SINGAPORE (Reuters) -The target of keeping long-term global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) is moving out of reach, climate experts say, with nations failing to set more ambitious goals despite months of record-breaking heat on land and sea.
As envoys gathered in Bonn in early June to prepare for this year’s annual climate talks in November, average global surface air temperatures were more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for several days, the EU-funded Copernicus Climate…
A loggerhead sea turtle received a heartfelt sendoff after completing its rehabilitation. Sweet Potato, affectionately nicknamed “Tater,” was rescued after a flipper injury, rehabilitated and released by the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Florida.
A small leatherback sea turtle heads toward the sea during the sunset at Lhoknga beach in Aceh province on February 25, 2023. (Photo by CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN/AFP via Getty Images)
The turtles are highly migratory, with some swimming over 10,000 miles a year.
They also dive deeper than most marine mammals, with the deepest recorded dive reaching nearly 4,000 feet.
The leatherback turtle has the widest global distribution of any reptile, nesting mainly on tropical or subtropical beaches.
While previously prevalent in every ocean but the Arctic and Antarctic, the leatherback population is rapidly declining in many parts of the world.
This picture taken on July 4, 2019, shows a leatherback sea turtle, also known as the Luth turtle, laying eggs under the supervision of Kwata association members on a beach in Remire-Montjoly, French Guiana. (Photo by JODY AMIET/AFP via Getty Images)
The leatherback sea turtle is listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, and it is estimated that the global population has declined by 40% over the past three generations.
It faces threats both on nesting beaches and in the ocean, with the greatest being incidental capture in fishing gear, the hunting of turtles and the collection of eggs for human consumption.
The Pacific leatherback turtle populations are most at risk of extinction.
July 2 (UPI) –Poland’s Interior Minister Mariusz Kamiński announced Sunday that 500 police officers would be sent to the Belarusian border to beef up security after a surge of migrants attempted to enter the country.
“Due to the tense situation on the border with Belarus, I decided to reinforce our forces with a group of 500 officers from riot control units and counter-terrorists,” Kamiński saidin a tweet, adding…
Fireworks are a manmade spectacle we enjoy around summertime holidays, but they aren’t so pleasant for some. Fourth of July fireworks may be a traumatic experience for veterans or those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
It’s also a harrowing experience for dogs and cats – nearly one in five lost pets goes missing after being scared by a loud noise, like fireworks or thunderstorms, a survey from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals found.
This Independence Day, here’s what to know about keeping your furry friends safe.
Why are dogs scared of fireworks?
Dogs have heightened senses – they can hear at higher frequencies and up to four times as far as humans can and their sense of smell can be 10,000 times more powerful. But unlike humans, dogs are unable to tell where a sound is coming from.
We also can’t give our pets a heads-up that fireworks are happening. Heightened hearing but a misperception of noise source gives dogs a sense of “pure panic,” says veterinarian Diana Watkins, who owns 143 Veterinary Services in Massachusetts.
“It smells and sounds terrifying to them, almost like it would if we were in a battle and weren’t expecting it,” Watkins says.
When dogs hear, see or smell the explosion of a firework, their first instinct is often to run.
“It’s oftentimes hard for them to get back home because by the time they have come to their senses and calm down a bit, they’re too far,” Watkins says.
Though man’s best friend is often by our side, you shouldn’t take your dog to watch the fireworks with you, Watkins says.
Dogs at firework showings won’t just be stressed out because of the sensory experience – they’ll also be away from home when they’re experiencing anxiety.
“You’re also taking them away from the environment that they’re used to, so if they do bolt, they’re more likely to get lost,” Watkins says.
Even if you’re keeping your pup at home, Watkins recommends making sure they have an ID tag on at all times or investing in a GPS locator for their collar if your pet isn’t microchipped.
If possible, your dog should stay home with at least one human so they can reassure them if they get anxious. Stay with your pet in a room that has minimal windows to see the firework activity and play soft music or a movie to distract from the other noises.
How to calm a dog down
A little affection goes a long way – Watkins says one of the best ways to calm your dog down is to give them strong, firm pats to let them know you’re here for them. You can try anxiety-reducing devices like a Thundershirt, which acts like a weighted blanket to soothe your dog.
You can also equip your home with calming pheromone diffusers and collars which have a canine-appeasing chemical that “reminds them of when they were nursing,” Watkins says. It lets them know they’re safe, protected and can relax.
For extra nervous dogs, there are also situational anxiety medications your vet can prescribe. This can be helpful during loud sensory events like thunderstorms and fireworks or if you’re leaving your dog alone for longer than normal.
Watkins advises only to give your dog veterinary-grade products because over-the-counter anti-anxiety and CBD supplements are often not FDA regulated and can be harmful to your pup.
Are cats scared of fireworks?
Most people know dogs and fireworks don’t mix, but did you know fireworks have an equally frightening effect on cats?
Cats are more sensitive to higher-frequency sounds than dogs and also have difficulty differentiating where the sound is coming from. They experience a similar panic when faced with unexpected loud noises.
“Account for (indoor and outdoor cats) a couple of days ahead of known fireworks because they can bolt too,” Watkins says. “They’ll do anything when they’re really scared.”
If you’ve got a freaked-out kitty on your hands, you can calm them down by sitting with them in a room that doesn’t have many windows, soothing and petting them, Watkins says.
The oppressive heat wave roasting Texas and Mexico is rekindling a scientific debate about the effects that Arctic climate change might have on weather patterns around the world.
Many experts say that rapid warming in the Arctic — where temperatures are rising four times faster than the global average — may cause an increase in these kinds of long-lasting extreme weather events.
It all comes down to the jet stream, a fast-flowing air current that wraps around the Northern Hemisphere. Many researchers theorize that rising temperatures in the Arctic are altering the atmosphere in ways that disrupt the jet stream’s flow, causing it to dip and meander up and down as it zooms around the…
Some residents of Marina Del Rey are asking for this year’s Fourth of July fireworks show to be cancelled as more sick sea lions are washing up on the shore.
A toxic algae bloom that sprouted throughout the Southern California coast is responsible for the deaths and illness of many sea mammals. Sea lions that are currently sick are being assessed by a veterinarian in a resting pen just yards away from the barge where fireworks are set to be launched this Independence Day.
Resident Claire Cianca worries that the amount of people making their way to the beach this holiday may be overwhelming for the sea creatures.
“It’s pretty devastating, having things like seizures, not being able to swim very well and even resulting in death” said Cianca about the state of the sea lions.
The Forth of July celebration is a longstanding tradition in Marina Del Rey with people from all over town showing up to see fireworks be launched over the ocean. With the celebration being just days away residents and animal lovers are questioning if it is worth having this year.
“I wish this one year people could just give up that 20-minute fireworks show, just this one time with everything going on” said Marina Del Rey resident Dana Feldman
A Biden administration report required by Congress outlines research options for a last-ditch effort to slow the heating of the planet. But the White House says it’s not changing its climate strategy.
The White House offered measured support for the idea of studying how to block sunlight from hitting Earth’s surface as a way to limit global warming, in a congressionally mandated report that could help bring efforts once confined to science fiction into the realm of legitimate debate.
The controversial concept known as solar radiation modification is a potentially effective response to fighting climate change, but one that could have unknown side effects stemming from altering the chemical makeup of the atmosphere, some scientists say.
The White House report released late Friday indicates that the Biden administration is open to studying the possibility that altering sunlight might quickly cool the planet. But it added a degree of skepticism by noting that Congress has ordered the review, and the administration said it does not signal any new policy decisions related to a process that is sometimes referred to — or derided as — geoengineering.
“A program of research into the scientific and societal implications of solar radiation modification (SRM) would enable better-informed decisions about the potential risks and benefits of SRM as a component of climate policy, alongside the foundational elements of greenhouse gas emissions mitigation and adaptation,” the White House report said. “SRM offers the possibility of cooling the planet significantly on a timescale of a few years.”
Still, the White House said in a statement accompanying the report, “there are no plans underway to establish a comprehensive research program focused on solar radiation modification.”
Skeptically or not, that the White House weighed in on solar experimentation at all is remarkable. The concept has created divisions among experts, with some saying it could be a last line of defense against runaway warming if nations fail to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, while others warn that it could result in an atmospheric substance dependency that, if stopped, could lead to abrupt increases in temperatures.
“The fact that this report even exists is probably the most consequential component of this release,” said Shuchi Talati, the executive director of the Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering, a nonprofit that seeks to include developing countries in the debate over solar modification. “This report also signals that the U.S. government is supportive of well-governed research, including outdoor experimentation, which I think is quite significant.”
The report, which was required by Congress in a policy report accompanying the 2022 appropriations bill, was released the same week that European Union leaders opened the door to international discussions of solar radiation modification. It also followed a call by more than 60 leading scientists to increase research on the topic.
The 44-page document considers a few plausible ways to limit the amount of sunlight that hits Earth, all of which could have significant drawbacks. One method is to multiply the amount of aerosols in the stratosphere to reflect the sun’s rays away from the planet — a process that can occur naturally after a major volcanic eruption. Others include either increasing cloud cover over the oceans or reducing the amount of high-flying cirrus clouds, which reflect solar radiation back to Earth.
There are risks associated with each form of solar radiation modification, the report said, that can affect human health, biodiversity and geopolitics. That’s because modifying sunlight could alter global weather patterns, disrupt food supplies and lead to abrupt warming if the practice was widely deployed and then halted. It also wouldn’t address air pollution from fossil fuels or ocean acidification, a major threat to coral reefs’ ecosystems driven by the overabundance of carbon in the air and seas.
At the same time, the White House emphasized that it was important to compare those uncertainties with the present dangers associated with a hotter planet.
“Climate change is already having profound effects on the physical and natural world, and on human well-being, and these effects will only grow as greenhouse gas concentrations increase and warming continues,” the report said. “Understanding these impacts is crucial to enable informed decisions around a possible role for SRM in addressing human hardships associated with climate change.”
The White House said that any potential research on solar radiation modification should be undertaken with “appropriate international cooperation.”
Policymakers in the European Union have signaled a willingness to begin international discussions of whether and how humanity could limit heating from the sun.
“Guided by the precautionary principle, the EU will support international efforts to assess comprehensively the risks and uncertainties of climate interventions, including solar radiation modification and promote discussions on a potential international framework for its governance, including research related aspects,” the European Parliament and European Council said in a joint communication Wednesday.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to questions about the timing of the new report or its potential political significance.
Given the polarized political climate in the United States, the Biden administration is right to proceed with caution, said Talati, a political veteran of Capitol Hill and the White House who most recently served in President Joe Biden’s Energy Department.
“Politicization around climate change has obviously been the huge driver” of policy gridlock on reducing carbon emissions, she said. “And so I think trying to avoid politicization around geoengineering is also important.”
Kenny Torrella is a staff writer for Vox’s Future Perfect section, with a focus on animal welfare and the future of meat.
This story is part of a group of stories called
Finding the best ways to do good.
Last weekend, Elon Musk posted one of his more outrageously false tweets to date: “Important to note that what happens on Earth’s surface (eg farming) has no meaningful impact on climate change.”
Musk was, as he has been from time to time, wrong. As climateexperts rushed to emphasize, farming actually accounts for around a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Before you add this to your list of criticisms of Musk, know that if you’re anything like the average person — or Musk himself — you too probably underestimate just how much agriculture, especially meat and dairy production, contributes to climate change and other environmental problems.
Want to eat less meat but don’t know where to start? Sign up for Vox’s five-day newsletter full of practical tips — and food for thought — to incorporate more plant-based food into your diet.
Late last year, Madre Brava, an environmental research and advocacy group, commissioned a poll of 7,500 consumers across the US, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Brazil, asking which industries and environmental issues they thought were the biggest contributors to global warming. People generally ranked industrial meat production as one of the smallest contributors, even though it’s one of the largest.
The tens of billions of chickens, pigs, cows, and other animals we raise and slaughter for food annually account for around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from cow burps, animal manure, and the fertilizer used to grow the corn and soy they eat. More than one-third of the Earth’s habitable land is used for animal farming — much of it cleared for cattle grazing and growing all thatcorn and soy — making animal agriculture the leading cause of deforestation and biodiversity loss globally.
Deforestation causes emissions itself, but it also represents a missed opportunity to sequester carbon. If that land were “rewilded,” or retired as farmland, it would act as a carbon sink, sucking massive amounts of climate-warming carbon out of the atmosphere. But we keep clearing more and more forestland, especially in the Amazon rainforest and elsewhere in the tropics, mostly for beef, pork, and poultry.
The consumer survey findings are bleak, and one major reason for them could be the fault of my own industry: journalism.
Madre Brava also conducted a media analysis that found that between 2020 and 2022, less than 0.5 percent of stories about climate change by leading news outlets in the US, the United Kingdom, and Europe mentioned meat or livestock.
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Last month, two groups that work on issues related to animal agriculture — Sentient Media and Faunalytics — published an analysis with similar findings. The organizations looked at the 100 most recent climate change stories from each of the top 10 US media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and CNN, and found that 7 percent mentioned animal agriculture. Of that 7 percent, most only discussed how climate change-fueled weather events like droughts, floods, and heatwaves impact animal farmers. “Across the 1,000 articles we examined, only a handful of stories reported in depth on the connection between consuming animal products and climate change,” the researchers wrote.
The media is an easy target, and some criticism is deserved — it’s a disservice to readers to largely ignore a leading cause of the climate crisis. Part of the problem is that the media, like everyone else, operates in an information environment in which the meat lobby downplays and in some cases suppresses the full extent to which burgers, ribs, and chicken nuggets pollute the planet. But journalists could be doing more to cut through the noise.
The food misinformation environment that reporters swim in
Estimates vary, but peer-reviewed research says that animal agriculture causes between 15 percent to 19.6 percent of climate-warming emissions. The United Nations’ most recent estimate puts animal agriculture’s emissions at 11.1 percent, but it hasn’t been peer-reviewed and has been questioned by some food and climate researchers.
Last month, journalist Sophie Kevany explained in detail for Vox why there’s such a wide range in estimates, but here’s the gist: It’s hard to measure emissions from farms, there’s evidence these emissions are undercounted, and different models use different carbon accounting methods.
The range of estimates has left room for meat lobbyists to muddy the waters, creating an environment of misinformation and exaggeration.
For example, in recent years the beef industry has promoted a misleading method of counting the warming impact of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas emitted by cows. “It’s the [beef] industry choosing metrics which make their impact look small,” Drew Shindell, a professor of Earth science at Duke University, told Bloomberg about the industry’s alternative math. “It’s not a credible way to approach the problem.”
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the industry’s leading lobby group, runs a “climate messaging machine,” food journalist Joe Fassler recently wrote in the Guardian, that trains influencers to confuse the public and downplay beef’s emissions.
The list goes on. Last year, leaked documents showed that delegates from Brazil and Argentina successfully lobbied the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to remove any mention of meat’s negative impact on the environment, or recommendations for people in rich countries to reduce their meat consumption, in its recent report. Meat giant Tyson Foods spends a much bigger share of its revenue than ExxonMobil lobbying Congress to stop climate policy.
Outside the animal rights movement, there aren’t many voices pushing back against these narratives. The US environmental movement has largely shied away from campaigning to reduce meat and dairy production, with some leaders outright rejecting the notion that we need to eat fewer animals. Policymakers largely avoid the issue too.
It’s no wonder that public health researchers, in a paper published last year in the journal Sustainability, found that the media often engages in “both-sidesism” on meat’s role in climate change, treating it as more of an open debate than it really is.
There’s also a human element at play. Food is a touchy subject, and telling people to change what they eat can turn some readers hostile. “Ask me how I know,” said Tamar Haspel, a food and agriculture columnist for the Washington Post who regularly encourages people to eat less beef and more lentils, during a recent Sentient Media panel discussion.
A 2014 study of US, Canadian, and Swedish environmental activists found a prevailing sentiment that climate groups felt influencing meat production wasn’t a part of their core mission and that changing diets has limited social and political appeal. That last part is true — people love to eat meat. But it’s on journalists and environmentalists to be clear-eyed about the realities of the climate crisis, and cover ideas — changing diets, yes, but also government food policy and farming practices and technologies — to try and get us out of it.
Improving how we talk about meat and climate change
Given recent newsroom closures and mass reporter layoffs, news outlets aren’t likely to be hiring scores of reporters specializing in agriculture and the environment anytime soon. But there is something any newsroom can do: treat agriculture and climate change with the same level of skepticism and nuance as any other issue. There are plenty of examples in recent memory in which journalists haven’t.
For example, President Joe Biden’s landmark climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, included $20 billion for “climate-smart” farming, but there’s scant evidence that the IRA’s agricultural initiatives will meaningfully reduce emissions, especially since they don’t touch emissions from livestock. Despite the limits of the legislation, most mentions of the agriculture component of the law receivedlittleto noscrutiny in initial news coverage.
“The [meat] industry is something we should really remain skeptical of … It’s every bit as powerful as oil and tobacco before that,” said Georgina Gustin, a reporter at Inside Climate News, at the Sentient Media panel. “I think that if we give industry too much credit by kid-gloving our treatment of farmers, then we’re making a mistake as journalists.”
Leading news outlets haveexaggerated the potential emissions savings from feeding cattle seaweed. Many headlines have framed “regenerative agriculture” — an approach to farming that aims, among other aspirations, to store carbon in the soil — as something that could “save the planet.” But its carbon-storing potential remainsspeculative, and regenerative agriculture generally requires muchmore land than conventional farming, an environmental drawback.
Also, be skeptical of meat alternative startups. I think developing better veggie burgers and nuggets is an important pursuit to cut food system emissions, but the field has been prone to hype. Most products are still too expensive and don’t taste good enough.
On top of applying healthy skepticism to claims made in the food and agriculture sphere, journalists could also be more specific by naming animal agriculture as the top cause for an environmental problem when appropriate, not agriculture writ large. For example, “agriculture” is sometimes cited as a major cause of the Colorado River water shortage, which could lead readers to think that the current sky-high levels of water use for agriculture in the Western US are just an inevitable part of feeding the world. But at least 70 percent of the water diverted from the Colorado River for agriculture is used to grow feed for beef and dairy cows, and animal products generally require much more water than plant-based foods.
Covering this huge, complex issue with skepticism and nuance requires time, resources, and specialization, all luxuries many reporters don’t have. The problem is a symptom of bigger challenges in journalism.
To be sure, in addition to journalists quoted in this article, there are a number of newsoutlets, non-profits, and writers that regularlyreport on how what we eat contributes to climate change. But an enormous coverage gap remains. It may just take time for stakeholders in the climate crisis — journalists, policymakers, environmentalists, and consumers — to catch up.
“The food conversation is probably about 20 years behind the energy conversation, and it is catching up, but it’s not visceral to people in the way energy is — that they immediately know energy is a climate issue,” said Michael Grunwald, a food and agriculture columnist for Canary Media, in the Sentient Media panel discussion.
But time is in short supply. Experts say that if we don’t change what we eat — especially reducing beef and dairy — we can’t meet the Paris climate agreement of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less. Journalists have risen to the occasion before: Coverage of climate change has increased in recent decades, especially in the last few years. Hopefully reporting on the emissions from what we put on our plate will follow a similar trajectory.
FILE – A jogger runs along McCovey Cove outside Oracle Park in San Francisco, under darkened skies from wildfire smoke on Sept. 9, 2020. As Earth’s climate continues to change from heat-trapping gases spewed into the air, ever fewer people are out of reach from the billowing and deadly fingers of wildfire smoke, scientists say. (AP Photo/Tony Avelar, File)
It was a smell that invoked a memory. Both for Emily Kuchlbauer in North Carolina and Ryan Bomba in Chicago. It was smoke from wildfires, the odor of an increasingly hot and occasionally on-fire world.
Kuchlbauer had flashbacks to the surprise of soot coating her car three years ago when she was a recent college graduate in San Diego. Bomba had deja vu from San…
A beloved 3-year-old elephant calf born and raised at the Louisville Zoo died on Friday night, the zoo said in a news release.
Fitz would have turned four on Aug. 2, 2023, the zoo said, and was the offspring of 37-year-old Mikki, who also lives at the Kentucky-based Louisville Zoo.
Zoo staff first noticed that Fitz was lethargic on June 25. A blood sample was sent out and he was diagnosed with endotheliotropic herpesvirus, more commonly known as EEHV, a “hemorrhagic disease that aggressively affects blood cells,” the zoo said. There is no vaccine for the virus, and the survival rate is only 20 to 30% in most cases, the zoo said.
Fitz’s diagnosis with the illness was confirmed on June 28, and he was treated around-the-clock with care, including antiviral medications, plasma transfusions multiple times a day…
nextImage 1 of 3A person holds one of the leatherback sea turtle’s eggs. (Cape Hatteras National Seashore/NPS Photo)
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Exposing the Big Game 