Article links: drop them here!

[kassy]

Pre-Inca Canal System Uses Hillsides as Sponges to Store Water

...

A team of hydrologists, engineers, and social scientists is hoping to strengthen the water security of Lima and other Peruvian cities through analysis of a 1,400-year-old nature-based system developed by pre-Inca mountain communities. The technique uses a canal system that diverts water from streams to small ponds or spreads it over rocky hillslopes that act as natural sponges. This slows the flow of water down the mountains, preserving it into the dry season.

The team’s analysis determined that if the system were scaled up to its maximum capacity, it could divert, infiltrate, and recover up to 100 million cubic meters of water and increase the region’s dry-season water volume by up to 33%. Lead author Boris Ochoa-Tocachi of Imperial College London presented the team’s findings at AGU’s Fall Meeting 2019 in San Francisco, Calif.

Quantifying the Benefit of Green Infrastructure
https://eos.org/articles/pre-inca-canal-system-uses-hillsides-as-sponges-to-store-water

[blumenkraft]

Moscow admits it will be severely troubled by climate change, but a reduction of fossil fuels extraction is out of the question

Link >> https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/ecology/2020/01/moscow-admits-it-will-be-severely-punished-climate-change-reduction-fossil-fuels

[kassy]

Evolving landscape added fuel to Gobi Desert's high-speed winds

...

The Hami basin may once have been covered in a fine, light-colored sediment, similar to California's Death Valley. Within the past 3 million years, however, strong winds carried away those fine sediments, leaving behind a sea of gray and black rocks.

Using a weather and forecasting model, Abell and his colleagues studied how this change from light to dark landscape affected wind speeds in the basin. By absorbing more sunlight, the darker stones exposed by wind erosion heated up the air within the depression. The team found that the resulting differences in temperature between the depression and the surrounding mountains increased wind speeds by up to 25 percent. In addition, the amount of time the area experiences high wind speeds increased by 30 to 40 percent.

Thus, by changing how much sunlight the ground absorbs, wind erosion appears to have exacerbated wind speeds in this region. It's the first time this positive feedback loop has been described and quantified, said Abell.

But it's probably not the only example of its kind. The researchers think this interaction may have helped to shape other stony deserts in Australia, Iran, and perhaps even on Mars.

...

Climate models typically do not account for changes in the reflectance of landscapes other than those caused by ice and vegetation. They also tend to assume arid landscapes remain unchanged over time. That could be problematic in some cases, said Abell.

"If you wanted to calculate the wind or atmospheric circulation in this area 100,000 years ago, you would need to consider the change in the surface geology, or else you could be incorrect by 20 or 30 percent," he said.

He added that the newly discovered relationship could also help to accurately model how other landscape changes, such as urbanization and desertification, influence atmospheric patterns by changing the reflectance of the Earth's surface.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200108131731.htm

[kassy]

There's a 'Desert' in The Middle of The Pacific, And We Now Know What Lives There

...

Despite taking up 10 percent of the ocean's surface, the South Pacific Gyre (SPG) – the largest of Earth's five giant ocean-spanning current systems – is generally considered a 'desert' in terms of marine biology.

Nonetheless, stuff does live there, even if organic life in these waters (and the seabed below it) is few and far between, due to a range of factors.

These include distance from land (and the nutrient matter it provides), the way water swirling currents isolate the centre of the gyre from the rest of the ocean, and high UV levels in this part of the ocean.
...
During a six-week expedition aboard the German research vessel FS Sonne from December 2015 to January 2016, a crew led by the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology sailed a 7,000-kilometre (4,350 miles) journey through the SPG from Chile to New Zealand.

En route, they sampled the microbial populations of the remote waters at depths between 20 to 5,000 metres (65 ft to 16,400 ft), using a newly developed analysis system that enabled the researchers to sequence and identify organic samples en route in as little as 35 hours.

"To our surprise, we found about a third less cells in South Pacific surface waters compared to ocean gyres in the Atlantic", said one of the researchers, microbial ecologist Bernhard Fuchs, back in July 2019.

"It was probably the lowest cell numbers ever measured in oceanic surface waters."

Among the microbes the team found, 20 major bacterial clades dominated the lot. These were mostly organisms scientists have encountered in other gyre systems, such as SAR11, SAR116, SAR86, Prochlorococcus, and more.

...

One of the populations identified, called AEGEAN–169, was particularly numerous in the surface waters of the SPG, whereas previous research had only discovered them at 500-metre depths.

"This indicates an interesting potential adaptation to ultraoligotrophic [low in biological productivity] waters and high solar irradiance", said one of the team, microbiologist Greta Reintjes.

"It is definitely something we will investigate further."

https://www.sciencealert.com/there-s-a-desert-in-the-middle-of-the-pacific-and-we-now-know-what-lives-there

[Tor Bejnar]

Cross post:  I thought this might go here...

I don't know if this is the right thread for this web, happy to move it somewhere else.

NASA free software. More than 600 programs for very different subjects. Have a look!

https://software.nasa.gov/

[kassy]

Even low particulate matter pollution is bad for the heart, says study

There is a 1%-4% increased risk of cardiac arrest associated with every 10 µg/m3 increase in PM2.5, the fine particulate matter linked to a slew of respiratory diseases and cardiac ailments, according to report in the latest edition of Lancet Planetary Health. The study analysed a quarter of a million patients and was among the largest of its kind. It sought to proffer evidence that even low levels of particulate matter pollution are dangerous.

“Our study supports recent evidence that there is no safe level of air pollution — finding an increased risk of cardiac arrest despite air quality generally meeting the standards,” Professor Kazuaki Negishi, co-author and Professor, University of Sydney School of Medicine, said in a statement.

...

The records analysed were from Jan 1, 2014, to Dec 31, 2015. The scientists chose Japan because it had consistent and detailed measurements of cardiac events as well as pollutant records. A key objective of the study, the authors said, was to investigate a link between cardiac events and exposure to pollution levels that were within, or below, World Health Organisation (WHO) standards.

“More than 90% of (cardiac events) in our study occurred with PM2·5 levels lower than the WHO guideline and Australian standard daily average concentration of 25 μg/m3, while 98.5% of them happened at levels lower than the Japanese or American daily standard level of 35 μg/m3,” the authors note.

https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/even-low-particulate-matter-pollution-is-bad-for-the-heart-says-study/article30678268.ece

or

There is an increased risk of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest even from short-term exposure to low concentrations of dangerously small particulate matter PM2.5, an international study has found, noting an association with gaseous pollutants such as those from coal burning, wildfires/bushfires and motor vehicles. The authors call for a tightening of standards worldwide; the findings also point to the need to transition to cleaner energy.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200128115421.htm

[kassy]

These corporations are quietly bankrolling Congress' top climate denier

Amazon has donated $8500 in the 2020 cycle to support the reelection of Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the most powerful and outspoken climate denier in Congress. Amazon's most recent donation to Inhofe, $2500, came on December 31, just two months after Bezos' climate announcement.

Google: $10,000 in donations to Inhofe

Microsoft: $2500 in contributions to Inhofe

Dell: $7500 in contributions to Inhofe

General Electric: $15,000 in contributions to Inhofe

https://popular.info/p/these-corporations-are-quietly-bankrolling

[pikaia]

What does a 9 inch ice core sound like when dropped down a 450 foot hole? 

https://twitter.com/blueicehiggins/status/1225852974813110277

[kassy]

Interesting sound. The Peter Neff reply goes into more detail on the sound.

Long ago when we had ice and i had ice skates i liked listening to the sound of all the people skating by just lying down on the ice and listening. Of course this only sounded like the earlier part since we did not have holes like that. Only shallow ones with ducks. 

[blumenkraft]

Why does ice make that sound?

Link >> https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/why-does-ice-make-that-sound-314912/

[kassy]

Intersting article but no obvious thread for it.

Hydropower dams cool rivers in the Mekong River basin, satellites show

Using 30 years of satellite data, researchers discovered that within one year of the opening of a major dam in the Mekong River basin, downstream river temperatures during the dry season dropped by up to 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C).

...

The researchers used Landsat satellites to track changes in surface water temperature for the Sekong, Sesan and Srepok rivers. The satellites capture the heat, or infrared radiation, from the rivers.

"With these data, we're looking at the temperature emissions from the rivers. It's like night vision: Warmer things give off more emissions, colder things give off less," said lead author Matthew Bonnema, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who completed this research as a UW doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering. "These satellites have been predominantly used over land, not water, because you need to be looking at a big enough area. But there's almost 40 years of Landsat data that works great for large rivers that people are only recently starting to take advantage of."

...

"At the beginning of the wet season, the dams start to have more water than they can store, so they're letting it go in a controlled way," Bonnema said. "As the wet season goes on they're like, 'OK, let's fill up the reservoir' and hold the water. Then when dry season comes, they have this big water supply that they let out over the course of the dry season.

"If you look at the river flows after a dam goes in, you end up with more water in the dry season and less water in the wet season than before. The dry-season water also happens to be colder because it's pulled from deep within the reservoir. That brings the river temperature down closer to what it is in the wet season."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200214134657.htm

[wdmn]

Remembering Earth
Part 1: The White Horse of Globalism

https://wawa-news.com/index.php/2020/02/17/remembering-earth-the-white-horse-of-globalism/

[kassy]

Also see #242 and #244 for related articles

We need to address streaming’s massive carbon footprint

...

According to a new report released by Netflix, the platform’s “global energy consumption increased by 84% in 2019 to a total of 451,000 megawatt hours; enough to power 40,000 average US homes for a year.”

It’s time for society to confront the fact that we’re burning through huge amounts of energy to stream television and movies, game online, hold video conferences, and power voice assistants like Alexa or Siri – and to support the technology infrastructure behind those services.

....

Data centers are the Internet’s back office. They’re the invisible engines that power everything we do online. Eight million of them run full tilt 24/7 to meet our insatiable, global demand. These are massive complexes lined with row after row of servers, and much of the energy these farms use goes toward cooling these processing machines.

To temper all that extra heat, companies build them in colder regions – in countries like Iceland, Ireland, Finland, and Canada. Even so, they use more than 200 terawatt hours a year worldwide, the equivalent of Australia’s annual electricity consumption. For a country like Ireland, that means devoting one-third of all national electricity to data-center operations by 2027.

The developed world’s irreversible and seemingly insatiable streaming appetite means these numbers are still tracking upward. In fact, global data transfer and the infrastructure needed to support it has surpassed the aerospace industry (2.5% of global totals) in terms of carbon emissions (nearly 4% of global totals). Which begs the question: What happens as developing countries begin catching up?

...

According to Cisco, 60% of the world’s population will be online, with video making up more than 80% of all internet traffic, by 2022. A recent study from Electronic Entertainment Design and Research found that the emissions created by gaming in the U.S. is roughly equivalent to introducing five million additional cars on the road. The environmental implications span every type of streaming and online activity – and the impact is immediate.

There are steps individuals can take today to make a difference in the near future as we speed toward 2030, a year singled out by the United Nations as a global deadline for climate action. According to Harvard Law School’s resident energy manager, turning down the screen brightness on devices used for streaming from 100% to 70% can reduce total energy consumption by 20%. Online gamers and people who stream other forms of entertainment from their devices, like the Roku TV or an iPhone, should consider turning off systems completely when not in use. People who plan to rewatch the content they stream should consider downloading or finding other ways to move the content offline during viewing experiences.

...

For instance, YouTube could reduce its annual carbon footprint by the equivalent of about 300,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide if it only sent sound to users who are actively watching programming (versus having a web tab or dormant mobile application open).

https://venturebeat.com/2020/02/22/we-need-to-address-streamings-massive-carbon-footprint/

[TerryM]

Thanks kassey!
I had no idea that the servers were using anywhere near that amount of energy.


Are there any plans to place limits, or is this simply a "feature" of our connected, multinational world.
Terry

[oren]

It would seem that this is partially (or wholly?) offset by the saving from reducing trips to the movies, to the mall, just driving around to relieve boredom, and other various forms of "offline" consumption.
But yeah, a sound-only mode for Youtube would be a real saving.

[blumenkraft]

Podcasts are a thing!

[kassy]

It is all the modern things we take for granted. Similar to people ordering crapand then complaining about delivery vans being in the way in the streets because all the neighbours order crap too.

Do we need it? Could you not just get it locally (if you had say a cafe the local merchant might come in and have a drink the guys from the China webshop not so much).

 

[wdmn]

Remembering Earth
Part 1: The White Horse of Globalism

https://wawa-news.com/index.php/2020/02/17/remembering-earth-the-white-horse-of-globalism/

Remembering Earth, Part 2: The Red Horse of Nationalism

https://wawa-news.com/index.php/2020/02/24/remembering-earth-the-red-horse-of-nationalism/

[kassy]

Really cool long article:

How boulders in Mongolian mountains reveal the pace of climate change

...

Eventually, we dug out both cars and got Joyner to a hospital. But this isn’t a story about a road trip gone wrong or an undergraduate who got sick. This is a story about teamwork and hardship, and the people who dedicate their lives to traveling around the world in the hope of fitting a small piece into a much larger scientific puzzle. This is a story about what it takes to research climate change.

...

Before each trip, Putnam and his team search for locations around the globe where they know glaciers expanded during the peak of the last ice age. They find these locations by searching for moraines—landforms carved into the landscape by glaciers. Imagine setting a chunk of Play-Doh on a table and sticking your hand flatly in the center. As you add pressure, the dough under your hand sinks while the outer dough oozes up, creating a handprint. That’s similar to what happens to the earth as a glacier expands. It sits heavily on the flat ground or mountain side, pressing the surrounding landform upward, causing divots to form. Debris adds to the rising landscape with boulders and other sediments that get picked up by the glacier. When the climate warms and the glacier melts, receding from the outer edges in, these landforms remain, like the handprint in the Play-Doh. Some of the world's largest of these handprints are now called the Great Lakes.

Thousands of years later, Putnam and Strand travel to such moraines to chip samples from the rocks that remain and then use a special chemical method to determine how long ago the glacier left them where they sit today. Using this calculation and identifying the distance between the debris position and where the glacier stands now allows them to determine the rate of warming in each region in past times, as compared to today.

...

The samples they’ve already studied from trips around the world hint that the shift in climate was not only synchronous in both hemispheres, but also occurred at a much faster rate than many previously suspected. “We had always had this conception that it was a slow process, but as we acquire more data, we developed a clearer picture of how glaciers behaved, and we realized that it was a really sudden event,” said Putnam. “It was so fast that you would have noticed it.”

https://thebulletin.org/2020/02/how-boulders-in-mongolian-mountains-reveal-the-pace-of-climate-change/

[blumenkraft]

Individuals who hold anti-intellectual views become more likely to oppose scientific consensus views (on issues such as climate change, nuclear power, GMOs, and water fluoridation) if they are informed about what the scientific consensus is on those subjects.

Link >> https://academic.oup.com/poq/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/poq/nfz053/5758079

[wdmn]

Remembering Part 3: The Black Horse of Hunger

https://wawa-news.com/index.php/2020/03/02/remembering-earth-the-black-horse-of-hunger/

Remembering Earth
Part 1: The White Horse of Globalism

https://wawa-news.com/index.php/2020/02/17/remembering-earth-the-white-horse-of-globalism/

Remembering Earth, Part 2: The Red Horse of Nationalism

https://wawa-news.com/index.php/2020/02/24/remembering-earth-the-red-horse-of-nationalism/

[wdmn]

Remembering Part 3: The Black Horse of Hunger

https://wawa-news.com/index.php/2020/03/02/remembering-earth-the-black-horse-of-hunger/

Remembering Earth Part 1: The White Horse of Globalism

https://wawa-news.com/index.php/2020/02/17/remembering-earth-the-white-horse-of-globalism/

Remembering Earth, Part 2: The Red Horse of Nationalism

https://wawa-news.com/index.php/2020/02/24/remembering-earth-the-red-horse-of-nationalism/

Remembering Earth Part 4: The Pale Horse of Death

https://wawa-news.com/index.php/2020/03/10/remembering-earth-the-pale-horse-of-death/

[kassy]

We climate scientists won’t know exactly how the crisis will unfold until it’s too late

...

This long period of stability seems to have ended already. Australia’s climate had been warming rapidly for many decades, and eventually the moment came when record-breaking extreme heat coupled with an exceptionally dry period created the conditions for a series of mega fires.

In all, the fires burned more than 20% of temperate broadleaf forests in New South Wales and Victoria, compared to less than 2% in a typical season. Many of the forests may never recover to their previous state. Other ecosystems may contain similar tipping points.

Predictive models are the lifeblood of climate science, and the foundation upon which political responses to the climate and ecological crisis are often based. But their ability to predict such large-scale disruptive events is severely limited.

For example, the massive scale of the recent Australian bushfires goes beyond what any model used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has ever simulated – for the present or the future. In fact, one of us (Wolfgang) has published extensively on future wildfires, and his work found that fire activity in parts of south-eastern Australia would likely increase significantly by the late 21st century. In reality, much more widespread fires occurred some 70 years earlier than predicted.

This isn’t the only case where models used by climate scientists are inadequate. The IPCC’s estimates of how much CO₂ we can still emit to be on the safe side explicitly leave out many known large-scale disruptions or tipping points because of insufficient understanding or because models cannot capture them.

One such tipping event, the unravelling and eventual disappearance of the Amazon rainforest, may already be underway. A new study uses model-aided statistical analysis from past ecosystem collapses and comes to the conclusion that, once triggered, Amazon dieback could take as little as 50 years. Because we lack a full understanding of how exactly such a collapse might unfold, such models are not being included in future projections.

The IPCC’s recent report on the oceans and cryosphere (sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets) still doesn’t report the full possible range of sea level rise exacerbated by a possible collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet. The IPCC’s range of 0.3 to 1.1 metres by 2100, dependent on emissions scenario, stays markedly below the worst-case scenario of 2.4 metres which resulted from an analysis of experts’ opinions. Zita Sebesvari, one of the report’s lead authors, has admitted that such a worst case scenario cannot be ruled out.

We know quite well that the climate we are about to create resembles that of millions of years ago, but we are mostly ignorant about how fast this will happen and what it means for humans and ecosystems. Yet scientists rarely point out the uncertainties in their predictions – in particular worst-case scenarios that are beyond the capability of models – and prefer to stick to the conservative but firm conclusions that can be drawn from well-established models.

To discuss highly uncertain but potentially catastrophic outcomes is often seen as political fearmongering. But basing the political response to the climate crisis on a series of safe-looking and – in their totality – apparently certain predictions is therefore painting a wholly inadequate picture of the potential risks that the climate and ecological crises pose to humanity and the biosphere.

...

https://theconversation.com/we-climate-scientists-wont-know-exactly-how-the-crisis-will-unfold-until-its-too-late-133400

[blumenkraft]

And now to something completely different!

Joshua Abraham Norton (February 4, 1818 – January 8, 1880), known as Emperor Norton, was a citizen of San Francisco, California, who proclaimed himself "Norton I, Emperor of the United States" in 1859. In 1863 he took the secondary title of "Protector of Mexico" after Napoleon III invaded the country. Norton was born in England but spent most of his early life in South Africa. He sailed west after the death of his mother in 1846 and his father in 1848, arriving in San Francisco possibly in November 1849.

Norton initially made a living as a businessman, but he lost his fortune investing in Peruvian rice to sell in China due to a Chinese rice shortage. He bought rice at 12 cents per pound from Peruvian ships, but more Peruvian ships arrived in port which caused the price to drop sharply to 4 cents. He then lost a lawsuit in which he tried to void his rice contract, and his public prominence faded. He re-emerged in September 1859, laying claim to the position of Emperor of the United States.[8] Though Norton received many favors from the city, merchants also capitalized on his notoriety by selling souvenirs bearing his name. "San Francisco lived off the Emperor Norton," Norton's biographer William Drury wrote, "not Norton off San Francisco."

Norton had no formal political power; nevertheless, he was treated deferentially in San Francisco, and currency issued in his name was honored in the establishments that he frequented. Some considered him insane or eccentric, but citizens of San Francisco celebrated his imperial presence and his proclamations, such as his order that the United States Congress be dissolved by force and his numerous decrees calling for the construction of a bridge and tunnel crossing San Francisco Bay to connect San Francisco with Oakland.

On January 8, 1880, Norton collapsed at the corner of California and Dupont (now Grant) streets and died before he could be given medical treatment. Upwards of 30,000 people lined the streets of San Francisco to pay him homage at his funeral. Norton has been immortalized as the basis of characters in the literature of Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christopher Moore, Morris and René Goscinny, Selma Lagerlöf, and Neil Gaiman.

Link >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton

[kassy]

If you need to kill some time while self quarantaining:

Volunteers Needed To Unlock Historic Weather Secrets

NIWA climate scientists are asking for volunteers to help give its historic weather project a quick, sharp boost.

The scientists have accumulated a mass of weather data for a special project focused on a week in July 1939 when huge snowstorms blanketed the country – but the problem is the records are all handwritten and now need to be keyed into a computer.

...

Anyone wanting to help out with the task can go to: www.southernweatherdiscovery.org

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC2003/S00027/volunteers-needed-to-unlock-historic-weather-secrets.htm

[blumenkraft]

Why don't they OCR it?

[kassy]

Because OCR works better for printed texts so they would still need people to check it.

[blumenkraft]

It's 2020. One would think OCR works with handwritten stuff by now.

I always live in the future...

[kassy]

Another one:

Help needed to rescue UK's old rainfall records


At a loss to know what to do with your self-isolation time?

Well, why not get on the computer and help with a giant weather digitisation effort?

The UK has rainfall records dating back 200 years or so, but the vast majority of these are in handwritten form and can't easily be used to analyse past periods of flooding and drought.

The Rainfall Rescue Project is seeking volunteers to transfer all the data into online spreadsheets.

You're not required to rummage through old bound volumes; the Met Office has already scanned the necessary documents - all 65,000 sheets.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52040822

[wdmn]

Remembering Part 3: The Black Horse of Hunger

https://wawa-news.com/index.php/2020/03/02/remembering-earth-the-black-horse-of-hunger/

Remembering Earth Part 1: The White Horse of Globalism

https://wawa-news.com/index.php/2020/02/17/remembering-earth-the-white-horse-of-globalism/

Remembering Earth, Part 2: The Red Horse of Nationalism

https://wawa-news.com/index.php/2020/02/24/remembering-earth-the-red-horse-of-nationalism/

Remembering Earth Part 4: The Pale Horse of Death

https://wawa-news.com/index.php/2020/03/10/remembering-earth-the-pale-horse-of-death/

Remembering Earth Part 5: Swans and Other Agents of Mercy

https://wawa-news.com/index.php/2020/04/06/remembering-earth-swans-and-other-agents-of-mercy/

[kassy]

Maybe panda´s don´t like being watched...

Giant pandas finally mate after park closed due to coronavirus

Hong Kong's Ocean Park had tried unsuccessfully to get Ying Ying and Le Le to mate since 2010

Hong Kong giant pandas residing in Ocean Park "successfully" mated naturally for the first time on Monday after a decade of attempts, the theme park announced.

...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/giant-pandas-1.5525915

[pikaia]

'Spectacular' artefacts found as Norway ice-patch melts.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/apr/16/spectacular-artefacts-found-as-norway-ice-patch-melts

[kassy]

'Right to repair' taken up by the ACCC in farmers' fight to fix their own tractors

Key points:
The humble tractor is now among the most sophisticated machines on the planet
Farmers from America to Australia complain about software in expensive farm machinery that must use authorised repairers to fix problems
The ACCC has already spoken to the five major importers or manufacturers of large-scale farm machinery, now it's seeking input from farmers

...

In an era of water scarcity and a swelling global population, machinery makers have poured millions of dollars into developing software that allows farmers to precisely plot their sprawling properties, gauging how much seed, water, fertiliser, and pesticide is needed for maximum crop yields for each field.

Mr O'Callaghan says this could potentially leave farmers stuck if they decided they wanted to buy a different brand of tractor but could not take a backup of the old data with them.

"One of the things [the ACCC] flagged is that intellectual property and data can be two separate things," he said.

"Because of the fact they can't shift their historical data to a new provider … then you can be in an invidious position where you get locked in over a period of time.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-19/right-to-repair-tractors-taken-up-by-the-accc/12156196

[blumenkraft]

How bad is it? That bad:

‘Black Mirror’ Creator Says Season 6 Is On Hold Because Society is Currently Depressing Enough

Link >> https://theplaylist.net/black-mirror-season-6-delay-society-20200506/

[kassy]

Study confirms ultra music festival likely stressful to fish

MIAMI--A new study published in the Journal Environmental Pollution by researchers at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science found that the Ultra Music Festival was likely stressful to toadfish.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers findings show that the fish experienced a significant stress response on the first day of the Ultra Music Festival in March 2019 on Virginia Key, Florida when there was elevated noise.

"The stress response was similar to what toadfish would experience when hearing bottlenose dolphins, a toadfish predator," said the study's co-investigator Danielle McDonald, professor of marine biology and ecology at the UM Rosenstiel School.

...

In addition to testing cortisol levels, the research team placed recording devices to measure sound intensity in the air and underwater. Hydrophones were placed in the toadfish tanks and in the waters directly next to the Ultra stages in Bear Cut Inlet in the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park and in Lamar Lake, a shallow mangrove lagoon further north.

"Recordings revealed that the sound intensity increased by 7-9 decibels in the toadfish tanks and 2-3 decibels in the nearby waters of Bear Cut in the low frequency range where fish are the most sensitive to changes in sound pressure," said co-investigator Claire Paris, professor of ocean sciences at the UM Rosenstiel School. "Variations in the sonic activity of marine organisms and additional noise from boat traffic may have contributed to the signal detected in Bear Cut during Ultra. In situ measurements, including long term acoustic recording, are necessary to evaluate the effect of Ultra on wild fish populations."

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-07/uomr-scu070120.php

The festival:

Ultra Music Festival (often abbreviated as UMF) is an annual outdoor electronic music festival that takes place during March in Miami, Florida, United States.[1] The festival was founded in 1999 by Russell Faibisch and Alex Omes and is named after the 1997 Depeche Mode album, Ultra.[2]

...

The 2019 edition was held from March 29–31, 2019. On September 27, 2018, the commissioners of Miami voted unanimously against allowing the festival to be hosted at Bayfront Park, citing noise complaints and other concerns among downtown residents.[111][112][113]

In November 2018, festival organizers proposed moving Ultra to the barrier island of Virginia Key, using the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park and the Miami Marine Stadium as venues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Music_Festival#2019

[kassy]

Brazilian environmentalist Sirkis killed in car crash

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Environmentalist Alfredo Sirkis, a founder of Brazil’s Green Party and a tireless campaigner for policies to curb climate change, died on Friday in a car crash, television network TV Globo said.

Sirkis, 69, was killed when the car he was driving hit a post on a highway outside his hometown Rio de Janeiro, broadcaster TV Globo reported, citing firemen at the crash.

...

He also served as coordinator of the government-backed Brazilian Forum for Climate Change until 2019, when he was fired by right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, who has sought to dismantle environmental protections in the country.

“For me it was absolutely no surprise,” he told Reuters at the time. “Because I’m a militant environmentalist for more than 30 years ... I’m too politically involved in the environmental struggle.”

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-brazil-environment-sirkis/brazilian-environmentalist-sirkis-killed-in-car-crash-idUKKBN24B32M

[kassy]

Coronavirus lockdowns reduced human 'rumble'

The rumble generated by humanity took a big dive during the Covid lockdowns.

Everything we do - from driving our cars to operating our factories - produces ground motions that can be detected by seismometers.

An international team of researchers says this noise fell by up to half when coronavirus restrictions were enforced.

The period March-May represents "the longest and most prominent global anthropogenic seismic noise reduction on record", they tell Science journal.

...

The biggest reductions were recorded in the most densely populated areas, like Singapore and New York City, but drops were also observed in remote areas like Germany's Black Forest and Rundu in Namibia. And the phenomenon wasn't confined just to the surface; the quieting was evident even at stations placed in boreholes hundreds of metres underground.

Seismometers have long recognised a drop in this shaking at nights, at weekends and during holiday periods - but this lull was far more pronounced and prolonged.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53518751

[kassy]

Record 212 land and environment activists killed last year

A record number of people were killed last year for defending their land and environment, according to research that highlights the routine murder of activists who oppose extractive industries driving the climate crisis and the destruction of nature.

More than four defenders were killed every week in 2019, according to an annual death toll compiled by the independent watchdog Global Witness, amid growing evidence of opportunistic killings during the Covid-19 lockdown in which activists were left as “sitting ducks” in their own homes.

...

The mining industry was linked to the most land and environmental defender deaths in 2019, according to the report, followed by agriculture, logging and criminal gangs. Indigenous communities around the world continue to face disproportionate risks of violence, making up 40% of murdered defenders last year.

...

“Agribusiness and oil, gas and mining have been consistently the biggest drivers of attacks against land and environmental defenders – and they are also the industries pushing us further into runaway climate change through deforestation and increasing carbon emissions,” said Rachel Cox, a campaigner at Global Witness.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/29/record-212-land-and-environment-activists-killed-last-year

[Tom_Mazanec]

A Thomistic Explanation of Environmental Ethics
https://onepeterfive.com/thomistic-environmental-ethics/

As we can see, there is a serious ecological crisis, but this is ultimately about the welfare of man and not the Earth. As we look through the writings of the popes, we do not see a radical new approach in our moral obligations to the environment. Rather, we see a gradual development of doctrine, which uses traditional theology to address modern problems. Though Pope Francis may appear to alter our doctrinal understanding in his grand encyclical on the environment, a close examination reveals that he is merely applying the principles of morality to modern situations. Thus, we can see that the only moral obligation to the environment is when the environment affects man.

[kassy]

As we can see, there is a serious ecological crisis, but this is ultimately about the welfare of man and not the Earth.

Ultimately we live of the land and we are degrading it fast.

If you would ask anyone the neutral question: would it make sense to manage the only planet we have in a way that enables our grand grand kids to live just as nice as we do that answer would be yes but in reality we are ruining it.

[pikaia]

Greenland's melting ice sheet – in pictures.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2020/aug/20/greenland-melting-ice-sheet-in-pictures

[oren]

From the above article:

A meltwater canyon on the Greenland ice sheet.
Photograph: Sarah Das/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

[kassy]

Thanks, missed the gallery the first time around.

Interesting pictures. The ice in Meltwater lakes on the edge of an ice cap in Greenland is so dirty...

[kassy]

So fences...

We’ve built enough fences to stretch to the sun—but still don’t understand their effects here on Earth

...

“Most of the time, fences produce more losers than winners,” Dr. McInturff says. Often, these winners are generalists that can handle disturbed areas—in other words, the same ones that survive other types of habitat disruption. More sensitive species tend to lose out. In some cases, fences curtail so many different species that whole ecosystems begin to collapse. 

There are also trends in the research itself. Most of the papers the researchers found were set in just five countries, and a majority focused on fences’ effects on larger mammals. We have a lot to learn about how smaller animals, plants, and fungi—not to mention physical aspects of ecosystems, like rivers and soil—respond to having their habitats sliced and diced.

...

https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2020/10/weve-built-enough-fences-to-stretch-to-the-sun-but-still-dont-understand-their-effects-here-on-earth/