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Category: Environment

Brazil’s Amazon rain forest is in the crosshairs, as defenders step up

Brazil’s Amazon rain forest is in the crosshairs, as defenders step up

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Andrew Revkin writes: By now, anyone worried about the fate of the Amazon rain forest or the indigenous and traditional communities depending on this vast, rich ecosystem knows the litany of potentially devastating steps [Brazil’s newly elected far-right president, Jair] Bolsonaro has threatened to take. He won on a platform mainly built around change and order after the worst string of corruption scandals and economic troubles in Brazil’s modern history. But he also wooed rural landowners and businessmen, appealing to…

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Risks of ‘domino effect’ of ecological tipping points greater than thought, study says

Risks of ‘domino effect’ of ecological tipping points greater than thought, study says

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The Guardian reports: Policymakers have severely underestimated the risks of ecological tipping points, according to a study that shows 45% of all potential environmental collapses are interrelated and could amplify one another. The authors said their paper, published in the journal Science, highlights how overstressed and overlapping natural systems are combining to throw up a growing number of unwelcome surprises. “The risks are greater than assumed because the interactions are more dynamic,” said Juan Rocha of the Stockholm Resilience Centre….

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The race to understand Antarctica’s most terrifying glacier

The race to understand Antarctica’s most terrifying glacier

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Jon Gertner writes: Few places in Antarctica are more difficult to reach than Thwaites Glacier, a Florida-sized hunk of frozen water that meets the Amundsen Sea about 800 miles west of McMurdo. Until a decade ago, barely any scientists had ever set foot there, and the glacier’s remoteness, along with its reputation for bad weather, ensured that it remained poorly understood. Yet within the small community of people who study ice for a living, Thwaites has long been the subject…

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Rapid warming caused largest extinction event ever on Earth, report says

Rapid warming caused largest extinction event ever on Earth, report says

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The Guardian reports: Rapid global warming caused the largest extinction event in the Earth’s history, which wiped out the vast majority of marine and terrestrial animals on the planet, scientists have found. The mass extinction, known as the “great dying”, occurred around 252m years ago and marked the end of the Permian geologic period. The study of sediments and fossilized creatures show the event was the single greatest calamity ever to befall life on Earth, eclipsing even the extinction of…

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Portrait of the Earth at the threshold of climate catastrophe

Portrait of the Earth at the threshold of climate catastrophe

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The Guardian reports: On Sunday morning hundreds of politicians, government officials and scientists will gather in the grandeur of the International Congress Centre in Katowice, Poland. It will be a familiar experience for many. For 24 years the annual UN climate conference has served up a reliable diet of rhetoric, backroom talks and dramatic last-minute deals aimed at halting global warming. But this year’s will be a grimmer affair – by far. As recent reports have made clear, the world…

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Air pollution is shaving years from people’s lives

Air pollution is shaving years from people’s lives

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McClatchy reports: People could add years to their lives in California and other smog-plagued parts of the world if authorities could reduce particulate pollution — soot from cars and industry — to levels recommended by the World Health Organization, a new study reported Monday. No other large U.S. city would benefit more than Fresno, which has soot concentrations at roughly twice the WHO guidelines. Fresno residents would live a year longer if the region could meet the health organization’s recommended…

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Trump plans on keeping his coal warrior in charge of the EPA

Trump plans on keeping his coal warrior in charge of the EPA

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HuffPost reports: President Donald Trump said Friday he plans to nominate Andrew Wheeler to be the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, installing the former coal lobbyist permanently in a position he’s filled in an acting role since July. Speaking at a Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony at the White House, Trump said: “Acting administrator, who I tell you is going to be made permanent, he’s done a fantastic job and I want to congratulate him.” Jeff Goodell writes: If…

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Humanity is destroying life on Earth

Humanity is destroying life on Earth

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  The Guardian reports: Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world’s foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation. The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the…

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Humanity is ‘cutting down the tree of life’, warn scientists

Humanity is ‘cutting down the tree of life’, warn scientists

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The Guardian reports: Humanity’s ongoing annihilation of wildlife is cutting down the tree of life, including the branch we are sitting on, according to a stark new analysis. More than 300 different mammal species have been eradicated by human activities. The new research calculates the total unique evolutionary history that has been lost as a result at a startling 2.5bn years. Furthermore, even if the destruction of wild areas, poaching and pollution were ended within 50 years and extinction rates…

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‘Hyperalarming’ study shows massive insect loss

‘Hyperalarming’ study shows massive insect loss

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The Washington Post reports: Insects around the world are in a crisis, according to a small but growing number of long-term studies showing dramatic declines in invertebrate populations. A new report suggests that the problem is more widespread than scientists realized. Huge numbers of bugs have been lost in a pristine national forest in Puerto Rico, the study found, and the forest’s insect-eating animals have gone missing, too. In 2014, an international team of biologists estimated that, in the past…

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How the loss of Native American languages affects our understanding of the natural world

How the loss of Native American languages affects our understanding of the natural world

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Dance is a unique way of passing on cultural stories to a younger generation. Aaron Hawkins/Flickr.com, CC BY-ND By Rosalyn R. LaPier, The University of Montana Alaska has a “linguistic emergency,” according to the Alaskan Gov. Bill Walker. A report warned earlier this year that all of the state’s 20 Native American languages might cease to exist by the end of this century, if the state did not act. American policies, particularly in the six decades between the 1870s and…

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Bolsonaro has made grim threats to the Amazon and its people

Bolsonaro has made grim threats to the Amazon and its people

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Climate Change News reports: No more Paris Agreement. No more ministry of environment. A paved highway cutting through the Amazon. Not only that. Indigenous territories opened to mining. Relaxed environmental law enforcement and licensing. International NGOs, such as Greenpeace and WWF, banned from the country. A strong alliance with the beef lobby. In a nutshell, this is what Jair Bolsonaro, who is sailing towards Brazil’s presidency after taking a near-majority in a first round vote on Sunday, has promised for…

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Human-caused climate change severely exposes the U.S. national parks

Human-caused climate change severely exposes the U.S. national parks

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Trees have died in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colo., as climate change has intensified bark beetle infestations and drought. Patrick Gonzalez, CC BY-ND By Patrick Gonzalez, University of California, Berkeley Human-caused climate change is disrupting ecosystems and people’s lives around the world. It is melting glaciers, increasing wildfires, and shifting vegetation across vast landscapes. These impacts have reached national parks around the world and in the United States. Until now, however, no analysis had examined climate change trends across all…

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Scientists fear that insects upon which humans depend are declining

Scientists fear that insects upon which humans depend are declining

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The Associated Press reports: A staple of summer — swarms of bugs — seems to be a thing of the past. And that’s got scientists worried. Pesky mosquitoes, disease-carrying ticks, crop-munching aphids and cockroaches are doing just fine. But the more beneficial flying insects of summer — native bees, moths, butterflies, ladybugs, lovebugs, mayflies and fireflies — appear to be less abundant. Scientists think something is amiss, but they can’t be certain: In the past, they didn’t systematically count the…

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Why do we love bees but hate wasps?

Why do we love bees but hate wasps?

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University College London: A lack of understanding of the important role of wasps in the ecosystem and economy is a fundamental reason why they are universally despised whereas bees are much loved, according to UCL-led research. Both bees and wasps are two of humanity’s most ecologically and economically important organisms. They both pollinate our flowers and crops, but wasps also regulate populations of crop pests and insects that carry human diseases. “It’s clear we have a very different emotional connection…

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A growing wave of extinctions is sweeping across the continents

A growing wave of extinctions is sweeping across the continents

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The Guardian reports: Spix’s macaw, a brilliant blue species of Brazilian parrot that starred in the children’s animation Rio, has become extinct this century, according to a new assessment of endangered birds. The macaw is one of eight species, including the poo-uli, the Pernambuco pygmy-owl and the cryptic treehunter, that can be added to the growing list of confirmed or highly likely extinctions, according to a new statistical analysis by BirdLife International. Historically, most bird extinctions have been small-island species…

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