From back, left to right, Rachel Duclos, Dayna Adams, Heather Hilgart, Kim Nguyen, Kelise LaSharr, and Colleen Foehrenbacher, front, pose for a photo together during a women’s hunting weekend they had during October of the 2020 archery deer season. Adams is a board member of the non-profit Women Hunting and Fishing in All Seasons organization. The Minnesota organization works to introduce women to the hunting and fishing fields through events they host while connecting them to other organizations and resources that can help women stay involved in the outdoors. (Contributed photo)
ALEXANDRIA, Minn. — Alexandria’s Lauren Krebs patiently sat in her elevated stand during a cool Nov. 3 morning in 2018 looking over the brushy tree cover and cattails in the swamp on her family’s hunting property in Douglas County.
A Wisconsin hunter was bitten by a bear that he estimated to weigh 250-300 pounds while perched in a tree stand nearly 20 feet off the ground.
Dalton Roach, 25, from the city of Eau Claire, was hunting for deer in the woods of Trempealeau County on Saturday when he spotted a black bear walking close to his vantage point, local news outlet theLeader-Telegramreport.
Roach was excited having never seen a bear before in the wild and took out his cellphone to film the encounter.
“But when he got to about 20 yards away, he took a left turn and came directly under my tree.”
The hunter decided to put his phone away before realizing that the bear was climbing up the tree directly toward his position on the tree stand, which consisted of a platform measuring around four-square feet in area.
Offshore drilling is bad for the environment for many reasons. Not only is it a destructive and greenhouse gas-producing method of extraction that winds up putting more fossil fuels out into the world, but the accidental oil spills that are sometimes caused by this process can have long-lasting, disastrous consequences for entire marine ecosystems. Worse still, the effects of offshore drilling on marine life aren’t just limited to oil spills.Article continues below advertisement
One pollutant can have many negative effects.
Naturally-occurring though it may be, oil is a pollutant both coming out of the ground and after it’s been used. When we burn petroleum products, either to fuel our cars, our electricity, or our factories, we are sending gouts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Most experts agree that these carbon emissions are directly related to climate change and global warming, but petroleum itself is just as dangerous in its raw form.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), oil spills cause contamination across all forms of marine life. Seabirds, mammals, sea turtles, fish, crustaceans, and even mollusks are affected by the presence of crude oil. It can harm their skin, lungs, heart, reproductive organs, and gastrointestinal systems. Needless to say, crude oil is also highly toxic if ingested.Article continues below advertisementhttps://800efadfa3b5127442f0616f13f08701.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Seabirds become helplessly mired in oil.
We’ve all seen pictures of gulls, penguins, pelicans, and other seabirds coated in glistening brown oil. According to the American Bird Conservatory, the pollution caused by offshore drilling oil spills threatens sea and shorebirds along every coast. Petrochemical compounds are toxic to birds and can rob their feathers of the insulating and waterproofing qualities that help them to survive.Article continues below advertisementhttps://800efadfa3b5127442f0616f13f08701.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Seabirds aren’t only affected by oil spills, explosions, or accidents. The mere presence of offshore drilling rigs can be hazardous, as well. According to Environment America, the lights, burning flares found on offshore oil derricks are very attractive to seabirds, which crash or collide with them unknowingly at times.
Some birds will circle the lights on the rigs for hours, exhausting themselves until they collapse into the sea. Those who do find a way to land on the rigs scavenge for the food and garbage that accumulates there. That trash is often contaminated with petrochemicals, which can rub off onto the birds’ feathers or become accidentally ingested.Article continues below advertisementhttps://800efadfa3b5127442f0616f13f08701.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Food chains can be disrupted by the presence of offshore rigs.
Chemical and crude oil spills are more common than one might think. According to Environment America, U.S. offshore drilling results in dozens of spills a year, which wind up leaking crude oil, natural gas liquids, diesel, or hydraulic fluid into surrounding marine environments. That oil makes its way up the food chain, killing or contaminating plankton, coral reefs, small fish, crustaceans, and larvae.Article continues below advertisementhttps://800efadfa3b5127442f0616f13f08701.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
If they don’t simply die from exposure to the oil, the survivors are rendered poisonous to other, larger creatures, which eat them and become poisoned themselves. In addition, petrochemicals can have a long-lasting effect on the health of marine animals, damaging immune and reproductive systems and decimating entire populations along the food chain.
Sound pollution caused by drills is more than just annoying, it’s dangerous.
According to Oceana, the seismic, sound-based technology used to locate oil and gas beneath the ocean floor can be highly disruptive to marine life. The loud blasts caused by these seismic airguns can be as loud and destructive as dynamite and are repeated every 10 seconds beneath the waves, 24 hours a day, for weeks at a time. Sea life isn’t just disturbed by the deafening noise, they can be severely injured by the explosions and habitat damage that it causes.
These sonic, seismic surveys can cause temporary or permanent hearing loss in some marine species, which is essentially a death sentence for the social marine mammals that live nearby. Whales and dolphins use sound for everything underwater. They find food, communicate with each other, and find their way using high-pitched underwater communication. Without these tools, these poor animals are left adrift, deafened, and frightened beyond their limited comprehension.Article continues below advertisementhttps://800efadfa3b5127442f0616f13f08701.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Arctic animals are some of the most affected.
Polar bears are already being affected by the warming climate and melting glaciers around their arctic home. Now, offshore drilling threatens to decimate their food sources and destroy their habitats even further. According to the World Wildlife Fund, polar bears are apex predators at the end of a potentially toxic food chain. Oil spills have already affected arctic animal populations, which have forced polar bears to change their hunting patterns.Article continues below advertisementhttps://800efadfa3b5127442f0616f13f08701.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Polar bears are also in danger of being buried or harmed by the equipment used to dig for fossil fuels in and around their habitats. This is because dedicated mother bears would rather die protecting their cubs than abandon their dens when their own lives are in danger due to seismic shifts, disturbing noise, or shifting ice, snow, or cave-ins.
Beluga whales, walruses, and arctic seals are affected in a similar way. They all prey on smaller marine species, which are more easily killed when oil spills begin gumming up nearby waters and suffocating wildlife. The whales, in particular, are highly affected by the seismic surveys and underwater testing, thanks to the communication problems they cause, though all creatures that swim are being pinched back by an influx of shipping vessels moving in and around the oil rigs.
A swan swims through a lake in the grounds of Osterley Park, a National Trust property in Isleworth Middlesex, west of London, on April 7, 2006. (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)INTERNATIONAL
The virus also infected poultry plant workers in Russia earlier this yearBy Entrepreneur October 21, 2021 Updated: October 21, 2021 biggersmallerPrint
The same virus also infected poultry workers in Russia in February of 2021. H5N8 is one of a few rare strains—including H5N1, H7N9 and H5N6—that can make the leap from birds to people.
The outbreak at the U.K. facility began when five infected swans were brought in for rehabilitation in October and November of 2020. The birds appeared to be doing well until they rapidly became weak and died between November 25-29, 2020.
The swans were isolated in a quarantine unit, as all newly arrived animals are, but the seals and fox were housed in the same unit in separate cubicles, and approximately a week later, they too became sick and died. The seals developed seizures, and the fox exhibited signs of weakness and loss of appetite.
The mode of transmission from the swans to the other animals indicates that H5N8 is spread through aerosols or infected surfaces, just as COVID-19 is.
In general, such spillover infections from birds to mammals are unusual, making the outbreak at the U.K. wildlife center all the more noteworthy. “Although genetic analyses indicated no increased risk for human infection with the H5N8 viruses in this outbreak, the investigation shows how these viruses may have unexpected and severe health risks for mammalian species,” the authors of the report wrote. “However, such spillover disease events in atypical host species constitute additional factors for veterinary authorities to consider during disease outbreaks and highlight the importance of wildlife disease surveillance that uses interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches.”
The statement says that the patient is in a 60-year-old female farmer who lives in Changde, a city in northern Hunan. She began displaying symptoms on 3 October and was admitted to hospital on 13 October. She is still in critical condition. Health authorities believe that she contracted bird flu after coming in contact with dead poultry.
prefecture-level city in the northwest of Hunan. The statement said that the patient started to feel unwell on October 3 and was hospitalised on October 13, pointing out that she was still in critical condition yesterday. The statement underlined that the patient had contact…
A single fossil site containing the remains of dozens of individuals from a range of age groups is the earliest evidence that long-necked, four-legged dinosaurs lived in herds.
“This is a stunning new fossil site,” Steven Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who wasn’t involved in the new study, wrote to me in an email. “This is convincing evidence that these plant-eating dinosaurs were social, and formed groups, and probably took at least some care of their eggs and young.”
A team led by Diego Pol from the Museum of Paleontology Egidio Feruglio discovered the fossils in the Laguna Colorada Formation in Patagonia, Argentina. They belong toMussaurus patagonicus—a long-necked sauropod from the…
Ben Adler·Senior Climate EditorThu, October 21, 2021, 10:14 AM·3 min readIn this article:
Joe ManchinUnited States Senator from West Virginia
Joe Biden46th and current president of the United States
Five young activists began a hunger strike in front of the White House on Wednesday in a last-ditch effort to preserve the most important measures to combat climate change in President Biden’s Build Back Better infrastructure investment proposal.
The protest arose in response to recent news that Democrats arereluctantly scrappinga plan that would have set a national standard for utilities transitioning to clean energy sources, in order to win the support of Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a centrist Democrat from a coal- and gas-heavy state whose vote is key to passing the budget bill in the evenly divided Senate.
The strikers, who are working with the youth-led Sunrise Movement, are demanding that Biden’s full…
FILE PHOTO: Najin and her daughter Fatou, the last two northern white rhino females, graze near their enclosure at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Laikipia National Park
NAIROBI (Reuters) – One of the world’s last two northern white rhinos, a mother and her daughter, is being retired from a breeding programme aimed at saving the species from extinction, scientists said on Thursday.
Najin, 32, is the mother of Fatu who is now the only donor left in the programme, which aims to implant artificially developed embryos into another more abundant species of rhino in Kenya.
There are no known living males and neither of the two remaining northern white rhinos can carry a calf to term.- ADVERTISEMENT -https://s.yimg.com/rq/darla/4-6-0/html/r-sf-flx.html
Northern white rhinos, which are actually grey, used to roam freely in several countries in east and central Africa, but their numbers fell…
Image caption,Climate change is contributing to extreme weather including storms and flooding in the UK
On Tuesday, the government set out a number of plans aiming to put the UK on course to achieve its climate goals. Funding for green cars, an end to gas boilers and tree-planting are some of the key announcements. But are they enough?
Let’s not be ungenerous: the government’s great over-arching green strategy is, on the face of, it a remarkable achievement.
Previous governments have theoretically espoused the need to live in harmony with the planet – but none has laid down a roadmap as to how that would be achieved.
It is especially important as Prime Minister Boris Johnson prepares to welcome world leaders to Glasgow for the vital climate conference known as COP26.
Mr Johnson will brandish his sheaf of eco-documents at…
A huge leak of documents seen by BBC News shows how countries are trying to change a crucial scientific report on how to tackle climate change.
The leak reveals Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia are among countries asking the UN to play down the need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels.
It also shows some wealthy nations are questioning paying more to poorer states to move to greener technologies.
This “lobbying” raises questions for the COP26 climate summit in November.
The leak reveals countries pushing back on UN recommendations for action and comes just days before they will be asked at the summit to make significant commitments to slow down climate change and keep global warming to 1.5 degrees.
These “assessment reports” are produced every six to seven years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body tasked with evaluating the science of climate change.
These reports are used by governments to decide what action is needed to tackle climate change, and the latest will be a crucial input to negotiations at the Glasgow conference.
The authority of these reports derives in part from the fact that virtually all the governments of the world participate in the process to reach consensus.
The comments from governments the BBC has read are overwhelmingly designed to be constructive and to improve the quality of the final report.
The cache of comments and the latest draft of the report were released to Greenpeace UK’s team of investigative journalists, Unearthed, which passed it on to BBC News.
Fossil fuels
The leak shows a number of countries and organisations arguing that the world does not need to reduce the use of fossil fuels as quickly as the current draft of the report recommends.
An adviser to the Saudi oil ministry demands “phrases like ‘the need for urgent and accelerated mitigation actions at all scales…’ should be eliminated from the report”.
One senior Australian government official rejects the conclusion that closing coal-fired power plants is necessary, even though ending the use of coal is one of the stated objectives the COP26 conference.
Saudi Arabia is the one of the largest oil producers in the world and Australia is a major coal exporter.
A senior scientist from India’s Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research, which has strong links to the Indian government, warns coal is likely to remain the mainstay of energy production for decades because of what they describe as the “tremendous challenges” of providing affordable electricity. India is already the world’s second biggest consumer of coal.
A number of countries argue in favour of emerging and currently expensive technologies designed to capture and permanently store carbon dioxide underground. Saudi Arabia, China, Australia and Japan – all big producers or users of fossil fuels – as well as the organisation of oil producing nations, Opec, all support carbon capture and storage (CCS).
It is claimed these CCS technologies could dramatically cut fossil fuel emissions from power plants and some industrial sectors.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, requests the UN scientists delete their conclusion that “the focus of decarbonisation efforts in the energy systems sector needs to be on rapidly shifting to zero-carbon sources and actively phasing out fossil fuels”.
Argentina, Norway and Opec also take issue with the statement. Norway argues the UN scientists should allow the possibility of CCS as a potential tool for reducing emissions from fossil fuels.
The draft report accepts CCS could play a role in the future but says there are uncertainties about its feasibility. It says “there is large ambiguity in the extent to which fossil fuels with CCS would be compatible with the 2C and 1.5C targets” as set out by the Paris Agreement.
Image caption,The offshore Sleipner gas field in Norway has been using CCS since 1996
Australia asks IPCC scientists to delete a reference to analysis of the role played by fossil fuel lobbyists in watering down action on climate in Australia and the US. Opec also asks the IPCC to “delete ‘lobby activism, protecting rent extracting business models, prevent political action’.”
When approached about its comments to the draft report, Opec told the BBC: “The challenge of tackling emissions has many paths, as evidenced by the IPCC report, and we need to explore them all. We need to utilise all available energies, as well as clean and more efficient technological solutions to help reduce emissions, ensuring no one is left behind.”https://emp.bbc.com/emp/SMPj/2.44.0/iframe.htmlMedia caption,Tony Blair on climate change: “Even though the challenge is immense, there really isn’t an alternative to dealing with it”
The IPCC says comments from governments are central to its scientific review process and that its authors have no obligation to incorporate them into the reports.
“Our processes are designed to guard against lobbying – from all quarters”, the IPCC told the BBC. “The review process is (and always has been) absolutely fundamental to the IPCC’s work and is a major source of the strength and credibility of our reports.
Professor Corinne le Quéré of the University of East Anglia, a leading climate scientist who has helped compile three major reports for the IPCC, has no doubts about the impartiality of the IPCC’s reports.
She says all comments are judged solely on scientific evidence regardless of where they come from.
“There is absolutely no pressure on scientists to accept the comments,” she told the BBC. “If the comments are lobbying, if they’re not justified by the science, they will not be integrated in the IPCC reports.”
She says it is important that experts of all kinds – including governments – have a chance to review the science.
“The more the reports are scrutinised”, says Professor le Quéré, “the more solid the evidence is going to be in the end, because the more the arguments are brought and articulated forward in a way that is leaning on the best available science”.
Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who oversaw the landmark UN climate conference in Paris in 2015, agrees it is crucial that governments are part of the IPCC process.
“Everybody’s voice has to be there. That’s the whole purpose. This is not a single thread. This is a tapestry woven by many, many threads.”
The United Nations was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2007 for the IPCC’s work on climate science and the crucial role it has played in the effort to tackle climate change.
Eating less meat
Brazil and Argentina, two of the biggest producers of beef products and animal feed crops in the world, argue strongly against evidence in the draft report that reducing meat consumption is necessary to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The draft report states “plant-based diets can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 50% compared to the average emission intensive Western diet”. Brazil says this is incorrect.
Both countries call on the authors to delete or change some passages in the text referring to “plant-based diets” playing a role in tackling climate change, or which describe beef as a “high carbon” food. Argentina also asked that references to taxes on red meat and to the international “Meatless Monday” campaign, which urges people to forgo meat for a day, be removed from the report.
The South American nation recommends “avoiding generalisation on the impacts of meat-based diets on low-carbon options”, arguing there is evidence that meat-based diets can also reduce carbon emissions.
On the same theme, Brazil says “plant-based diets do not for themselves guarantee the reduction or control of related emissions” and maintains the focus of debate should be on the levels of emissions from different production systems, rather than types of food.
Brazil, which has seen significant increases in the rate of deforestation in the Amazon and some other forest areas, also disputes a reference to this being a result of changes in government regulations, claiming this is incorrect.
Money for poorer countries
A significant number of Switzerland’s comments are directed at amending parts of the report that argue developing countries will need support, particularly financial support, from rich countries in order to meet emission reduction targets.
It was agreed at the climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009 that developed nations would provide $100bn a year in climate finance for developing countries by 2020, a target that has yet to be met.
Australia makes a similar case to Switzerland. It says developing countries’ climate pledges do not all depend on receiving outside financial support. It also describes a mention in the draft report of the lack of credible public commitments on finance as “subjective commentary”.
The Swiss Federal Office for the Environment told the BBC: “While climate finance is a critical tool to increase climate ambition, it is not the only relevant tool.
“Switzerland takes the view that all Parties to the Paris Agreement with the capacity to do so should provide support to those who need such support.”
Going nuclear
A number of mostly eastern European countries argue the draft report should be more positive about the role nuclear power can play in meeting the UN’s climate targets.
India goes even further, arguing “almost all the chapters contain a bias against nuclear energy”. It argues it is an “established technology” with “good political backing except in a few countries”.
The Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia criticise a table in the report which finds nuclear power only has a positive role in delivering one of 17 UN Sustainable Development goals. They argue it can play a positive role in delivering most of the UN’s development agenda.
