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Category: Environment

The chaotic effects of climate change on Pacific walruses

The chaotic effects of climate change on Pacific walruses

The New Yorker: In 2018, in the Siberian Arctic, the filmmakers Evgenia Arbugaeva and Maxim Arbugaev, who are sister and brother, arrived on a strange beach. “The sand was of dark colour, full of bones, and smelled terrible,” Arbugaeva recalled. Arbugaeva was working on a photography project about an Indigenous Chukchi community that practices subsistence hunting (whales, walruses, and seals, following the international quotas), and the siblings were on a hunt, at sea, when they landed on the beach. “In…

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How the global rise of border walls is stifling wildlife

How the global rise of border walls is stifling wildlife

Fred Pierce writes: Pity the tiny band of lynx in the Polish half of Europe’s most ancient forest. In June, their home, the Białowieża Forest, was cut in half when the Polish government completed construction of a wall on its border with Belarus. The aim was to repel refugees from the Middle East and elsewhere being channeled to the border by the Belarus government. But the 115-mile wall — which towers 18 feet above the forest floor, stretching almost into…

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‘Vast’ mass of microbes being released by melting glaciers

‘Vast’ mass of microbes being released by melting glaciers

The Guardian reports: Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of bacteria are being released by melting glaciers, a study has shown. The microbes being washed downstream could fertilise ecosystems, the researchers said, but needed to be much better studied to identify any potential pathogens. The scientists said the rapid melting of the ice by the climate crisis meant the glaciers and the unique microbial ecosystems they harboured were “dying before our eyes”, leaving researchers racing to understand them before they disappeared….

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Our planet, shaped by life

Our planet, shaped by life

Olivia Judson writes: I want to start with a proposition: if Earth had never come alive, it would be a profoundly different world. Conversely: the planet of today has, to a remarkable extent, been made what it is by the activities of lifeforms. Over the course of the planet’s long history, a history that extends back more than 4.5 billion years, lifeforms have shaped the rocks, the water, the air, even the colour of the sky. A Never-Life Earth would…

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Did humans inadvertently produce super insects?

Did humans inadvertently produce super insects?

Lina Zeldovich writes: One day, about 60 million years ago, a little leafcutter moth landed on an ancient sycamore tree to lay eggs in its leaves. The larvae grew, nestled inside a comfy enclosure akin to a sleeping bag made between the leaf’s thin layers. Once hatched, they ate their way through to the surface and left to perpetuate their kin. Most of the chewed-up leaves swirled down to the earth, decomposing shortly after. But this leaf, along with a…

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What does water want?

What does water want?

Erica Gies writes: Walking across spongy tundra, among bonsai shrubs on fire with autumn colours, I came upon a river too wide to cross. Gazing up the valley from which it flowed, I saw that the obstacle blocking my path was just one strand of a broad, braided system spread languidly across a floodplain in Denali National Park in Alaska. I watched the McKinley River’s fluid columns shift apart, then twine together. Although at that time I knew little about…

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Ukraine uses Cop27 to highlight environmental cost of Russia’s war

Ukraine uses Cop27 to highlight environmental cost of Russia’s war

The Guardian reports: Ukraine has used the Cop27 climate talks to make the case that Russia’s invasion is causing an environmental as well as humanitarian catastrophe, with fossil fuels a key catalyst of the country’s destruction. Ukraine has dispatched two dozen officials to the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to spell out the links between the war launched by Russia in February, the soaring cost of energy due to Russia’s status as a key gas supplier, and the planet-heating emissions…

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What did the Russians dig up when they dug trenches in Chernobyl?

What did the Russians dig up when they dug trenches in Chernobyl?

Michael Marder writes: Contemporary events appear in ever-shifting configurations. They seem to be entirely contingent, their amplification on the global scale dependent on how many people are paying attention. The vicissitudes of spotlighting various events are daily, if not hourly: something that was the focus of attention yesterday may be forgotten today. A massacre and a wardrobe malfunction are put on the same level of intense scrutiny and curiosity, attitudes that just as quickly latch on to another object. As…

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With Lula back, can Brazil turn the tide on Amazon destruction?

With Lula back, can Brazil turn the tide on Amazon destruction?

Jonathan Watts writes: The month before Brazil’s October 30 presidential election was the most brutal of Jair Bolsonaro’s term as president. Landowners rushed to illegally clear forest while they could rely on the impunity that had been a characteristic of the Bolsonaro era. From my home in Altamira, I could see flames on the other side of the Xingu River from a blaze large enough to generate its own lightning. Most other days in September and October, my asthmatic lungs…

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Lawyers press international court to investigate a ‘network’ committing crimes against humanity in Brazil’s Amazon

Lawyers press international court to investigate a ‘network’ committing crimes against humanity in Brazil’s Amazon

Inside Climate News reports: Even as environmentalists cheer the ouster of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as a turning point for the Amazon rainforest, new information filed Wednesday with the International Criminal Court suggest that the battle to protect the region and its inhabitants is far from over. In the filing, human rights and environmental lawyers acting on behalf of rural land users are requesting an investigation into a colossal “network” of politicians, business officials, industry lobbyists and criminal gangs for…

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Canada’s First Nations move to protect their lands

Canada’s First Nations move to protect their lands

Ed Struzik writes: On yet another unusually warm subarctic day last August, members of the Łı́ı́dlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́ First Nation in the Northwest Territories of Canada held a fire-feeding ceremony, drummed, raised their eagle-emblazoned flag, and prepared a celebratory feast for themselves and a group of scientists 30 miles south of where they live in Fort Simpson. By the close of festivities, Laurier University’s 23-year-old Scotty Creek Research Station, which is monitoring the varied impacts of climate change and permafrost thaw,…

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Major glaciers, including in Yosemite and Kilimanjaro, will be gone within 23 years due to climate change, UN report warns

Major glaciers, including in Yosemite and Kilimanjaro, will be gone within 23 years due to climate change, UN report warns

CBS News reports: One-third of the world’s most iconic glaciers have been “condemned to disappear” within 23 years, according to a new report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The fate of these glaciers, which include those in Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Dolomites, is all but sure, UNESCO warned, as carbon emissions cause them to rapidly deteriorate. There are roughly 18,600 glaciers in 50 UNESCO World Heritage sites, spanning nearly 25,500 square-miles and making up about…

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Why Bolsonaro’s stunning loss should give humanity a glimmer of hope

Why Bolsonaro’s stunning loss should give humanity a glimmer of hope

Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman write: One of the ugliest pathologies in global politics at the moment is the bizarre connection between climate denialism and right-wing authoritarianism. With some exceptions, authoritarian politicians are the ones most prone to spinning conspiracy theories and lies about climate change while resisting the transition to a green energy future. This is why Jair Bolsonaro’s stunning defeat in Brazil’s presidential race is a major global event. It should afford us a moment of hopefulness that,…

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Want to save the bees? Pay attention to pathogens and flowers

Want to save the bees? Pay attention to pathogens and flowers

University of Massachusetts Amherst: New research published in the journal Ecology conclusively shows that certain physical traits of flowers affect the health of bumblebees by modulating the transmission of a harmful pathogen called Crithidia bombi. In particular, the research, conducted by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, shows that the length of a flower’s corolla, or the flower’s petals, affects how this pathogen gets transferred between bees because shorter corollas mean that fewer bee feces wind up inside the…

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The Mediterranean has become so hot, it’s forming carbonate crystals

The Mediterranean has become so hot, it’s forming carbonate crystals

Matt Simon writes: If you stand on the coast of Israel and gaze out across the Mediterranean Sea, you’ll spy deep-blue, calm waters that have sustained humans for millennia. Beneath the surface, though, something odd is unfolding: A process called stratification is messing with the way the sea processes carbon dioxide. Think of this part of the Mediterranean as a cake made of liquid, essentially. Fierce sunlight heats the top layer of water that sits on cooler, deeper layers below….

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More than half of U.S. bird populations are shrinking

More than half of U.S. bird populations are shrinking

Smithsonian Magazine reports: Interest in birds and birdwatching surged during the Covid-19 pandemic, with legions of birders, new and old, recording the details of their feathered sightings with apps such as eBird. In the process, these citizen scientists delivered a glut of high-resolution data that has been a boon to American ornithologists looking to better understand bird populations. Combined with decades of traditional biological surveys, this trove of data tells a story, and not a happy one. A new report…

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