DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 30, 2016

Pragmatic or predatory?

South Africa is pushing a proposal for legal ivory trade that is likely to drive African elephant extinction. 

In a proposal to be submitted at the 17th Conference of the Parties (CoP17) of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) to be held in September-October in Johannesburg, South Africa, the three nations are pushing instead to establish a process for an international trade in ivory – demanding minimal regulation of trade with limited safeguards for the continent’s beleaguered elephants.

In contrast, and in an effort to afford elephants the highest protection under international law, the coalition of 29 African countries, a body that represents over 70% of the 37 African elephant range states, will be presenting a comprehensive suite of five proposals at CoP17.

Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence supporting a total ban with an Appendix I listing, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia will be submitting their counter-proposals for deliberation at CoP17 effectively calling on the CITES Standing Committee to permit unrestricted commercial exports of ivory.

“A divided message will spell doom for Africa’s elephants,” warns Patricia Awori the Secretariat of the AEC, who “longs for a time when all Africans unite to save its elephant heritage for future posterity.”

On the Other Hand

Hawaii has banned the sale of ivory and other products derived from a variety of endangered species.

Hawaii, still in the spotlight for historic gun control legislation, has taken a major step toward curbing the illegal trade of wildlife products.

Gov. David Ige last week quietly signed into law Senate Bill 2647, now Act 125, effectively banning the sale of ivory and other products from a variety of animal and marine species.

Inga Gibson, Hawaii senior state director for the Humane Society of the United States, told The Huffington Post that she and other supporters are thrilled with the outcome.

“We’re looking at one of the strongest anti-wildlife trafficking bills in the country,” Gibson said.  

It’s Just Weather - Right?

A large percentage of Americans have decided to ignore science.  Unfortunately science is not an act, it is a report.  And climate change is going to doom our planet.  So what if it is unprecedented?

Climate scientists this week expressed alarm after “unprecedented” data showed the Northern Hemisphere Jet Stream crossing the Equator.

In a column on Tuesday, environmental blogger Robert Scribbler noted that the Northern Hemisphere Jet Stream had merged with the Southern Hemisphere Jet Stream.

“It’s the very picture of weather weirding due to climate change. Something that would absolutely not happen in a normal world,” he wrote. “Something, that if it continues, basically threatens seasonal integrity.”

“Like many extreme events resulting from human-forced climate change — this co-mingling of upper level airs from one Hemisphere with another is pretty fracking strange,” Scribbler explained. “Historically, the Tropics — which produce the tallest and thickest air mass in the world — have served as a mostly impenetrable barrier to upper level winds moving from one Hemisphere to another. But as the Poles have warmed due to human-forced climate change, the Hemispherical Jet Streams have moved out of the Middle Latitudes more and more. ”

“That’s bad news for seasonality,” he continued. “You get this weather-destabilizing and extreme weather generating mixing of seasons that is all part of a very difficult to deal with ‘Death of Winter’ type scenario.”

University of Ottawa climate scientist Paul Beckwith called the new behavior “unprecedented.”

“Our climate system behaviour continues to behave in new and scary ways that we have never anticipated, or seen before,” Beckwith observed. “Welcome to climate chaos. We must declare a global climate emergency.”

Humans Are Getting Dumber

 It may be self-evident that as a species, humans aren’t doing very well.  Dumb, greedy and unwilling to change according to Stephen Hawking.

Stephen Hawking made a rare interview appearance on Larry King Now on Saturday to discuss science’s greatest discoveries, what still mystifies him about space and the state of the planet.

While the interview was less than 10 minutes long, King and Hawking covered a lot of ground. Hawking, director of research at the department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge, joined King via video stream from the Starmus Festival, which celebrates the intersection of science and art, in the Canary Islands of Spain. This year’s festival was titled Tribute to Stephen Hawking.

Below are some highlights of the Q&A:

Q. King: Stephen, when we last spoke six years ago, you said that mankind was in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. Have things gotten better or worse since then?

A. Hawking: We certainly have not become less greedy or less stupid. Six years ago I was warning about pollution and overcrowding, they have gotten worse since then. The population has grown by half a billion since our last meeting with no end in sight. At this rate, it will be 11 billion by 2100. Air pollution has increased by 8 percent over the past five years.

Q. King: What’s the biggest problem facing humanity today?

A. Hawking: The increase in air pollution and increasing emissions of carbon dioxide. Will we be too late to avoid dangerous levels of global warming?

See the whole interview here.

Oh, and Larry King is still alive.  I was surprised.

DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 29, 2016

Tiny Wings – Dinosaur’s Had Them

Dino wings discovered intact in amber.  Feathers apparently 100 million years old.

Two tiny wings entombed in amber reveal that plumage (the layering, patterning, coloring, and arrangement of feathers) seen in birds today already existed in at least some of their predecessors nearly a hundred million years ago.

A study of the mummified wings, published in the June 28 issue of Nature Communications and funded in part by the National Geographic Society's Expeditions Council, indicated they most likely belonged to enantiornithes , a group of avian dinosaurs that became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period. (Read more about the evolution from dinosaurs to modern birds.)

While the fact that many, if not nearly all, dinosaurs were feathered has been generally accepted since the 1990s, our knowledge of prehistoric plumage until now has come from feather imprints in carbonized compression fossils and individual feathers fossilized in amber.

What Good Are Zoo - # Infinity

Lacking genetic diversity, cheetahs in the wild are in worse health and more susceptible to disease.  The most diverse and strongest gene pool resides in the world’s zoos.

The planet's last stronghold of wild cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) is losing genetic diversity at an alarming rate according to a new study from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) and partners published June 21 in the journal Biological Conservation. This is in direct contrast with the population of cheetahs in zoos, which is as genetically diverse as it was 30 years ago because of cooperative and strategically managed breeding programs, including the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' Cheetah Species Survival Plan.

"This study provides objective proof that management of cheetahs in zoos is working," said Kim Terrell, lead author on the study, former SCBI doctoral student and current director of research and conservation at the Memphis Zoo. "It is crucial that wildlife institutions continue to work together to invest in methods to complement conservation efforts in the wild, ensuring the long-term survival of the species."

Genetic diversity plays a key role in the overall health of a species, its ability to fight disease and even whether it can easily reproduce. Cheetahs survived a population collapse more than 12,000 years ago that led to inbreeding and a loss of genetic diversity. As a result, modern cheetahs are prone to disease and have poor sperm quality.

SCBI has a cheetah breeding center at its headquarters in Front Royal, Virginia, designed to help create a genetically diverse and self-sustaining insurance population of cheetahs in human care. Since it was opened in 2007, 25 surviving cubs have been born there. SCBI is also a member of the Conservation Centers for Species Survival (C2S2), a partnership of eight facilities collectively managing more than 25,000 acres devoted to studying and breeding endangered species. Six of those facilities study cheetahs and have cheetah breeding centers.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies cheetahs as vulnerable to extinction. The population in Namibia--the species' last stronghold--faces numerous threats, including habitat loss and conflict with livestock farmers. According to the study's authors, conservation efforts in the wild need to focus both on protecting habitat and reducing conflict with humans.

No Coals to Newcastle

For Britain to go without using coal even for a few hours is a major accomplishment.  Not that big a deal in the light of Portugal and Germany both running for significantly longer periods on sustainables only.  Still it’s a start.

I'm going to declare my bias upfront: I am very, very mad at my homeland right now. But international politics and market turmoil aside, it's not all bad news coming from the British Isles. And who better than Robert Llewellyn to deliver a little dose of sunshine:

It turns out that recently, for a brief period of time, and for the first time since 1882, Britain burned absolutely no coal for electricity. That's a pretty important milestone. True, as Robert says, it was in the middle of the night. And true, it was only for a few hours. But it still marks an important turning point—and it's one more sign of Death by Capacity Factor that's making fossil fuel generation more expensive. As coal plants sit idle, the cost to run them when they are fired up again goes up. And that makes the economic case for renewables, efficiency, conservation and storage just that little but more compelling.

Speaking of Coal

The folks in Oakland, California say no to being the end of the line for coal trains bringing death via climate change.

At approximately 9:00 PM on Monday, June 27th, 2016, after likely more than a hundred public speakers, the Oakland City Council, by votes of 7-0 and 7-0, banned coal processing in Oakland and specifically banned the processing, loading and unloading of coal at a proposed bulk loading facility at an old Army Base facility in West Oakland.

This had been a bitter battle between the developers of the project — who had originally given written and verbal assurances that coal was not part of the plan and then reneged — and most of the Oakland community who wanted no part of the health, safety and environmental dangers associated with coal.

Apparently there was lying involved.

 The move exposes the city, its lawyers warned, to hundreds of millions of dollars of liability for breaching its contract authorizing developer Phil Tagami to build what is known as Oakland Global Trade and Logistics Center on the city-owned former Oakland Army Base at the foot of the Bay Bridge.

OBOT is a $250 million component of Tagami's project, aimed at moving 10 million tons of bulk freight per year. Under a deal with four Utah counties — Carbon, Emery, Sevier and Sanpete — half that capacity would be reserved for Utah products in exchange for $50 million.

Many speakers were unhappy with Tagami, a politically connected developer and friend to California Gov. Jerry Brown, himself a former Oakland mayor, for promising city officials that coal would not be part of the port project before he won approvals to redevelop the decommissioned Army base.

Spectacular Photos

The overall awards winners have been announced in the 2016 Atkins Ciwem environmental photographer of the year competition, an annual international showcase for thought-provoking photography and video that tackles a wide range of environmental themes. 

DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 28, 2016

Endangered Apparently Doesn’t Mean Anything
 

Make a little contribution and get anything you want.  On the other hand, moving breeding age species to different facilities is often critical to insure species diversity.  However, the role of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service as a protector of endangered species is highly questionable in many cases.

Last year, after a Minnesota dentist sparked an uproar by killing a popular lion named Cecil while on safari in Zimbabwe, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service placed similar African lions on the endangered species list, making it illegal to import them as trophies to the United States.

But for African lions and other threatened and endangered species, there’s an exception to this rule: Hunters, circuses, zoos, breeders and theme parks can get permits to import, export or sell endangered animals if they can demonstrate that the transactions will “enhance the survival” of the species.

Often, records show, this requirement is met in part by making a cash contribution to charity - usually a few thousand dollars. The practice has angered both animal-rights activists who say it exploits wildlife and exhibitors who describe the process as unfair and arbitrary.

In the last five years, the vast majority of the estimated 1,375 endangered species permits granted by the Fish & Wildlife Service involved financial pledges to charity, according to agency documents reviewed by Reuters.

For a $2,000 pledge, the Fish & Wildlife Service permitted two threatened leopard cubs to be sent from a roadside zoo to a small animal park. After a $5,000 pledge, the agency approved the transfer of 10 endangered South African penguins to a Florida theme park.

An application now under final consideration would permit a South Carolina safari park operator to send 18 endangered tigers to Mexico to participate in a multimillion-dollar movie – for a $10,000 donation to charity.

Climate Change – More Hoaxification

Climate change is real and it’s destroying the lives of people who have worked for generations at a trade.

One of America's oldest commercial industries, fishing along the coast of the Northeast still employs hundreds. But every month that goes by, those numbers fall. After centuries of weathering overfishing, pollution, foreign competition and increasing government regulation, the latest challenge is the one that's doing them in: climate change.

Though no waters are immune to the ravages of climate change, the Gulf of Maine, a dent in the coastline from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, best illustrates the problem. The gulf, where fishermen have for centuries sought lobster, cod and other species that thrived in its cold waters, is now warming faster than 99 percent of the world's oceans, scientists have said.

The warming waters, in the gulf and elsewhere, have caused other valuable species, such as clams, to migrate to deeper or more northern waters. Others, such as lobsters, have largely abandoned the once-lucrative waters off the southern New England states of Connecticut and Rhode Island, having become more susceptible to disease or predator.

I’m So Tired Of These People

Maybe they should be hunted from helicopters.

Five conservation groups filed a lawsuit in federal court recently challenging the U.S. Department

of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services’ killing of gray wolves in Idaho.

The agency killed at least 72 wolves in Idaho last year, using methods including foothold traps, wire snares that strangle wolves, and aerial gunning from helicopters. The agency has used aerial gunning in central Idaho’s “Lolo zone” for several years in a row — using planes or helicopters to run wolves to exhaustion before shooting them from the air, often leaving them wounded to die slow, painful deaths.

The agency’s environmental analysis from 2011 is woefully outdated due to changing circumstances,

including new recreational hunting and trapping that kills hundreds of wolves in Idaho each year, and significant changes in scientific understanding of wolves and ecosystem functions.

Toxic Chemicals – Thanks 3M

As if anyone in the political leadership of the State of Alabama cares about a little poison in their rivers.

  

With a major American river poisoned by toxic chemicals dumped into it by one of the nation’s largest corporations, Tennessee Riverkeeper has filed a federal lawsuit against 3M Company and other defendants under the U.S. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).

The suit alleges the defendants’ contamination of the Tennessee River in and near Decatur, Alabama with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and related chemicals has created an “imminent and substantial endangerment to health and the environment.”

The toxins—components or byproducts of 3M’s manufacture of its profitable lines of “non-stick” products like Scotchgard and Stainmaster—have polluted the Tennessee River’s Wheeler Reservoir, a popular recreation destination and home to various important wildlife species and ecosystems. The Tennessee Riverkeeper’s RCRA suit seeks to compel the immediate and thorough clean-up of the contaminants.

As even minimal exposure to PFOS and PFOA is linked to a variety of lethal health hazards, there exist virtually no safe levels of the chemicals in the environment. 

We Owe Dogs Everything

Dogs detecting diabetes.  The wild that lives with us can save us.

Dogs may be able to help prevent type 1 diabetes patients' blood sugar levels from dropping dangerously low by detecting the start of a hypoglycemic episode with their sense of smell.

Teaching dogs to detect higher levels of a chemical exhaled in human breath during a hypoglycemic episode could prevent potentially dangerous health conditions in diabetic patients, report researchers in England.

"Humans aren't sensitive to the presence of isoprene, but dogs with their incredible sense of smell, find it easy to identify and can be trained to alert their owners about dangerously low blood sugar levels," said Dr. Mark Evans, a consultant physician at Addenbrooke's Hospital at the University of Cambridge. "It provides a 'scent' that could help us develop new tests for detecting hypoglycemia and reducing the risk of potentially life-threatening complications for patients living with diabetes."

DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 27, 2016

Leaders as Fizza

“A bit like a big red bunger on cracker night. You light him up, there’s a bit of a fizz but then nothing … nothing”.

Environmentalist in Australia are starting to get really upset with their government.  Coal free future, maybe?

The former Liberal leader John Hewson addressed an estimated 2000 people protesting in the Sydney suburb of Double Bay – minutes from Malcolm Turnbull’s harbourside mansion – calling on the prime minister to take stronger action on climate change.

Speaking at the same time as Turnbull addressed the party faithful at the Coalition’s campaign launch, Hewson told protesters the Coalition’s lack of action on climate change was a “national disgrace”.

 “I think climate change should be the dominant issue of this campaign – it should have been for quite some time,” said Hewson, who was once the local member for the seat of Wentworth, which includes Double Bay.

He said “short-term politicking” from both sides left targets that were inadequate and policies that were not going to meet those targets.

Diablo Canyon Shutdown

California’s last nuclear plant to shutdown and be replace with renewables

The agreement, announced today in California, says that PG&E will renounce plans to seek renewed operating licenses for Diablo Canyon’s two reactors—the operating licenses for which expire in 2024 and 2025 respectively. In the intervening years, the parties will seek Public Utility Commission approval of the plan which will replace power from the plant with renewable energy, efficiency and energy storage resources. Base load power resources like Diablo Canyon are becoming increasingly burdensome as renewable energy resources ramp up. Flexible generation options and demand-response are the energy systems of the future.

By setting a certain end date for the reactors, the nuclear phase out plan provides for an orderly transition. In the agreement, PG&E commits to renewable energy providing 55 percent of its total retail power sales by 2031, voluntarily exceeding the California standard of 50 percent renewables by 2030.

“This is an historic agreement,” Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, said.

“It sets a date for the certain end of nuclear power in California and assures replacement with clean, safe, cost-competitive, renewable energy, energy efficiency and energy storage. It lays out an effective roadmap for a nuclear phase-out in the world’s sixth largest economy, while assuring a green energy replacement plan to make California a global leader in fighting climate change.”

What if we all worked together as a community on this stuff.

A robust technical and economic report commissioned by Friends of the Earth served as a critical underpinning for the negotiations. The report, known as Plan B, provided a detailed analysis of how power from the Diablo Canyon reactors could be replaced with renewable, efficiency and energy storage resources which would be both less expensive and greenhouse gas free.

With the report in hand, Friends of the Earth’s Damon Moglen and Dave Freeman engaged in discussions with the utility about the phase-out plan for Diablo Canyon. The Natural Resources Defense Council was quickly invited to join. Subsequently, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1245, Coalition of California Utility Employees, Environment California and Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility partnered in reaching the final agreement. The detailed phase out proposal will now go to the California Public Utility Commission for consideration. Friends of the Earth (and other NGO parties to the agreement) reserve the right to continue to monitor Diablo Canyon and, should there be safety concerns, challenge continued operation.

The agreement also contains provisions for the Diablo Canyon workforce and the community of San Luis Obispo.

Extreme Weather Is A Hoax

The frequency of extreme weather events has been a predicted outcome of global climate change from the beginning of research on the subject.  Every year we see more evidence of this fact.

West Virginia climatologist Kevin Law told USA Today that this is the third-deadliest flooding event on record for the state. A November 1985 flood that killed 38 ranked second-worst, and the 1972 Buffalo Creek flood that killed 125 was the worst in state history, the report also said.

The news came one day after at least 12 confirmed tornadoes touched down in northern Illinois, Indiana and Ohio Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, the National Weather Service said. Tens of thousands were left without power across the Midwest as a derecho swept through the region, leaving a trail of damage from Illinois all the way to Virginia.

Dirt Isn’t Always Just Dirt
 

Took scientist only 700 years to figure this out.  OK, not quiet, but a century or so.

For the last 700 years women in Ghana and Liberia have been using a valuable farming technique that modern-day agronomists have only recently figured out. It transforms depleted soil into “enduringly fertile” farmland.

A team of anthropologists and scientists studied almost 200 sites in the two West African countries and found that women added kitchen waste and charcoal to nutrient-poor tropical soil. The resulting rich black soil, which the researchers call “African dark earths,” could help countries adapt to the effects of climate change as well as improve agriculture not just in Africa but in resource-poor and food-insecure regions around the world.

African dark earths can handle more intensive farming on less land—the soil stores between 200% and 300% more organic carbon than other soils. It also traps carbon and cuts down on greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, according to the study. Researchers have come across similar soil in South America, there known as terra preta, or”black earths.”

DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 26, 2016

Stunning

Montana is a beautiful place and this part of the state is a dramatic mix of prairie and mountains, cut through by tumbling rivers.  Art and nature combine at Tippet Rise in an almost mystical way.

The Tippet Rise Art Center, on an 11,500-acre working ranch near Yellowstone, Montana, has just opened to the public. It celebrates land and architecture, as well as music during its classical concert season.

Men no longer invoke the love of poetry. And yet never before has there been such a need for men to be transfigured, to be rescued, to be comforted by poetry. - Wallace Stevens

Destroy the World For Profit - Greed Driven Extinction

Oil and gas companies believe that they have the right to pump all the oil and gas from the planet.  Then they will move on to some other line of business.  Of course by then our planet will be a lifeless cinder.

It is often argued by supporters of the oil and gas industry and opponents of renewable energy that the need to ween ourselves off fossil fuels is not as pressing as many claim, since a significant amount of resources remain on the planet. However, a new study from the University of Victoria in Canada may well have put paid to that argument.

The paper has estimated what would happen to the world’s climate if no further action were taken to mitigate the effects of climate change – and found catastrophic results, both in terms of temperature and precipitation, which would render many parts of the planet uninhabitable. As such, the paper provides new impetus to the feeling that the time for change is now when it comes to our energy production and consumption habits. 

Poverty Drives Extinction, Too

It doesn’t take a meteor strike to cause a mass extinction.  Man is perfectly capable.  So we have to work on man if we want to prevent the on-coming mass extinction.

Brent Stirton/National Geographic

Around 480 mountain gorillas live within the confines of Virunga, Africa’s oldest national park. The critically endangered primates are among the most threatened animals in the world, and the population inside the region is the only gorilla species on the rise.

But despite its renowned status, including a designation as a World Heritage Site, Virunga has become a war zone.

National Geographic sent two correspondents into the park to investigate the thorny relationship between people trying to save Virunga and those jockeying to use the park’s resources to survive.

Some 4 million people live along the border of Virunga, a 3,000-square mile expanse of dense jungle on the eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many survive on less than $1.25 day, dependent on an illicit charcoal and bushmeat industry that’s encroached on the park.

…the realities of this conservationist-local relationship present a complex dynamic that can’t be fixed by classifying the region as a national park or protecting its fauna with “endangered” labels.

Zombie Corals

Zombie corals and sunscreen destroying coral reefs.

Zombie corals, which look healthy but cannot reproduce, have been discovered by researchers, dashing hopes that such reefs could repopulate areas destroyed by bleaching.

Scientists have also found that a common ingredient in sunscreen is killing and mutating corals in tourist spots.

The new evidence of harm to corals comes as the most widespread coral bleaching event in recorded history is sweeping the world’s oceans. Water temperatures have been driven up by a run of record-breaking hot years, caused by climate change and the El Niño phenomenon. Very warm water causes corals to lose the algae that normally live inside them and help them feed.

Corals in every major reef region have already experienced severe bleaching. About 93% of the reefs on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef have been affected, and almost a quarter of the reef is now dead. Corals are hotspots of biodiversity and crucial nurseries for fish, upon which 1 billion people rely for nourishment.

Another study Fauth was part of found that oxybenzone, a common UV-filtering compound in sunscreen, is common in Hawaii, Florida and the US Virgin Islands.

The chemical kills coral but also causes DNA damage in adult coral and deforms the larval stage, making normal development unlikely. An earlier study showed that the highest concentrations of oxybenzone were found on the reefs most popular with tourists.

Pink Snow

First it was “don’t eat the yellow snow,” now it’s beware the “pink snow.”

The Arctic conjures up images of white snow, ice, and polar bears. But this month, the Arctic landscape looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, with landscapes of pink snow.

What caused this strawberry hue? Was it an Arctic accident? Or polar pranksters? Neither, according to a new study published Wednesday by a team of scientists in England and Germany in the journal Nature Communications. 

Instead, the pink coloring is caused by algae, which creates an effect that can actually worsen climate change.

Water Is the New Oil

When we runout of water, we run out of life.

Of all the ways climate change inflicts harm, drought is the one people worry about most, according to a Pew Research Center survey. And it’s not surprising—droughts have been drier and lasting longer in recent years thanks in part to climate change. In 2012, the central and western U.S. was hit particularly hard when 81 percent of the country was living in abnormally dry conditions, causing $30 billion in damages and putting the health and safety of many Americans at risk.

Of all the ways climate change inflicts harm, drought is the one people worry about most.

While droughts can have different causes depending on the area of the world and other natural factors, the majority of scientists have started to link more intense droughts to climate change. That’s because as more greenhouse gas emissions are released into the air, causing air temperatures to increase, more moisture evaporates from land and lakes, rivers and other bodies of water. Warmer temperatures also increase evaporation in plant soils, which affects plant life and can reduce rainfall even more. And when rainfall does come to drought-stricken areas, the drier soils it hits are less able to absorb the water, increasing the likelihood of flooding—a lose-lose situation.

DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 25, 2016

No More Monkey Business

Humans and monkeys exhibit similar behavior as they age.  Researchers suggest that this similar behavior is genetic for both species.

Humans spend less time monkeying around as they get older, and according to a study published Thursday, so do monkeys.As anyone who has ever hung out with a grandparent, observed a retiring parent, or grown old themselves may know, many people get pickier with age.

 Some go to the same restaurants on the same days every week, some get cranky around too many strangers and instead of playing outside with the grandkids, some watch TV silently. While it’s pretty clear that monkeys aren’t humans — we’re distant relatives, separated by 25 million years of evolution — monkeys too, tend to become less social with age.

What Happened to Mr. Times New Roman?

Do people really need a graphic to figure out that one ton wild animals can cause them injury?

Jackson filmmaker Sava Malachowski, who has made several safety videos on topics as varied as avalanches and winter driving, believes Helvetica Man will convey his message to most Yellowstone visitors. Most visitors, but not all.

“If you string enough of them side by side, someone might pay attention to them,” Malachowski said of the flyer. “They had these posters for years and it didn’t stop the last guy from being gored.”

The origins of Helvetica Man stretch back to Austrian philosopher Otto Neurath (1882-1945) who created easily decipherable icons for international communication. His isotypes (International System of Typographic Picture Education) took official hold in the U.S. when the federal Department of Transportation looked to aid throngs of visitors celebrating the country’s bicentennial in 1976. The American Institute of Graphic Arts, a trade group, and others participated. Designers Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller nicknamed the figure Helvetica Man after a typeface that has a clean modern look.

Brexit and the Environment

And I thought the real damage was to my retirement plan. 

Despite being an issue that knows no borders, affects all, and is of vital interest to future generations, the environment was low on the agenda ahead of the United Kingdom's historic vote to leave the European Union.

The short answer to what happens next with pollution, wildlife, farming, green energy, climate change and more is we don't know—we are in uncharted territory. But all the indications—from the "red-tape" slashing desires of the Brexiters to the judgment of environmental professionals—are that the protections for our environment will get weaker.

The Brexit vote leaves it highly uncertain which protections will remain in place and the prospect of improving them seems remote. UKIP's Nigel Farage, the politician who did more than anyone to force the EU referendum, doesn't even think climate change is a problem and wants to scrap pollution limits on power stations.

Earlier legal action from the EU forced the UK to clean up its sewage-strewn beaches, while many of the protections for nature and wildlife across the nation stem from EU rules. Here again, the people whose job it is to safeguard these wonderful places and reverse the damage of the past think leaving the EU is a mistake: 66 percent say there will be a lower level of legal protection for wildlife and habitats against 30 percent who think it will improve.

The EU has also driven a revolution in recycling and waste. What will happen to that, according to the people who made it happen on the ground? Two-thirds of the professionals think it will go into reverse, with 30 percent saying it will stay the same and just 4 percent thinking it will improve.

Small Space = Small Animals

Makes sense, but proof was needed.

In 1964 a young biologist named J. Bristol Foster published a paper in which he suggested  that large mammals tended to evolve to smaller sizes after colonizing islands, and smaller mammals tended to grow larger. This generalization became known as the “island rule,” or “Foster’s rule”, but in the intervening 50 years this matter has remained a subject of debate.

Now, a group from Aarhus University, Denmark, says they’ve put the subject at rest. The researchers analyzed the size of living and extinct mammals from the last 130,000 years, or around the time humans began expanding and colonizing islands. They found the island rule is not a myth, but an evolutionary reality.

Whether big or small, both tactics come with innate advantages and disadvantages. Big creatures have a wider food choice and tend to dominate other species. You won’t ever see a mouse at the top of the food chain. Smaller creatures, on the other hand, require fewer resources, have generally shorter breeding cycles, and can adapt far quicker — all considerations very important in an island setting where ecosystems are limited.

Evolutionary Similarities

A bird's feathers, a reptile's scales, and a mammal's hairs may seem like very distinct features, but these skin appendages may come from common origins, say scientists.

The mechanism behind the embryonic development of feathers, reptilian scales, and hair is remarkably similar, according to a paper published Friday in the journal Science Advances. This finding suggests that these distinct appendages have their roots in a common ancestor of these three diverse lineages.

A hair, scale, feather, or even a tooth, grows out of an anatomical structure called a placode that forms in the top layer of the skin. When the signal is sent to a particular location in the skin to form a placode, the top layer of the skin begins to thicken in that place, as columnar cells that divide more slowly than normal form.

Scientists had spotted these placodes associated with feather and hair development in bird and mammal embryos, Michel Milinkovitch, one of the study authors and an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Geneva, tells the Monitor in an interview. But finding these structures in scaly reptiles was proving more of a challenge.

DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 24, 2016

Great Barrier Reef Conflict

Science and politics get confused in dealing with bleaching of the reef.  Difficulty defining the problem and determining a solution.

The El Nino-inspired doldrums that bleached a great swath of the northern Great Barrier Reef this summer have unlocked billions of dollars in funding to protect our great marine assets.

But the bleaching also unleashed long-simmering tensions over the quality of reef research, the way findings are explained to the community and policymakers — and the damage doomsday findings may do to tourism on the reef.

The stakes are huge and, as emotions swell with the bleaching, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority finds itself increasingly at odds with how the mes­sage was spun and “widespread misinterpretation of how much of the reef has died”.

What the latest coral bleaching makes clear is that the politics of the reef cannot be separated from the politics of climate change. The dominant view among coral scientists is that rising temperatures will make bleaching events more frequent, diminishing the reef’s ability to recover.

Bears Like Garbage Dumps – Who Knew?

Bears change their behavior based on the availability of food. 

University of Utah biologists working in Turkey discovered two surprising facts about a group of 16 brown bears: First, six of the bears seasonally migrated between feeding and breeding sites, the first known brown bears to do so. Second, and more sobering, the other 10 bears stayed in one spot all year long: the city dump.

The behavioral split between the two bear groups shows how dramatically the availability of food, particularly human-related food sources, can change bears' lifestyles. Understanding the difference in behaviors is key to designing conservation strategies among increasing human-caused fragmentation of the bears' habitats.

Today's visitors to U.S. national parks, especially Yellowstone and Yosemite, are confronted with the consequences of past visitors allowing bears to get too close to human establishments. Feeding the bears used to be a commonplace highlight of a Yellowstone visit. Up until World War II, the park even erected bleachers near park dumpsters so visitors could watch the bears come eat every night. Now, visitors are instructed to not even leave empty coolers in cars, because bears have learned to associate the boxy plastic coolers with a quick snack -- and may tear the door off to get to it.

Florida decides not to hunt down bears this year.   Asks residents to bear proof garbage cans instead.  

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission voted 4 to 3 Wednesday against a staff recommendation to hold a bear hunt in October 2016, after a controversial 2015 hunt killed 304 bears in two days.

Bear hunting had been illegal in the state since 1994, as The Christian Science Monitor reported in October, but a growing population caused the commission (the FWC) to schedule a seven-day hunt to kill as many as 320 bears. The temporary measure came after several attacks on Floridians' pets in recent years. Bears also commonly raid trash cans for food, and the FWC said the hunt was part of a bear management plan.

Recently, the FWC's announcement that it was considering holding another hunt started a fierce debate between hunters and animal rights activists.

Four incidents of bears directly interacting with humans and many raided trash cans led the state to re-consider the hunt. However, Laura Bevan, the Humane Society of the United States' southern region director, told the Monitor in April that the hunt would not properly address that issue.

"Problem bears in human areas are already dealt with harshly by officials," Ms. Bevan said. "The October bear hunt targeted bears in the woods, not the problem bears."

Instead of the hunt, the use of bear-proof trash cans is widely seen as a possible solution. Tracy Coppola, director of the Humane Society of the United States' Wildlife Abuse Campaign, told the Monitor although the trash cans are more difficult to use by trash collectors, they are already the norm in many Western states.

Other counties are following Seminole County's example: Lake County, for example, has now passed an ordinance requiring residents to use a bear-resistent container or lock up their garbage. Davis said Volusia County was also considering following in Seminole's footsteps.

Environmental Activist Is A Deadly Job

Extraction industries are brutal in the pursuit of profits.  Greed inspired murder.

More than three people were killed each week on average in 2015 trying to protect the environment from industrial activities, according to a new report published Monday (June 20, 2016).

The 185 reported deaths worldwide last year represents a 59 percent increase from 2014. The deadliest countries for environmental activists were Brazil, the Philippines and Columbia, with 50, 33 and 26 deaths respectively.

Almost all of the deaths were the result of people trying to defend their land from extractors of commodities such as mining, timber and palm oil.

Billy Kyte, a campaigner with Global Witness - the organization that compiled the report - says the rise is due to increasing demand for raw materials worldwide. As commodity prices fall, companies are taking greater risks to secure larger profits, encroaching into ever more remote areas that were previously out of reach - with cooperation of governments.

Octopus Intelligence
 

A creature that can do amazing things and even figures out how to escape from the aquarium.

…the octopus always comes to mind as the poster child for underappreciated brilliance. (Well, slime mold too, but that's another story.) Octopuses may not have come up with E = mc2, but good lord are they incredible. Can we change our skin to look exactly like the background in a split second, virtually creating a mechanical invisibility cloak? Can we taste with our fingertips? Can our arms perform cognitive tasks when severed from our body, or even still attached? These are just some of the amazing things in the octopus toolset.

DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 23, 2016

Ready to Burn

Sixty-six million torches in California’s forests.  It’s only June and California is a tinderbox.   The worst is yet to come.

The number of trees in California’s Sierra Nevada forests killed by drought, a bark beetle epidemic and warmer temperatures has dramatically increased since last year, raising fears that they will fuel catastrophic wildfires and endanger people’s lives, officials said on Wednesday.

Since 2010, an estimated 66 million trees have died in a six-county region of the central and southern Sierra hardest hit by the epidemic, the US Forest Service said.

California is in the fifth year of a historic drought, which officials say has deprived trees of water, making them more vulnerable to attack from beetles.

Kathryn Phillips, director of the Sierra Club California, said the die-off from drought should signal to policymakers the urgency of curbing pollution that contributes to climate change.

“This is a warning to all of us,” she said. “We need to cut our air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions more. We’re on the right path, but we need to accelerate our effort.”

Dogs - What Do With Do Without Them?

Bighorn sheep and mountain goats that tend to congregate on Logan Pass.  In Glacier National Park, bighorn sheep and mountain goats have become accustom to human contact and they are literally creating traffic jams on winding mountain pass roads. 

…congestion at Logan Pass filled him with anxiety. Tourists and wildlife don’t mix, and a recent mountain goat study conducted at Logan Pass showed that the goats are becoming habituated to people.

They’re spending more time further from the cliffs and in human company, Biel said, because humans provide a couple of benefits. First, large groups of people tend to ward off predators. Second, humans emit a lot of salt, through urine and sweat, which attracts the goats.

Having a dog there could convince them it’s not as safe as they thought, though Gracie’s job will be driving them off and stopping, not chasing them. This puts pressure on the wildlife without overly stressing them, Biel said.

Electrical Energy

Who do  has a better idea about the future?  Tesla or Exxon?

Big news today! Tesla Motors issued a public statement announcing “it’s now time to complete the picture” — in other words, the company famous for making the fastest electric cars the world has ever seen wants to buy the country’s biggest private solar energy provider, SolarCity. If the deal goes through, Tesla Motors will secure a sustainable energy behemoth comprised of electric cars (Tesla Motors), energy storage (Powerwall) and energy generation (SolarCity).

“We would be able to expand our addressable market further than either company could do separately. Because of the shared ideals of the companies and our customers, those who are interested in buying Tesla vehicles or Powerwalls are naturally interested in going solar, and the reverse is true as well. When brought together by the high foot traffic that is drawn to Tesla’s stores, everyone should benefit,” the statement reads.

Legal/Illegal – Dead is Dead

Pretending that legal ivory trade will reduce poaching is a huge mistake.

“We find that a singular legal ivory sale corresponds with an abrupt, significant, permanent, robust, and geographically widespread increase in the production of illegal ivory through elephant poaching, with a corresponding 2009 increase in seizure of raw ivory contraband leaving African countries.  The sudden 2008 increase in poaching does not correspond with any abrupt and systemic change in China’s or Japan’s affluence of influence in elephant range states, as measured by numerous covariates.”

‘Using trade to conserve wild species is a really complicated’

The report states, “findings demonstrate that partial legalization of a banned good can increase illegal production of the good because the existence of white markets may influence the nature of black markets.  Our findings are likely to extend to markets structurally similar to ivory markets, such as those for products from other slow-growing, slow-breeding, or low-population density species like rhinoceroses and tigers.” (©Solomon Hsiang and Nitin Sekar).

George Wittemyer, a Colorado State University associate professor of fish, wildlife and conservation biology said in an interview with Princeton University,  “Using trade to conserve wild species is a really complicated social issue and it’s hard to predict if it will be successful or not. The fact that you’re dealing with the persistence of a species means that if you make a mistake, and your assumptions are wrong, the cost can be extinction or large-scale extirpation. That to me is really important to consider and a paramount concern.”

"No Bill, No Break"

American democracy.  May be hope, yet.