Five most viewed stories of 2019

The five most viewed stories of the year.

Oil Companies Soon to Promote Plastic Diet

Oil companies are facing a global slowdown in the demand for oil based fuels.  In response they are ramping up their production of oil based chemicals.  A significant factor in this ramp up are the petroleum based chemicals used in the production of plastics.  

"Are You Going to Close the Beaches?"

There are daily warnings that climate change is bringing on a new reality. Yesterday, the state of Mississippi demonstrated that new reality when it closed down the two beaches in the state that had remained open when the other 19 state beaches were closed over the last two weeks.

Ignorance is Winning

                                                                                                                         BBC

“We’re living in very strange times. The idea of being popular for being outrageous is coming from the leadership.”  Marcelo Gleiser, a Brazilian professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College in the United States

The president of Brazil surrounds himself with ignorant advisors so is it any wonder that in a country with a poor educational system and so much willful ignorance in its leadership that 7% of the population believes the earth is flat.  That any percentage of any population is so willing to throw away thousands of years of scientific understanding is frightening.  It is a trend that illuminates the rise of men like Bolsonaro and Donald Trump.  Ignorance is winning.

Backyard Tigers

It is difficult to determine why anyone would keep a tiger in their suburban backyard, but the tragedy is that there are more captive tigers in American backyards and seedy roadside zoos than there are in the wild globally.  Some of these pets are treated with the same care and love as any family pet, but many more are locked in cages or allowed to pad back in forth in converted dog runs for their exercise.  These captives have less protection than their endangered cousins in the wild.  A patchwork of state and local laws fail to protect them from horrible conditions, unscrupulous breeding practices and tragic neglect. 

The Vaquitas' Last Summer

                                                                                         University of St Andrews/PA

Vaquitas are the smallest member of the porpoise family. They inhabit a small area of the upper Gulf of California. Their total estimated population is between 6 and 19 individuals. They are likely to become extinct in the next 12 months.

Most viewed photos of 2019

The year's most viewed photos:

San Diego sunset from June.

Great Blue Herons - Melissa Rowell - from July.

Pangolin Peril from November.

Lions in Namibia from October.

Clouds - A Good Reason to Look Up from October.

Rescued from October.

Big Enough to Hug a Donut from August.

What Climate Emergency?

Welcome to Mallacoota a coastal town in Victoria, Australia.  This town with a population of just over 1,000, grows to 8,000 or more over the Christmas holidays.  This photo was taken at 9:45 in the morning.  Here's the report from the scene:

#Mallacoota is turning pinkish red. Still no flames visible from where I am but plenty of hot embers and the roar is undeniable. VicEmergency notifications are going wild.

"Thou shalt be free as mountain winds"

Wind turbine blades arriving in Wyoming                    WyoFile

Wyoming is coal country, but the winds of change are blowing there.

In a new 20-year plan, PacifiCorp will cut back on coal, focusing on wind energy development instead, with a $3 billion initial investment. It currently operates several large coal plants in Wyoming.

“We are committed to a low-emissions future, and so that is why you see us going toward this renewables portfolio,” said Spencer Hall, spokesman for PacifiCorp. “We, in the meantime, definitely need coal generation.”

In early October, the company announced its 2019 Integrated Resource Plan, with investments in new wind generation and transmission, while also adding significant new solar and storage resources.

Yes, The Predictions Were Accurate

The article is short on specifics, but the fact it appears in USA Today illustrates the extent to which the climate emergency is starting to make appearance in the media.

"What the models correctly told us 20 years ago is that if we continued to add fossil fuels at an increasing rate to the atmosphere, we'd see an increasing range of consequences, including a decline in Arctic sea ice, a rise in sea levels and shifts in precipitation patterns," Weather Underground meteorologist Robert Henson told USA TODAY. Overall, we're running quite close to the projections made in 2000 for carbon dioxide concentration, global temperature and sea level, Henson said.

Maybe in 50 more years the general public will realize that in 2019, we had all the information we needed to save the planet. 

That's A Lot of Birdseed

The world's most numerous bird species: Red-billed quelea (Quelea quelea) • population estimate 1.5 billion • flocks of several million birds that can consume up to 50 tons of seed in one day.  ---  Africa Geographic

The Holidays Are Almost Over

Post Christmas binge eating.

Now We Total the Costs

Once again we count the casualties and deal with the debris of the battles.  The War on Christmas leaves no one untouched.

Merry Christmas

It's the Damn Dam

Nature finds a way to survive all kinds of catastrophic events – except one.  Humans.  Beavers have been creating natural irrigation systems and firebreaks for millennia.  In might be time to turn some forest management back to natures dam builders. 

Fairfax found that vegetation along sections of a river without dams burned straight to the river’s edge. But for sections with a resident beaver, “essentially, the plants don’t know a fire is happening.” The channels dug by beavers acted like irrigation channels, said Fairfax, keeping vegetation too wet to burn, even during drought. In all, stretches of river without beavers lost 51% of their vegetation greenness, compared with a 19% reduction for sections with beavers.

Not Your House Cat

The black-footed cat (Felis nigripes), also called small-spotted cat, is the smallest African cat and endemic to the southwestern arid zone of Southern Africa. It is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List since 2002, as the population is suspected to be declining due to bushmeat poaching of prey species, persecution, traffic accidents and predation by domestic animals.  ---  Wikipedia

Prince of Peace

A manger scene juxtaposed against concrete blocks seemingly pierced by a mortar shell: with Christmas looming, the latest Bethlehem offering by secretive artist Banksy appeared Saturday in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Dubbed the “Scar of Bethlehem”, the baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph are backlit through damaged concrete, chiseled pockmarks exploding out from a gaping hole in four directions to approximate the Christmas Star.  --- Raw Story

Home for the Holidays

It was 4 a.m. when Jack Jokinen woke up to find his wife standing over him with unusual news: Their 1-month-old daughter was fine, his wife said, but there was an unfamiliar dog in their living room.

Jokinen, 34, said he figured there had to be some kind of misunderstanding. Perplexed, he walked downstairs Saturday morning and found an emaciated dog sitting in the middle of the floor — wet, shaking and visibly afraid.  ---  Washington Post

Sixes and Sevens - One More Mass Extinction

The history of life on our planet contains fossil records of a number of mass extinction events.  Planet wide catastrophic devastations of vast numbers of species.  As technology has improved to allow for more precise dating of these fossil records, the number and impact of these events is being refined.  A new study suggests that we are not facing the Sixth Extinction, but in fact just at the beginning of the Seventh Extinction.  Fossil records indicate that the so called "Big Five" of historical extinction events should actually include one additional event that wiped out a vast number of species, particularly marine creatures.  

At the time, the carnage of the end-Permian overshadowed another extinction event just eight million years earlier at the end of the Guadalupian epoch. Over the last three decades, though, geologists have been digging deeper into the end-Guadalupian, and it’s more widely recognized as a distinct crisis. Now, some scientists are arguing that this ancient die-off was big enough to rank among the pantheon of past apocalypses, and they propose renaming the group of major extinction events the Big Six.

One factor that to be consistent with these mass extinction events, whether they were caused by extra-planetary asteroids or planetary volcanism is oxygen-depletion of the oceans.  A condition that they have in common with our current anthropomorphic greenhouse warming.

In the past decade ocean oxygen levels have taken a dive—an alarming trend that is linked to climate change, says Andreas Oschlies, an oceanographer at the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, whose team tracks ocean oxygen levels worldwide. “We were surprised by the intensity of the changes we saw, how rapidly oxygen is going down in the ocean and how large the effects on marine ecosystems are,” he says.

The evidence becomes more compelling every day.  The very processes that sustain life on our planet are under attack and this time it is not some random rock from space or fire from below the planet's surface that are besieging the planet.  It is us - the most "intelligent" creature on the planet - we are the agents of another mass extinction event.

In the history of life, there have been many flameouts and setbacks. But by singling out and studying the biggest ones, geologists can begin to unearth patterns and search for common causes. Increasing evidence suggests that many global extinction events were associated with oxygen-depletion in the oceans, a symptom of greenhouse warming, and that has worrying implications for the present-day effects of climate change...

Santa Whooo!

"No joke, we just found a LIVE owl roosting in our Christmas tree. What?!?!?," Katie McBride Newman posted on her Facebook page on Dec. 12. 

The Chattahoochee Nature Center said Newman's daughter spotted it first. They had other owl-shaped ornaments on the tree, so they didn't notice it at first. But then, the owl turned its head.

Among the lights and ornaments, you could see it sitting there. Since that day, she has been documenting "OwlGate" on Facebook,  as they tried to encourage it to return to its natural environment.  ---  11Alive

"The Fate of Stuff"

Consumerism is the basis for the entire global economy.  We buy stuff, use it for a while, mostly throw the stuff away and buy new stuff.  Sometimes we keep the old stuff in our garage or rent space in a storage facility and pay to have it sit out of sight and out of mind. In his new book, Secondhand, Adam Minter takes a close look at what happens to all of the stuff with which we fill our lives for a while until we replace it with new stuff.  What happens to all the shinny new things we buy?

They end up in the landfill or the incinerator. I mean, there is no green heaven, if you will. Everything wears out eventually and everything gets tossed out. ... That's the fate of stuff. That's the fate of our consumerist societies. If we spend our time thinking this is going to be used perpetually, forever, even the best-made garment, the most robust smartphone, we're deluding ourselves a bit. Eventually, everything does have to die. ... It's sort of the ultimate story of consumerism and it's the dark side. We can't really delude ourselves into thinking everything lasts forever.

The only solution to avoid choking on the garbage that our stuff becomes is to buy less stuff and to make sure the stuff we do buy lasts as long as possible. 

Canadian Attacks US Soldiers

I blame Canada.  They are jealous of our great heath care.

Turkey Vultures

The turkey vultures that Manning watched in the Gulf Islands are part of a population that migrates annually to southwestern Canada and the adjacent United States from as far south as Venezuela and Colombia. The Atlas of the Breeding Birds of British Columbia estimates that up to 300 pairs may breed in the province.

The species’ ability to efficiently use their wings to glide the thermals allows them to travel vast distances across a variety of landscapes and temperatures. That makes them more resilient to climate change, with the potential to increase their northern range as temperatures warm.  --- Hakai

Greenland - New Worst Case Projection Needed

                                                                                                                                                 AIan Joughin/AP

The acceleration of ice loss in Greenland will require scientists to recalculate their forecasts for the timing and impact of climate change driven sea level rise.  Considering that a one centimeter (0.39 inches) rise in sea level would put six million more people in danger of increase flooding, the current melt rate would result in a 16 centimeters (6.3 inches) of sea level increase in global sea levels by 2100.

The recent Greenland losses, the experts suggest, match a more dire sea-level projection outlined by the United Nations' chief climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Under that high-end scenario, Greenland could contribute about 16 centimeters, or around half a foot, to ocean levels by 2100. 

"What that means is that really, the midrange scenario becomes what was previously the upper scenario, and they will have to invent a new upper scenario, because one currently doesn't exist," Shepherd said.

Greenland’s ice sheet is only part of the problem.  It’s smaller than the ice that covers Antarctica.

Hiding in the Snow

                                                                                                                                                   Anthony Madden

In winter, Rock Ptarmigan are white with dark eyes, bill, lores (area between bill and eye), and tail feathers. Breeding males have scarlet patches (“combs”) above their eyes. They remain white into midsummer, then molt into brown plumage with dark barring and dark tail feathers. The wings and legs remain mostly white. Breeding females are camouflaged with intricate dark and pale brown mottling, with some white in legs and wings.  ---  All About Birds

Ubiquitous Eucalyptus

The Eucalyptus tree may be Australia's most prolific export.  It's not as objectionable as the Aussies current obsession with coal exports, but there are many who view the Eucalyptus as a dangerous export none the less.

In the 1800's the fast growing Eucalyptus was imported into California to provide wood for buildings.  Unfortunately, the soft resin rich wood proved unsuitable for that purpose.  Eucalyptus ended up as wind breaks and later developers latched onto the tree as a quick way to green out new housing tracts.  

You can find groves of the trees all over the state (and the world for that matter).  As noted, its a fast growing and highly invasive tree that easily pushes out slower growing native trees and as it litters the ground with its shedding bark, it also limits the growth of native flowering plants.  

In California the battle over the Eucalyptus continues.

“They need to wake up in 2020."

After 14 days, two longer than originally planned, representative of nearly all the world' nations were unable and, in some cases, unwilling to come to any agreements regarding the reduction of green house gas emissions.  The "can" for actual action was kicked down the road an additional year.  The major dissension to any meaningful agreements came from the major sources of green house gasses - China, India and the United States.  Brazil and Saudi Arabia and Australia worked to weaken any efforts to create a global carbon market that would create a framework for systematic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Marathon international climate talks ended Sunday with major polluters resisting calls to ramp up efforts to keep global warming at bay and negotiators postponing the regulation of global carbon markets until next year.

The final declaration called on the “urgent need” to cut planet-heating greenhouse gases in line with the goals of the landmark 2015 Paris climate change accord. That fell far short of promising to enhance countries’ pledges to cut planet-heating greenhouse gases next year, which developing countries and environmentalists had lobbied the delegates to achieve.

The  only significant agreement reached was for the wealthy nations to provide financial support to poor nations to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change.  However, no additional funds were committed to this agreement, so it is equal to "thoughts and prayers."

Oltremare

Oltremare is a marine park in Italy.  I know people have strong opinions regarding marine mammal captivity, but this video has a very special beauty.

Choked by Plastic

The fossil fuel industry sees the writing on the wall regarding internal combustion engine powered automobiles, so they are aggressively pivoting to plastics.  They have filled the atmosphere with green house gases and now they are planning to choke the planet with plastics.

This is the biggest, most powerful industry in the world, which will keep developing ever more convenient and attractive ways for us to use more and more plastic. They are spending billions on new petrochemical capacity which will completely destroy any market that exists for recycled plastic. The Saudi Arabian oil company Aramco is now valued at two TRILLION dollars, the most valuable company in the world; that is how confident people are that this will continue.

The only way to stop them is to stop buying and using the products they are sealing in plastic.  These new plants will make recycling plastics more expensive than virgin material, so there will be no incentive to reuse material.  

Spy Puppy

There’s a new kind of spy animal infiltrating secretive groups. The wildlife film company John Downer Productions uses robotic facsimiles of animals to sneak into wolf packs, fool squirrels with nut cameras, and infiltrate monkey clans to record authentic representations of animal behavior. Watch as this robotic wild dog pup does fools his flesh-and-blood brethren.  --- Quartz

When Your Lunch Decides to Eat You

After hearing shrieks coming from the water on the north-western tip of Vancouver Island, employees at a fish farm investigating the noises happened upon a bird and cephalopod locked in battle.

The giant Pacific octopus, which had turned a deep crimson, had wound its tentacles tightly around the eagle, which was floating helplessly at the surface.  --- The Guardian

The United States - "a destructive player"

Since 2005 a group of climate advocacy organizations have published the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI).  The CCPI evaluates the comprehensive climate change activities and policies of 57 countries and the European Union and ranks their performance in four primary areas - “GHG Emissions” (40% of overall score), “Renewable Energy” (20% of overall score), “Energy Use” (20% of overall score) and “Climate Policy” (20% of overall score).  These 58 government entities are responsible for 90% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The Index is published by Germanwatch, the NewClimate Institute and the Climate Action Network. The CCPI’s unique climate policy section, evaluating countries’ national and international climate policy performance, is only possible through the continued support and contributions of around 350 climate and energy experts. We express our gratitude to these experts and greatly appreciate their time, efforts and knowledge in contributing to this publication. 

Each government entity receives a score and is ranked in these four areas and on an overall basis.  You can read the study here and see how each entity is scored, so I will just highlight the reports summary relative to the lowest scoring country in the overall index – the United States of America.  Yes, the world’s richest nation and largest economy is the worst nation in the index, a distinction driven in large part by the actions of the Trump presidency and the on-going efforts of the Republican Party. 

At international level, the performance completes the picture on national level, with the US acting as a destructive player in international negotiations on all levels. The very low performance is further underpinned by the Trump administration officially having started the process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, due to be finalised on 4 November 2020.

USA, USA, USA..... We win the race to the bottom.

What the Future May Hold

What does our future look like? Arup is an international engineering firm that delves deeply in the design of human systems.  Part of Arup is Foresight, a “think tank” that tries to envision the paths societies could potentially travel as a component of how engineered products and structures will fit into those societies.  One of their projects is the development of four potential futures for humanity by 2050.  These future scenarios range from enlightened global action to keep warming below 1.5 degrees to an edge of extinction view that posits a world like this: 

The Amazon rainforest is gone, sold to make cardboard for online deliveries. Natural resources are being extracted everywhere. "Geo-engineering and GMO crop development are the only way to feed the global population. Seeds are controlled by Holycrop, an American-based business, which monopolises the market." Domes are built over cities to enclose breathable air. "Isolationism has been on the rise for years, and society is driven by a fear of the ‘foreign’ and ‘different’. This has been exacerbated by an unheralded number of climate refugees. Economic disparity has increased dramatically.

There is a poll on the TreeHugger site that allows you to predict which is the most likely future for humanity.

Death and Life

                                                                                                                                                                     Photo: Dave Southwood

The brutal reality of drought-ravaged southern Africa. This elephant died from anthrax, which is prevalent during times of drought. The attendant scavengers, vultures and marabou storks, have evolved to be immune to infection. Boteti River, Botswana.  --- Africa Geographic

Helmet, Hats, Wings....

A treehopper with a helmet that looks like an ant.

…a trio of University of Connecticut biologists led by Cera Fisher has analyzed genetic data that could help resolve the helmet mystery once and for all. Their study, published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution, suggests treehopper helmets are indeed bits of thorax, not wings. But there’s a twist: The strange structures still rely on wing genes to grow.

“Treehopper helmets are just fantastic, and their morphological diversity is amazing,” says Kasey Fowler-Finn, an evolutionary biologist and treehopper expert at St. Louis University who wasn’t involved in the study. After nearly a decade of controversy, she says, “I think we finally have the real answer here.”  ---  Smithsonian

Canada Will Kill Us All for $

Do you think that by 2050 trials will begin for “crimes against humanity” and the first people in the dock will be the oil company executives and the politicians that did their bidding?  By then it might be too late to save the planet, but maybe the televised trials will give the survivors some measure of justice. 

Approving Teck Resources’ Frontier mine would effectively signal Canada’s abandonment of its international climate goals. The mega mine would operate until 2067, adding a whopping 6 megatonnes of climate pollution every year. That’s on top of the increasing amount of carbon that Canada’s petroleum producers are already pumping out every year.

Alberta’s oil sands produce one of the dirtiest oils on the planet, and they are the fastest growing source of carbon emissions in Canada. The industry is expanding rapidly and is already responsible for more carbon pollution than all of Quebec. Oil and gas is now the largest climate polluter in the country, exceeding all greenhouse gases from transportation. Even without Teck Frontier, there are 131 megatonnes per year in approved tar sands projects just waiting for companies to begin construction. No wonder the industry is on track to take up 53% of Canada’s emissions budget within the next 10 years.

Just a Small Thing

The transmission tower northeast of Paradise hadn’t been subjected to a “climbing inspection” since 2001, in violation of PG&E’s own safety policies, the PUC report said. “A climbing inspection of the Incident Tower during that time could have identified the worn C-hook before it failed, and ... its timely replacement could have prevented ignition of the Camp Fire.”  --- Fresno Bee

The Camp Fire killed 85 people, destroyed the town of Paradise and 18,804 structures and burned 153,336 acres.  PG&E has agreed to a $13.5 billion settlement that will compensate individual and government agencies for the damages and costs associated with a number of wildfires caused by PG&E equipment failures over the past four years.  There are things this money can't replace.  How do you compensate people for the loved ones lost?  PG&E failed the people of California, but insured that it's shareholders got dividends and that executives got big pay raises while cutting costs by skipping maintenance.