I wonder if you’d be open to feedback on your latest, The Myth of Human Supremacy. If so, read on.
I’ve followed your writings since you started your writing career with exquisite narratives of polemic anti-civ activities. Inspiring anti-civ stuff that feeds my spirit! (Let’s check to see if your writings still pass the anti-civ litmus test: I’ll turn your book over to see who you selected to comment. Wtf? The pro-civ leftists Eve Ensler, Chris Hedges and Bill McKibben? Oh Derrick, how did such a wild spirit and lucid mind end up falling into hypocrisy’s deep abyss? When you first started noticing your schism, I bet a chat with your old friend John Zerzan could have helped you avoid your self-promotion as the Leftist Leader heading humans down a farcical path.) Well, I guess I could say that your book follows both your motif of elegiac…
Updated Jul. 2, 2021 1:32 PM PDTCopiedhttps://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.470.1_en.html#goog_676015520https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.470.1_en.html#goog_1344689718about:blank00:00 of 00:31Volume 0%
Residents of Lytton, British Columbia, raced to flee the town as a wildfire quickly approached the community, forcing a full evacuation order to be issued.
The village of Lytton, located in southern British Columbia, Canada, was the hottest spot in the entire country for three consecutive days. From Sunday, June 27, to Tuesday, June 29, Lytton broke the all-time Canadian high-temperature record, with each day hotter than the last. The heat peaked on Tuesday when the temperature reached 121 F (49.6 C)
If unprecedented heat wasn’t enough of a problem, almost a full week of extremely hot and dry conditions set the stage for another danger: wildfires.
Delaware is the latest state to discover a mysterious sickness among songbirds, with at least 50 dead birds reported so far.
The cause is not yet known, but affected birds are “stricken by an unknown disorder characterized by swollen eyes with crusty discharge, as well as neurological signs such as erratic flight and stumbling,” the Delaware Department of Natural Resource and Environmental Controlsaid in a news release Wednesday.
Many of the Delaware cases are occurringin New Castle County, according to DNREC spokesperson Nikki Lavoie.Samples of affected Delaware birdshave been sent tothe Pennsylvania Animal Diagnostic Laboratory in New Bolton Center, Pennsylvania.
Maryland’s cases “have been found primarily in our central/northern counties,” according to Maryland Department of Natural Resources spokesman Gregg Bortz.
Twenty-four-year-old Republican Danielle Butcher is watching with anticipation as GOP leaders move from “outright denial to now having a climate caucus” — a move she sees as the first step in integrating climate action into formal party policy.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating the caseof a 13-year-old Saginaw County boy who died in his sleep three days after getting his second dose of aCOVID-19 vaccine in mid-June.
The county health department confirmed the investigation, telling the Free Pressthat the medical examiner’s office conducted an autopsy and the death was reported to the state health department as well as the CDC.
“The investigation as to whether there is a correlation between his death and vaccination is now at the federal level with CDC,” said a joint statement issued by Saginaw County Health Department Medical Director Dr. Delicia Pruitt andHealth Officer Christina Harrington.
Man-animal conflicts have left 74 people dead and 134 injured each year on an average with over 90 per cent of such incidents involving elephants in Jharkhand. Between 2016 to 2020, 301 people and 80 elephants have died. Picture used for illustrative purposes only.Image Credit: Razeq Mohammad
Patna: A young elephant that killed 16 people in the past two months has been reunited with the herd in Jharkhand.
“We were constantly on the move, keeping track of the tusker and alerting the villagers about its unruly behaviour. We have information the separated elephant has got united with the herd,” local divisional forest officer Satish Chandra Rai said over the phone from Dhanbad town on Thursday.
“Yet, we are keeping a close watch on his behaviour to see how the herd reacts,” he added. Currently, the herd has been spotted in Giridih forests, he informed.
Forest department officials said the mature male, around 16 years old, had been on the rampage ever since it got separated from the herd of 22 elephants in the forests of Dhanabad district in May this year. Subsequently, it went from one district to another, and trampled to death as many as 16 villagers in six districts after covering a distance of 500km.
Several teams of forest staff were tracking the elephant and alerted the villagers not to come in its path . The villagers didn’t take heed and tried to capture the animal which led to its violent behaviour , In villages close to forest, people chase away elephants with the help of traditional weapons, like spears and bamboo sticks.
Another forest official told local media the elephant might have been expelled from the herd for its “bad behaviour”. “So we are studying his behaviour and monitoring his activities closely. We want to see if he is accepted back into the herd,” he added.
The elephant had demonstrated his extreme behaviour in Jamtara district when he lifted an elderly couple with his trunk and killed them while they ventured out before dawn. The incident took place in the last week of June.
A similar story was reported from Jharkhand two years back when a young elephant killed 20 villagers after getting separated from the herd. The forest department team tried hard to tranquillise the elephant but did not succeed. Eventually, the elephant had to be put down.
Man-animal conflicts have left 74 people dead and 134 injured each year on an average with over 90 per cent of such incidents involving elephants in Jharkhand. Between 2016 to 2020, 301 people and 80 elephants have died.
First global assessment of the extent of snow and ice cover on Earth’s surface—a critical factor cooling the planet through reflected sunlight—and its response to warming temperatures.
The global cryosphere—all of the areas with frozen water on Earth—shrank by about 87,000 square kilometers (about 33,000 square miles), a area about the size of Lake Superior, per year on average, between 1979 and 2016 as a result of climate change, according to a new study. This research is the first to make a global estimate of the surface area of the Earth covered by sea ice, snow cover, and frozen ground.
The extent of land covered by frozen water is just as important as its mass because the bright white surface reflects sunlight…
Updated 7:08 AM ET, Thu July 1, 2021Proposed legislation would phase out cages for farm animals, including rabbits, young hens, quails, ducks and geese.
(CNN)The European Union will work to phase out caged animal farming across the bloc, after a petition calling for an end to the practice gathered more than a million signatures.The European Commission has outlined plans to propose legislation which would phase out — and ultimately ban — cages for farm animals, including rabbits, young hens, quails, ducks and geese.The changes would be suggested by 2023 and introduced by 2027, the Commission said in a statement Wednesday.
Currently, only laying hens, broiler chickens, sows and calves are covered by the EU rules on caging.
“Animals are sentient beings and we have a moral, societal responsibility to ensure that on-farm conditions for animals reflect this,” Stella Kyriakides, commissioner for health and food safety, said in a statement.
“Citizens demanded change and the Commission received the message loud and clear, making an unequivocal and visionary commitment to phase out cages. The tide is finally turning. We will stay focused on the European institutions until they deliver on this ambition and will be vigilant in preventing vested interests from watering it down.”Factory farming is the biggest cause of cruelty to sentient creatures on the planet. Ending the use of cages is a massive step towards ending factory farming,” she added.
Eurogroup for Animals, a lobby group based in Brussels, Belgium, said the changes would affect more than 300 million farmed animals on the continent.Reineke Hameleers, Eurogroup for Animals CEO, said the commitment to end caged animal farming would have a “huge impact for millions of animals.”
Old Faithful erupts in Yellowstone. Photograph: Susanne Pommer/Alamy
If temperatures rise 10F by the century’s end as projected,Old Faithful could stop erupting, and the snowpack that feeds rivers throughout the west may disappearAdam Popescu@adampopescuFri 2 Jul 2021 01.00 EDT
When a band of geological surveyors and US army scouts mapped out what would become Yellowstone in 1870, the geysers and springs seemed endless – a land so unbound that Congress moved to name it the world’s first national park.
Nearly 150 years later, about 4 million people visit the park annually to see its most famous geyser: Old Faithful.It is a sight to behold, shooting tens of thousands of litres of boiling water hundreds of feet into the air about 17 times a day.
While the geyser is highly predictable – it eruptsevery 44 to 125 minutes since 2000 – a new climate assessment and a recent study has revealed that rising temperatures, reduced snowfall and increased rain threaten to shut Old Faithful off completely by the end of the century.
While that could threaten the natural beauty of the park, it also means an ecosystem three times the size of Rhode Island, stretching 22m acres across Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, faces a threat that no national park can protect against: temperature.
The Greater Yellowstone ecosystem’s size, boundaries and characteristics can vary greatly. Photograph: Yellowstone Resources and Issues Handbook
If temperatures at Yellowstone rise10F (5.6C) by the end of the century, as they are projected to, this vast ecosystem will be disrupted. Old Faithful will almost surely shut off completely, and the snowpack that feeds rivers throughout the west may disappear.
While the story of climate change is well-known, what’s new is the startling connection between temperature and water, a shift which threatens an extensive geyser system that makes this place so iconic.
But it is not the first time this has happened. About 800 years ago, extreme heat and drought made Old Faithful come to a complete standstill for decades, a shift which changed everything from what plant species grew in the area to what the land looked like.
Looking at what happened then could be a mirror to the present – a way of looking back to look forward.
Academics are trying to use the park’s recent past as a sort of climate roadmap, helping us to predict what might happen next. But reading that map isn’t easy – or clean. The geological samples studied to help predict what happens next are full of mud, pollen and sludge – heavy, hard to reach and buried deep under lakes.
In 2018, Chris Schiller, a post-doctoral research associate at Montana State University, set out to find out what made one lake in the geyser basin go from thermal to freshwater centuries ago, and whether that stark change may have been caused by a period of staggering heat and drought that looks very much like the temperature shifts we are experiencing today.
In the lab, Schiller’s team discovered evidence of fire, drought and temperature shifts in the sediment. The research fills in gaps to prehistoric climate and vegetation, all indicators of how this land has changed. The why remains more opaque, but we do know that the conditions that led to this change occurred in a period of extreme dryness, like today.
But what can this study tell us about the future?
Yellowstone is home to 10,000 hydrothermal features which could be affected, including the Grand Prismatic Spring, pictured. Photograph: Peter Adams Photography/Alamy
“The best part of science is you find something no one else has ever seen, something new, and that’s what happened at Goose Lake. We’re still trying to figure out what it means,” saysCathy Whitlock, a paleo-climatologist at Montana State University, and Schiller’s research partner and co-author.
What we do know, she says, is that the period of mega droughts that caused Old Faithful to dry up was potentially less extreme than now. “We are now moving into a climate that seems even warmer and drier than those periods. That’s crazy,” she says, adding: “It’s possible that this whole geyser basin and the plumbing is going to change.”
Whitlock specializes in long-term environmental and climate change, and has spent four decades sifting through these sediment-rich lakes, publishing more than 200 scientific papers on the topic, including co-writing Yellowstone’s first ever climate assessment which showed that since 1950, the area’s average temperature has increased by 2.3F (1.3C).Advertisementhttps://b0790319982ed80465a1327f6c3ee9a9.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Such a small shift may seem benign – until you realize that the last Ice Age was only around 5-7F (2.8-3.9C) colder than the pre-industrial period.
In recent decades, the average temperature in the park has been as high or higher than in any period in the last 20,000 years, and could be the warmest of the last 800,000 years, according to the recent Yellowstone climate assessment.
One clue as to what will happen next can be found by looking at plant fossils.
A portion of a White Bark Pine forest. The different colors show various levels of damage done to the trees by a combination of Mountain Pine beetles and climate change. Photograph: Gado Images/Alamy
Schiller and Whitlock’s work showed that about 4,000 years ago, a cool, wet period abruptly ended, and the temperatures looked a lot like today. Modern Yellowstone is known for thick pine forests, expansive geyser basins with grassy vistas that break the tree cover. When the team analyzed the pollen buried in Goose Lake, they found that once the temperature heated up, the pine stopped growing and there was a sudden explosion of sagebrush and other grasses that do well in hotter climates. This points to drought at the time, Whitlock says.
So far, no one is 100% sure whether or not the changes were caused by climate alone. But with trees dying off due to the hotter climate, this could mean less forest in the coming decades here, which has a cascading effect: less forest and tree roots mean more grass and more erosion. Drier grass means less nutrients for major mammals. Less water also hurts everything from migratory and aquatic species to grazers like bison who face decreased nutrients from dry plants.Advertisement
Big flora like white bark pine, a key species already vulnerable from years of destructive beetle outbreaks associated with rising temperatures, now face a 79% mortality rate, further increasing soil erosion and disappearing habitat. Each dry domino is an accelerant which further reduces snow and waterflow and turns already dry vegetation into spark-hungry tinder.
Extreme weather is now the norm and blazes like Yellowstone’s huge 1988 fires – which burned 800,000 acres – are a seasonal worry.
“We’re facing a critical moment,” Schiller says, referencing the current situation at Yellowstone.But the new climate report could jumpstart locals to begin discussing the changes around them. Whitlock points out that ranchers, miners and tourism are all set to be affected should the pristine settings and the water these mountains produce dry up – which could ultimately mean financial losses.
The Grand Canyon Lower Falls could dry up. Photograph: Alamy
The Yellowstone, Snake and Green Rivers feed major tributaries for the Missouri, Columbia and Colorado Rivers – vital for agriculture, recreation, energy production, even the water we receive inour kitchen sinks. Regional farming – potatoes, hay, alfalfa – and cattle ranching depend on late season irrigation, threatened by reduced snowfall. And abig question mark hangs over the rapidly growing tourism and hospitality industries that rely on Yellowstone’s world-class rivers and ski areas for angling and black diamond runs.Advertisementhttps://b0790319982ed80465a1327f6c3ee9a9.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Whitlock says the most important part of her career is giving people on the ground evidence of the changes she sees happening – even if they aren’t always keen to hear it. And while her work helps to reconstruct the past, she hopes it can also help to change the current trajectory we are on, before projections become reality.
As Whitlock reflects on her own legacy and the world she leaves her grandchildren, it can be scary. Referencing how steep temperatures have risen over the last few years, she says: “The trajectory we take depends on what we do about greenhouse gas now. By 2040, 2050, we can flatten the curve.” Her voice lowers and she collects herself. “What we do in the next decade is critical. We have new technologies, we can solve this. We just need the will to do it.”
Proposed legislation would phase out cages for farm animals, including rabbits, young hens, quails, ducks and geese.
