DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 17, 2016

Not All Coral Reef Are Dying

Some reefs are unexpectedly thriving and not because they are isolated and uninhabited.  On the contrary many of the healthiest coral reefs are at the center of human communities who work diligently to care for the reefs, because the health of the reef is critical to the success of the community. 

Amid the gloom and tears, Cinner and his colleagues went searching for bright spots. Mimicking Sternin, they looked for reefs that house more fish than expected, relative to other reefs facing comparable pressures. And their surprising results are upending traditional assumptions about what makes a healthy reef.

Contrary to what you might think, the bright spots weren’t all remote reefs, where humans were absent or fishing was banned. Instead, most were home to lots of people, who rely heavily on the corals and who frequently fished. They weren’t leaving the corals and fish alone; instead, they had developed social norms and institutions that allowed them to manage the reefs responsibly.

…people in the bright spots were dependent on the reefs, were engaged in managing them, and did so via taboos and institutions. Consider Karkar Island at Papua New Guinea. The local people practice marine tenure—a system of oceanic property rights, where villages can exclude their neighbors from accessing their particular plot of sea. They also rotate their harvests, closing off patches of reefs for months or years. (They do so to give the fish time to lose their fear of humans; coincidentally, the practice also allows fish to recover.)

Communities working to preserve nature because it is their best interests.  It works and needs to be nurtured.

Mobile Phones Wreaking Havoc

South Africa’s parks struggling with mobile phone driven apps causing traffic havoc.

Tourists are using mobile phone apps that allow users to share tips on animal sightings in South Africa’s national parks, and that’s a cause for concern, according to park officials.

South African National Parks is looking for a way to shut down such apps, claiming they “induce an unhealthy sense of eagerness for visitors to break the rules.”

“As an organization, we appreciate the fact that technology has evolved and that guests are taking advantage of it,” Hapiloe Sello, SANParks managing executive of marketing, said in a statement. “However, this is compromising the values of good game viewing in national parks.”

Parks officials said that since people starting using these mobile apps, incidents of speeding, wildlife roadkill, and road rage have all increased around animal sightings.

Brexit – Great Britain Leaving the European Union (EU)

We’re not sure of the ramifications of a British exit from the EU (Brexit).  Lots of indications that they will be detrimental for the British and possible for the world economy.  Based on the following polling data, what is clear is that many of the people in favor of abandoning the EU are identical in philosophy (and ignorance) to those in the United States who support Donald Trump.  To quote Dean Wormer…”fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.”

British people backing a leave vote in the EU referendum are almost twice as likely to believe that climate change does not have a human cause, according to a new poll.

Brexiters are more likely to think the media exaggerates how settled climate science is; distrust scientists; have sympathy with creationism; oppose onshore windfarms and support fracking.

The polling also found 44% of leavers thought scientists had too much influence on British politics against 25% of remainers, and 46% of leavers agreed that people who question the theory of evolution “have a point” compared to 36% of remainers.

On energy, leave voters were more likely to oppose onshore windfarms in rural areas (36% versus 21% of remain voters), and more likely to support increasing the use of fracking to extract shale gas (40% versus for 35%).

“It’s disheartening to see that so many people still refuse to acknowledge clear scientific knowledge, thereby undercutting the efforts of Britain’s world-leading scientists,” said Assaad Razzouk, CEO of cleantech firm Sindicatum Sustainable Resources, who commissioned the poll.

“Climate change denialism and anti-evolutionism are obvious hindrances to productive discussions about the future of Britain, Europe and indeed the world.”

Find Your Bank In This Report

Major banks continue to fund environmentally damaging coal, oil and gas projects that make meeting global warming limits nearly impossible.  And, the banks apparently have no concern for the human damage that these projects will cause.

In the past three years, the North American and European commercial and investment banking sector has engaged in fossil fuel financing practices that are deeply at odds with the global climate agreement reached at COP 21 last December.  The Paris Climate Agreement’s target of limiting warming to 1.5°C (or, at most, 2°C) above pre-industrial levels will require a rapid decarbonization of the global energy system. Distressingly, levels of fossil fuel financing by major North American and European banks between 2013 and 2015 are incompatible with these climate stabilization targets…

These “sacrificial” communities include towns near blasted off Appalachian mountaintops, coastal regions off the Gulf exploited for export terminals and offshore drilling, First Nations whose lands and waters are contaminated by tar sands mines in Canada, and communities from Poland to Indonesia to Bangladesh who breathe contaminated air and drink contaminated water from smokestacks, oil spills, and other routine disasters caused by fossil fuel infrastructure. And with global greenhouse gas concentrations rising steadily, the atmosphere itself and acidifying oceans are also becoming

sacrifice zones, with devastating consequences for low-lying island nations and coastal communities worldwide.

Speaking of Environmental Damage

Fracking is becoming a serious political issue in the United Kingdom (UK).  The shale gas companies are looking at very questionable practices and regulators and politicians are working hard to hide the details.

A UK shale gas company is considering dumping waste water from fracking in the sea, emails from the company show.

Ineos, which owns the Grangemouth refinery and holds 21 shale licences, many in the north-west, North Yorkshire and the east Midlands, has said it wants to become the biggest player in the UK’s nascent shale gas industry.

Dr Paul Johnston from the Greenpeace Science Unit argued that discharging “huge quantities of water loaded with metals and radioactivity and chemical constituents” into “sensitive marine environments” is “a retrograde step as far as environmental protection”.

But the industry said the water could be treated and disposed of safely.

Much as in the United States, hiding the dangers of fracking from the communities where wells are installed is the standard mode of operation.  Pressure is growing on the UK government to release a report into the impacts of shale gas fracking on the UK's carbon emissions.  So far....no report.

The Committee on Climate Change, which advises parliament on meeting the UK’s carbon targets, submitted the report in March. It covers the expected impact of exploiting the UK’s onshore oil and gas resources on nationally set greenhouse gas targets.

It can only be published when the secretary of state for energy has responded.

Green activists suspect that ministers are wary of the potentially explosive impact of the report, which is likely to find that fracking would be an addition to the UK’s carbon dioxide output, if pursued to the extent that ministers support. As well as being a wholly untapped new source of fossil fuel, and thus carbon, fracking has also been found to release more carbon than conventional oil and gas exploration, because of the difficulty of production and the dangers of leakage.