environment

environment

Road plan poses further threat to pristine habitat

Road plan poses further threat to pristine habitat –

(CNS): The National Conservation Council has confirmed that the extension of a farm road in North Side will need an environmental impact assessment as the proposed route would take it through some of Cayman’s most pristine remaining forest land. Flying in the face of the PACT Government’s policy of limiting development in untouched habitat, the NRA wants to extend Hutland Road.

Experts at the Department of Environment believe that this land is some of the most bio-diverse habitat in the Cayman Islands, which could be placed under threat once it is made accessible.

Speaking at the National Conservation Council general meeting on Wednesday, DoE Director Gina Ebanks-Petrie explained that the working group of the NCC had reviewed the westward road extension proposed by the planning ministry.

(https://caymannewsservice.com/2022/07/road-plan-poses-further-threat-to-pristine-habitat/)

Coastal Fire Shows Even the Rich ‘Are Not Safe From Earth Breakdown’

Coastal Fire Shows Even the Rich ‘Are Not Safe From Earth Breakdown’

 As a fast-moving brush fire near Laguna Beach, California destroyed well over a dozen homes on Thursday—including five multimillion-dollar mansions—a prominent environmental researcher and advocate warned that the wealthy are not immune from the disastrous effects of the climate emergency, even as the fossil fuel-driven crisis harms the poor disproportionately.
“No matter how rich you are, you are not safe from Earth breakdown,” tweeted Los Angeles-based climate scientist Peter Kalmus, a member of Scientist Rebellion.
Emphasizing that it is still May—months before the wildfire season typically reaches its peak—Kalmus said that “the only way out” of Southern California’s historic drought is to “fight side by side and to strip power away from the rich corporatists who are leading us deeper into catastrophe, even as their own homes burn.”

Global Climate Coalition Tells Biden Ukraine War Is Chance to ‘End the Fossil Fuel Era

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Global Climate Coalition Tells Biden Ukraine War Is Chance to ‘End the Fossil Fuel Era’

 Over 520 organizations told President Joe Biden on Wednesday to urgently “end the fossil fuel era” and commit to a rapid renewable energy transition rooted in justice and a more peaceful world.
“This is the opportunity of our lifetimes to stop the violence of fossil fuels and build a new era of peace and justice to confront the climate crisis.”
The demand was delivered in a letter that points to a “cascade of emergencies” currently facing humanity including the climate crisis and Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, which “share the same dangerous thread: dependence on fossil fuels.”
“Russia’s invasion into Ukraine is fueled by their fossil fuel extraction power, and the world’s reliance upon it,” the signatories, including global groups like Climate Action Network International and 350.org, wrote

Heat-resilient “super corals”: Nature Seychelles setting up aquaculture farm for future corals

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Heat-resilient “super corals”: Nature Seychelles setting up aquaculture farm for future corals 

 Nature Seychelles, a nonprofit organisation, is planning to set up a land-based aquaculture coral farm on the island of Praslin to produce more heat-resilient corals, which are better engineered to adapt to continuously rising ocean temperatures.
The organisation’s chief executive, Nirmal Shah, told SNA that such a project will be more advantageous than an ocean-based nursery or farm.
“By growing corals in an aquaculture facility, we will be able to produce more corals and faster. We can also produce corals that we have experimented with. We want to train the corals to become more resilient to heat as this is the problem corals face at the moment,” said Shah.
Corals all over the world are increasingly dying due to the continuous rise of sea temperatures as a result of climate change.
Shah explained that it is more urgent for Seychelles matters as waters of the western Indian Ocean are warming up at a faster rate, causing corals to bleach faster.
When corals bleach, they expel their symbiotic partners, types of photosynthetic algae, causing the corals to be deprived of their nutrients and, as such, die off. 

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Campaign to save Bermuda seagrass beds gets under way

Efforts are under way to protect Bermuda’s native seagrass beds – and the species that rely on them to survive.

Walter Roban, the Minister of Home Affairs, said the ministry launched a restoration project last summer, installing large mesh cages over struggling seagrass areas around the island.
Mr Roban said: “Anyone swimming or boating around our Island last summer is likely to have noticed that many of our seagrass meadows have disappeared, for example at Admiralty Park and Somerset Long Bay.
“In a few places where the seagrass is short, it no longer provides refuge for juvenile fish, newly settled spiny lobsters and other small animals.
“This loss of seagrass will very likely upset the dynamics of our shallow water environment as well as negatively impact recreational and commercial fisheries

Researchers Pull Carbon Out of the Sky And Convert it to Instant Jet Fuel, Reshaping Aviation For Good

Researchers Pull Carbon Out of the Sky And Convert it to Instant Jet Fuel, Reshaping Aviation For Good
 A simple, yet world-altering method of sucking CO2 from the air into airplanes where it is converted directly to jet fuel is described in a new paper published in Nature.
With the importance of removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere at the front and center of so many economic and policy decisions, the invention of an onboard system for carbon-neutral flight would represent a massive step towards addressing the climate crisis.
Some estimates puts the aviation industry’s primarily-CO2 footprint of global emissions at just under 1 billion metric tons, or around 2.4% of all human activities.
Converting atmospheric CO2 into useable hydrocarbon fuel is difficult, and as until recently, expensive both in terms of capital and electricity. Using a molecule that is fully oxidized and thermodynamically stable, there are few keys that can cheaply or efficiently ‘unlock it’ for reuse.
Some catalysts, compounds that can attract and force a change in molecules, can convert CO2 into hydrocarbon molecules of a desirable configuration for jet fuels, but their use is limited because they are expensive or require huge amounts of electricity. They’re also inconsistent with producing hydrocarbon chains with the number of atoms ideal for aviation fuels.

How Ugandan Nasa scientist Catherine Nakalembe uses satellites to boost farming

How Ugandan Nasa scientist  Catherine Nakalembe uses satellites to boost farming 
27 Dec 2020 | Africa 

As a keen badminton player Ugandan Catherine Nakalembe wanted to study sport science at university but a failure to get the required grades for a government grant set her on a path that led her to Nasa and winning a prestigious food research prize, writes the BBC’s Patience Atuhaire. 
When Dr Nakalembe tried to explain to a Karamojong farmer in north-eastern Uganda how her work using images taken from satellites hundreds of kilometres above the Earth relates to his small plot, he laughed. 
While she uses the high-resolution images in her pioneering work to help farmers and governments make better decisions, she still needs to get on the ground to sharpen up the data. Read More

2020 was the year clean energy started to beat Big Oil

 For the last century, the biggest, most powerful companies in the global energy market have been oil and gas producers. Slowly, though, the global race to avert climate change has been upsetting that hierarchy. And in 2020, aided by the devastating blow dealt to oil demand by the pandemic, a cohort of clean energy companies finally shouldered aside Big Oil and rose to the top of the financial heap.
The era of Big Renewables—electric utilities and traditional oil and gas majors that have shifted their portfolios out of fossil fuels and toward renewables—is here. How long they’ll stay on top depends on what happens during the post-pandemic economic recovery. . Read More

Are climate scientists being too cautious when linking extreme weather to climate change?

In this year of extreme weather events—from devastating West Coast wildfires to tropical Atlantic storms that have exhausted the alphabet—scientists and members of the public are asking when these extreme events can be scientifically linked to climate change.
Dale Durran, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, argues that climate science need to approach this question in a way similar to how weather forecasters issue warnings for hazardous weather.
In a new paper, published in the October issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, he draws on the weather forecasting community’s experience in predicting extreme weather events such as tornadoes, flash floods, high winds and winter storms. If forecasters send out a mistaken alert too often, people will start to ignore them. If they don’t alert for severe events, people will get hurt. How can the atmospheric sciences community find the right balance? 

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Climate Science Denial Network Behind Great Barrington Declaration

Climate Science Denial Network Behind Great Barrington Declaration – Byline Times

 “There are countries who are managing the pandemic relatively well, including South Korea and New Zealand, and their strategies do not include simply letting the virus run wild whilst hoping that the asthmatic community and the elderly can find somewhere to hide for 12 months.”
It is consequently no wonder that some experts see this not as science, but as a form of predatory neoliberal economics in disguise.