Residents worry bosque land transfer could mean hunting near their neighborhood

For years, climate scientists have called for a phase-out of fossil fuels to avoid catastrophic global warming. Now, according to a first-of-its-kind survey of more than 200 environmental and agricultural scientists, we must also drastically reduce meat and dairy production — and fast.

Global livestock emissions should peak by 2030 or sooner to meet the Paris climate agreement target of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the surveyed climate experts said. In high- and middle-income countries, which produce and consume the overwhelming majority of the global meat and dairy supply, livestock emissions should peak much earlier than in low-income countries.

A bar chart showing that a majority of respondents said livestock emissions in high-income countries should peak before 2025 to align with the Paris Agreement.

“We need to see major changes in livestock production and consumption — really deep and rapid changes over the next decade,” said Helen Harwatt, an environmental social scientist and lead author of the survey report, which was published last week by Harvard’s animal law and policy program, where Harwatt is a fellow. The survey was also co-authored by researchers Matthew Hayek, Paul Behrens, and William Ripple.

Asked how rapidly global livestock emissions should fall after they peak, the experts’ most common response was a 50 percent or more decrease within five years after peaking. And the most effective way to do that, most survey respondents agreed, is by reducing the amount of meat and dairy humanity produces and consumes.

But such a peak, let alone a swift reduction in the amount of meat we eat, is nowhere in sight. Rising global meat consumption, along with vanishingly little government policy designed to change diets or cut pollution from factory farms, means we’re all but guaranteed to miss even the least ambitious targets suggested by climate and agricultural scientists in the Harvard survey.

Last year, a United Nations and OECD analysis predicted global meat consumption — a good but imperfect proxy for livestock emissions — won’t actually peak until 2075.

Livestock emissions are primarily generated by cows’ methane-rich burps, animal manure, and the corn and soy produced to feed farmed animals. Globally, the sector accounts for around 15 to 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and is the leading driver of deforestation, which further exacerbates climate change.

Inside a warehouse, a large metal carousel is tightly packed with cows, who are each held in separated enclosures with their heads held in place between metal bars. — Cows are milked inside a 60-stall rotating carousel on a large dairy farm in Poland.

But animal agriculture has largely evaded environmental regulation, and only 12 of the 175 countries that have signed on to the Paris climate agreement have committed to reduce livestock emissions.

Nearly two decades ago, a United Nations report marked the livestock sector as one of the most polluting industries on the planet. Ever since, there’s been a steady drip of research on the need to scale back meat production in high- and middle-income countries.

Industry is fighting back. A well-oiled PR machine composed of shadowy communications groups, industry-funded academics, and pro-meat influencers all push out the message that livestock aren’t so bad for the planet. Their claims have ranged from misleading scientific arguments to hollow corporate greenwashing to outright disinformation.

Harwatt’s survey cuts through all this noise, revealing a consensus among climate scientists that the annual slaughter of around 80 billion land animals for food is simply unsustainable.

How to slash meat’s carbon footprint: produce a lot less of it

As pressure increases for the livestock industries to reduce emissions, companies and governments have announced a slate of technologies and farming practices they claim will help reduce meat and dairy’s carbon footprint. This includes things like improving manure management, changing animals’ diets and genetics, and “regenerative agriculture,” a type of farming that aims to sequester and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere inside the soil.

But according to the new survey’s respondents, these industry-touted practices won’t do nearly as much to cut pollution from cow burps and chicken poop as raising and eating fewer animals.

A stacked bar chart depicting the response of climate and agricultural scientists when asked to rate the effectiveness of various solutions to decrease meat and dairy production emissions. The majority responded that reducing meat and dairy consumption and reducing the number of farmed animals would be the most effective solutions.

Around three-quarters of respondents said reducing livestock production and consumption would make a large or very large contribution to shrinking the livestock sector’s carbon footprint. Less than half of respondents said the same about the practices often promoted by industry.

“We need to drastically reduce livestock numbers, particularly in high- and middle-income countries — the evidence shows that clearly,” said Pete Smith, a survey respondent and climate scientist at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Smith is an authority on the issue, acting as a lead author on United Nations environmental reports for over two decades.

Almost half the survey respondents said that replacing beef with lower-emissions meats like pork, poultry, and farmed fish would make a large or very large contribution to emissions reduction. But Smith warns against this because raising those species still requires a significant amount of farmland to grow corn and soy to feed them. In other words, they’re still far more carbon-intensive than plant-based foods.

“They’re eating products that are grown on land that could be growing food for humans instead, so it’s still a really inefficient thing to do to swap out ruminant [beef, lamb, goat] products for other different types of meat,” Smith said.

A person in a hazmat suit stands in a dimly lit aisle flanked on either side by fully packed chicken cages, pointing a camera at the cage before them. — An industrial egg-laying facility on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain, holds hundreds of thousands of hens. Hens are typically kept in small cages to lay eggs for 18 months before they are shipped to slaughter and replaced by younger, higher-productivity hens. At this facility, the cage housing system is stacked seven rows high.

It would be far better for the environment and animal welfare to transition to growing “plant-based products that can be consumed directly by humans,” he said. “I think that’s got to be the way forward. And that’s the one that will free up the most land that will allow us to create the carbon sinks that we need.”

One survey question asked how our diets would need to change if the livestock sector were required to reduce emissions to align with the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Participants answered on a sliding scale, with minus five meaning a more animal-based diet, zero meaning maintaining current diets, and five meaning more plant-based diets.

A graph depicting survey participants’ responses when asked to answer the following question: How would diets change if livestock emissions were reduced to align with the Paris Agreement? Answer: All countries would transition to more plant-based diets. High-income countries would have a significantly more plant-based diet than they currently do, followed by middle-income countries, and then low-income countries.

On average globally, respondents said, we’d need to adopt a diet much richer in plant-based foods. But scientific consensus is often no match for politics.

Navigating the politics of meat

In the US, there’s been no legislation passed to meaningfully reduce livestock emissions, as industry has lobbied hard against proposed regulations. European policymakers seeking to regulate animal agriculture have been met with fierce opposition. In the Netherlands, farmers have jammed up highways with tractors and set fire to hay bales in protest of new limits on livestock pollution.

“As we have seen by the recent protests in Europe, it’s really becoming a left/right, or a liberal/conservative dividing line,” said Lukas Fesenfeld, a researcher at ETH Zurich and lecturer at the University of Bern who studies environmental and food policy. Fesenfeld did not participate in the survey.

Fesenfeld said it’s also a political economy issue, meaning that there aren’t many actors who would benefit economically from a radical reduction in livestock numbers. Meanwhile, the powerful meat lobby has a strong interest in maintaining the status quo. There’s also the personal element: People like meat, and government policy designed to reduce its supply would be highly unpopular.

A solution, Fesenfeld said, is to implement policy in a certain sequence — first carrots, then sticks — that could help reduce political blowback and ensure a more just transition.

First, governments could fund research and development to make meat and dairy alternatives taste better and become more affordable, while supporting farmers growing crops for a more plant-based food supply chain. Denmark, Germany, and other countries are experimenting with such policies.

Second, there’s a lot the public sector could do to change the food environment to be more climate-friendly. For example, buying more plant-based meals with government dollars — like at schools and hospitals — and working with restaurants, grocers, and cafeterias to offer more plant-based options (and better market them).

Over the last two years, for example, New York City’s hospital system served 1.2 million plant-based meals, which it says reduced its food carbon footprint by 36 percent in 2023, saved money, and had high reported satisfaction from patients.

Chefs wearing tall white chef hats and black aprons serve food from buffet tables covered in lime green tablecloths. Mayor Eric Adams walks past, smiling, beside a chef wearing black-rimmed eyeglasses. — In April 2023 at NYC Health & Hospitals’ Culinary Center, Rohit T. Aggarwala — head of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection — and Mayor Eric Adams released the city’s first integrated greenhouse gas inventory, which incorporates emissions from the production and consumption of food.

These two approaches could eventually make more aggressive policies, like reducing agricultural subsidies for livestock production or making large meat companies pay for excessive pollution, more politically digestible.

“It’s a really challenging thing, actually, for policymakers and the industry to think about the kind of depth and pace of the reductions that the experts are saying are needed,” Harwatt said. But after decades of inaction, we’re left with two options: aggressive policy to achieve that required depth and pace of reductions, or a dire level of global warming.

Humans are significantly changing ocean surface temperatures and seasons

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Exposing the Big Game

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/humans-are-significantly-changing-ocean-surface-temperatures-and-seasons/ar-BB1kevwG?ocid=msedgntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=d72e64f635eb4859b6a6a8e12a3715d2&ei=27

Humans are significantly changing ocean surface temperatures and seasons© Provided by Earth

Human activity is no longer subtly influencing the ocean’s rhythm. According to the results of a new study, humans are dramatically reshaping how ocean seasons change throughout the year. Scientists have found a clear human imprint on the seasonal cycle of sea surface temperature. #1 Rated Photo Books

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The ocean temperatures in 2023 broke all-time records. This unprecedented heat isn’t just about rising numbers; it’s fundamentally altering the ocean, its seasons and the delicate balance of life upon which we all depend.

What is ocean surface temperature?

Sea surface temperature (SST) refers to the temperature of the ocean’s top layer. It’s a crucial component of understanding our climate because the ocean absorbs about 90% of the excess heat.

SST impacts weather patterns, marine ecosystems, and the ocean’s ability to continue soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Disrupted ocean season rhythm

This research by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) shows that the seasonal swings in sea surface temperature are amplifying. Summers are getting significantly hotter compared to winters.

This isn’t happening everywhere in the same way. Researchers observed the following patterns:

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Northern hemisphere

Critically, the warming impact is most dramatic during summer months, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. Scientists found that shallower summertime “mixed layers” (the top, actively mixed part of the ocean) are trapping more heat.

Southern hemisphere

Shifting wind patterns, themselves caused by warming, are the main culprits behind changing ocean temperatures.

More than ‘just nature’

Skeptics try to downplay the seriousness of climate change by suggesting the warming is ‘just nature.’ This finding offers a powerful counterargument.

“This research rebuts claims that recent temperature changes are natural, whether due to the Sun or due to internal cycles in the climate system. A natural explanation is virtually impossible in terms of what we are looking at here: changes in the seasonal temperatures of the ocean,” stated Dr. Jia-Rui Shi, a researcher at the WHOI. #1 Rated Photo Books

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“This research further rules out the claim that we don’t need to treat climate change seriously because it is natural.”

Consequences of changing ocean temperatures and seasons

“This robust human fingerprint in the seasonal cycle of ocean surface temperature is expected to have wide-ranging impacts on marine ecosystems. This can dramatically influence fisheries and the distribution of nutrients,” said Shi. “Gaining insight into the anthropogenic influence on seasonality is of scientific, economic, and societal importance.”

More extreme summer temperatures will affect crucial food sources for countless species, disrupt migration patterns, and throw marine life cycles out of balance.

This has profound implications for fisheries, which many communities around the world depend upon for their livelihoods.

Additionally, warmer water holds less carbon dioxide. As the ocean gets hotter, its ability to act as a buffer against the full force of climate change may falter, leading to even faster warming of the planet as a whole.

Insights from changing ocean seasons

As Benjamin Santer, a leading climate scientist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, points out, decisions about tackling climate change must be based on the best possible scientific understanding.

“We now face important decisions, in the United States and globally, on what to do about climate change. Those decisions should be based on our best scientific understanding of the reality and seriousness of human effects on average climate and on the seasons,” noted Santer.

The seasons of the ocean are changing due to our actions, and those changes are accelerating. This research is a stark reminder that climate change is real, it’s here, and it demands our urgent attention.

The study is published in Nature Climate Change.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/humans-are-significantly-changing-ocean-surface-temperatures-and-seasons/ar-BB1kevwG?ocid=msedgntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=d72e64f635eb4859b6a6a8e12a3715d2&ei=27

Blobby creatures washed up on West Coast beaches during marine warming, sucking up energy

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Exposing the Big Game

Blobby creatures washed up on West Coast beaches during marine warming, sucking up energy

Good news! Washington becomes 12th state to ban sale of animal-tested cosmetics

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Exposing the Big Game

KITTY BLOCK AND SARA AMUNDSON

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Guinea pigs, as well as rabbits, mice and rats, are typically used for the painful testing of cosmetics ingredients.

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Last week, Washington became the 12th U.S. state to pass a law to ban the sale of cosmetics newly tested on animals. This is a win for all the guinea pigs, rabbits, mice and rats who will never have to suffer through painful testing, including having cosmetics chemicals forced down their throats, dripped into their eyes or smeared onto their skin. If the animals don’t die during the experiments, they are typically killed by asphyxiation, neck-breaking or decapitation without any pain relief.

Washington’s ban follows similar laws passed in California, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Virginia. These state laws closely mirror the provisions of the federal Humane Cosmetics Act, a bill we have championed for years; we urge U.S. House Energy and Commerce Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers to move the federal bill forward, especially now that her home state has passed such a law.

Already, 45 countries have passed laws to limit or prohibit animal testing for cosmetic products, many in direct response to our global campaign.

It’s not only immensely cruel to force animals to suffer through these tests, but also totally unnecessary. Thousands of ingredients that have a history of safe use can already be used for formulating products such as mascaras and shampoos. Not only that, but modern technologies have also given us advanced options for testing: Human cell-based tests and sophisticated computer models can replace outdated animal tests. We’ve said it before, and we’ll keep saying it until the paradigm finally shifts: These non-animal technologies are often faster, less expensive and more reliable predictors of human safety.

Through passing this ban, Washington lawmakers acted in a way that is consistent with their citizens’ interests in avoiding being complicit in animal cruelty when purchasing cosmetic products and in promoting testing practices that are more likely to keep them safe.

Many cosmetics companies are already embracing our vision for a humane world where animal testing for cosmetics is eradicated, including industry heavyweights Lush, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Avon and L’Oreal who have stood alongside us in our global campaign. In addition, several companies selling cosmetics in Washington provided testimony in support of the state’s ban, including Lush Cosmetics, rue Santé and Thrive Causemetics. 

It is especially significant that the Humane Cosmetics Act has the endorsement of the Personal Care Products Council, the trade association representing 90% of the U.S. cosmetics industry, in addition to more than 400 companies that have individually signed on to support this legislation. In a real sense, public policy in the U.S. trails behind the philosophy and actions of the corporate sector involved.

At this point, the question is no longer about whether cosmetics animal testing should end in the U.S.—it’s now as simple as, what are we waiting for?

Tell your legislators to support the Humane Cosmetics Act. Support our work to end cosmetics animal testing and other forms of animal cruelty by making a donation.

Sara Amundson is president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund.

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