
Contrary to a common perception, ignoring climate change won't make it disappear. Global research going back to 1824 in fields ranging through physics, oceanography, biology and geology have confirmed human activity—mainly burning fossil fuels, raising livestock and destroying carbon sinks like forests and wetlands—is increasing greenhouse gas emissions and causing global temperatures to rise rapidly, putting humanity at risk. Every legitimate scientific academy and institution and every government, except the current U.S. administration, agrees.
Yet the disconnect between that reality and government action to confront the greatest crisis humanity faces is astounding. Nowhere is that disconnect more profound than in the U.S., where the attitude is "out of sight, out of mind."
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, appointed by President Donald Trump, told staff to scrub the agency's website of information about climate change and the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, aimed at reducing CO2 emissions from power generation. According to Newsweek, "Pruitt ordered edits that would modify search results for 'Clean Power Plan' to link to a page promoting Trump's executive order, with a photo of the president and the EPA administrator posing with coal miners."
That's just one among many moves by the administration to reduce environmental protection and overturn measures to reduce climate change and shift to a clean energy economy. Pruitt has also suggested climate change might be beneficial!
Trump, as with many issues, is both confused and ignorant about global warming.
"There is a cooling and there's a heating," Trump told British journalist Piers Morgan in an ITV News interview. "I mean, look, it used to not be climate change, it used to be global warming. That wasn't working too well because it was getting too cold all over the place."
His comment shows the president doesn't understand the difference between climate and weather or the history and basics of climate science.
Although Canadian governments sound more reasonable, their actions demonstrate a similar disconnect. The Alberta and federal governments talk about reducing emissions but somehow believe expanding oilsands production and shipping dirty bitumen around the world to be burned are compatible with their climate plans.
"We need to make sure we're both protecting the environment and growing the economy at the same time," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told CBC in defending Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which would triple the amount of bitumen shipped.
The economy and the environment aren't equal considerations. We invented the current economy and can change it, as we often have, when it no longer suits our needs or realities. Demanding constant growth on a finite planet is suicidal. And extracting, processing, selling and transporting polluting, climate-altering fossil fuels isn't the best way to ensure economic prosperity.
The oil and gas sector emits 26 percent of Canada's greenhouse gases (almost 10 percent from oilsands)—not including emissions from burning the product!—yet only contributes about five percent of GDP, with the oilsands contributing about two percent. The industry employed around 178,000 people in 2017, with fewer than 30,000 in the oilsands. That's significant, but clean tech employs more people, often in more widely distributed, high-paying jobs.
Trudeau's claim that reducing direct oilsands emissions is enough is also disingenuous. Canada isn't on track to meet its commitments under the Paris agreement, and he ignores the fact that countries buying our bitumen will burn it, further fueling global warming. Assurances that Canada has adequate plans to protect the BC coast from a spill, with an increase in crude oil tankers through Burrard Inlet from 60 to 400 a year, are absurd.
No matter what lengths politicians, corporate interests and others take to avoid, downplay and obfuscate serious issues around environmental degradation and our economic system's destructive path, we can't deny reality. Studies show we must refrain from burning most fossil fuel reserves to avoid catastrophic warming.
In little more than a century, the human population has more than quadrupled to seven billion and rising, and our plastic-choked, consumer-driven, car-obsessed cultures have led to resource depletion, species extinction, ocean degradation, climate change and more. It's past time to open our eyes and shift to a more sensible approach to living on this small, precious planet.
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- Redwoods are the world's tallest trees.
- Now scientists have discovered they are even bigger than we thought.
- Using laser technology they map the 80-meter giants.
- Trees are a key plank in the fight against climate change.
They are among the largest trees in the world, descendants of forests where dinosaurs roamed.
Pixabay / Simi Luft
<p><span>Until recently, measuring these trees meant scaling their 80 meter high trunks with a tape measure. Now, a team of scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland uses advanced laser scanning, to create 3D maps and calculate the total mass.</span></p><p>The results are striking: suggesting the trees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">may be as much as 30% larger than earlier measurements suggested.</a> Part of that could be due to the additional trunks the Redwoods can grow as they age, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a process known as reiteration</a>.</p>New 3D measurements of large redwood trees for biomass and structure. Nature / UCL
<p>Measuring the trees more accurately is important because carbon capture will probably play a key role in the battle against climate change. Forest <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/09/carbon-sequestration-natural-forest-regrowth" target="_blank">growth could absorb billions of tons</a> of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.</p><p>"The importance of big trees is widely-recognised in terms of carbon storage, demographics and impact on their surrounding ecosystems," the authors wrote<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank"> in the journal Nature</a>. "Unfortunately the importance of big trees is in direct proportion to the difficulty of measuring them."</p><p>Redwoods are so long lived because of their ability to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cope with climate change, resist disease and even survive fire damage</a>, the scientists say. Almost a fifth of their volume may be bark, which helps protect them.</p>Carbon Capture Champions
<p><span>Earlier research by scientists at Humboldt University and the University of Washington found that </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716302584" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Redwood forests store almost 2,600 tonnes of carbon per hectare</a><span>, their bark alone containing more carbon than any other neighboring species.</span></p><p>While the importance of trees in fighting climate change is widely accepted, not all species enjoy the same protection as California's coastal Redwoods. In 2019 the world lost the equivalent of <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 soccer fields of forest cover every minute</a>, due to agricultural expansion, logging and fires, according to The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).</p>Pixabay
<p>Although <a href="https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1420/files/original/Deforestation_fronts_-_drivers_and_responses_in_a_changing_world_-_full_report_%281%29.pdf?1610810475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the rate of loss is reported to have slowed in recent years</a>, reforesting the world to help stem climate change is a massive task.</p><p><span>That's why the World Economic Forum launched the Trillion Trees Challenge (</span><a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a><span>) and is engaging organizations and individuals across the globe through its </span><a href="https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o00000vOf09AAC/trillion-trees" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uplink innovation crowdsourcing platform</a><span> to support the project.</span></p><p>That's backed up by research led by ETH Zurich/Crowther Lab showing there's potential to restore tree coverage across 2.2 billion acres of degraded land.</p><p>"Forests are critical to the health of the planet," according to <a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a>. "They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers."</p><p><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor">Reposted with permission from the </em><span><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/redwoods-store-more-co2-and-are-more-enormous-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></span></p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
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Kentucky is coping with historic flooding after a weekend of record-breaking rainfall, enduring water rescues, evacuations and emergency declarations.
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Spring is coming. And soon, tree swallows will start building nests. But as the climate changes, the birds are nesting earlier in the spring.
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