February 15, 2021 - SYSKA (Stuff You Should Know About)

 

David Haring - Duke Lemur Center

Manatees and Dolphins Just Hanging Around in Florida

“Dolphins and manatees don’t interact super often, mainly because manatees spend a lot of their time in fresher waters than you find dolphins,” said Mike Heithaus, dean of Florida International University College of Arts, Sciences and Education and professor of the university’s department of biological sciences.

“There’s no particular reason they wouldn’t interact, but manatee numbers are down and that makes it less likely. The more unique part is to see that many manatees from a drone and it’s always cool to see dolphins swimming through them.

“If we are successful in rebuilding manatee populations to where they should be, we could see this more often. It’s a glimpse of what we could do with the oceans if we work really hard to restore them to what they used to be. The threats are still there and the population isn’t where it used to be.”

Post Valentine's Day Insight - Monogamy is a Mystery

To biologists, monogamy is somewhat a mystery. That’s in part because in many animal groups it’s rare. While around 90% of bird species practice some form of fidelity to one partner, only 3% to 5% of mammals do. The vast majority of the roughly 6,500 known species of mammals have open relationships, so to speak.

“It’s an uncommon arrangement,” says Nicholas Grebe, a postdoctoral associate in professor Christine Drea’s lab at Duke University and lead author of the paper, published in Scientific Reports.

Which raises a question: what makes some species biologically inclined to pair up for the long haul while others play the field?

Bitcoin Mining Requires More Energy Than Argentina

"Mining" for the cryptocurrency is power-hungry, involving heavy computer calculations to verify transactions.

Cambridge researchers say it consumes around 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) a year - and is unlikely to fall unless the value of the currency slumps.

Critics say electric-car firm Tesla's decision to invest heavily in Bitcoin undermines its environmental image.

The currency's value hit a record $48,000 (£34,820) this week. following Tesla's announcement that it had bought about $1.5bn bitcoin and planned to accept it as payment in future.

But the rising price offers even more incentive to Bitcoin miners to run more and more machines.

And as the price increases, so does the energy consumption, according to Michel Rauchs, researcher at The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, who co-created the online tool that generates these estimates.

Printing paper money is cheap in comparison and, as an added benefit, isn't a pyramid scam.

Hawaii's Beaches Are Being Washed Away

Property owners are legally only allowed to keep the emergency protections in place temporarily, but officials with Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources have liberally interpreted the term “temporary,” allowing walls of sandbags to remain in front of some properties for years, and even decades, after issuing repeated approvals or losing track of them, an investigation in December by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and ProPublica found.

Coastal scientists warn that the structures can be just as damaging to Hawaii’s beaches as seawalls, which have contributed to the loss of about one-quarter of the beaches on Oahu, Maui and Kauai. As waves hit an armored shoreline, they pull sand off the beach. In addition, the sandbags have blocked public shorelines, created eyesores along picturesque coastlines and littered beaches with heavy fabric and rope that gets torn and whipped around by waves.

Wealthy property owners are destroying the beaches for everyone in order to protect their personal investment in beach front property.  

Coastal Darkening - One More Disaster for our Oceans

LWM/NASA/LANDSAT/Alamy Stock Photo

“It’s affecting the quality of the sea we know,” says Oliver Zielinski, who runs the Coastal Ocean Darkening project at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. These “changes in the physics will lead to biological changes,” he adds.

Some of the causes behind ocean darkening are well understood: fertilizer enters the water and causes an algal bloom, or boats stir up light-blocking silt as they move. But other causes are murkier. During heavy rains, for instance, organic matter—primarily from decaying plants and loose soil—can enter the ocean as a brown, light-blocking slurry. This process is well documented in rivers and lakes, but has largely been overlooked in coastal areas.

February 14, 2021 - SYSKA (Stuff You Should Know About)

California Donut Bar, San Diego

OK.  This is a conservation blog, but today is Valentine's Day and for some reason my thoughts turned to love donuts.  So, today you get conservation and donuts.

51 Sites for your empty calorie fix:

"There's one thing that's really great about waking up early," the comedian Kathy Griffin apparently once said, "and it's not jogging or greeting the day – it's just that that's when they make doughnuts."

Today, doughnuts have become a kind of blank canvas for creative bakers, and are likely to be topped or filled with everything from bacon to jalapeños to foie gras. They’re even sometimes repurposed to serve as burger or sandwich buns – like the Krispy Kreme Sloppy Joes served at the Virginia State Fair. 

Personally, I would have voted for this "best" list to be population adjusted.  I can think of two equally great donut purveyors within minutes of my house - VGs in Solano Beach and Danny's in Vista.

California has always set the nation's trends:

That’s because as bad as California’s affordable housing problem is, it isn’t really a California problem. It is a national one. From rising homelessness to anti-development sentiment to frustration among middle-class workers who’ve been locked out of the housing market, the same set of housing issues has bubbled up in cities across the country. They’ve already visited Boise, Nashville, Denver and Austin, Texas, and many other high-growth cities. And they will become even more widespread as remote workers move around.

Now we Californians can take credit for blowing up real estate markets all across the nation.  Our housing shortage is soon to be yours.  You're welcome.

Trump Doesn't Believe Native American Religions Are Important

In its final days the Trump administration pushed through a controversial land transfer agreement that would give a 2,234 acre parcel of Arizona land to the mining group called Resolution Copper.  The whole process was rigged to insure that the incoming Biden Administration couldn't undo the transfer.  The losers are more than a dozen Native American tribes.  A federal court just ruled that the Apaches have to give up the site.

Called Chi’chil Bildagoteel in Apache, Oak Flat is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its spiritual and cultural significance to at least a dozen south-west Native American tribes. It contains hundreds of Indigenous archaeological sites dating back 1,500 years.

Oak Flat also sits atop one of the largest untapped copper deposits in the world, estimated to be worth more than $1bn. The mining operation will consume 11 sq miles (17 sq km), including Apache burial grounds, sacred sites, petroglyphs and medicinal plants.

“The immediate burden is total desecration of our religion,” said Wendsler Nosie in response to Logan’s decision. Nosie is a member of the San Carlos Apache tribe and leader of Apache Stronghold. He has been camping at Oak Flat for more than a year in protest against the mine. “After March 11, Chi’chil Bildagoteel will become private property and I will be subject to illegal trespassing for praying on my sacred homeland.”

Climate Change, Bats and the Pandemic(s)

"We estimate that, over the past century, climate change caused a significant increase in the number of bat species in the location where SARS-CoV-2 likely originated," study lead author and University of Cambridge researcher Dr. Robert Beyer told CBS News. "This increase suggests a possible mechanism for how climate change could have played a role in the origin of the pandemic."

Scientists think that the bat-borne viruses behind both SARS and COVID-19 emerged in China's southern Yunnan province as well as parts of countries immediately to the south. The researchers discovered that vegetation changes in this area over the last 100 years had led to the introduction of 40 new bat species and, with them, 100 new types of bat-borne coronaviruses, a University of Cambridge press release explained.

 

Will Wyoming Face the Future?

In Wyoming, a top fossil fuel energy producing state — much of which is done on federal lands — the executive order was met by fierce opposition from Wyoming leadership. All three members of Wyoming’s federal delegation have publicly condemned the executive orders and indicated that they will fight as hard as possible to push back through newly introduced legislation. Much is on the line — the jobs that support entire communities and most of the state’s tax revenues. As a laid-off Gillette coal worker stated to Reveal News in 2017: “This community is all rooted in coal, all the way down to the fast food. Everybody relies on the miners.”

However, there is also a growing number in Wyoming who recognize that the energy transition has arrived permanently, and that the best course forward is to plot out a new future. Louise Carter-King, the mayor of Gillette — Wyoming’s coal-producing epicenter — acknowledged as much and stated her desire to work with President Biden to help bring jobs to the community saying: “for one thing, he did say during his campaign ‘I will work with the blue states and the red states.’ Well, we are one of the reddest counties in one of the reddest states in the nation. We are ready to talk.” 

February 13, 2021 - SYSKA (Stuff You Should Know About)

Raphael Barbar / 2021 Sony World Photography Awards

Some items that have been sitting in the "in box" and some articles from today's conservation news clippings.

Just discovered and already endangered:

A 38-foot-long (11.5 meters) whale that washed ashore in the Florida Everglades in January 2019 turns out to be a completely new species. And it's already considered endangered, scientists say.

The discovery, detailed Jan. 10 in the journal Marine Mammal Science, also means that there are fewer than 100 members of this species living on the planet, making them "critically endangered," according to a statement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

At least the newly discovered Rice's whales don't face extinction anonymously.

Man bites dog in Idaho:

For nearly three decades, the region has been stuck in unending litigation and spiraling costs as salmon in the Columbia and Snake rivers decline toward extinction. But in a sweeping $34 billion proposal from an unlikely source, at an auspicious moment, comes a chance for a fresh start.

Could Congressman Mike Simpson, a Republican from a conservative district in eastern Idaho, have launched a concept that will forever alter life on the Columbia and Snake — and finally honor tribal treaty fishing rights in the Columbia Basin?

A Republican suggesting doing the right thing for both conservation and tribal rights.  Truly a "man bites dog story."

Will humans and Los Lobos share the land?

Mexican wolves help balance the entire ecosystem. They keep populations of both its prey and competitors — like pumas and coyotes — in check. And the remains of the animals they feed on in turn nourish scavengers, microorganisms and plants.

But the old enmity between "el lobo'' and the farmer hasn't gone away — particularly as wolves circle villages, venturing within a kilometer (0.6 miles) of human homes. Which is why the initiative is working to educate people about the benefits their canine neighbors bring, and encourage cattle breeders in particular to welcome them back.

46 wolves have been released and 35 are currently living in the wild. 

Did Appalachia's fracking boom create jobs? 

 Short answer - NO:

The fracking boom has received broad support from politicians across the aisle in Appalachia due to dreams of enormous job creation, but a report released on February 10 from Pennsylvania-based economic and sustainability think tank, the Ohio River Valley Institute (ORVI), sheds new light on the reality of this hype.

The report looked at how 22 counties across West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio — accounting for 90 percent of the region's natural gas production — fared during the fracking boom. It found that counties that saw the most drilling ended up with weaker job growth and declining populations compared to other parts of Appalachia and the nation as a whole.

Go big or why bother:

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything like the Australia-based company Sun Cable. Not only are they developing the “world’s largest solar farm and battery storage facility” – consisting of some 15,000 hectares of photovoltaic panels with a capacity of 10GW, as well as a 33 GWh battery storage facility. But they are also planning to dedicate a good chunk of that capacity (3GW) to offering dispatchable power that’s transported from Australia’s Northern Territory along a 4,500-kilometer high-voltage, direct current (HVDC) transmission system across the ocean to Singapore. If all goes well, by 2027 the project could be supplying as much as 20% of Singapore’s electricity needs and helping it to wean itself off from expensive natural gas imports.

Sure roof-top solar makes us feel good, but imagine what a solar/battery facility that takes up 58 square miles (150 km2) can do to make the planet feel better. 

Drought In California - Again

California is remarkable vulnerable to the impact of climate change.  The state's agricultural economy depends on water that is accumulated during the winter rainy season.  The northern and central areas of the state are dependent on snowfall from winter storms that build a deep snow pack in the Sierra Nevada mountains.  The southern part of the state is nourished by some of that water, but also depends heavily on snow pack build up in the Rocky Mountains that feed into the Colorado River.  The forecast for both mountain ranges and the rivers their snow pack feeds is bleak. 

Climate change has shortened California's rainy season by a month since the 1960s.  

This year, the state saw a very delayed start to its annual rainy season, which is typically heaviest from January to March. Wildfires sparked as late as January. It’s a sign that the window of time where rainfall and snow can add to the state’s water reserves is shrinking, says John Abatzoglou, a climatology researcher at the University of California, Merced – and that window may be even narrower in the future.

Most of the state’s water comes from an astonishingly low number of precipitation events – just three to five winter storms do the work of building up the snowpack and filling reservoirs. That makes California uniquely vulnerable. “In years where you miss out on one or two of those, you’re probably going to struggle to get close to normal,” says Abatzoglou.

Without water California's Central Valley, the most prolific agricultural area in the nation will become a dust bowl. Agricultural interests in the valley have long since increased their water demands beyond what seasonal rains and even the state's extensive reservoir system can support.  Instead they have pumped so much water from underground aquifer that the entire central valley is sinking.

For decades, farmers have relentlessly pumped groundwater to irrigate their crops, draining thick, water-bearing clay layers deep underground. As the clays compress, roads, bridges, and irrigation canals have cracked, causing extensive and expensive damage. In 2014, when NASA scientists flew radar equipment over the California Aqueduct, a critical piece of water infrastructure, they found that one section had dipped 20 centimeters over 4 months... Excessive pumping also jeopardizes water quality, as pollutants accumulate within groundwater and the clays release arsenic. Worst of all, the persistent pumping means that, one day, aquifers might run out of usable water. 

Southern California's dependence on the Colorado River watershed will once again create incredible stress on water resources in the most populous region of the state.  Population growth in the seven western states that depend on the Colorado River combined with the expansion of agricultural activity in regions of historical water scarcity are generating substantial demands on a system that depends on the same weather patters that have diminished Northern California's rainy seasons.   

A sobering forecast released this week by the Bureau of Reclamation shows the federally owned Lake Mead and Lake Powell — the nation’s two largest reservoirs and critical storage for Colorado River water and its 40 million users — dipping near-record-low levels. If those levels continue dropping as expected, long-negotiated agreements reached by the seven Colorado River Basin states in 2019 will go into effect, with water deliveries curtailed to prevent the federal government from stepping in and making hard water cuts.

The Bureau of Reclamation’s quarterly report was dire, showing Lake Powell at 42% of capacity and downriver’s Lake Mead at 40% capacity. And there’s not much water coming.

Climate change did not take 2020 off due to Covid-19.   

Stuck Out In The Cold

 

"Hare Ball".   Andy Parkinson / Wildlife Photographer of the Year

You can find this photo and many more here.

The Damage and Destruction Are Trump's Monument

Trump's wall along the US-Mexico border was a linchpin of his 2016 presidential campaign.  It was to supposed to be a signature achievement of his presidency.  There were however some significant issues with his wall.  First, everyone who studies the issue of people illegally entering the US realize that most enter the US through ports of entry not via cross country treks.  Second, building the wall would require substantial eminent domain actions by the US government against US citizens to take their border adjacent land to build the wall.  And, finally, despite Trump's exclamations to the contrary, Mexico would not pay for the building of the wall.  

What all of this meant was that the only quick and dirty wall building Trump could use as evidence of his promised "great wall" was in the refurbishment of existing border barriers and that new wall construction was mostly relegated to public lands along the border.  Public lands that included areas of substantial conservation and cultural value.  None of this mattered to Trump and his wall obsessed MAGAs.

“(The administration) really started to push out into remote, rugged terrain on public lands all across the borderline in Arizona, where the ecological value of those places is so much higher that the damage done by this construction is much more egregious,” said Randy Serraglio, Southwest conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity.

For months now, construction crews have been dynamiting, drilling, pumping, excavating and clear-cutting public land. In places like Guadalupe Canyon in far eastern Arizona, simply building roads to bring in construction equipment involved blasting mountainsides and sending the rubble down to clog drainages. Previously wide-open landscapes where wildlife and water could move freely have been severed by the huge steel barrier. The Sonoran Desert’s iconic saguaros, protected by law, have been found lying in heaps next to construction sites.

“This is damage that will not ever be remediated or mitigated,” Serraglio said. “This is permanent.”

Also posted at The Old Man and the Apocalypse. 

Pet Ducks Get Thirsty, Too

What better way to restart Just Save One than with word of a new Starbucks drink.

this is the best video i have ever seen pic.twitter.com/BYa8IWGipG

— justin (@jusdaydreamin) January 22, 2021