Trump Believes in "weather" Not That Other Stuff

Apparently to Trump, global warming, climate change and extreme weather are all branding efforts used to sell a false concept.  Kind of like "Trump University" was a scam pretending to be an educational institution.  Trump can't conceive that global warming is driving climate change which is exacerbating extreme weather events around the planet.  

Dave Kettering, AP

Asked by Piers Morgan if he accepted the science on climate change, Trump said: “I believe there’s a change in weather, and I think it changes both ways. Don’t forget, it used to be called global warming, that wasn’t working, then it was called climate change. Now it’s actually called extreme weather, because with extreme weather you can’t miss.”

Existential Crisis or Chinese Hoax

Donald Trump has called climate change a "Chinese hoax".  These guys suggest it might be the end of civilization by 2050.  Who are you going to believe?

Apocalypse - Albert Goodwin (1903)

This scenario provides a glimpse into a world of “outright chaos” on a path to the end of human civilisation and modern society as we have known it, in which the challenges to global security are simply overwhelming and political panic becomes the norm.

"Master of the Sky"

Minden Pictures/Alamy

This is the story of the journey of a Golden eagle.  A 20 year physical and eternal spiritual journey.

Where in life she roamed the wild Idaho landscape, she continues her journey as Master of the Sky, where she flies higher and sees further than any other bird.

The eagle is a major social and religious symbol in Native American culture.  Golden eagles are revered by tribes across the nation, strong associated with native cultures of the Great Plains and Western mountains.  The feathers of Bald and Golden eagles are treasured possessions. 

These are not just ancient customs and rituals, they remain part of Native American culture today.  Native American students are often given an eagle feather when the graduate from high school and warriors (soldiers) are awarded eagle feathers when they return from Iraq or Afghanistan. 

Eagles are also endangered and under severe stress due to human activity.  Their numbers are dwindling, which impacts the availability to Native American tribes of feathers and even whole birds for religious and social ceremonial events.  To accommodate the tribes' need for these critical artifacts and protect eagles in the wild, the National Eagle Repository was established in the 1970s  by the U.S. Fish  and Wildlife Services.

 

Cats With Cameras

Cats behave differently when people aren't around.

Cats are seen as relatively lazy, especially compared to dogs. But we saw that when they were outside, they became superalert. They scanned their surroundings, sometimes for a half-hour or more on end. And even though cats are highly territorial, they didn’t always fight with other cats they encountered. Often, they just sat a couple of meters away from each other for up to a half an hour. They may have been sizing each other up. Sometimes they would engage in a greeting, briefly touching noses.

When they were in their homes, the cats spent a lot of time following their humans around. They liked to be in the same room. A lot of my students were surprised at how attached cats were to people.

Extinction Watch - Last Captive Male Sumatran Rhino Dies

Last week the last captive male Sumatran rhino died at the Tabin Wildlife Reserve in Borneo.  Estimates suggest that the entire population of Sumatran rhinos existing in the wild range between 30 and 80 individuals.  

Sumatran Rhino Rescue

On Sumatra, populations are thought to be isolated as their habitats have fragmented into smaller pockets due to deforestation. The result is inbreeding and means that genetically these sub-populations have a bleak future. 

Low population sizes, few rhinos living close together and the isolation of viable habitats have combined with fatal consequences for the Sumatran rhino. If females don’t regularly mate, they have a tendency to develop uterine cysts and growths. This is what conservation biologists refer to as an “Allee effect”: the lower a population becomes, the less successful individuals become at reproducing. Ultimately, this leads to an extinction vortex.

Conservationist believe that the only way to save this species is through the collection of as many of the remaining rhinos as possible into sanctuaries, where they can be protected and breeding managed.  This isn't an ideal solution, but considering the difficulty of protecting the limited population in the wild, sanctuaries appear to be the only way to preserve the species.

“This is our last opportunity to raise the profile of this lesser-known species of rhino and preserve over 20 million years of evolutionary history,” said Jonathan Baillie, executive vice president and chief scientist at the National Geographic Society. “Now is the time to take action together.”

The coalition hopes to build two new sanctuaries for them, one in Indonesian Borneo, and another in Sumatra. As of now, there’s only one, the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary, which was built by the International Rhino Foundation in Way Kambas National Park.

There, they hope to build on what’s been learned by past failures and successes when it comes to captive breeding of Sumatran rhinos, and hopefully more births will soon come.

There is a plan and a coalition of government and conservation organizations focused on this effort.  You can read about and donate to this cause at Sumatran Rhino Rescue.

Millions of Species May Go Extinct in Silence

In the next few decades it is estimated that one millions species will become extinct primarily due to human activity (including the impact of climate change).  There are an estimated eight million species on the planet, so we are looking at the loss of a staggering 12.5% of the species currently in existence.  

Species extinction happens out of sight and in silence.

It’s all connected, you see. A soil microbe disappears and maybe that loss contributes to a tree also dying off. That tree produced fruit, so the birds and monkeys that visited its seasonal buffet then suffer. After that the predators that eat the birds and monkeys disappear. Meanwhile we’ve lost the insects that pollinated the tree, the snails that helped break down its decaying leaves and branches, the snakes and lizards that ate the snails and insects, and probably more microbes along the way.

It’s an organic game of Jenga. Remove enough parts of the system and the entire thing threatens to collapse.

Graph - Climate Emergency Institute

If you  assume that one million species will become extinct by 2050, on a linear basis that means that approximately 90 species per day for the next 30.5 years.   Ninety species per day - you would think that would make it into the media.  Of course many of those species will be organisms that most people don't even know exist.  If you assume extinction as a non-linear event, with the number of species lost increasing over time as the Jenga blocks that hold up the whole structure of nature begin to collapse. Perhaps in 10 or 20 years, when the wholesale disappearance of the natural world becomes inescapably obvious, the urgency of the situation will become apparent.  Sadly, by then it will be too late.

Lots more data available here.

Endangered Asiatic Lions - Bristol Zoo (UK)

Kamran

Two years ago the Bristol Zoo in the United Kingdom had two male Asiatic lions - Ketan and Kamran.  Today both of the six year old brothers are gone - Ketan passed away on May 29 shortly after his brother Kamran was moved to the Tehran, Iran on May 1.  The Asiatic lion is the most endangered of all large cat species.  There are only an estimated 500 Asiatic lions remaining in the wild concentrated exclusively in the Gir Forest in western India.  

Ketan

Just prior to Ketan's passing, Bristol had acquired a four year old female, Sonika, as part of the zoo's Asiatic lion breeding program.