Continued
habitat destruction (Chinese oil extraction) and poaching (by oil installation
guards) will drive the species to extinction in the wild.
The Saharan Addax antelope has been pushed
to the brink of extinction by poaching and loss of habitat to the oil industry,
the international organization that tracks threatened species warned.
An extensive aerial and on-the-ground survey
in the antelope’s native region in Niger found only three specimens in the
wild, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reported.
“It is a desperate situation,” said
Alessandro Badalotti, coordinator for Save Our Species, an IUCN-managed body
that provides grants for the protection of highly threatened animals. “In the
current context, the species is doomed to extinction in the wild.”
It wouldn’t
be an extinction event without some Chinese involvement.
As recently as 2010, surveys concluded that
there were still some 200 Addax in the wild. However, a massive oil-extraction
installation set up by the China National Petroleum Corporation has proven a
double threat.
Giant lorries and bulldozers have ripped up
large swathes of the antelope’s habitat, reducing the land on which it forages
for sparse shrubs and herbs.
However, military personnel assigned to
protect the oil operation have also been poaching the animals in their last
haven, the Termit and Tin-Toumma National Nature Preserve, the IUCN said.
Yes, the
only hope for the Addax is a network of zoos.
What good are zoos – number infinity.
If there is still hope for the species, it
lies in coordinated captive breeding programs in zoos around the world, especially
in the U.S., Japan and Australia.
Silicon Valley Help
Can ecosystem entrepreneurs find a way to tap into the Silicon Valley start-up culture. And can these companies find funding for
growth when their primary aim is environmental improvement with profit coming
later?
It’s a familiar story: a group of Stanford
and tech-industry alums get together and found a startup accelerator. But this
venture wouldn’t focus on creating picture sharing apps or the next Uber. It
would foster the types of companies that address an issue largely left behind
by Silicon Valley: climate change.
An accelerator was never the group’s first
choice. They first experimented in hackathons, a White House Climate Data
partnership, and a CrunchBase-inspired platform called GreenBase. But the
four-man crew founded the Silicon Climate accelerator in late 2014 as they
identified the need for something that more directly empowered entrepreneurs to
turn their idealistic ideas into viable companies.
Some of their young companies have logical
paths to monetization. Zuli, a smartplug that reduces energy use that is
already in partnership with Google’s Nest, has a direct reduction in the
consumer’s bill. Likewise, GridCure uses big data to help utility companies
boost revenue through increased reliability and efficiency. Others, while they
have promise in long term environmental impact, struggle to make an argument
for venture capital investment.
Can’t Stop the Electrons
Renewable energy advocates have long warned
that grid parity — once it arrives — will transform the relationships between
consumers and utilities, and the power markets in which they operate. But,
despite these warnings, few utilities, regulators or policymakers have fully
appreciated just how rapid and far-reaching this technological revolution will
prove. Many have avoided engaging with this impending transformation, putting
it into the “too hard,” “not our business” or “irrelevant” categories.
Once it becomes economic over the long term
to install renewable energy and storage technology without subsidies, uptake
will accelerate beyond the control of incumbents and the authorities as the
free market takes over. This will have profound implications for electricity
markets around the world.
In both developed and developing countries,
utilities have clung to outdated business models and have been on the wrong end
of the spectrum with respect to renewable energy growth, suffering as a
consequence. State-owned power monopolies such as Mexico’s CFE and Eskom in
South Africa have only recently opened their markets to renewable energy
tenders. The big utilities in Japan have denied grid access to solar farms. And
Nevada’s utility, NV Energy, has recently won what is likely to be a Pyrrhic
victory against its own ratepayers over grid connection charges for solar
generation.
Birds are capable of extraordinary
behavioral feats, from solving complex puzzles to tool making. There may be
good reason for that. A new study shows that, pound for pound, birds pack more
neurons into their small brains than mammals, including primates.
Published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, this study is the first to systematically measure the
number of neurons in the brains of more than a dozen bird species, from tiny
zebra finches to the six-foot-tall emu. By doing so, neuroscientist Suzana
Herculano-Houzel and her team at Vanderbilt University discovered that avian
brains contain more neurons per square inch than mammalian brains.
This means that birds pack more brain power
per pound than mammals, offering an explanation for their remarkable cognitive
talents. What’s more, the study shows that evolution has found more than one
way to build a complex brain.
Climate Change or Just Weather
New on-line tools provides details on
weather events and links to climate change.
The site’s main page allows you to click on
a U.S. map that shows ongoing, recent and significant past events, including
heat waves, floods and other weather disasters as well as ecosystem shocks such
as wildfire and high-latitude ice loss. Click on an event and you get a brief
summary, together with a curated list of media reports and relevant research
findings. Each event also features a schematic “tree” that shows the chain of
physical and social processes running from greenhouse gases to the event. Some
of the trees are richly branched; others have as little as a single connection.
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