Trophy hunting of grizzly bears to continue in British Columbia – The Globe and Mail

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Justine Hunter, VICTORIA — The Globe and Mail

“British Columbia is cracking down on the use of sheep and goats as pack animals for big game hunters in its latest set of hunting and trapping regulations. But the contentious trophy hunting of grizzly bears will continue unchanged.

“The provincial ministry responsible for hunting produced updated regulations on Monday, and although it has rejected a proposal to increase the number of grizzly hunting permits for resident hunters in the Peace River region, environmentalists are disappointed that the status quo remains in place.

“The major changes include additional record-keeping requirements for butchers, and a new ban on bringing domesticated sheep or goats along on big game hunts to act as beasts of burden because of fears that the animals may pass on disease to wildlife. The report did not say whether this was a common practice. Steve Thomson, the Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, says in the report released Monday his major concern in wildlife management right now is around the declining moose population, and he promised a new BC Moose Tracker app that will allow people to record moose sightings.”  Continue reading: Trophy hunting of grizzly bears to continue in British Columbia – The Globe and Mail

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Ten Mile Wide Chunks of Arctic Sea Ice are Disintegrating North of Svalbard | robertscribbler

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Robert Scribbler--“Over the past 10 days, the rate of sea ice extent loss in the Arctic has slowed down somewhat. And as a result sea ice extent measures, though maintaining in record low ranges, are much closer now to the 2012 line. Low pressure systems have come to dominate the Arctic Ocean zone. And the outwardly expanding counter-clockwise winds from these systems have tended to cause the ice to spread out and to thin. In the past, such events were seen as an ice preserving feature. But this year, there’s cause for a little doubt.

“The first cause comes in the form of record Arctic temperatures for all of 2016. As Zack Labe shows in the compelling graphic below, not only has the first half of 2016 been a record warm six months for the Arctic, it’s been a record warm half-year like no other.

(The first half of 2016 is about 1.5 C hotter in the Arctic than the previous record hot year. It’s a huge jump to new record warmth that should cause pretty much everyone to feel a deep sense of concern about this sensitive region. Image source: Zack Labe.)

“And if extra heat is guaranteed to do one thing — it’s melt frozen water. We can see that in the current near record low snow coverages for the Northern Hemisphere. We can see it in the fact that — despite what would be ‘bad melt’ weather conditions such as cloud cover and low pressure systems dominating the Arctic during the middle of June — Arctic sea ice extents are still in record low ranges and Arctic sea ice volume continues to track just below 2012’s record low trajectory. And we can certainly see it in the fact that despite the clouds that would normally promote cooler Arctic conditions during this time of year, surface temperatures have remained well above normal for the majority of June.

“Overall, these conditions are unprecedented for the Arctic. And, in microcosm, we can tell a little bit of this story of heat by tracking the life of a ten mile wide hunk of ice that was recently blown away from the ice pack and into the warming waters north of Svalbard.”  Continue reading:  Ten Mile Wide Chunks of Arctic Sea Ice are Disintegrating North of Svalbard | robertscribbler

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Climate Impacts From Farming Are Getting Worse | Climate Central

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By John Upton.–  “As signs emerge that the global energy sector is beginning to rein in what once had been unbridled levels of climate-changing pollution, new United Nations figures show pollution from farming is continuing to get worse.

“Greenhouse gases released from the growing of crops and livestock directly increased by a little more than 1 percent in 2014, compared with a year prior, the newly updated data shows.

“Burning fossil fuels for energy grew by about half that amount during the same period, research published in December showed, with further reductions anticipated for 2015. That’s seen as a key first step toward achieving the vast pollution reductions needed to start to stabilize the climate.

“Historically, it’s been the opposite — fossil fuel emissions have grown exponentially and agricultural emissions have grown linearly,” said Francesco Tubiello, a team leader in the statistics division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, which compiles the data.

“The new U.N. figures do not include greenhouse gas impacts from deforestation or other clearing of land to make space for farms, which are slowly being reduced overall.”  Continue reading:  Climate Impacts From Farming Are Getting Worse | Climate Central

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Too Flawed — “Too Few and Too Many: The Looming Population Crisis”

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Joe Bish, Population Media Center:  “The following blog post, authored by the president of the World Policy Institute at Loyola Marymount University, Michael A. Genovese, is a curious mishmash. While recognizing the malign pressure a woefully over-sized human population is putting on the Earth system, Mr. Genovese is also stuck, unimaginatively, on the “aging population fear” treadmill at the national level.

“As such, adopting the mantra of “Too Many, Too Few”, Mr. Genovese predictably hatches plans for remedial migration to sustain the unsustainable economies of the western nations. As for the rapidly growing undeveloped nations of the world, he offers a one sentence endorsement of “increasing access to and education on birth control”. All in all, the essay can probably be categorized as well-intended, but I am guessing you will agree the final product is disappointing. (The author also seems to mis-characterize the TFR’s of India and the Philippines.)

“NOTE: When it comes to disappointing population related content, many of you may have seen the outrageously daft publication from The Guardian on Sunday, June 12, titled “The Eco Guide to Population Growth.” I decided that anymore than two sentences covering this spectacle would be a waste of time, but if you want to see how mass media can obfuscate and mislead on crucial issues, click here.”  [GR:  The link is for my post on the “Eco Guide.”  The article below covers the “aging workforce” justification for increasing population.  My post covered another of the homocentric justifications:  A growing population is more likely to pop out a genius who will solve all our problems.]

Continue reading: Too Flawed — “Too Few and Too Many: The Looming Population Crisis”

May Marks 8th Consecutive Record Hot Month in NASA’s Global Temperature Measure | robertscribbler

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According to NASA, the world has just experienced another record hot month.

May of 2016 was the warmest May since record keeping began for NASA 136 years ago. It is now the 8th record hot month in a period that has now vastly exceeded all previous measures for global temperature tracking.

The month itself was 0.93 C above NASA’s 1951-1980 baseline measure. It’s the first month since October that readings fell below the 1 C anomaly mark. A range that before 2015 had never before been breached in the 136 year climate record and likely during all of the approximate 12,000 year period that marks the Holocene geological epoch.

It’s a reading that is fully 1.15 C above 1880s averages. A very warm measure in its own right but one that is thankfully somewhat removed from the 1.55 C monthly peak back during February of 2016. To this point, it’s worth noting that hitting 1.5 C above 1880s temps in the annual measure is the first major temperature break that scientists consider to be seriously threatening to human civilization and the life support systems of planet Earth. And we’re getting close to that mark now. However, considering the fact that El Nino is now transitioning toward La Nina, it appears that 2016 averages may peak closer to 1.2 C.

Continue reading: May Marks 8th Consecutive Record Hot Month in NASA’s Global Temperature Measure | robertscribbler

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Legal ivory sale drove dramatic increase in elephant poaching, study shows | Environment | The Guardian

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Damian Carrington, Monday 13 June 2016:  Research shows the legal sale in 2008 catastrophically backfired – but two African nations want to repeat the stockpile sell-off.

A huge legal sale of ivory intended to cut elephant poaching instead catastrophically backfired by dramatically increasing elephant deaths, according to new research.

The revelation comes just months before a decision on whether to permit another legal sale and against a backdrop of more African elephants being killed for ivory than are being born. In 2015 alone, 20,000 elephants were illegally killed.

The international trade in ivory was banned in 1989 but, in 2008, China and Japan were allowed to pay $15m for 107 tonnes of ivory stockpiled from elephants that died naturally in four African nations. The intention was to flood the market, crash prices and make poaching less profitable.

But instead, the legal sale was followed by “an abrupt, significant, permanent, robust and geographically widespread increase” in elephant poaching, concluded researchers Prof Solomon Hsiang at the University of California Berkeley and Nitin Sekar at Princeton University, whose work was published on Monday.  Continue Reading: Legal ivory sale drove dramatic increase in elephant poaching, study shows | Environment | The Guardian

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Alpine soils storing up to a third less carbon as summers warm – Carbon Brief

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Robert McSweeney, 13.06.2016:  The top metre of the world’s soils contains three times as much carbon as the entire atmosphere. This means that losing carbon from the soil can quicken the pace of human-caused climate warming.

A new paper, published today in Nature Geoscience, finds this is already happening in the forests of the German Alps. Soils there are losing carbon as summer temperatures rise, the researchers say.

In the last three decades, soil carbon across the German Alps has decreased by an average of 14% – and by as much as 32% for certain types of soils.  Source: Alpine soils storing up to a third less carbon as summers warm – Carbon Brief

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Carbon dioxide levels in atmosphere forecast to shatter milestone | Environment | The Guardian

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Arthur Neslen, Monday 13 June 2016:  Scientists warn that global warming target will be overshot within two decades, as annual concentrations of CO2 set to pass 400 parts per million in 2016

Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 will shatter the symbolic barrier of 400 parts per million (ppm) this year and will not fall below it our in our lifetimes, according to a new Met Office study.

Carbon dioxide measurements at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii are forecast to soar by a record 3.1ppm this year – up from an annual average of 2.1ppm – due in large part to the cyclical El Niño weather event in the Pacific, the paper says.

The surge in CO2 levels will be larger than during the last big El Niño in 1997/98, because manmade emissions have increased by 25% since then, boosting the phenomenon’s strength.

Source: Carbon dioxide levels in atmosphere forecast to shatter milestone | Environment | The Guardian

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The eco guide to population growth [not] | Environment | The Guardian

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GR:  The article below contains an argument for more people on the planet.  It uses one of the standard homocentric arguments to justify population growth:  A genus among the new people will solve all our problems.  Some of the article’s contents are so biased they are painful to read.  “The shelves are wrapped in certified zero-deforestation leather from Brazil . . . .” and “. . . I’m in love with Timothy Han’s new scent, which features fairly traded Brazilian cedarwood.”  Google “controlling population growth” for more arguments.  One thing you will learn is that controlling growth is extremely difficult.  And with the current economic benefits of more consumers and workers for wealthy investors, it is impossible.

Lucy Siegle, Sunday 12 June 2016.–“The regularity with which I’m contacted by population worriers – people who think it’s pointless discussing green energy, climate change and ethical pensions when the elephant in the room is actually the new human in the room – is impressive. They say that the planet needs fewer people. End of.

“The numbers are indeed eye catching. Today there are 7 billion humans alive (twice the number who were alive in 1965) – and each hour we add 10,000 more. By 2050, UN demographers predict, there will be at least 9 billion of us putting a strain on life-sustaining resources.

“Some experts suggest we’re at “peak farmland”, – meaning the predictions of cleric Thomas Malthus, who published his population theory in 1798, are coming to fruition. Malthus suggested that our global population would outpace food supplies until war, disease and famine arrived to halt the party.I prefer to be Pollyanna-ish about it: rather than fearing more people, let’s believe that the new ones will make a difference, fix the energy gap, work out how to develop sustainable protein sources and so on [emphasis by me].”  Continue reading:   The eco guide to population growth | Environment | The Guardian

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