June 2021: 3 Significant environmental news I want to share

In writing, I am a semi-democratic. Last month, in my realm, eight environmental articles hooked me. I picked 3-news among them that my friends liked most. Before going to the stories, I articulate the essence- 

1. Our mother earth and life are more than mystic; kilometers below Earth’s surface, where sunlight for photosynthesis cannot reach such depths, and the meager amount of organic carbon food that does is often exhausted; life was everywhere.
2. The law of nature doesn't care about our absurd thought of nature’s wellbeing; although wolves are predators, a 24 percent decrease in deer-vehicle strikes is linked to their arrival. 
3. And our next generation is more caring to the earth than we do; Eight teenagers, along with an 86-year-old nun, launched a case to prevent the approval of a massive coal mine. The federal court of Australia has found the environment minister has a duty of care to protect young people from the climate crisis.

On May 24, The Quanta Magazine published, Scientists, poke and prod at the fringes of habitability in pursuit of life’s limits. To that end, they have tunneled kilometers below Earth’s surface, drilling outward from the bottoms of mine shafts and sinking boreholes deep into ocean sediments. To their surprise, life was everywhere that we looked. And it was present in staggering quantities: By various estimates, the inhabited subsurface realm has twice the volume of the oceans, making it one of the biggest on the planet, as well as one of the oldest and most diverse.

Researchers are still trying to understand how most of the life down there survives. Sunlight for photosynthesis cannot reach such depths, and the meager amount of organic carbon food that does is often exhausted. Scientists find evidence that, much as the sun’s nuclear fusion reactions provide energy to the surface world, a different kind of nuclear process- radioactive decay- can sustain life deep below the surface.

Although these radiolytic reactions yield energy far more slowly than the sun and underground thermal processes, they are fast enough to be drivers of microbial activity in a broad range of settings- and that they are responsible for a diverse pool of organic molecules. It opened up whole new vistas into what life could look like, how it might have emerged on an early Earth, and where else in the universe it might one day be found.

On May 26, The Anthropocene printed, the various species in an ecosystem are in a delicate balance with one another. If one is removed or overabundant, the results can ripple through the entire community. Changes to an ecosystem also often affect humans, both our conservation and economic interests. Such is the case with wolves, which have proponents both for their protection and their removal.

To better understand one aspect of the economic impact of wolf recolonization, researchers in Wisconsin have compared the costs incurred by wolf-caused livestock losses to the money saved from a reduction in deer-vehicle collisions, likely due to the presence of the predators.

Due to wolves’ tendency to use roads as corridors, the researchers hypothesized that they would steer deer away from roadways, thus lowering the number of wildlife collisions. They found that- on an average wolf, arrival linked to a 24 percent decrease in deer-vehicle strikes. Besides, wolf presence could potentially limit crop damage by shifting deer away from road-adjacent agricultural fields.

And, on May 27, The Guardian wrote, the Australian court finds government must protect young people from the climate crisis. Eight teenagers, along with an 86-year-old nun, launched a case to prevent the approval of a massive coal mine. The federal court of Australia has found the environment minister has a duty of care to protect young people from the climate crisis in a judgment hailed by lawyers and teenagers who brought the case as a world first. It was a historic and spectacular decision with potentially significant consequences. It is the first time in the world that such a duty of care has been recognized, especially in a common-law country.

May 2021: 3 Significant environmental news I want to share

Most Significantly, on Apr 3, 2021, The Economist wrote that Carbon dioxide is not the only cause of global warming. About a quarter of the effect is a consequence of methane. And the methane problem looks a lot more tractable in the short term than does the carbon dioxide one.

Over the 20 years after its emission, a tonne of methane causes 86 times more warming than does a tonne of CO2. Also, it does not hang around. It has a half-life in the atmosphere of about a decade, so what is released soon vanishes. By contrast, CO2 lingers for hundreds, or even thousands, of years.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change envisages a 35% drop in methane emissions below 2010 levels by 2050. The IEA's numbers suggest that 14% of this is possible in the oil and gas sector alone, at no net cost.

SCIENCEFOCUS.COM, published on Apr 30, 2021, Scientists have found that only 43 percent of the cells that make up our physical form are human; the majority of what counts as “us” comprises bacteria, fungi, and other microbes. For every human gene in our bodies, there are 360 microbial genes. It’s enough to inspire an identity crisis. Your body isn’t just you.

Ask someone what a fungus eats, and perhaps they’ll guess manure, or rotting fruit, or houses, each of which counts as a correct answer. Considering what a wide variety of things fungi consume or can eat, it’s hard to guess wrong. But ask a stranger how fungi eat, and it’s a good bet you’ll stump them.

Yet many details of fungal biology, their evolutionary history, and their ecological roles in soils, plants, and the human remain a mystery.

And, PHYS.ORG, printed on May 19, 2021, A new study reveals far greater extinctions among the snakes and lizards of Guadeloupe following European colonization than previously believed. The team studied an extraordinary 43,000 individual bone remains from fossil and archaeological assemblages on six islands, ultimately revealing that 50% to 70% of Guadeloupe's squamate species went extinct after the arrival of European colonialists.

This study shows that Indigenous populations co-existed with the islands' snakes and lizards for thousands of years. The biodiversity of Guadeloupe's snakes and lizards increased during the long history of Indigenous habitation with no recorded extinctions. Yet the Guadeloupe data clearly show that Indigenous lifeways were supportive of snake and lizard biodiversity.

April 2021: 3 Significant environmental news I want to share

Most Significantly, on Apr 9, 2021, SCIENCEX.COM wrote that A unique methane-eating community of bacteria is living within the bark of a typical Australian tree species paperbark. These microbial communities were abundant, thriving, and mitigated about one-third of the substantial methane emissions from paperbark that would have otherwise ended up in the atmosphere. Scientists discovered the bark of paperbark trees provides a unique home for methane-oxidizing bacteria that consumes methane and turns it into carbon dioxide, a far less potent greenhouse gas.

Within wetland forests, scientists assumed most tree methane "treethane" emissions originate from the underlying soils. The methane is transported upwards via the tree roots and stems, then through to the atmosphere via their bark. This discovery will revolutionize how we view methane-emitting trees and the novel microbes living within them. Only through understanding why, how, which, when, and where trees emit the most methane, we more effectively plant forests that effectively draw down carbon dioxide while avoiding unwanted methane emissions.

PHYS.ORG, published on Mar 24, 2021, A new study shows that if we can keep the population fixed at current levels, the risk of population displacement due to river floods rise by ~50% for each degree of global warming. However, if the population increases, the relative global flood displacement risk is significantly higher.

And, SCIENCEFOCUS.COM, printed on Apr 9, 2021, Devastating environmental disasters have a way of bringing people together – and scientists have found the same may also hold for monkeys. New research has found that monkeys living in Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico, made more friends and became more tolerant of each other after a major hurricane ravaged the island in 2017. Three years since hurricane devastation, the monkeys appear to have maintained the connections formed after the blow– by sitting next to each other or grooming. 

March 2021: 3 Significant environmental news I want to share

 

Most Significantly, on Mar 8, 2021, The New Youk Times wrote that Two-species of sea slug Elysia marginata and Elysia atroviridis decapitate themselves only to regrow a new body from the severed head. Researchers were astonished to observe slugs in captivity cutting off their heads after their bodies became infected with parasites. Within 3-weeks, the heads regenerate a whole, parasite-free body, though the bodies never grow back new heads.

Scientific American, published on Feb 24, 2021, Researchers are just beginning to recognize the role of burial places as protectors of biodiversity. In 2015, scientists found rare orchids thriving in cemeteries in Turkey, and another team discovered a variety of medicinal plants in the graveyards of Bangladesh in 2008. And in Ukraine in 2014, ancient burial mounds were found to safeguard the last remnants of Europe’s dwindling steppe grasslands.

China Agricultural University in Beijing conducted plant surveys in 199 family graveyards among Hebei province wheat fields. They ranged in area from two to 400 square meters. Despite their relatively small size, they were home to a total of 81 native plant species. Even the tiniest, covering just two square meters, hosted 24 plant species. Nearly half of all graveyard plants were significant food resources for insect pollinators.

And, Science, printed on Mar 4, 2021, that Earth is in the midst of an insect apocalypse, with thousands of species dwindling over several decades. Scientists have often blamed habitat loss or pesticide use. But a new study of butterflies in the western United States has found that warmer fall weather may be taking as big, if not an immense, toll. The findings are a wake-up call—not just for butterflies, but for all insects. If humans don’t take dramatic steps to curb global warming, entire ecosystems could disappear, with untold impacts on biodiversity and human health.

Feb 2021: 3 Significant environmental news I want to share

Most Significantly, on Nov 12, 2018, Conservation International posted on its website that Without traditional knowledge, there is no climate change solution. They advocated- Indigenous people's traditional knowledge can help not only the world’s indigenous people but all of humanity in adapting and mitigating climate change. Indigenous people collect information from nature and use this data to make their decisions. They observe trees, fruits, bird migrations, wind direction, and the positions of the stars to predict the weather and help them adapt to changes. By combining this knowledge with science and technology and by grounding innovation in nature, we have the highest chance to meet ambitious new carbon targets.

The Guardian published on Feb 9, 2021, Invisible killer': fossil fuels caused 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, one in five of all people who died that year. Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil was responsible.

And, fern.org printed on Jul 1, 2020, that Tree planting cannot solve climate change. It merely refers to the act of planting trees in the ground, usually young trees (or saplings). Restoration, on the other hand, is returning a forest ecosystem to a previous, healthy state. In a biodiverse natural forest, there is a range of trees of different ages. Any young trees we plant now will be vital for the future, but it will take them a long time to catch up with the older forests’ ability to store carbon. We, therefore, need to prioritize protecting and restoring the forests we already have. 

My Planet Home-Earth; the future of Mankind and it

Characteristically, my eyes see my 13-year old son waking in the morning like a baby duck- shaking his hands like the feathers, strolling here & there, looking up the soft sky, observing the colored trees, and announced his very presence Quack, Quack, in response to the Caw, Caw, of the Crows. And suddenly runs towards the pond, stand a while on edge, examine thoroughly the greenish blue-water, & the sky with enormous-curiosity and jump over the warm water. Swim across the water-lettuce, hyacinths, and lilies. 

So, you know I do not see my earth as a gaseous tank, such as nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and others. I see my globe as my home, my sweet home! Amazon is our forest where Tarzan lives and protects our pets, the lions, Elephants, Deer, from the prankish. The Oceans are our lakes where Khizir- the righteous servant of God possessing great wisdom or mystic knowledge traveling around the earth on a giant fish and helping the poor, supporting the pious & honest pupils. The Himalaya is the palace of Himavati, who travels around the Himalaya on her white cow, and when needed, encrypted to Kali- equipped with weapons, marched into battle as Durga to confront the Demons. Furious, she furrowed her brow, and Kali emerged in all her terrible magnificence. She leaped into the fight, armed with her sword and noose, decapitated the demons, and presented their heads to Durga as a gift. I clap with big hands with joy.

On Jan 18, 2017, a press released- The planet's average surface temperature has risen about 1.1 degrees Celsius since the late 19th century, according to independent analyses by NASA. More importantly, it also stated, We do not expect record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear. NASA claimed- a change driven mainly by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere.

For humans, this means more destructive hurricanes, floods, forest fires, droughts, and bone-chilling Arctic blasts resulting in thousands of deaths, billions in property destruction, and massive interruptions of life as we know it.

But let me understand! The first reason NASA claimed against the rising temperature is the increased carbon dioxide. Can I tell that we human beings are not contributing to it? No way, but Carbon dioxide releasing is the base of our modern civilization! How? Only see around- the chimneys of our factories, the automobile traffic on our roads! According to the Journal Nature on Sep 2, 2015, we cut down about 15 billion trees each year! The other reason NASA claimed was directly accusing human-made emissions. So, are we the human being a caravan of suicidal pilgrims? 

I am not going to decide so fast. The earth Day Network announced their theme for Apr 22, 2019- Protect Our Species! They pointed out 10-animals threatened with extinction because of climate change are,

1. Climate change has impacted Bumblebees in two ways: Rising temperatures force populations northward to remain in cold weather, and spring flowers bloom earlier than in general, leaving less time for bees to pollinate.
2. Whales rely on specific ocean temperatures for their migration, feeding, and reproductive habits. As sea temperatures rise, these changes disrupt the attitudes necessary for whale survival.
3. Asian elephant habitat is negatively impacted by both lower rainfall and higher temperatures. Together, these threats have decreased the reproductive capacity of an already endangered species.
4. Giraffes have seen their population decline by 40% in the last 30 years. In addition to illegal poaching, the most pressing dangers are shrinking habitat and fewer acacia trees (their principal food source) due to climate change.
5. Insects stand to suffer drastically from climate change. At the current rate of warming (2°C), roughly 18% of all insect species would be lost by 2100; if the planet were to warm by 3.2°C, that number would rise to 49%.
6. Oceanic bird species are directly threatened by rising sea levels due to climate change. Rising waters can submerge their coastal habitats and nests completely.
7. Sharks have difficulty hunting and a higher embryo mortality rate as ocean temperature and acidity rise worldwide. In the Pacific Ocean, rising temperatures force sharks northward by an average of 30 kilometers annually. It is disrupting ecosystems that depend on sharks.
8. Rising sea temperatures endangered Coral reefs. In the last three years alone, 72% of the world's coral reefs protected by UNESCO experienced severe heat stress. Sustained heat stress causes coral bleaching, an often-deadly occurrence in which coral starves from loss of nutrition.
9. Monarch butterfly populations in California have fallen by as much as 95% since the 1980s due to habitat loss, increased use of pesticides, and loss of milkweed cultures, all related to climate change caused by humans.
10. Great apes of Southeast Asia, perhaps the most endangered ape species, are in jeopardy of extinction due to deforestation caused by climate change, with nearly 75% of forest cover at risk of deforestation.

However, significantly, the earth Day Network accused human beings of these changes.

Again, we blame ourselves for arranging the gas chamber for other animals of the earth to extinction. We are blaming ourselves as the force to destroy the planet. What is the globe? What is the relationship between us?

While visiting a large textile factory, big boilers always attract me to visit their giant sheds. Like someone enjoys ghost movies, although the heart-throbbing & throat is drying. Generally, for a big textile mill, the boiler is a maximum of 35 MW with a maximum temperature of 510-degrees Celsius. However, do we think about the temperature in the core of our earth continuously firing at 6000 degrees Celsius? We know the iron melts at around 1510 degrees Celsius temperature, so if the globe blast-good that, we would not notice how we died, so no pain! So, you think, how an angry mother-earth is raising her children gently in her lap! 

Considering nothing but only the temperature, I can tell we have nothing to do below the surface of the planet-earth but above the surface? Yes, we can do many things. However, before proceeding further, the question-will we do for what we are responsible for?

Mark Twain, how he sees- Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. He thinks it is open to dispute. Indeed, his experiments have proven to him that Man is the Unreasoning Animal. In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things that other animals quickly learn; he is incapable of learning. Among his experiments was this- in an hour, he taught a cat and a dog to be friends. He puts them in a cage. In another hour, he trained them to be friends with a rabbit. In the two days, he was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel, and some doves, finally a monkey. They lived together in peace, even affectionately.

Next, in another cage, he confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame, he added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next, a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China, and a Brahman from Benares; finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then he stayed away for two whole days. When he came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh-not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.  

Neither I agreed wholly with Mark Twain, nor did I ignore his perception. But I preferably want to cite E. B. White on the Silent Spring by Rachel Carson; I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its Wellbeing. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively. But we are skeptical and dictatorial to it. 

Whether we are compassionate to our humankind, living-nonliving things, and the mother Dharitri- it has its rule of law. So, I should confess, I am a big fan of Lovelock- the Creator of Gaia theory-the idea of the planet as a self-regulating entity. It sees the earth as a system made up of all the rocks, atmosphere, the ocean, and all the living things, and these interact together to sustain a state that keeps the living part of it surviving. It has to. If the biotic part dies, then so does the whole darned system, and it goes back to becoming a dead rocky planet like the ones we have in the Solar System already.

At the age of 92, in an interview with the Guardian, before the Rio-2012; UN Conference on Sustainable Development- Lovelock, getting upset with the initiatives of the World leaders taking to combat Environmental changes. He said he is doubtful that internationalist efforts of this sort achieve much: Whenever the UN puts its finger in, it seems to become a mess. The burden of my thoughts is that the climate situation is more complicated than we can handle, or possibly even in the future. You can not treat it as a scientific problem alone. You have to involve the whole world, and then there is the time constant of human activity. Look at how long ago the Kyoto treaty was – 15 years ago – and damn all have done. The human time constant is slow. You do not get remarkable changes in under 50-100 years, and climate does not wait for that. 

However, I still see him as an optimist. In an interview, at his 100, in 2019, with the Discover magazine, he says- Yes, we are making pretty prideful mistakes leading to global heating. Even so, the earth is still about balance. Throughout earth history, there have been some very disruptive phases; think of the Permian Period. But life did survive all of it. Amazingly, we did. So, whether humankind will survive or not, by the very nature of our planet, living may continue here until the sun is warming up and nothing will stop it. It will heat up until it becomes a red giant, and there will be no earth worth having then.

I completed the article; however, my instinct disagreed. Forget the red giant sun- it is too far to imagine also. Let me believe in us, the humankind. Yes, we have had many actions against nature. But still, we love our planet-earth, our humanity, nature. So, I want to look at Rachel Carson. In the article The Obligation to Endure in her book Silent Spring- she explained beautifully- we have to give time. She wrote,

Only within the moment represented by the present century has one species—man—acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world. During the past quarter-century, this power has not only increased to one of disturbing magnitude, but it has changed in character.  

It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth—eons of time in which developing and evolving and diversifying entity reached a state of adjustment and balance with its surroundings. Given time—time not in years but millennia—life adjusts, and a balance has reached. Time is an essential ingredient, but in the modern world, there is no time. 

Good that she explained the root causes of the problem and gave direction on what way to go. 

She explained- This is an era of specialists; each sees his problem. And unaware and intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits. It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged. When the people protest, confronted with some clear evidence of damaging results, it fed little tranquilizing pills of half-truth. We urgently need an end to this false assurance to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. The people must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the data.

So, considering the contemporary environmental global movements, whether the people succeed or not, I think they are responsive to their earth and are on the right track. 

Reference Reading:

1. The History of Tarzan; The official site- Edger Rice Burroughs tarzan.com

2. Encyclopedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/topic/Tarzan

3. The History of al-Tabari, Volume III, The Children of Israel, Translated by William M. Brinner, www.kalamullah.com/Books/The%20History%20Of%20Tabari/Tabari_Volume_03.pdf

4. Encyclopedia of Ancient Deities edited by Charles Russell Coulter, Patricia Turner; https://books.google.com.bd/books?id=sEIngqiKOugC&pg=PA257&lpg=PA257&dq=Devi+Himavati&source=bl&ots=3ws2l6X8-z&sig=ACfU3U12eYCdNZX4fi_1LMea7VX8NZmY4g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj_yqzz_7LgAhUNfisKHXE_BGsQ6AEwEHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Devi%20Himavati&f=false

5. NASA Press release, Jan 18, 2017, https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-noaa-data-show-2016-warmest-year-on-record-globally

6. Nature; Sep 2, 2015, https://www.nature.com/news/global-count-reaches-3-trillion-trees-1.18287

7. Earth Day Network, https://www.earthday.org/campaigns/endangered-species/earthday2019

8. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/core/

9. Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

10. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/15/james-lovelock-interview-gaia-theory

11. https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/james-lovelock-cyborgs-turning-100-and-the-come-age-of-the-novacene/

12. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/at-100-james-lovelock-has-new-ideas-about-gaia-and-earths-future

13. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson