Our results are now published in Nature. Overall, we found that environmental features were the most important, particularly human impacts on the environment – how many other alien species groups were already present, for example – and how well the new environment matched what the species was used to from its native range.

The matching effect is not surprising – introduce a tropical parrot to the Arctic and it’s probably not going to do very well – but it is reassuring, as it gives us confidence in our analysis. This makes the anthropogenic effects more worrying though, in particular that alien birds are more likely to establish populations in areas that already have more aliens of other sorts. This is consistent with the “invasional meltdown” hypothesis that previous invasions help facilitate future alien arrivals.

The meltdown result does not simply reflect general environmental disturbance, as we also found that alien birds are more likely to establish themselves in less disturbed habitats – for example, areas where lots of habitat had been converted to cropland in the run up to the introduction.

Another sort of disturbance that matters is bad weather – a big storm in the period immediately following introduction can cause the alien population to disappear. There was already anecdotal evidence for this – for example, the initial extinction of the alien house crow population from Mauritius following a storm – but our analysis shows that this is a general effect.

We did find some evidence that lots of native bird species meant alien birds were less likely to establish themselves, but alien birds do slightly better in areas with at least some similar native species rather than none. This makes sense – for example, an alien bird that eats insects might be expected to do better in areas where native insectivores live, as long as there aren’t too many for the aliens to make a living. Overall, however, the types of native plants and animals had a relatively weak effect on alien bird establishment success.

While the environment explained most variation in alien bird establishment overall, we also found large effects of species traits and number of individuals introduced. Founding population size needs to be large enough (more than about 50 birds) to avoid the alien population failing simply by chance (the same reason we worry about very small populations of threatened native species). Assuming there are enough birds, then it helps if they breed fast but don’t die too young. It also helps if they are not too fussy about what they eat or where they live.

Taken together, our results show how features of the environment, the species, and the founding population size have all influenced the global history of alien bird establishment. They also suggest reasons to worry. The world is showing signs of a global invasion meltdown, while ever more alien species are being introduced to new locations and getting the chance to test their environmental matches. Increasingly, the future is looking alien.

Tim Blackburn's research was supported in part by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust.

source: The Conversation: Environment

Schoolchildren helped redesign a city to cut air pollution and climate warming

Air pollution has a particularly damaging effect on children. They’re still growing and breathe faster than adults do. They also live closer to the ground, where the most polluting gases from vehicles accumulate. Pollution from traffic has been linked to problems with brain development, stunted growth, respiratory conditions, cancers and 300,000 child deaths worldwide.

Children themselves are far from oblivious to all this. The school climate strikes show that young people are forcing air pollution and the climate crisis to the top of the political agenda. The strikes tell us that children demand a platform to challenge pollution in their environment. Unable to voice their concerns in school, they are forced to take radical action. What if instead there was a way to work with children in tackling air pollution and climate change?

Through my research, I look for ways that we can give children the tools, the skills and the confidence to affect change in the cities they live in. With the help of teachers and my colleagues in Open Lab – a research group at Newcastle University – we’ve come up with Sense Explorers, a series of lessons to run in primary schools.

Smog on the Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK has a population of just over 260,000. It’s relatively small, but several areas of the city have illegal levels of air pollution. The culprit? Cars, buses and lorries, all emitting harmful concentrations of polluting gases such as nitrogen dioxide in built-up areas.

Read more:
Why air pollution in schools is such a big deal – and what to do about it

The children I talked to care about the environment and wanted to see it change for the better – but they have few means to influence that change. In our lessons, we didn’t simply teach school children about environmental issues – we allowed them to learn for themselves what they can do to improve their local environment.

First, we took them to streets in their neighbourhood. With the help of some digital tools, including a basic kit we built ourselves, we collected data about air pollution.

In our pilot lessons, we gave them a tool that professionals use called the Fidas Frog, a handheld device that monitors fine dust in the air. But when we found this wasn’t so fun or easy for children, we created the Sensor Pi. Using low-cost sensors connected to a Raspberry Pi computer, they could get a rough air pollution reading at the press of a button.

We didn’t just rely on technology – we asked the children to think about what their own five senses were telling them about the street. Could they see or hear what may be causing pollution?

We compiled the data they collected and showed it back to them alongside official data. Adults might not expect children to be able to interpret air pollution data, but when we asked them to explain what might be causing peaks in the graphs, they suggested parents in their idling cars, rush-hour traffic and the fumes from local factories.

We then asked: if you were in charge of the city, how would you make the situation better?

The city of tomorrow

The children proposed many things, including solar-powered cars, separate bridges for people and vehicles, tunnels to keep traffic underground and even electric travelators to replace roads and cars altogether. Many of their ideas to combat pollution could be implemented right now – slowing vehicles down or removing them from the road, providing electric car charging points, filtering the air and getting more people to walk and cycle.

These ideas won’t just linger in a teacher’s drawer or decorate a display wall. We’ve worked with four classes in three different schools, and local politicians came to meet all of them to listen and commit to action on their ideas.

Schools are the perfect places to encourage children to become environmental activists. It’s where children learn about the future, what it holds for them, and how they can make it better. We should be showing them what they can – and should – do to make their cities less polluted places.

Urban planners and politicians are often hesitant to work with children, but they shouldn’t be – we need to embrace their creativity and passion to take radical action on air pollution and climate change. More now than ever, we need the original ideas that only children can bring.

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Sean Peacock receives funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through the Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Civics. He is a board trustee of A Place in Childhood, a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation, and a member of the Labour Party.

source: The Conversation: Environment

In defence of the wolf: this big bad animal is more prey than predator

Wolves are returning to their former ranges across Europe and North America, resurrecting a centuries’ old war with humans over land, hunting opportunities, and livestock. While protected in many areas, the wolf is fighting a losing battle, because in the war against them we’ve recruited something much more deadly than guns, traps, or poison, a more powerful and effective tool for wolf extermination than all of these things combined: the human imagination.

Even though we’re all aware of what real wolves are like and can picture them very clearly, perhaps even find them majestic and beautiful, lurking within our collective psyche is the nightmarish Big Bad Wolf whom we came to know so well as children, and who stays with us into adulthood with the fictionalised killers of television and film.

I am fiercely pro-wolf and strongly advocate for their return, but I can’t pretend that there isn’t a little part of my brain that sends out danger signals whenever I think about them actually being on my doorstep. Rationally, we know from scientific evidence that wolves pose very little threat to humans (in fact, because of our long-standing persecution of them they tend to avoid us – so much so that even sightings are rare, let alone attacks). Yet it is as if a primal fear of wolves is simply built into human DNA. So as much as I want this aspect of my feelings to go away, it’s just not something that I think ever will.

It’s easy for those who are anti-wolf to capitalise on this fear in order to perpetuate the war between the species. Using the image of the wolf as a bloodthirsty, uncontrollable killer, and the synonymity between wolves and the “wilderness” to great effect, wolf opponents are able to convince others that wolves and people cannot co-exist, especially where farming is concerned. For example, when wolves were spotted in one national park in the Netherlands for the first time in more than a century, the park’s director, Seger Emmanuel baron van Voorst tot Voorst, argued that:

Once a wolf has tasted sheep meat it won’t be running after deer. Grazing sheep will be impossible if wolves are in the area, and fences won’t keep them out… We live in a country of 17 million people, not the Serengeti.

This indignance at the expectation that humans should adapt to live alongside wolves (“we have been farming in this way for centuries, why should we change that now because of something we don’t even want here?”), epitomises an attitude that is problematic not only for wolves, but for all species of animals: that humans should have primacy over the earth.

Humans act as though wolves should respect “our” spaces – that they should recognise areas where they should not go. But wolves don’t know about the imaginary borders between countries, states, inhabited and uninhabited land, “civilisation” and “wilderness”. They don’t know which areas have been designated for their use and protection and which haven’t, and they don’t know that what they’re doing when they step outside these boundaries is “wrong”. Nor do they know that hunting sheep is an offence that is often punishable by death. They are just trying to eat, which is much more difficult than is often thought: fewer than 20% of wolf hunts are successful. Can we really blame them for trying to snag an easy meal?

No wonder they’d rather hunt sheep. (Source: BBC Earth)

Realistically, wolves do need management if they are to co-exist with humans. Unfortunately, we live in a human-dominated world, so we call the shots – literally, if we decide to shoot wolves – but management does not have to be lethal. Fences, auditory and visual defences, guard dogs and even guard llamas can be used in order to deter wolves from attacking livestock.

Wolves might even be able to help us in fixing some of the damage that we have inflicted on the earth, by restoring the ecological balance in areas where deer, unchecked in number by a lack of natural predators, have decimated the native plant life. While “rewilding” is sometimes seen as radical (relinquishing our control over nature is simply unthinkable for some) it’s in fact the opposite – it’s putting nature back to the way it was before humans altered its course.

Before that happens though, we need to put the Big Bad Wolf to bed. Wolves are not bad – they’re just wolves, trying to survive in a world where they are increasingly unwelcome. In fact, it’s worth considering what a human would look like to a wolf. To them, we’re the killing machines (armed with further killing machines). We’re stealing from their larder when we hunt, displacing them from their homelands, tearing apart their families, and killing their new-born children in their dens. They’re as frightened of us as we are of them, if not more so, and for good reason. While the human-wolf war rages on, perhaps we should consider the possibility that the Big Bad Wolf does not exist, but the Big Bad Human is alive and well.

Elizabeth Marshall receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

source: The Conversation: Environment

Universities have alerted us to the scale of the climate crisis – now they must lead in showing society how to solve it

After increasingly stark scientific warnings and unprecedented mass mobilisations of school children and rebellious citizens, the climate crisis is finally starting to be acknowledged in the halls of decision making. The UK has now committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, mirroring momentum in France and the rest of the EU for similar targets.

But there’s a long way to go yet. Government targets to date still vastly underestimate the urgency of the climate crisis. And in terms of concrete action, the world is way off; based on current policy plans, the science indicates that we’re heading for a world that will be three to four degrees hotter by 2100.

As the source of much of the very research that has alerted us to the true scale of the crisis we face, it is up to universities to take the lead in showing society how to act on it. If they don’t, then how can they justify taxpayers funding the research in the first place?

Leading the way

Such leadership starts with rallying behind a zero carbon target that takes climate breakdown seriously. The UN recently released a key report on the catastrophic effects of letting global heating rise above 1.5℃ – in which university academics played a major role. But according to the report, aiming for net zero by 2050 still gives us a 50% chance of temperatures rising above this dangerous level.

And even this risky percentage is based on the whole world going zero carbon by this date. To address the murky economic injustice of climate breakdown, countries that have long benefited from exploiting the fossil fuel resources of poorer countries need to decarbonise much sooner than 2050. As privileged institutions facing pressure to confront colonial biases, universities in these countries should champion a zero carbon target of 2035. Such a target would both respect the severity of their own scientific findings, and allow those who have suffered from oily geopolitics to decarbonise at a slower pace.

In fact, some already have set targets of 2035 or earlier – but that doesn’t mean that their job is done. Universities, like governments, are guilty of creative carbon accounting that diminishes the true value of even seemingly impressive targets.

In reporting only emissions from fuels burnt on site, and electricity and heat utility bills, most paint an incomplete picture of their full emissions burden. Universities must create a culture of honest accounting by including the hefty carbon costs of areas such as travel and transport (often accounting for more than a quarter of universities’ emissions) and food, and then set about reducing them.

This means spending money directly on reducing emissions, and avoiding the use of popular carbon offsets, which palm off emissions reductions to poorer, low-emitting countries. Some universities have already claimed to be “carbon neutral” or close to it, but their substantial use of offsets in reality reveals a prioritisation of green branding over concrete action. Evidence from academics indicates that offsets almost never actually reduce emissions, and may in some cases be worse than doing nothing.

Universities must therefore focus efforts on achieving real zero, not net zero. Unlike industries such as steel, cement and aviation, which are difficult to decarbonise, the vast majority of university emissions are relatively easy to cut.

Switching to genuinely renewable energy as well as systematically implementing energy-saving measures such as heat pumps and insulation can slash energy use. Frequent air travel for conferences and field trips is clearly inconsistent with decarbonisation, and there is no excuse for universities not to replace travel with remote participation wherever possible, and support slower, less polluting options where necessary. Taking beef and lamb off the university menu is also an important and urgent step.

As hubs of scientific innovation, universities must also redouble efforts to find new ways of decarbonising – and, importantly, integrate these efforts with the local communities they are often so intimately linked to. Creating new economies and ways of living will be essential in the journey to zero emissions, and projects such as the Place-based Action Network have already begun to show how local cooperation can build an inclusive and coordinated path away from fossil fuels.

To ensure broad buy in to what will inevitably be tough changes ahead, universities must actively engage with and listen to these communities, as well as staff and students at all levels. Universities are not just innovators but educators too, and have a vital role in ensuring that when students and staff leave university they’re less likely to exacerbate the climate crisis, not more – no matter what they study or teach.

Finally, universities must fully and unconditionally divest from all fossil fuels. Despite widespread support for divestment among staff, UK and US universities alone have billions of pounds still invested in the industry. Continued support for fossil fuel companies is not compatible with the climate emergency that academic research has illuminated – and universities would do well to question whether maintaining research ties or student placements with such companies is either.

I am proud to be a part of a network of institutions with a long history of using research to create a better world. But as the world faces its gravest existential threat, these institutions urgently need to marry words with action. Anything less undermines the integrity of their work.

Without the work of universities, we would not have been awakened to the climate emergency. If even they then ignore the teachings of their research, how on Earth can we expect anyone else to act?

Calum Harvey-Scholes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

source: The Conversation: Environment