Category Archives: Human Impact

Population Impacts

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“There are thousands of essays, articles and books dealing with population but “Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot” provides a convincing new way of understanding the impacts of population size on human welfare and nature. Through well-chosen quotes, and stunning photographs, this largely visual presentation documents the realities and role of burgeoning human numbers on a broad variety of important areas including the destruction of wildlife and natural systems, air and water pollution, food insecurity and climate change.

“This consequential book should be read by political leaders, development planners, and the public to bring about an end to the current neglect of voluntary family planning. As Nobel laureate Henry W. Kendall noted “If we do not voluntarily bring population growth under control in the next one or two decades, nature will do it for us in the most brutal way, whether we like it or not.”  from: populationspeakout.org

GR:  It really isn’t an accident.

Since humans know very little about their surroundings or about the consequences of their actions, many will one day say, “yes, we probably destroyed most of life on earth, but we didn’t mean to, it was just an accident.  The more people that read Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot, the fewer people can claim their impact was accidental.  Peruse the book (click on the center button to begin).

Tallying up the climate pledges: How close are current INDCs to reaching the 2-degree goal?

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“So far, 57 countries have submitted their intended climate contributions ahead of the Paris conference – but their combined pledges aren’t enough to keep global warming in check. Experts say more ambition is needed.
Dried-up seabed in Uzbekistan (Photo: picture alliance / blickwinkel/G. Pohl)

“The climate pledges submitted to the UN by individual countries don’t do enough to reduce global greenhouse emissions and hold warming below 2 degrees, according to Climate Action Tracker (CAT), a consortium of climate scientists and policy experts.

“This week, delegates are meeting in Bonn for some of the last days of talks before the much-anticipated UN climate conference in Paris this December. CAT took the opportunity to underscore that countries must pledge more to make the agreement a success.”  Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.dw.com

GR:  Struggling to achieve too little too late.

California drought cause of odd animal activity?

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LOOMIS, Calif. — “The scarcity of food in the wild has been blamed for unusual animal activity during California’s drought including a recent bear attack, mountain lion sightings and an uptick in orphaned animals.

“But the devastating four-year drought that’s dried up streams and vegetation isn’t the sole cause, state officials and experts say. Instead, they say the drought is exacerbating long-term trends and natural animal behaviors in a state that is becoming increasingly developed.

“Pools and lush gardens in residential areas are attractive to animals forced out of their normal homes. The construction of roads and business developments, along with man’s increased movement into rural areas, had begun fragmenting habitats before the drought.

“You have a longer-term trend exacerbated by this acute change in water availability,” said Dick Cameron, a scientist who studies habitat fragmentation for The Nature Conservancy in California.”  Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.thonline.com

GR:  Drought is adding to wildlife woes in some places, but everywhere wild animals are suffering from human progress.  Our bulging population is using up the food that wild animals need, and our wastes are ruining wild habitats.

Predators and the food chain and preventing the suburban extinction of small native creatures

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“It is springtime here in Mount Waverley, close to the Reserve. The air is filled all day with the anguished squawks of smaller birds vainly trying to divert enormous crows from taking babies from their nests. Pairs of noisy miners are squawking at crows; by dusk, they must be exhausted. In our reserve, the Australian raven terrorises the other birds and dive-bombs the smaller dogs. The bellbirds keep their portion of the reserve, and will not let other birds colonise their areas.

“Every spring there are fewer little birds. Wrens and tits, which were quite plentiful in our garden twenty years ago, seem to have gone. Crows can be seen sometimes flying down the street with little birds in their beaks. We had no crows twenty years ago here. They are out of their ecological niche, whether native or exotic. The little birds have an ecological function in getting rid of noxious insects and other garden pests and these proliferate without them.

“Surely small birds have enough predators with cats, foxes and cars. Surely there is no need to protect all of the growing hordes of native crows or Australian ravens, on the grounds they have an important role in the food chain and they are native.  Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.onlineopinion.com.au

GR:  Habitat destruction, invasive species introductions are parts of the actions we have taken to begin Earth’s sixth mass extinction.

Shades of a Canfield Ocean — Hydrogen Sulfide in Oregon’s Purple Waves?

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Here we are at 1-degree C above normal, calling for a 2-degree limit, and already we get hints of horrors that might come. These purple waves should be treated as an early warning and cause for intensive investigation.

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Are we already starting to awaken some of the horrors of the ancient hothouse ocean? Are dangerous, sea and land life killing, strains of primordial hydrogen sulfide producing bacteria starting to show up in the increasingly warm and oxygen-starved waters of the US West Coast? This week’s disturbing new reports of odd-smelling, purple-colored waves appearing along the Oregon coastline are a sign that it may be starting to happen.

Purple Waves

(Purple waves wash over the Oregon beach of Neskowin on August 15. A form of hydrogen sulfide consuming bacteria is known to color water purple. Is this an indicator that the deadly gas is present in Oregon’s waters? Image source: Jeanine Sbisa and Beach Connection.)

A Dangerous Beauty

Oregon beachgoers and ocean researchers alike are flummoxed. There’s something strange in the water. Something that’s coloring the waves of Oregon’s beaches purple even as the off-shore waters are painted…

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Banned pesticides pose a greater risk to bees than thought, EU experts warn

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“Three pesticides banned in Europe for their potential to damage bee populations could pose an even greater threat than was thought, according to a new assessment by the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa).

“Already proscribed for seed treatments and soil applications, the Efsa analysis says that clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam also pose a ‘high risk’ to bees when sprayed on leaves.

“The UK is currently facing a legal challenge to an emergency exemption it granted, allowing use of two of the substances, after protests by the National Farmers Union.

“But far from supporting the British case, the advisory expert assessment will add to pressure for an extension of the ban to apply to fruit orchards after blooming, and crops gown in greenhouses, Greenpeace says.

“The commission should expand the EU-wide ban to cover all uses of neonicotinoids on all crops, and end the self-service approach to derogations. Viable non-chemical alternatives exist and the EU should encourage farmers to use them,” said the group’s agriculture policy director, Marco Contiero.”  Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.theguardian.com

GR:  The rest of the world needs to pay attention here and see the need to escape from the chemistry industry’s death grip.

Slowing Africa’s Population Boom to Save People and Wildlife Both

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“Ask any serious conservationist to name the most pressing issues today for African wildlife, and right at the top of the list, you’ll almost certainly hear about the wholesale killing of wildlife for the bushmeat trade, or the slaughter of 33,000 elephants a year to make ivory trinkets.

“But the truth is that these are symptoms. And if they sound hard to fix, take a look at the much larger underlying problem, the one nobody wants to talk about: Human populations in some of most revered habitats on Earth—notably including Kenya and Tanzania—are on track to quadruple or even quintuple in this century. Nigeria, already almost ungovernable with 160 million people in an area the size of France, will grow to just under a billion people over the next 85 years.

“Across sub-Saharan Africa, according to the latest United Nations forecast, the population will rise from 960 million today to almost four billion by 2100. Population density will match that of modern China. That’s bad news for human populations and catastrophic for wildlife.”  Sourced through Scoop.it from: strangebehaviors.wordpress.com

“Good God! I’ve been sayin’ it. I’ve been sayin’ it for ten damn years. Ain’t I been sayin’ it, Miguel? Yeah, I’ve been sayin’ it.” —Russell Casse, Indpendence Day.

GR:  Human population, the source of Earth’s problems.

 

Resilient Federal Forest Act will diminish resilience of forests

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George Wuerthner:  “Oregon Congressman’s Greg Walden’s (other western legislators also are sponsors) support of the so-called Resilient Federal Forests Act is based on faulty assumptions. The Resilient Federal Forests Act will actually decrease forest resilient. Here’s a link to Walden’s position on the Act.

“Here’s just a few of the problems:

“Walden asserts that if beetles, and disease along with lack of management are creating fuels that are contributing to large wildfires.
Large fires are driven by weather/climate not fuels. You cannot put them out until the weather changes. Thus additional fire fighting funds will do little to actually stop these blazes.
“Furthermore, from an ecological perspective you would not want to stop them. They are one of the most important ways that forests get an input of dead trees.
“In reality, dead trees are less likely to burn than live trees under severe fire weather conditions.”  Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.thewildlifenews.com

GR:  Mixing land management with politics is one of the great forces behind our mass extinction.

 

Dolphin health predicts human health

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Dolphins are known to marine biologists as sentinel animals, if they are ailing, we humans may be next. The Indian River Lagoon, an ecologically diverse estuary that covers 40 percent of Florida’s east coast, is ailing. The area is home to a large human population who live near its shores and plays a significant part in the area’s economy. The lagoon’s nitrogen-saturated waters—due to fertilizer run-off and other pollution—is likely promoting the algae blooms that are toxic to marine mammals and birds.

Florida Institute of Technology assistant professor Spencer Fire and researchers from lead agency Georgia Aquarium and other conservation partners recently completed a study to better understand the health of Atlantic bottlenose dolphins in the IRL, and the data collected from the dolphins is expected to help researchers understand how toxic algal blooms can harm wildlife.  Sourced through Scoop.it from: phys.org

GR:  Another innocent canary in our exploding coal mine.