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3 Hurricanes Are Hitting the Pacific at the Same Time, and the View From Space Is Amazing

by CQYAidanaxaaivp Posted on September 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Astronauts aboard the International Space Station are marveling at a particularly awesome view from orbit right now. This week marks the first time that three major hurricanes—dubbed Kilo, Ignacio, and Jimena—have been captured simultaneously churning across the Pacific Ocean, according to the United Kingdom’s Met Office. (The National Hurricane Center agrees.)

The storms are being fueled by warmer waters caused by this year’s El Niño, the global climate event that occurs every five to seven years, bringing drought to places like Australia, while heaping rain on the Western United States. The Met Office says temperature anomalies in this part of the world are currently at their highest since 1997-98.

According to the Met Office: “Hurricanes Kilo, Ignacio and Jimena were all at category 4 simultaneously in the Pacific east of the International Dateline—the first time three major hurricanes have been recorded at the same time in this region.” The Met Office says tropical cyclone activity across the northern hemisphere this year is about 200 percent above normal. Six hurricanes have crossed the central Pacific, more than in any other year on record, the agency says.

The view from space is incredible:

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says manmade global warming is likely to drive up the number of intense hurricanes like these around the world—despite a predicted overall drop in all types of weaker, tropical storms. By the end of the century, hurricanes will likely produce substantially higher rainfall—up to 20 percent more—than present-day hurricanes.

So far, Hawaii appears to be safe, and no humans are in the paths of destruction, allowing us to enjoy the spectacular view.

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3 Hurricanes Are Hitting the Pacific at the Same Time, and the View From Space Is Amazing

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Australia files joke of a climate pledge to the U.N.

by KamDennison87 Posted on August 11, 2015

Australia files joke of a climate pledge to the U.N.

By on 11 Aug 2015commentsShare

To raucous applause of denialists everywhere, Australia submitted its climate pledge to the U.N. on Tuesday. The plan — immediately and nearly universally hailed as weak by climate hawks, climatologists, and most other reasonable people — is one of twenty-six voluntary greenhouse gas emission reduction pledges, covering more than fifty countries, filed in the run-up to the climate negotiations in Paris this December. While currently non-binding, these Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) are considered indicative of countries’ levels of ambition in responding to the global climate change dilemma.

Australia committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 26–28 percent of 2005 levels by 2030. Compare this target to the European Union’s: 40 percent of 1990 levels — when global emissions were much lower — by 2030. While Australia’s pledge may look similar to that of the United States, which committed to a cut of 26–28 percent of 2005 levels by 2025, analysts at Australia’s Climate Institute project that the U.S.’s pledge will amount to a 41 percent reduction on 2005 levels by 2030. Canberra’s five years of wiggle room make for a significant break for fossil fuel companies.

Weak target aside, “even worse is the lack of policy instruments outlined to get us there,” argued Yannick Spencer, an Australian Master of Public Policy candidate at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, in an email to Grist. “In fact the policy instruments in place will get us nowhere near there, while being highly economically inefficient.”

The Australian INDC leans heavily on the government’s US$1.86 billion Emissions Reduction Fund, the country’s main climate strategy, even though analysts expect it to be “fully eroded” (read: out of money) by next year. The fund operates via a reverse auction, in which companies offer to undertake emissions-cutting projects and bid for taxpayer dollars to fund those projects. Not only is the fund running out of money, but its impact is dubious. The policy suite will allow Australia’s top 20 polluters to actually “increase their carbon emissions without penalties,” reported the Australian Financial Review.

Despite the backlash, the Australian government stuck to its coal-fired guns. “Australia is making a strong and credible contribution to the international effort to tackle climate change,” said Prime Minister Tony Abbott in a statement. “We are committed to tackling climate change without a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme that will hike up power bills for families, pensioners and businesses.”

Ignoring the fact that the INDC is neither strong nor credible, the position is at least a step up for Abbott, who previously called climate change “absolute crap.” (The PM also notably said, “I won’t be rushing out to get my daughters vaccinated,” but we’ve only got time to cover one type of denialism today.)

Coal made up more than 60 percent of Australia’s energy mix in 2014. Peabody Energy, the world’s biggest private-sector coal company, quoted Abbott in a recent submission to the White House Council on Environmental Quality protesting the inclusion of greenhouse gases in National Environmental Policy Act analyses:

As Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott recently explained, … “Coal is good for humanity. Coal is good for prosperity. Coal is an essential part of our economic future here in Australia.”

The same can’t be said for the rest of the South Pacific. “If the rest of the world followed Australia’s lead, the Great Barrier Reef would disappear,” said Tony de Brum, foreign minister for the Marshall Islands, in a statement addressing Australia’s INDC. “So would my country, and the other vulnerable atoll nations on Australia’s doorstep.”

Source:
Australia Sets Emissions Goal, but Climate Scientists Say It Falls Short

, The New York Times.

Anger as Australia unveils ‘weak’ climate pledge

, RTCC.

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Stop blaming yourself for the woolly mammoth extinction

by StewartFollmer Posted on July 27, 2015

SPOILER ALERT

Stop blaming yourself for the woolly mammoth extinction

By on 27 Jul 2015commentsShare

Phew! It looks like we might finally be off the hook for killing all the woolly mammoths. New research suggests that it was climate change, not overhunting and human-caused habitat fragmentation, that drove all of Mr. Snuffleupagus’ ancestors to extinction. This must feel almost as good as that time you thought you’d killed your neighbor’s dog by letting it eat a bunch of chocolate and then found out that it actually just had cancer! Welcome back to Spoiler Alerts, where climate change is always the culprit.

Scientists have been trying to figure this out for decades — not only what killed the woolly mammoth, but what killed all kinds of large land animals during what’s known as the Late Pleistocene (miss you, giant ground sloth!). But only recently, with advances in DNA analysis, radiocarbon dating, and historical climate data, have they really been able to zero in on what actually went down.

And that’s exactly what a group of researchers from Australia and the U.S. did using 56,000 years worth of climate and DNA data. They reported their findings — that periods of warming coincided with die-offs — last week in the journal Science. Here’s more from a press release out of the University of Adelaide:

The researchers came to their conclusions after detecting a pattern, 10 years ago, in ancient DNA studies suggesting the rapid disappearance of large species. At first the researchers thought these were related to intense cold snaps.

However, as more fossil-DNA became available from museum specimen collections and through improvements in carbon dating and temperature records that showed better resolution through time, they were surprised to find the opposite. It became increasingly clear that rapid warming, not sudden cold snaps, was the cause of the extinctions during the last glacial maximum.

The researchers also noted that humans, while not the primary cause of the extinctions, certainly didn’t help matters (just like you feeding your neighbor’s sick dog chocolate didn’t help, you monster!). As Chris Turney from the University of New South Wales put it in the press release:

“The abrupt warming of the climate caused massive changes to the environment that set the extinction events in motion, but the rise of humans applied the coup de grâce to a population that was already under stress.”

If these researchers are right, then Harvard geneticist George Church’s attempt to bring back the woolly mammoth in the form of a mammoth-elephant hybrid looks less like a pioneering act of genetic engineering and more like a cruel joke: “Welcome back, guys! There are now 7 billion of us, and we’re driving the Earth toward rapid and catastrophic climate change.”

Source:
Mammoths killed by abrupt climate change

, University of Adelaide.

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We Love America, and You Should, Too

by BraydenSconce Posted on July 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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James West: Okay. How to start. How to start?

Ben Dreyfuss: July 4th! America! That great American holiday wherein we celebrate some bit of the American story. I think the earliest bit. Or the earliest official bit? We aren’t celebrating the stuff with the Mayflower.

JW: So the idea is we’re chatting about what makes this holiday so great for Americans and America and by extension the world, because for Americans: America is the world. It’s a bit off-brand for Mother Jones, no?

BD: You could say that, yes. We don’t have a lot of stories called “America Is Great.”

JW: It’s usually: “America: It’s Far Worse Than You Think ” or “America: Get Out. Seriously, Get Out While You Can.”

BD: But you can’t be critical all of the time or you’ll have an aneurysm. So let’s talk about the truth of the thing, which is that we actually love America! We’re harsh and critical about it, but that’s because we love it so much. We wouldn’t bother writing these stories that urge it to be better if we didn’t have some deep abiding love for it.

JW: I mean, I love America more than is reasonable, because I left a sun-soaked beach paradise with universal health coverage and a social safety net to move to this rat-infested fuckshow called New York City. But anyway, I’m going to start with a simple question. What is your favorite thing about America? FIRST THING that comes to your mind.

BD: Blue jeans. I think blue jeans are amazing. I also love Hollywood and rock & roll. Blue jeans and Hollywood and rock & roll won the cold war.

JW: Blue jeans, when they’re not made by children in Asia.

BD: Well, even then we invented them. “Guess” may make them in Asia but those kids are playing an American song.

JW: “Designed in California” is how Apple describes that particular phenomenon.

BD: Apple! Right, that’s another cool thing America has. Innovation! Other places have that too, though.

JW: Innovation is one thing I think America excels at quite legitimately and can lay claim to (despite lack of diversity hires.) Have you tried to use 3G in the UK? It’s awful. And all their websites break when you try to book a ticket to see Jurassic World 3D. The internet is basically America. At least in the Anglophone world.

BD: That’s true, but in their favor they did invent radar.

JW: Jurassic World 3D, by the way, is an American film, made by Americans.

BD: American films are the best films. This is a fact. Cinema is—along with Jazz—the great American art form.

JW: I think that’s a fact, too. I mean, what is the comparison? French films? I don’t think so. Bollywood? Bollywood is great. But very long films.

BD: And cinema in a very real sense created the American identity that has been exported around the world. For instance, would blue jeans be as important had not James Dean worn them? The French films are all very…well, French. Great! But arty to the point of being intentionally obtuse.

JW: British films are all set in a kitchen making tea… why is that? And Keira Knightley is in every single one of them.

BD: Have you seen the Eddie Izzard bit on the differences between British and American films?

BD: British films are all “room with a view and a staircase and a pond.”

JW: Now I’m in an Eddie Izzard YouTube K-hole.

BD: “You fuck my wife? You fuck my wife?” “I am your wife!”

JW: Okay, now I’m going to stop this.

BD: One thing I think he gets at in this discussion of the size and expanse of American films is the thematic size and expanse of the American ideal, right?

JW: Big, brash, uncompromising, and designed to sell you food made out of corn served in containers made of corn, in seats made of corn.

BD: You had this ridiculous frontier mentality in the 18th century. Then you have the moon looming large in the 20th century. There is this idea that you can do anything in America! Even though this isn’t true and the poverty trap here is as terrible as anywhere, it’s still baked into the pitch. You came here from Australia. Did you get that growing up?

JW: I think what most Australians refuse to really admit is that we are far more similar to Americans than we are to the British. Same frontier thing, same sense of upward-mobility (as a sometimes-flawed, problematic) national obsession, same sense that given the right circumstances everyone can achieve greatness. (Though in Australia’s case, not too great, otherwise you’re arrogant, “like an American.”)

BD: Haha right. “Arrogant like an American” is a very British thing. You still have traces of British in you.

JW: It’s tactical! America loomed large—and continues to loom the largest for Australians, I think. My childhood was drenched with all the cultural products your childhood was.

BD: Nationality was—and is—far less a divide than age… because “everything is global, man!”

JW: If I dusted off my Marxist undergraduate degree I would say something about the spread of global capitalism and America’s imperialist soft power. But that’s kind of boring, isn’t it. Plus, I love America.

BD: Right, I mean we’re going to get into the Bad Bits later. We are liberal journalists, after all.

JW: And if there’s any country’s soft power I would want, it’s America’s, on balance. I mean, Scandinavian furniture is really nice, and better than American, but they aren’t a superpower. But given the choice of current superpowers, I would throw my chips down for America. Also, New York hosts the UN, man, and it’s a beautiful building full of august (ineffective!) debate about the future of the planet!

BD: And Hillary Clinton wasn’t afraid to announce her run for president in front of it!

JW: No. That was bold.

BD: That was great. I think a lot of people—myself included—think of America as a leader of the world, right? But what Hillary was saying with that backdrop was that we’re a leader sure, but still a member of this global community. And that’s true and important and when America acts like its worst self on the global stage is when we forget that.

JW: I’ve been doing some thinking about this question, and I want to get sentimental for a second about America. Are you ready?

BD: Yes.

JW: America got a really bad wrap in recent years around the world for obvious reasons. And it made people kind of…”bigoted” against Americans. Certainly there was this feeling that American culture is crass, debased, somehow inferior. But actually I’ve only ever found the opposite: a culture that is genuinely open to people and ideas, in the pursuit of creating something cool. In my case, writing and videos. But there’s never any hesitation to welcome an idea in any field, from my experience. Americans are natural storytellers, and therefore natural listeners, alert to things and excited by them. That’s a really fun culture to be around.

BD: Right. Like, storytelling is a big thing in like every culture but it does hold a special place in America.

JW: Every American has a “story.” That’s fun. (And great for a reporter.)

BD: Nietzsche said that everyone tells themselves the story of their life. That’s true about countries, too. We’re constantly telling ourselves the American story.

JW: Americans are especially good at framing a personal narrative, and then putting it on a path to redemption. Right, the same is true for the country.

BD: I think we do that because—we should do it more, too—but we do that because we have done so much terrible shit. Like, I know we’re talking about America as one thing right now and basically it’s a very New York liberal blah blah version of America but I was raised with an acute awareness of our original sins. The story of America is necessarily one of progress because if it’s not than it’s a stale story where we have not risen above Klansmen.

JW: I do like the stakes involved in the project of America though: “We’ve done awful shit. We’ll keep doing awful shit. But we also think of ourselves as the best country on Earth, so we have to hold ourselves to a higher ideal.” I mean, what a crazy motherfucking insane project that is. The Russians don’t do that. The Chinese don’t do that. But it matters, because if America succeeds in that project, the world is a better place for it.

BD: But like also, yeesh, obviously America is still totally fucking awful on these issues.

JW: Dreadful.

BD: And it’s insane. For decades in America, centuries even, lynching was just a thing that happened. Then not that long after people looked back at it with the genuine shock and outrage it deserved and wondered, “HOW THE HELL DID WE DO THAT?” I think we’ll look back on a lot of stuff that happens today the same way. Not seeing ourselves—not recognizing ourselves— in our own history. That’s a scary feeling. One that everyone can’t help but feel time to time.

JW: But at the same time, America has this idea of itself—rightly, wrongly—of becoming better, never settling, never being comfortable, always at war with the concept of “doing good”—and that makes it really interesting from an outsider’s perspective. I’m from Australia. We go to the beach instead of confront our demons.

BD: Haha.

JW: I mean, if you guys had beaches like Australia’s you’d do the same.

BD: Have you been to Southern California? Southern California is the most beautiful place on Earth.

JW: OK, apart from Southern California, which is beautiful. And the Pacific Northwest. And actually, a lot of America is really beautiful.

BD: Gorgeous!

JW: Haha.

BD: There are ugly bits but even the ugly bits aren’t that bad.

JW: Coming back from Newark airport is pretty bad.

BD: Wait, wait, before we start just listing our favorite parts of America—which we’ll do in a second— I want to do something before we leave the history bit of this discussion.

JW: Okay.

BD: The constitution looms large, right? My dad likes to talk about how it was a first. Other people had strived for freedom and promise and ratatatata but the Constitution was the first time we codified it aspirationally and wrote it down and put it up on a wall and said, “this is us.” If your father was a cobbler, and his father was a cobbler, and his father was a cobbler, you don’t have to be a cobbler.

I mean Magna Carta was codified, DAD. “Look, dad, have you even fucking read the Magna Carta?”

JW: Apparently the Magna Carta was over-rated?

BD: I mean, it seems like it would have to be.

JW: Look at Britain now!

BD: Haha.

JW: I think Constitutional festishism can be a bit of a problem, though. Pick your amendment to be a nut about!

BD: Right. No one seems to give a fuck about them all equally. I mean, it would be weird to do that maybe too. I hate the constitutional originalism. Like, it’s not some magical document. It was written by a bunch of smart people—most of whom are in hell now by the way—hundreds of years ago. Who gives a fuck what the founding fathers would think?

JW: Also, they would have been horrible people, by modern standards.

BD: Horrible!

JW: With awful teeth.

BD: Wooden!

JW: Thank god for fluoride. When I think of America, I think of Janis Joplin. I think of Nina Simone. I think of Martin Luther King Jr. I think of protest and struggle. There’s never really been a time of calm—where counter culture has given in. All the way through to Baltimore, Ferguson, Charleston.

BD: That’s so interesting. Maybe it’s just because I’m a ’90s kid but I really had this disruptive change after 9/11 where I felt a calmness lost. Like that is definitely because of “white privilege” and shit though.

JW: Yeah, the “innocence lost” narrative of 9/11 is one to poke holes in for sure, but the whole world was involved, so wasn’t just about America at that point.

BD: Sure, but I don’t think it’s true that it was like equally spread out over the world. A few months ago I was abroad somewhere and a political person from that country was trying to make some point and kept being like “how did you feel on 9/11?” and I was like, “stop trying to co-opt our tragedy for your own bullshit purposes.”

JW: Haha. Well, loads of countries went to war with you guys, including ours. So in that sense your tragedy was very ours.

BD: Anyway…

JW: Can we list other things we like about America now, in short order?

BD: Yes. Southern California, Jazz, Hollywood, our breakfasts, the Pacific Northwest, basketball, rock & roll, going to the moon, leather jackets, bourbon, New York City.

JW: The Good Wife. Road-trips and going to diners on road trips with my BF. HBO. The Empire State Building.

BD: The Good Wife! The Americans! Pop music!

JW: American newscasts and hyperbolic segues. I love them. I also love the weather segments which go for so long compared to back home.

BD: Oh, they’re amazing I love the bullshit morning shows. They’re so stupid but I love them.

JW: The national anthem is also pretty special, and amazing, piece of music. Especially as sung by Whitney.

BD: We’re good at music.

JW: And I also think—I’m going to say it—the design of your national flag is really iconic and beautiful.

BD: Yeah it’s nice. I like it. It’s on the moon, too! When the aliens come they’ll be very impressed.

JW: America! I’m so worked up about America now and feel so self-validated by my decisions to move here! Yay, America!

BD: Yay!

JW: Happy July 4!

BD: Ok, so I guess that’s how we wrap this up. We love America. You should too.

JW: I think I wanna end on a quote from my favorite American play (duh—it’s so unsurprising. don’t laugh)… Angels in America… About the guy who wrote the national anthem, one of the characters remarks that he “knew what he was doing. He set the word ‘free’ to a note so high nobody can reach it.”

I like that. Sums it up for me. Still trying to hit that high note.

BD: Perfect. All right, let’s publish this motherfucker.

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We Love America, and You Should, Too

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Well, Well, Well, Look Who Just Endorsed a Bold Fix For Climate Change

by AbigailKennemer Posted on June 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Oil companies are pretty much the last ally you’d think of when it comes to advancing big-picture solutions to climate change. These are the companies, after all, whose product is responsible for causing a significant amount of climate change in the first place—and pretty much every proposed fix for global warming necessarily involves burning less oil.

So it came as a bit of a surprise Monday when six of the leading European oil companies, including BP and Shell, unveiled a letter addressed to the United Nations climate chief calling for a price on carbon emissions (read the full letter below).

“We believe that a price on carbon should be a key element” of ongoing UN-led international climate negotiations, the letter said. This week representatives from nearly 200 countries are meeting in Bonn, Germany, to prepare for a summit in Paris this winter where they hope to produce a powerful global accord on fighting climate change. The letter called on the world’s governments to create new national carbon markets where they don’t currently exist (like most of the United States, for example), and to eventually link those markets internationally.

As Bloomberg Business pointed out, the letter is “unprecedented,” in that it’s the first time a group of major oil companies have banded together to advocate for a serious climate change policy. It was welcomed by the UN’s top climate official, Christiana Figueres, who said that the “oil and gas industry must be a major part of the solution to climate change.”

Most environmental economists and policy wonks agree that making companies pay for their carbon pollution—whether through a tax or a cap-and-trade system—is a fundamental step for any meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The basic idea is that making carbon pollution expensive will drive big polluters to clean up. Policies like this are already gathering steam across the globe, from Canada to China. (California and a few Northeast states have regional carbon markets, but a national carbon price is still a non-starter in the US Congress.) Recently, Australia demonstrated just how effective carbon pricing can be, in a counterintuitive way: Carbon emissions dropped immediately after the country implemented a carbon tax, then jumped right back up when the tax was repealed.

If Monday’s letter is any clue, oil companies are reading the writing on the wall, and they know that one way or another, it’s time to start planning for a future when carbon pollution is more expensive and tightly regulated. Well, some oil companies: Conspicuously absent from the letter are any US oil companies, like Chevron or ExxonMobil; all the signatories are European. In fact, just last week Exxon chief Rex Tillerson implicitly blasted his European peers for cozying up to the UN on climate issues, saying his company wouldn’t “fake it” on climate change and that investing in renewable energy is tantamount to “losing money on purpose.”

The head of French oil giant Total addressed the cross-Atlantic schism in comments to Reuters, saying that the European companies were set on throwing their weight behind carbon pricing “without necessarily waiting for an American to come on board.”

Although carbon pricing “obviously adds a cost to our production and our products,” the letter says, the companies would prefer consistency and predictability over the patchwork of policies that exists now. In other words, it’s easier to justify and plan investments in lower-carbon projects, such as replacing coal with natural gas, when carbon prices are stable and “even-handed,” the letter said. At the same time, these companies have come under increasing pressure from shareholders to address how they’ll stay profitable in the future, as restrictions on carbon emissions are tightened.

To that end, a few of the signatories already have their own internal “shadow” carbon price, where investment options are calculated with a hypothetical carbon price added in, as a way of anticipating future policies.

Still, progressive-sounding statements notwithstanding, oil companies are oil companies, and the letter gives no indication that any of them have plans to replace fossil fuels as their primary product. Shell, for one, is just weeks away from a new foray into offshore drilling in the Arctic. And according to Bloomberg, the European companies are no better than their American counterparts in terms of their actual carbon footprint. So it remains to be seen how committed the companies will be to supporting sweeping changes to the global energy system, or if letters like this are just a clever way to stay relevant as the international climate talks forge ahead. Either way, the paradox of a corporation calling for a carbon price while still pursuing fossil fuel extraction is just more evidence that the free market won’t fix climate change voluntarily—governments have to create new policies, like an international carbon price, that energy companies can’t evade.

Here’s the letter:

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Paying for Carbon Letter (PDF)

Paying for Carbon Letter (Text)

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Well, Well, Well, Look Who Just Endorsed a Bold Fix For Climate Change

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We’re in the Process of Decimating 1 in 6 Species on Earth

by GitaBuckner Posted on April 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Plants and animals around the world are already suffering from the negative impacts of manmade global warming—including shrinking habitats and the spread of disease. A great number are also facing the ultimate demise—outright extinction—among them the iconic polar bear, some fish species, coral, trees… the list goes on.

While most of the research on this topic so far has been piecemeal, one species at a time, a new study out today in Science offers the most comprehensive view to date of the future of extinction. The outlook is pretty grim.

The research, conducted by evolutionary biologist Mark Urban of the University of Connecticut, analyzes 131 other scientific papers for clues about how climate change is affecting the overall rate of species extinction. The result is alarming: One out of every six species could face extinction if global warming continues on its current path. The picture is less dire if we manage to curb climate change, dropping to only 5.2 percent of species if warming is kept within the internationally-agreed upon target of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The analysis makes clear that the climate change threat isn’t necessarily a separate issue from things like habitat loss and disease; indeed, it’s often climate change that is the driving force behind those impacts. The risk appears to be spread evenly across all types of plants and animals (i.e., trees, amphibians, mammals, etc.), but is more severe in geographic ares where there are more unique species and exposure to climate impacts.

South America takes the lead, with up to 23 percent of its species threatened. One classic case study there is the golden toad, a native of mountaintop rain forests that was last seen in 1989. The toad was driven to extinction in part due to an epidemic of chytrid fungus (which is wiping out amphibians worldwide), and because climate change-related drought is destroying the forests they called home. Australia and New Zealand also ranked highly at risk, with up to 14 percent:

Urban, Science 2015

Urban’s paper offers perhaps the most comprehensive scientific companion to a terrifying narrative made popular last year in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Sixth Extinction,” by Elizabeth Kolbert. The New Yorker journalist argued that when you look at the combined toll that pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change is taking on the planet’s biodiversity, humans are driving extinction on a scale only preceded in the geologic record by cataclysmic natural disasters (like the meteor that likely brought about the demise of the dinosaurs). Never before has one species been responsible for the demise of so many others. (Check out our interview with Kolbert here).

Still, Urban’s study makes clear that many species that avoid extinction still face grave threats from climate change:

“Extinction risks are likely much smaller than the total number of species influenced by climate change,” Urban writes. “Even species not threatened directly by extinction could experience substantial changes in abundances, distributions, and species interactions, which in turn could affect ecosystems and their services to humans.”

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We’re in the Process of Decimating 1 in 6 Species on Earth

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Feral cats are literally eating all of Australia’s wildlife

by Araceli55T Posted on April 13, 2015

Feral cats are literally eating all of Australia’s wildlife

By on 13 Apr 2015commentsShare

Australia wants its cats dead. But not because it’s a nation of fanatical dog people — rather, the country’s enormous feral cat population now constitutes a major threat to its biodiversity. To save the country’s native wildlife, the cats need to go.

Due to hotter days, longer dry periods, and increasingly intense bush fires caused by climate change, Australia’s biodiversity is diminishing. Despite being one of the world’s 17 “megadiverse” countries, Australia has not done a bang-up job of protecting its wildlife. As mammalian extinction rates go, Australia’s is pretty dang high: Twenty-one percent of Australian native land mammals are threatened.

But, shockingly, climate change is actually not the No. 1 enemy of koalas and kangaroos: Feral cats are the “single biggest threat” to protecting Australia’s wildlife, according to a new piece from VICE News. There are about 20 million of these little cutthroat barbarians pawing, nuzzling, and murdering (in equal measure) their way across the continent, eating three to 20 animals each day — which adds up to a loss of 80 million native animals per week.

So, in a cruel but necessary gesture to save the country’s wildlife, the Australian government has pledged $2 million to slow their biodiversity loss by 2020 by killing as many feral cats as possible. Eliminating feral cat colonies altogether won’t be possible because they reproduce at high rates and are difficult to catch, but dammit, they’re going to keep trying. Here’s more from Vice:

For now, poisoned baits are the weapon of choice for population control. The largest programs for this method use aircraft to scatter baits across Australia’s vast outback. The aircraft can drop upwards of 60,000 baits across areas of over 1,000 square kilometers.

Until a stronger solution is found, endangered animals will have to be kept alive by isolating them from the vast swathes of the country where the cats roam unabated.

An entire continent terrorized by herds of meaner, angrier house cats sounds like the plot of a David Lynch movie, but this is real life. Who knew Miss Fluffs had it in her?

Source:
One of the World’s Biggest Extinction Crises Is Being Caused by Cats

, VICE News.

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Feral cats are literally eating all of Australia’s wildlife

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Koalas Are Cute and Cuddly. This Video Proves They Are Also Fearsome Warriors.

by Kathryn9208 Posted on March 27, 2015

Mother Jones

Weekends are always better when they start with koalas.


This Koala Is So Cute You’ll Want It To Get Away With Stealing This Kid’s Car


Koalas Are Cute and Cuddly. This Video Proves They Are Also Fearsome Warriors.


We Have Some Good News For You About the Koala That Was Burned in the Fire


Please, Please Stop Making Mittens for Koalas


Here Is a Photo of President Obama Holding a Koala


PHOTOS: Koalas, Tennis Players Grapple with Australian Heat Wave

Oh, Australia. Even when you’re just taking the dog out for a walk, you might walk straight into a CRAZY KOALA WRASSLIN’ MATCH.

This fight raises fresh questions about the Secret Service’s competency: Why would they let the president get so close to one of these dangerous beasts!?

Happy Friday.

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Koalas Are Cute and Cuddly. This Video Proves They Are Also Fearsome Warriors.

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A second giant blob of Antarctic ice is getting ready to drown us

by MYZJeffrysi Posted on March 17, 2015

A second giant blob of Antarctic ice is getting ready to drown us

By on 17 Mar 2015commentsShare

Remember when we found out last year that the West Antarctic ice sheet had started to collapse, that the collapse more or less can’t be stopped, and that it will eventually result in 10 to 15 feet of sea-level rise? Now we have some more bad news of that caliber.

An enormous glacier, one on the other side of the continent from the ailing ice sheet, is doing pretty much the same thing, researchers have discovered. Chris Mooney reports for The Washington Post:

The findings about East Antarctica emerge from a new paper just out in Nature Geoscience by an international team of scientists representing the United States, Britain, France, and Australia. They flew a number of research flights over the Totten Glacier of East Antarctica — the fastest-thinning sector of the world’s largest ice sheet — and took a variety of measurements to try to figure out the reasons behind its retreat. And the news wasn’t good: It appears that Totten, too, is losing ice because warm ocean water is getting underneath it. …

The floating ice shelf of the Totten Glacier covers an area of 90 miles by 22 miles. It it is losing an amount of ice “equivalent to 100 times the volume of Sydney Harbour every year,” notes the Australian Antarctic Division.

That’s alarming, because the glacier holds back a much more vast catchment of ice that, were its vulnerable parts to flow into the ocean, could produce a sea level rise of more than 11 feet — which is comparable to the impact from a loss of the West Antarctica ice sheet. And that’s “a conservative lower limit,” says lead study author Jamin Greenbaum, a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin.

If you haven’t already done the math, this means we could see well upwards of 20 feet of sea-level rise over the next few centuries, double the rise expected from the West Antarctic ice sheet alone — and those are conservative estimates.

Though it’ll be awful for the entire world, the newly liberated Antarctic ice melt will affect some of us more than others. The Northern Hemisphere (including, of course, North America) will be hit particularly hard: As Antarctica melts, it exercises less gravitational pull on the seas, and will head northward.

Researchers have made it pretty clear that the West Antarctic ice sheet’s collapse is unstoppable. The Totten Glacier has almost reached that same point. “The ice loss to the ocean may soon be irreversible unless atmospheric and oceanic conditions change so that snowfall outpaces coastal melting,” the researchers said in a press release. So with climate change moving forward — something that’s not likely to change anytime soon — it’s probably too late for both of these ice blobs. “[I]t’s difficult to see how a process that starts now would be reversed, or reversible, in a warming world,” one of the study’s coauthors, Martin Siegert, told Mooney.

So maybe just cross your fingers and hope that your grandchildren are born with gills.

Source:
The melting of Antarctica was already really bad. It just got worse.

, The Washington Post.

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A second giant blob of Antarctic ice is getting ready to drown us

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Finally Some Good News About Clean Energy Investment

by DeannaColleano Posted on January 9, 2015

Mother Jones

Clean energy investment around the world is rebounding after a three-year decline, according to new figures released today by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Globally, the total amount of clean energy investment jumped 16 percent in 2014, to $310 billion. That number is just shy of the record amount of investment set in 2011.

BNEF produces quarterly reports that track how much money governments and the private sector are pouring into wind, solar, biofuels and other green energy projects. In 2014, the United States enjoyed its biggest investments since 2012, but it was China that once again drove the numbers. China’s clean energy spending shot up 32 percent to a record $89.5 billion, cementing its place as the world’s top market for green investment. (You can get a sense of just how impressive Chinese investment is by peaking inside the the world’s biggest solar manufacturing factory, which is run by Chinese company Yingli.)

Solar is getting the lion’s share of investment around the world, according to the figures. Almost half the money spent on clean energy this year—just shy of $150 billion—was in the solar industry. Wind investment also reached record levels—$19.4 billion globally—thanks in part to offshore projects in Europe.

There was one darker patch in the numbers: Australia, where the government is trying to slash the country’s Renewable Energy Target, a policy that creates mandates for the amount of clean energy in the electricity mix. Bucking the global trend, investments there fell by 35 percent.

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Finally Some Good News About Clean Energy Investment

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