Southern Bookman

Massive bird deaths sound alarm about disappearing plant, animal species

Birds dying by the thousands in the American Southwest give tragic confirmation to the latest UN alarm that biodiversity is collapsing.

For centuries, birds have migrated from Alaska and Canada to Central and South America at the end of summer in the northern hemisphere. Now, large numbers of flycatchers, swallows and warblers are falling out of the sky in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Nebraska, dying far short of their destinations, according to the Guardian.

That distressing news follows a United Nations report warning that the world is failing to halt the extinction of plant and animal species. Out of 20 goals set in 2010 to reverse humans' destruction of wildlife by 2020, only six have been met, and those partially, according to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The new findings follow an earlier UN report that 1 million plant and animal species are in danger of extinction.

The rapid decline in species since 1970 threaten  human existence, the UN says. Urbanization, the growth of agriculture, the loss of forests, plastic pollution, carbon emissions, climate change and invasive alien species have disrupted natural habitats. Overfishing and industrial wastes spewing into waterways have distressed the earth's oceans.

Climate change, and the wildfires in the Western United States, appear the main cause of the birds' deaths. The fires forced the birds away from pathways where food is plentiful, leaving them too undernourished to complete their journey.

Bird species are also threatened by climate change in Canada and the loss of their South American habitats to deforestation. A similar process is reducing the number of monarch butterflies.

New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert's Pulitzer Prize winning "The Sixth Extinction" warned in 2015 about the threat to humanity from the loss of plants and animals. But even as awareness of climate change grows, the loss of diversity receives little attention.

The UN report contained some good news: deforestation has lessened, more ocean and natural areas have received protection, and progress was made to halt invasive species. But lately, fires have spread across Brazil's Amazon jungle and Pantanal wetlands, as the western United States burns.

As with the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions, the world is running out of time to protect species that share the earth with us.

 

 

Temperatures quickly approaching threshold set by climate change treaty

As wildfires rage across the globe and heat records tumble, high temperatures are soaring rapidly toward the apocalyptic zone.

The world is pushing toward a 1.5-degree Celsius increase in temperatures over pre-industrial averages, the strictest limit set for this century by the Paris climate change agreement in 2015, according to a new report issued by the United Nations World Meterological Organization and other groups.

There's a 25 percent chance that the world will exceed the limit of 2.7 degrees Farenheit in the next four years, the Associated Press reported in an article published on the Huffington Post news site. The Paris treaty also set an upper goal of 2 degrees Celsius for the world to avoid climate change's worst effects.

Temperatures this summer reached 130 degrees in Death Valley, Calif., and 100 degrees in Siberia. As another heat wave pushes temperatures higher, wildfires continue in California, Washington and Oregon.

In Brazil, not only is the Amazon burning with worst fires than last year. Wildfires are also devastating Brazil's Pantanal, the world's largest wetlands, the New York Times reported.

Rising temperatures also bring worst hurricanes. Most of Lake Charles, La., remains without power after Hurricane Laura struck Aug. 27. The hurricane was the most powerful to ever strike the state, frequently ravaged by hurricanes.

Without major emissions reductions, temperatures could blaze far above the 1.5 Celsius threshold, making much of the world unlivable.

 

 

 

 

 

ANWR oil drilling plan fans flames of climate change

Oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve would be the finale of the American frontier.

Donald Trump's Interior Secretary David Bernhardt on Monday opened the pristine 19-million acre ANWR to oil company leasing. The admnistration's act of vandalism sacrifices the sacred home of polar bears and caribou to corporate greed.

The action opens the entire 1.56-million acre coastal plain of the ANWR to leasing. Showing that the Trump administration will keep wreaking mischief even if it loses the election, Bernhardt wants the leasing done by the end of the year, making it difficult for Joe Biden to halt drilling. If Trump steals the election, oil wells will cover caribou nesting grounds.

Environmental groups will file suits to stop the action, and market forces might preserve the wildlife area. With the drop in oil prices and the technical difficulties of drilling in the ANWR, petroleum companies have expressed reluctance to bid on leases. Banks won't be eager to give loans for drilling.

Millions of barrels of oil reportedly lie beneath the ANWR, but those estimates might be understated. More seismic tests are required to determine the exact amount of petroleum there, but Bernhardt is pushing ahead anyway.

With the world reeling from climate change, the Trump administration pours more fuel on the fire.

 

 

Antarctic ice shelves melting at alarming pace

Goodbye to the Antarctic ice shelves.

Antarctica has lost 4,000 megatons of ice in the last 25 years, according to a Wall Street Journal article Tuesday, based on a report in the journal Nature Geoscience.

That's enough water to fill the Grand Canyon, the British newspaper The Independent said. If the melting continues at the present rate, the Grand Canyon might really be filled with water some day.

Thousands of years old, the ice shelves are melting faster than they can be replenished. Floating on the ocean, the shelves form on the edges of the ice sheets that cover Antarctica and Greenland.

While the ice-shelf melting doesn't directly contribute to rising sea levels, the shelves are a buffer to underground ice moving out to sea, which increases sea levels. The shrinking ice shelves mean more of the subterranean ice is heading to the oceans.

Research has just begun into the effects of the Antarctic's loss of ice, according to the WSJ piece. The ice loss can change global weather patterns, the WSJ said.

Unlike Greenland, where the loss of ice is on the surface, the Antarctic melting comes from below, the article said.

If the entire Antarctic melts, sea levels could rise 200 feet, the Independent said, submerging coastal areas.

 

 

Jazz pianist Bill Charlap returns to performance

A New York Times article about jazz pianist Bill Charlap's return to live performing left me longing for the pre-pandemic days of open culture.

Charlap after canceling a full summer schedule decided to give a solo concert at the rustic Deer Head Inn, "the oldest continuously running jazz club in the country," according to its web site.

After initially declining to perform at the Deer Head Inn, Charlap decided to travel to the hotel in Delaware Water Gap, Penn., in the Poconos Mountains near the Appalachian Trail. The club, which has drawn a stellar list of jazz artists, boosted Charlap's career when he started out.

Charlap performed alone  and wore a mask throughout his two sets. His audience was more than six feet from the stage, and practiced social distancing. But Charlap still took a risk in returning to live performance.

John Marhese's article stirred my nostalgia for the days when we could attend concerts, plays, movies and art exhibits without fear. In that now vanished era, my wife and I saw Charlap's trio perform at the Atlanta History Center in the spring of 2019 during the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival. Earlier, we saw Charlap's wife, Renee Rosnes, play at the Village Vanguard in New York City.

We also saw one of Charlap's most notable musical partners, Tony Bennett, in concert at Atlanta Symphony Hall in February, which turned out to be our last public gathering before the covid-19 shutdown. We had been scheduled to see Wynton Marsalis and the Atlanta Opera's "Porgy and Bess."

Such public events appear more and more distant as the virus surges across the country, and the Trump administration gives little hope of controlling the outbreak. The Times also had an article about the Boston Symphony's canceling of its Tanglewood  summer concerts, a New England tradition.

Unlike in the United States, Western Europe has reopened without a resurgence of the coronavirus. Here, events like Charlap's Deer Head Inn performance appear increasingly endangered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Methane emissions rise as Amazon forest shrinks

While the coronavirus curve bulges upward again, climate bad news has come back as well.

Methane emissions have increased 10 percent over the last two decades, with the highest level ever reached in 2017, according to a Nature magazine report citing findings by the Global Carbon Report, which measures changes in greenhouse gases.

Produced by natural gas production and livestock, the odorless gas is a more potent pollutant than carbon dioxide, while not lasting as long in the atmosphere, the article said.

As Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro recuperates from what he says is a symptom-free case of covid-19, the destruction of the Amazon under his rule races onward, according to satellite data.

"Nearly 3,000 square miles of tree coverage were lost in the 11 months ended June 30, according to preliminary numbers from Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research," the Wall Street Journal reported. "That is a 64% increase from the same period a year earlier, when 1,772 square miles of forest were destroyed."

During the pandemic lockdown last spring, carbon dioxide emissions decreased, bringing bluer skies across the world. But methane didn't abate; cows kept on burping.

The use of natural gas for energy was seen as more beneficial to the environment than oil, and the Obama administration tightened rules against the methane release from natural-pipes and drilling gear. But Trump, in his relentless drive to remove regulations, let the methane flow again.

And, as poverty falls across the world, the taste for juicy steaks rises. The increased desire for more red meat means more cows, and more methane.

The earth is experiencing a major extinction of animal species. But cows will always be with us.

Wall Street Journal's Robert Lee Hotz in new science column reports on hummingbirds' amazing vision

Distinguished reporter Robert Lee Hotz's science articles have raised the quality of the Wall Street Journal's news columns for years.

Hotz on Tuesday launched his new Science Journal column with a fascinating report on how hummingbirds possess greater abilities to see colors than humans.

As usual with his work, Hotz's writing illuminated an impressive marshaling of information. His in-depth quotes from Princeton sensory ecologist Mary Caswell Stoddard made the piece a mini-profile of her as well as an examination of animal behavior and scientific methods.

The column, which apparently will run on the same day as The New York Times' longstanding Science Times section, touched upon other members of the animal kingdom who have special abilities humans lack. For example, elephants communicate with low-pitched sounds that people can't hear.

Hummingbirds are particularly amazing because of their capacity to see ultraviolet colors beyond the range of human sight. Hotz details Stoddard's brilliant experiments in the field that found that the tiny birds use their visionary powers to find food and travel through foliage. Their intelligence might be different from ours, but it's just as impressive.

I knew Hotz slightly when he was part of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's outstanding science reporting team years ago. I still remember my one conversation with Hotz, who impressed me with his civility and intelligence. Like many outstanding journalists, he quickly moved on from the stifling AJC.

Now, he's embarked upon a promising new phase of his career. While I look forward to his column, I hope he still does science stories for the WSJ. A versatile reporter whose expertise covers many fields, he singly covers stories with more understanding and knowledge than the Times' entire team of specialists.

Globe has six-month opportunity to reduce carbon emissions, IEA chief says

Pandemic recovery plans give the world a last chance to build a green economy, according to the International Energy Agency chief.

Nations must take action to reduce carbon emissions in the next six months or climate change devastation will be unavoidable, IEA Chief Executive Fatih Birol told The Guardian.

Global emissions are rising again with the haphazard reopening from the coronavirus shutdown. In April, emissions fell an average of 17 percent over last year's totals, according to media reports. But in June, CO2 emissions were just 5 percent less than in 2019.

An IEA report said that the world will spend $9 trillion in economic stimulus plans in the next few months. That money should be spent on green jobs to make buildings more energy efficient and on solar and wind power projects, the IEA said.

Spending decisions for the six-month period will determine the economy's structure for the next three years, Birol said. Without major programs now, emissions will keep rising, making climate change inescapable.

 

World hurtling toward environmental disaster, reports indicate

Humanity keeps racing toward destruction beyond the coronavirus pandemic, recent reports say.

The globe's sixth mass extinction rushes forward unabated, according to a recent report from the National Academy of Sciences. The study focused on the alarming loss of vertebrates as their habitat is destroyed by human development. The species extinctions threaten human life, the report warns.

"The ongoing sixth mass extinction may be the most serious environmental threat to the persistence of civilization, because it is irreversible," the study said.

"Thousands of populations of critically endangered vertebrate animal species have been lost in a century, indicating that the sixth mass extinction is human caused and accelerating. The acceleration of the extinction crisis is certain because of the still fast growth in human numbers and consumption rates"

Climate change is also bearing down, another report found.

Carbon dioxide levels in May rose to their highest level in human history, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego announced last week.

The amount of carbon in the atmosphere rose to a once unfathomable 417 parts per million, as recorded in May by the Mauna Loa Observatory in the Pacific. That's the highest atmospheric level of CO2 in millions of years, the report noted. The world breached the ominous threshold of 400 parts per million in 2014.

Carbon emissions have declined during the pandemic economic shutdown, but not enough to change the amount in the atmosphere.

"The rate of increase during 2020 does not appear to reflect reduction in pollution emissions due to the sharp, worldwide economic slowdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic," the report found. "The reason is that the drop in emissions would need to be large enough to stand out from natural CO2 variability, caused by how plants and soils respond to seasonal and annual variations of temperature, humidity, soil moisture, etc.

"These natural variations are large, and so far the emissions reductions associated with COVID19 do not stand out. If emissions reductions of 20 to 30 percent were sustained for six to 12 months, then the rate of increase of CO2 measured at Mauna Loa would be slowed."

With the United States and the world reopening their economies, emissions will again climb. There are no ventilators for the world.

As scientists sounded their alarm. the Trump administration carried out another assault on environmental laws. Using the coronavirus as a pretext, Trump issued an executive order to halt environmental impact statements for pipelines, highways and other infrastructure projects. Such assessments are the hallmark of the Environmental Policy Act signed by Richard Nixon 50 years ago.

Trump might love Nixon's law and order tactics. But he hates the GOP president's groundbreaking environmental legislation as much as he does Obama's programs.

 

 

 

 

Coronavirus etiquette while watiing for the dermatologist

A crowded doctor's waiting room made social distancing difficult.

The receptionist at the dermatologist's office took my temperature with one of those instruments held to the forehead. I also followed instructions to wash my hands before seeing the doctor, ducking into a small bathroom.

Most people in the waiting room wore face masks. I was amused at the variety of styles; one fellow wore a mask with Georgia Bulldogs insignia, making me wish I had one decorated with the purple and gold of LSU, my alma mater. Alas, I wore a bland white mask, albeit the sturdy N-95 model I'd acquired from my neighborhood pharmacist early in the pandemic shutdown.

We tried to keep six feet away from each other, moving from place to place in a strange game of musical chairs. When called to the doctor, we walked too close to those seated, but courtesy, compassion and a rueful humor ruled.

Over the years, I'd made countless trips to the medical building on one of Peachtree Dunwoody Road's generic suburban corners. Sitting with the others in the waiting room, I felt I was in a different world, its fate not yet known.