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<font size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b>January</b></i></font><font
size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b> 5, 2024</b></i></font><font
face="Calibri"><br>
</font>
<p><i>[ CNBC - news of Asia ]</i><br>
<b>Climate change has forced millions to flee their homes — and
Asia is ‘not prepared’</b><br>
PUBLISHED WED, JAN 3 2024<br>
Chelsea Ong<br>
<b>KEY POINTS</b><br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>As the number of climate disasters increase, more people are
also being forced to flee their homes, especially in Asia.</li>
<li>A record 32.6 million internal displacements were associated
with disasters in 2022 — more than the 28.3 million displaced
by conflict and violence that same year.</li>
<li>Four of the top five countries with the highest number of
new internal displacements due to disasters in 2022 were in
Asia.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
As the number of climate disasters increase, more people are being
forced to flee their homes, especially in Asia.<br>
<br>
A record 32.6 million internal displacements were associated with
disasters in 2022 — that’s 41% higher than the annual average of the
past decade, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring
Centre. It was far more than the 28.3 million people displaced by
conflict and violence that same year.<br>
<br>
In particular, four of the top five countries with the highest
number of new internal displacements due to disasters in 2022 were
in Asia, said the IDMC. Pakistan had the highest number at 8.2
million, followed by the Philippines at 5.5 million and China at 3.6
million. <br>
<br>
The situation is set to get worse.<br>
<br>
According to a 2021 World Bank report, climate change could force
216 million people across six regions to move within their countries
by 2050. <br>
<b>South Asia most at risk</b><br>
In the region, South Asia is likely to have the most people
displaced by climate change due to the density of its populations
and its vulnerability to the effects of climate change, he added. In
particular, he noted that Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan are
likely to be the most affected.<br>
<br>
According to the World Economic Forum, 10% to 18% of South Asia’s
GDP is at risk due to climate disasters. This is at about thrice the
risk North America faces and 10 times more than Europe. <br>
<br>
Climate change driven internal displacement has severe economic
repercussions for the host country, said Thomas. <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/04/climate-change-has-displaced-millions-in-pakistan-china-and-india.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/04/climate-change-has-displaced-millions-in-pakistan-china-and-india.html</a>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[No, it was NOT a rogue wave -- it was the new changes to our
ocean waves ]</i><br>
<b>Did a rogue wave actually hit California? | About That</b><br>
CBC News<br>
Jan 3, 2024<br>
A massive wave slammed Ventura Beach in California last week,
sending eight people to hospital. But was it actually a rogue wave?
About That producer Lauren Bird breaks down the science of rogue
waves and why they’re so unpredictable.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcL2iMO8HiU">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcL2iMO8HiU</a>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ Sad warning: extinct and endangered species ]</i><br>
<b>‘Grief is a rational response’: the 21 US species declared
extinct this year</b><br>
Hawaii hardest hit by loss of eight birds, with an Ohio catfish, a
Pacific fruit bat and eight freshwater mussels also disappearing<br>
<br>
Maanvi Singh<br>
@maanvissingh<br>
Fri 29 Dec 2023<br>
Hawaii hardest hit by loss of eight birds, with an Ohio catfish, a
Pacific fruit bat and eight freshwater mussels also disappearing<br>
<br>
The Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, a small black and yellow bird with glossy feathers
and a haunting song, was the last surviving member of the Hawaiian
honeyeaters. This year, it was officially declared extinct.<br>
<br>
The ōʻō was one of 21 species that the US Fish and Wildlife Service
removed from the endangered species list in 2023 because they had
vanished from the wild. Gone is the little Mariana fruit bat – also
known as the Guam flying fox – and the bridled white-eye, which was
once one of the most common birds on that island. So too, are the
Scioto madtom, a diminutive, whiskered catfish that lived in Ohio,
and the Bachman’s warbler, which summered in the US south and
wintered in Cuba. Eight freshwater mussels in the south-east are
officially extinct, as are eight Hawaiian birds.<br>
The delisting, which was finalised in November after two years of
study and consideration, came as no surprise to biologists and
conservationists. Many of these species had not been seen in
decades. But the announcement was a sobering reminder that the
climate crisis and habitat destruction are accelerating an
extinction crisis that threatens 2 million species globally.<br>
<br>
For the scientists and environmentalists who have been working to
protect these species, the delisting has been a moment to mourn –
and to galvanise. “It’s a horrible tragedy,” said the ecologist and
author Carl Safina. “And I think it is a breach of our moral
guardrails.”...<br>
- -<br>
Global heating has also fueled extreme weather, exacerbated drought
and wildfire risk, further imperilling the islands’ forest birds.
This year, the devastating blaze that destroyed the town of Lahaina
nearly engulfed a conservation centre for some of the world’s rarest
birds, including the ‘akikiki, a species of honeycreeper that is
considered the most endangered bird in the US. The fire came within
about 150 feet of the property before conservationists were able to
fight it off.<br>
- -<br>
She also thought about how she could honour their memory. “It’s
important to make space for grief, because grief is a rational
response to what is happening to the planet,” Curry said. “But it’s
also important to not dwell there. As I lit the candles for each
extinct species, I also focused on what I could do to save the ones
that are still here.”...<br>
- -<br>
When the Fish and Wildlife Services finalised its decision to
declare the species extinct this year, Curry resolved to advocate
for more conservation funding and a strengthening of the Endangered
Species Act. This year has put renewed scrutiny on the landmark
legislation and whether it is enough to fight the staggering rate of
biodiversity loss.<br>
<br>
In many cases, Curry said, the species that were declared extinct
this year had been listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) too
late. The flat pigtoe mussel, for example, only gained ESA
protections in 1987 – seven years after it was last seen in the
wild, and more than a decade after construction began on a dam that
experts agreed would imperil its population.<br>
<br>
In other cases, species are protected – but scientists lack the
funding and resources needed to recover them. A 2016 study by CBD
found that Congress only provides about 3.5% of the funding that the
Fish and Wildlife Service’s own scientists estimate is needed to
recover species.<br>
<br>
The Endangered Species Act has helped bring some species – such as
the bald eagle – back from the brink. “But in some ways, the ESA is
like having an emergency room and intensive care unit, without
providing regular immunizations and check-ups,” said Safina.<br>
<br>
The scope of the extinction crisis, he said, “is completely
overwhelming to the capacity of the human mind to actually know and
understand”.<br>
<br>
Amid a worsening climate crisis and rapid deforestation and habitat
loss, nearly all of nature needs urgent action and protection. It is
nearly impossible for us to fathom how quickly, how many species are
disappearing, Safina added. “And so the endeavour of stopping this
crisis becomes more of a religious kind of experience than a
scientific one, in a sense, more moral than practical.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/29/us-animals-birds-extinct-this-year">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/29/us-animals-birds-extinct-this-year</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ Burgers and scrambled eggs ]</i><br>
<b>The meat and dairy industry is not ‘climate neutral’, despite
some eye-catching claims</b><br>
Published: January 2, 2024 <br>
Imagine a house is on fire, and someone is actively pouring gas on
the fire. They then pour a little less gas and want credit for doing
so, despite still feeding the fire. Perhaps they claim they are now
“fire neutral”.<br>
<br>
We’d rightly be very sceptical of such claims. Yet that is more or
less what some influential supporters of the livestock industry have
done.<br>
<br>
I’m referring to eye-catching and influential recent studies
published in peer-reviewed livestock science journals which claim
that the meat and dairy industries are or can easily be “climate
neutral”.<br>
<br>
For example, one study claims that the US dairy industry could reach
climate neutrality by 2050 through reducing its annual methane
emissions by just 1%-1.5%. Another declares that some US livestock
sectors are “already part of a climate solution” and that the
Californian dairy industry could “induce cooling” under annual
methane reductions above 1%.<br>
Several industry bodies have recently adopted and widely publicised
goals based on these reports. For example, the National Cattlemen’s
Beef Association in the US has stated its ambition to reach climate
neutrality by 2040, while consumers in Australia are told that their
lamb has a neutral, or even negative, climate footprint.<br>
<br>
The claims are especially striking because methane is a potent
greenhouse gas that accounts for 0.5°C of global warming so far, and
we know that livestock production accounts for about one-third of
human-caused emissions. That methane is a product of the digestion
processes in cattle, sheep, and other ruminants, emitted when they
belch.<br>
So these claims certainly deserve scrutiny. In a paper now published
in the journal Environmental Research Letters, my co-author Donal
Murphy-Bokern and I argue that these claims represent a distorted
understanding of the science. There’s a risk that they could be used
for greenwashing and undermining confidence in this area of climate
science.<br>
<br>
We show how easily subtle shifts in definitions, combined with
overlooking key facts, can distort understanding to the point where
significant emitters of greenhouse gases are presented as “climate
neutral”.<br>
<br>
Changing definitions and climate metrics<br>
The term “climate neutral” was first coined by policy makers to
refer to net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases. These gases were
measured using a long-established scale that represents their
warming effect over a 100-year period, expressed in CO₂ equivalents
– this is the so-called “global warming potential” or GWP100 and it
was used in the preparation of the Paris agreement.<br>
<br>
But GWP100 is still imperfect because while most methane is in the
atmosphere for only a couple of decades, carbon dioxide can linger
for centuries. That’s why in 2018 some academics introduced a new
metric called GWP* to better represent the warming impact over time.<br>
<br>
But the reports we examine have used GWP* to subtly shift the
meaning of the term climate neutral from net-zero emissions to
net-zero additional warming, where “additional” refers to warming on
top of that already caused by the livestock sector, not warming
compared to if the sector stopped entirely. This means a
historically high emitter such as the beef industry can get off
easily.<br>
<br>
Using GWP*, a livestock sector with high but declining methane
emissions can claim to be climate neutral since it adds less
additional methane to the atmosphere – and therefore less additional
warming – each year. This is referred to in some of these studies as
a “cooling effect”, which is misleading since it’s not cooling the
atmosphere, only warming it slightly less.<br>
<br>
These studies also fail to make clear that, like methane itself,
this “cooling” effect of methane reductions is temporary. And the
level at which they stabilise will likely still be high enough to
cause significant warming.<br>
<br>
GWP* certainly has merit when applied at the global level. However,
even the scientists who developed it agree it shouldn’t be used to
assess a particular region or sector such as livestock.<br>
<br>
Our investigation shows how its use here could be used to support
greenwashing. This risks undermining climate science by confusing
businesses, consumers and policy makers. These recent climate
neutral claims distract us from the urgent challenge of reducing
emissions of all greenhouse gases from all sectors, including
agriculture.
<blockquote>The Conversation put the key arguments in this article
to Frank Mitloehner, corresponding author on two studies mentioned
in the third paragraph. He told The Conversation:<br>
<br>
“Reaching climate neutrality is a good goal to have, but it
doesn’t have to be the last goal. Efforts to reduce environmental
impacts is a journey, not a destination. I’m proud to be on the
journey with producers and farmers, helping them reduce their
environmental impact – there’s no other way to do the job. At the
end of the day, we will need more funding from both the public and
private sectors to improve sustainability across the board.<br>
<br>
"We will continue using GWP100, but we can do so alongside with
GWP* to better understand the impact methane emissions have on
warming.”<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://theconversation.com/the-meat-and-dairy-industry-is-not-climate-neutral-despite-some-eye-catching-claims-219369">https://theconversation.com/the-meat-and-dairy-industry-is-not-climate-neutral-despite-some-eye-catching-claims-219369</a>
<p>- -</p>
<i>[ from DeSmogBlog ]</i><br>
<b>The Livestock Industry’s “Climate Neutral” Claims Are Too Good To
Be True</b><br>
New research shows how a slew of recent climate pledges are based on
incomplete accounting, which downplays the scope of methane
pollution by the meat and dairy industries.<br>
By Joe FassleronDec 14, 2023 <br>
Recent findings from some peer-reviewed academic papers in
agricultural journals sound like fodder for optimism: The United
States cattle industry has helped to cool the climate almost every
year since 1986. European dairy goats and sheep have caused no
additional warming since 1990. Australian sheep meat is a
“climate-neutral” product. <br>
<br>
But these findings are highly misleading, according to a new study
in Environmental Research Letters. The study found that an
alternative method of quantifying the impact of methane emissions
has led to a raft of industry-friendly findings that the livestock
sector seems to be using to claim climate neutrality as they
continue to pollute. <br>
<br>
While virtually everyone agrees that anthropogenic methane emissions
play a huge role in climate change, different approaches to
measuring that impact can result in dramatically different
narratives. For decades, scientists have relied on a standard metric
called GWP100, which measures the global warming potential of
greenhouse gasses relative to carbon dioxide over a timeframe of 100
years. This approach makes methane’s potency clear: A pound of
methane warms the climate 30 times more than a pound of CO2. <br>
<br>
But unlike carbon dioxide, which can linger in the atmosphere for
millennia, methane is a relatively transient greenhouse gas. Since
methane’s lifespan in the atmosphere is only about 12 years,
GWP100’s critics tend to feel it’s inaccurate to compare it to
carbon dioxide. <br>
<br>
That’s why some experts have proposed an alternative approach called
GWP* for talking about methane. Instead of measuring absolute
emissions, GWP* helps to model how management decisions impact the
overall rate of warming. The scientists who develop the approach say
this makes for a more accurate way of tracking methane’s real-world
consequences — though those findings shouldn’t be taken in
isolation. <br>
<br>
“We have consistently said we are not advocating the replacement of
GWP100 with GWP*,” said Myles Allen, an Oxford University geosystems
scientist who helped to develop the framework. “It was proposed as a
way of using the information provided by GWP100 to work out warming
impacts, and that remains what it is for. It’s a supplement, it’s
additional information.” <br>
<br>
However, the new study, co-authored by Caspar Donnison of the
University of California, Davis and independent researcher Donal
Murphy-Bokern, shows that some academic researchers are indeed using
GWP* as an alternative metric. This is opening the door for the
livestock industry to minimize the warming impact of their
historical and continued production by shifting the focus away from
total emissions and onto current trends.<br>
<br>
Ryan Katz-Rosene, a University of Ottawa political studies professor
whose research focuses on climate policy debates, explained by email
that this focus on trends creates a “key loophole.”<br>
<br>
“GWP* prioritizes the trend over the last 20 years. If your CH4
emissions trajectory over that time is steady or even negative you
come out looking real good,” Katz-Rosene said, using the chemical
formula for methane. “But that completely erases the historical
legacy of CH4 emissions growth before that (which is what occurred
in most industrialized economies). GWP* essentially allows those
industrialized economies to start with an unfair hand. <br>
<br>
“The second loophole is of course the way it could disincentivize
greater CH4 cuts. ‘We’re already climate compliant, why should we
cut CH4 further?’”<br>
<br>
Donnison and Murphy-Bokern’s findings suggest that both loopholes
are already being exploited, with selective use of GWP* giving rise
to problematic “climate neutral” claims in the peer-reviewed
literature. Their study calls attention to six journal articles that
use GWP* to suggest stabilized methane emissions are the same as
climate neutrality — even if a given sector’s total emissions are
still sky-high. <br>
<br>
That’s an “imprudent and misleading use of this metric,” says
Donnison, an environmental scientist at the University of
California, Davis.<br>
In their study, he and Murphy-Boker highlighted a 2021 paper that
used GWP* to measure the climate impact of sheep farming in
Australia. That research found that the sector’s methane emissions
had stabilized in 2020, meaning that domestic sheep production was
no longer causing new warming beyond what it already had — making
the Australian sheep sector “climate neutral” — a finding that was
then recirculated by industry groups and trade publications. <br>
<br>
While it was true that the sector didn’t cause any additional
warming in 2020 compared to 2019, the term “climate neutral” makes
it sound like Australian sheep no longer impact the climate, which
isn’t accurate. Whether those emissions are holding steady or even
falling, Australia’s sheep are still locking up a whole lot of
climate-intensive methane in the atmosphere. The sector has only
improved relative to its past performance — a far cry from
“neutral.” <br>
<br>
“The climate neutrality cited in these reports is defined as having
no additional warming over time,” explained Michelle Cain, one of
the Oxford scientists who developed GWP*. “For industries which have
a large component of methane emissions, this is not the same as the
industry not existing at all. Obviously, stopping the methane
emissions entirely would lead to even lower temperatures than
reducing the methane emissions by a fraction.”<br>
<br>
Oxford’s Allen said GWP* wasn’t designed to be used so selectively.
<br>
<br>
“If you’re trying to use [GWP*] to say what the responsibilities of
a sector are, without consideration of anything else — like the
history of a sector, the wealth of a sector, and the other impacts
that sector might have had on the environment — then I think that’s
inappropriate,” he said. <br>
<br>
The author of the Australian sheep meat study — Brad Ridoutt, a
principal research scientist with Australia’s national research
agency, CSIRO — did not respond to a request for comment. <br>
<br>
In their new study, Donnison and Murphy-Bokern also highlighted a
2022 paper in The Journal of Dairy Science that used GWP* to show
the U.S. dairy cattle industry becoming “climate neutral” in less
than two decades. By steadily reducing methane emissions, and
getting each individual cow to produce more than 30 percent more
milk, U.S. dairy could produce “no additional warming” as soon as
2041, according to this research. But overall warming from the dairy
industry would only continue to increase for the next 19 years.
Under the scenario described as “climate neutral,” U.S. dairy would
actually be warming the world in 2041 much more than it is today. <br>
<br>
Industry groups leaped on the report, which was co-authored by
University of California, Davis professor of livestock sciences
Frank Mitloehner, who has received scrutiny and criticism for close
ties to the livestock sector. His co-author was Sara Place, a
Colorado State University associate professor of feedlot systems,
who had been the chief sustainability officer at a global animal
health company until 2022. <br>
<br>
In an emailed response to DeSmog’s request for comment, Mitloehner
did not directly address the issue of whether his use of “climate
neutral” was misleading, but conceded that absolute emissions should
still play an important role in conversations around climate action.<br>
<br>
“We will absolutely need to continue using GWP100 as it tells us
things other metrics can’t, but we can do so in tandem with GWP* to
get a more accurate picture of the impact methane emissions have on
our climate,” Mitloehner said.<br>
<br>
It’s not just that industry groups are using GWP* to divert
attention away from the sheer volume of their emissions. The term
“climate neutral” also suggests a level of sustained equilibrium
that doesn’t really exist. Donnison said only ongoing, aggressive
cuts in methane can make up for other continued emissions from the
livestock sector, which also contributes longer-lived greenhouse
gasses to the atmosphere, like nitrous oxide and CO2. Claiming
neutrality when continued cuts will be needed indefinitely, the
authors write, is “an oxymoron.” <br>
<br>
More significantly, Donnison said, drastic cuts are necessary
because methane continues to rapidly drive climate change, enough to
contribute half a degree of warming on its own. Agriculture is
responsible for about 40 percent of that footprint, mostly due to
the production of ruminant livestock like cattle and sheep, which
belch up methane in large quantities as part of their digestive
process. A single cow can produce over 200 pounds of methane
emissions per year, according to an Environmental Protection Agency
analysis of Our World in Data estimates. <br>
<br>
Scientists say we can’t achieve the big-picture goal of the Paris
Agreement — limiting the rise in average global temperature to 1.5
degrees Celsius — without cutting methane now. <br>
<br>
With that in mind, Donnison said, the livestock industry’s claims of
future “climate neutrality” give a false impression. The situation
is more like a house on fire, he said, and someone who’s actively
pouring gas on the fire wants credit for pouring a little less. <br>
<br>
“You can say, ‘Well, I’m not going to add further to the fire
anymore,’” said Donnison. “But what about all the existing damage
you’ve caused up until that point?” <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.desmog.com/2023/12/14/the-livestock-industrys-climate-neutral-claims-are-too-good-to-be-true/">https://www.desmog.com/2023/12/14/the-livestock-industrys-climate-neutral-claims-are-too-good-to-be-true/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ pity the tiny vole ]</i><br>
<b>A Major Climate Force Has Been Ignored for Decades</b><br>
Small mammals play an outsize role in shaping the world around them.<br>
By Bathsheba Demuth<br>
<br>
JANUARY 4, 2024, 7:30 AM ET<br>
<br>
Finding a vole on Alaska’s North Slope takes practice. The open
plain pulls the eye upward, toward grand things: the horizon line,
the distant shimmer of snow in the mountains. The nearest tree is
more than 50 miles away. The low shrubs and sedges toss and wave in
the wind. It’s a place where a 600-pound musk ox can look dog-size.<br>
<br>
In this landscape, even a very large vole—weighing less than three
ounces and no more than nine inches long—is easy to miss. But Nick
Patel knows what to look for. Last August, Patel pointed my
attention toward a depression worn into the moss, a path that
disappeared into a yellowed tuft of sedge. Voles are creatures of
habit, scurrying so often over the same route that they wear
trails—runways—into the soil. Once you know to look for them, the
tundra is laced through with vole runways.<br>
<br>
Patel is a field tech with Team Vole, a group of some 20 researchers
studying Alaska’s voles and lemmings. Despite their size, these
creatures are a force on the tundra. Caribou migrate. So do the
geese, ducks, swans, and sandhill cranes that come north by the
hundreds of thousands each summer. But voles and lemmings stay put.
Unlike many Arctic animals, they don’t hibernate. And as Team Vole
is finding, this means that these small mammals—which live
throughout the circumpolar north—fundamentally shape the ecosystem
around them. In their tiny paws rests a crucial part of the
climate’s future: whether the world’s tundra will help pull carbon
from the atmosphere, or instead emit more.<br>
<br>
Once Patel showed me how to spot voles, I couldn’t stop seeing signs
of their work. One day at Toolik Lake Field Station, a science hub
370 miles north of Fairbanks, I watched a pair of them emerge from a
knot of grassy fronds. They paused and stood, delicately fingered
paws hanging over buff bellies. “Those two are always together,”
Audrey Fatone, a field tech with Team Vole, told me. “Although we
can’t tell them apart exactly...<br>
- -<br>
People, too, are a variable in the carbon equation. The degree to
which global emissions fall or rise is an aggregate of human
politics, of what we choose to build. That’s especially apparent in
Alaska. The Toolik Lake Field Station sits at mile 284 on the Dalton
Highway, built for the construction and maintenance of the
Trans-Alaska Pipeline in the 1970s. On the short drive between the
vole pens and Toolik Lake, you can see the pipeline curling like a
silver jump rope thrown over the plush hills. To the west of the
Toolik Lake vole pens, in the National Petroleum Reserve, a cluster
of new wells approved by the Biden administration in 2023 could,
once completed, pump some 600 million barrels of crude over the next
three decades. Burning that oil will add more carbon to the
atmosphere—provoking warming that, in part because of the voles,
could make the tundra a carbon source.<br>
<br>
Historically, climate modelers have focused on how human projects
interact with the most obvious components of the carbon cycle:
oceans, forests, sea ice, atmosphere, all the grand parts of the
global landscape. Recently, helped by more computing power, models
have begun to consider variables such as the difference between
plant growth in the tundra and the tropics. And yet, much like me
before I learned to see how vole trails shape the tundra,
researchers still tend to overlook the role of herbivores in the
carbon cycle. “Small mammals matter. They punch above their weight,”
McLaren said. That means standard climate models, many of which
don’t consider how animals rework the world around them,
underestimate the scope and consequences of ecosystem change.<br>
<br>
Adding animals into the equation requires knowing, in detail, what
different species do—even the tiny ones that get lost in the
grasses. Team Vole might not yet be able to say definitively what
kind of tundra voles will build in the coming decades. What is
clear, however, is that voles’ eating and scampering are
consequential, part of shaping each of our futures. For all that
human beings transform the land and atmosphere, even two-ounce
animals reshape the world around us as they make it home.<br>
<br>
Bathsheba Demuth is the author of Floating Coast: An Environmental
History of the Bering Strait. She teaches history and environmental
studies at Brown University.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/01/alaska-arctic-voles-carbon-source-climate-change/677014/">https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/01/alaska-arctic-voles-carbon-source-climate-change/677014/</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><i>[ from Phys.Org]</i><br>
<b>Evolution might stop humans from solving climate change,
researchers say</b><br>
by Marcus Wolf, University of Maine<br>
JANUARY 2, 2024<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/hires/2024/evolution-might-stop-h-1.jpg">https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/hires/2024/evolution-might-stop-h-1.jpg</a><br>
Central features of human evolution may stop our species from
resolving global environmental problems like climate change, says
a recent study led by the University of Maine.<br>
<br>
Humans have come to dominate the planet with tools and systems to
exploit natural resources that were refined over thousands of
years through the process of cultural adaptation to the
environment. University of Maine evolutionary biologist Tim Waring
wanted to know how this process of cultural adaptation to the
environment might influence the goal of solving global
environmental problems. What he found was counterintuitive.<br>
<br>
The project sought to understand three core questions: how human
evolution has operated in the context of environmental resources,
how human evolution has contributed to the multiple global
environmental crises, and how global environmental limits might
change the outcomes of human evolution in the future.<br>
<br>
Waring's team outlined their findings in a new paper published in
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Other authors
of the study include Zach Wood, UMaine alumni, and Eörs Szathmáry,
a professor at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary.<br>
<br>
<b>Human expansion</b><br>
The study explored how human societies' use of the environment
changed over our evolutionary history. The research team
investigated changes in the ecological niche of human populations,
including factors such as the natural resources they used, how
intensively they were used, what systems and methods emerged to
use those resources and the environmental impacts that resulted
from their usage.<br>
This effort revealed a set of common patterns. Over the last
100,000 years, human groups have progressively used more types of
resources, with more intensity, at greater scales and with greater
environmental impacts. Those groups often then spread to new
environments with new resources.<br>
<br>
The global human expansion was facilitated by the process of
cultural adaptation to the environment. This leads to the
accumulation of adaptive cultural traits—social systems and
technology to help exploit and control environmental resources
such as agricultural practices, fishing methods, irrigation
infrastructure, energy technology and social systems for managing
each of these.<br>
<br>
"Human evolution is mostly driven by cultural change, which is
faster than genetic evolution. That greater speed of adaptation
has made it possible for humans to colonize all habitable land
worldwide," says Waring, associate professor with the UMaine
Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions and
the School of Economics.<br>
<br>
Moreover, this process accelerates because of a positive feedback
process: as groups get larger, they accumulate adaptive cultural
traits more rapidly, which provides more resources and enables
faster growth.<br>
<br>
"For the last 100,000 years, this has been good news for our
species as a whole." Waring says, "but this expansion has depended
on large amounts of available resources and space."<br>
<br>
Today, humans have also run out of space. We have reached the
physical limits of the biosphere and laid claim to most of the
resources it has to offer. Our expansion also is catching up with
us. Our cultural adaptations, particularly the industrial use of
fossil fuels, have created dangerous global environmental problems
that jeopardize our safety and access to future resources.<br>
<b><br>
Global limits</b><br>
To see what these findings mean for solving global challenges like
climate change, the research team looked at when and how
sustainable human systems emerged in the past. Waring and his
colleagues found two general patterns. First, sustainable systems
tend to grow and spread only after groups have struggled or failed
to maintain their resources in the first place.<br>
<br>
For example, the U.S. regulated industrial sulfur and nitrogen
dioxide emissions in 1990, but only after we had determined that
they caused acid rain and acidified many water bodies in the
Northeast. This delayed action presents a major problem today as
we threaten other global limits. For climate change, humans need
to solve the problem before we cause a crash.<br>
<br>
Second, researchers also found evidence that strong systems of
environmental protection tend to address problems within existing
societies, not between them. For example, managing regional water
systems requires regional cooperation, regional infrastructure and
technology, and these arise through regional cultural evolution.
The presence of societies of the right scale is therefore a
critical limiting factor.<br>
<br>
Tackling the climate crisis effectively will probably require new
worldwide regulatory, economic and social systems—ones that
generate greater cooperation and authority than existing systems
like the Paris Agreement. To establish and operate those systems,
humans need a functional social system for the planet, which we
don't have.<br>
<br>
"One problem is that we don't have a coordinated global society
which could implement these systems," says Waring, "We only have
sub-global groups, which probably won't suffice. But you can
imagine cooperative treaties to address these shared challenges.
So, that's the easy problem."<br>
<br>
The other problem is much worse, Waring says. In a world filled
with sub-global groups, cultural evolution among these groups will
tend to solve the wrong problems, benefiting the interests of
nations and corporations and delaying action on shared priorities.
Cultural evolution among groups would tend to exacerbate resource
competition and could lead to direct conflict between groups and
even global human dieback.<br>
</p>
<p>"This means global challenges like climate change are much harder
to solve than previously considered," says Waring. "It's not just
that they are the hardest thing our species has ever done. They
absolutely are. The bigger problem is that central features in
human evolution are likely working against our ability to solve
them. To solve global collective challenges we have to swim
upstream."</p>
<b>Looking forward</b><br>
Waring and his colleagues think that their analysis can help
navigate the future of human evolution on a limited Earth. Their
paper is the first to propose that human evolution may oppose the
emergence of collective global problems and further research is
needed to develop and test this theory.<br>
<br>
Waring's team proposes several applied research efforts to better
understand the drivers of cultural evolution and search for ways to
reduce global environmental competition, given how human evolution
works. For example, research is needed to document the patterns and
strength of human cultural evolution in the past and present.
Studies could focus on the past processes that lead to the human
domination of the biosphere, and on the ways cultural adaptation to
the environment is occurring today.<br>
<br>
But if the general outline proves to be correct, and human evolution
tends to oppose collective solutions to global environmental
problems, as the authors suggest, then some very pressing questions
need to be answered. This includes whether we can use this knowledge
to improve the global response to climate change.<br>
<br>
"There is hope, of course, that humans may solve climate change. We
have built cooperative governance before, although never like this:
in a rush at a global scale," Waring says.<br>
<br>
The growth of international environmental policy provides some hope.
Successful examples include the Montreal Protocol to limit
ozone-depleting gases and the global moratorium on commercial
whaling.<br>
<br>
New efforts should include fostering more intentional, peaceful and
ethical systems of mutual self-limitation, particularly through
market regulations and enforceable treaties, that bind human groups
across the planet together ever more tightly into a functional unit.<br>
<br>
But that model may not work for climate change.<br>
<br>
"Our paper explains why and how building cooperative governance at
the global scale is different, and helps researchers and
policymakers be more clear-headed about how to work toward global
solutions," says Waring.<br>
<br>
This new research could lead to a novel policy mechanism to address
the climate crisis: Modifying the process of adaptive change among
corporations and nations may be a powerful way to address global
environmental risks.<br>
<br>
As for whether humans can continue to survive on a limited planet,
Waring says, "We don't have any solutions for this idea of a
long-term evolutionary trap, as we barely understand the problem. If
our conclusions are even close to being correct, we need to study
this much more carefully."<br>
<br>
More information: Timothy M. Waring et al, Characteristic processes
of human evolution caused the Anthropocene and may obstruct its
global solutions, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:
Biological Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0259<br>
<br>
Journal information: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
B <br>
Provided by University of Maine <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://phys.org/news/2024-01-evolution-humans-climate.html">https://phys.org/news/2024-01-evolution-humans-climate.html</a>
<p><br>
</p>
<font face="Calibri"><br>
</font><font face="Calibri"> <i>[The news archive - video clip from
2000 - check 29 mins in ]</i></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> <font size="+2"><i><b>January 5, 2000 </b></i></font>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> </font> January 5, 2000: During a Democratic
Presidential debate with former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley,
Vice President Al Gore notes that as a Congressman, "...I decided to
take on the issue of global warming and make it a national issue,
when everybody was saying 'You know, you're going to run a lot of
risk there. People are going to think that that's kind of off the
edge there.' Well, now more and more people say, 'Yes, it is real,'
and the next president has to be willing to take it on."<br>
<br>
(29:28-29-50)<br>
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