Daily Quick Read - August 23, 2019

Will Global Outrage Matter 

The Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro may turn out to be burned by the fires it is allowing to burn up the Amazon rainforest.  Brazil’s environment minister was heavily booed and hecked in the north-eastern Brazilian city of Salvador.  The public outrage in Brazil combined with the potential for international trade action against Brazilian agricultural products may result in an alliance between environmentalist and agrobusiness.  

The environment minister of Brazil, where wildfires have been sweeping the Amazon rainforest, was booed at a climate event on Wednesday as celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio and Ariana Grande joined an international chorus of criticism.

Salles flew over fires in the Amazon state of Mato Grosso – an agricultural powerhouse – on Wednesday, and told reporters that some of the fires were “intentional” and others “incidental”.

“Agribusiness sectors who know that this [rising deforestation] is going to create problems for market access, for product price, are beginning to mobilise,” Marcello Brito, the president of the Brazilian Agrobusiness Association, told Valor on Wednesday.

E-Rickshaws 

The electric vehicle revolution has hit India.  Drivers are still crazy and many of the e-rickshaws are illegal, but whenever they replace a fossil fuel powered vehicle it’s a small victory.

More than half of the shared three-wheeled taxis are technically illegal, and the drivers typically don’t have licenses. Accidents are common. Nearly all of the rickshaws are powered by lead-acid batteries underneath the passenger seats. And the electricity used to recharge them is often stolen.

“It isn’t safe at all,” said Suman Deep Kaur, who works at a credit agency and rides an e-rickshaw twice a day between the station and her home. “But this is the only conveyance that will get me home.”

Welcome to the front line of India’s electric vehicle revolution. It’s messy, improvised and driven by the people. The government and vehicle makers are now trying to gain some control over it.

About 60 million Indians hop on an e-rickshaw every day, analysts estimate. Passengers pay about 10 rupees, or 14 cents, for a ride. In a country with limited shared transit options and a vast population of working poor people, the vehicles provide a vital service as well as a decent living for drivers, who are mostly illiterate.

Does Trump Even Know What Humility Is?

The free world has at least one leader left.  For a little while.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is in Iceland for talks with leaders of Nordic countries. Climate policy is expected to dominate the agenda, and Merkel has called for 'humility' in our treatment of the environment.

Climate change is expected to be a key topic when German Chancellor Angela Merkel meets Nordic leaders in Iceland on Tuesday.    

Iceland's Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir is hosting a working lunch during which Merkel is expected to discuss climate policy and a range of international topics with the heads of government of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

"From the shift in mobility patterns to the issue of energy generation, I believe we face common challenges," Merkel said on Monday. The example of Iceland shows "that humankind must treat nature with care and show some humility," the chancellor stressed.

Who's The Most Dangerous Pest?

Hard to know which pests are worse for our forest, these insect or Trump and his Republican enablers.  Combine these invasive insects with drought weakened forests and the damage is magnified.  This Forest Survey study examines the impact of the insects only

In North America, forests account for an estimated 76 percent of carbon sequestration, or removal from the atmosphere and storage globally. "The key impact of the tree-killing alien insects and diseases is that they are greatly increasing the rate at which trees die on average," Liebhold said. "This transfers carbon stored in live trees to dead material and much of this carbon will likely return to the atmosphere."

More than 430 non-native insects and diseases have found their way to U.S. forests. Most of these species have little known effects on forests, however 83 have caused noticeable damage.

In their study, Fei and Forest Service scientists examined the impacts of these 83 known damaging non-native forest insect and disease species and estimated the rate at which live tree biomass has been killed by the 15 species that have had the greatest impacts on forests. Insects such as the emerald ash borer, gypsy moth, and hemlock woolly adelgid and diseases including Dutch elm disease, beech bark disease and laurel wilt disease are among the 15 most damaging non-native species.

As these insects and diseases continue to spread and tree mortality increases, the toll on forested landscapes and associated carbon storage will continue; the study suggests that 41 percent of the total live forest biomass remaining in the conterminous United States is threatened.

Jurassic Plants

When a Jurassic era plant that in Great Britain had been restricted to living indoors begins to act like the good old Jurassic days have returned, you have some botanical evidence of global warming.  Cycads are more commonly known as Sago Palms.  Despite not being related to palms, they have been around for millions of years and a couple of outdoor specimens are telling botanist that the times are changing – or at least the weather is.

Two cycads (Cycas revoluta), a type of primitive tree that dominated the planet 280m years ago, have produced cones on the sheltered undercliffs of Ventnor Botanic Garden on the Isle of Wight.

The species is native to Japan and usually only found indoors as an ornamental plant in Britain, but one of the garden’s plants has produced what is believed to be the first outdoor female cone on record in the UK.

Cycads previously lived in what is now Britain millions of years ago, with fossils of the plants found in the Jurassic strata of rock stretching from the Isle of Wight to the Dorset coast, an era when the Earth’s climate had naturally high levels of carbon dioxide.