topic: Climate Science

topic: Climate Science

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Circular solutions vital to curb enviro harm from cement and concrete
- Concrete is ubiquitous in the modern world, but building cities, roads and other infrastructure and more comes with an environmental cost. Cement and concrete production is responsible for significant pollution, human health impacts and vast amounts of climate-fueling emissions.
- Manufacturing cement is particularly problematic as the chemical process used to make it produces nearly 8% of global carbon emissions. Experts also underline that demand for the mined and quarried aggregate materials used to make concrete, such as sand, is responsible for biodiversity and ecosystem harm.
- Demand for cement and concrete is set to grow, especially in developing countries to improve infrastructure and living standards. Experts say that solutions reigning in the sector’s environmental footprint are vital, especially curbing greenhouse gas emissions that could absorb a major chunk of our remaining carbon budget.
- Solutions to address these challenges include a suite of technological advances, material changes, improved resource efficiency, and circular economy approaches. Some specifics: electrifying cement kilns, low-carbon concrete, carbon capture, and bio-architecture utilizing natural building materials.

Enviva bankruptcy fallout ripples through biomass industry, U.S. and EU
- In March, Enviva, the world’s largest woody biomass producer for industrial energy, declared bankruptcy. That cataclysmic collapse triggered a rush of political and economic maneuvering in the U.S. (a key wood pellet producing nation), and in Europe (a primary industrial biomass energy user in converted coal plants).
- While Enviva publicly claims it will survive the bankruptcy, a whistleblower in touch with sources inside the company says it will continue failing to meet its wood pellet contract obligations, and that its production facilities — plagued by chronic systemic manufacturing problems — will continue underperforming.
- Enviva and the forestry industry appear now to be lobbying the Biden administration, hoping to tap into millions in renewable energy credits under the Inflation Reduction Act — a move environmentalists are resisting. In March, federal officials made a fact-finding trip to an Enviva facility and local communities who say the firm is a major polluter.
- Meanwhile, some EU nations are scrambling to find new sources of wood pellets to meet their sustainable energy pledges under the Paris agreement. The UK’s Drax, an Enviva pellet user (and also a major pellet producer), is positioning itself to greatly increase its pellet production in the U.S. South and maybe benefit from IRA subsidies.

Fertilizer management could reduce ammonia pollution from 3 staple crops: Study
- Nitrogen fertilizers are applied to crops to increase yield, but some of that nitrogen is lost to the atmosphere in the form of ammonia. Ammonia is a major air pollutant linked to numerous health issues, including asthma, lung cancer and cardiovascular disease.
- Using published agricultural and environmental data, researchers employed machine learning to quantify global ammonia emissions from rice, wheat and corn cultivation at 10-kilometer resolution. This added up to a global estimate of 4.3 billion kilograms (9.5 billion pounds) of ammonia emitted from the three staple crops in 2018.
- The model also revealed that optimizing fertilizer management to suit local conditions could achieve a 38% reduction in global ammonia emissions from the three crops. Optimal fertilizer management and the associated emissions reductions depended on local climate and soil characteristics.
- The model, which utilized machine learning, found that under current fertilizer management practices, climate change will increase ammonia emissions from rice, wheat and corn by up to 15.8% by 2100. But this increase could be entirely offset by optimizing fertilizer management and adapting it to local conditions.

Pollution poses big risks to global clean water supplies, study shows
- Nitrogen pollution could intensify global water scarcity threefold by 2050, scientists warn in a recently published paper. In addition, “newly emerging pollutants,” such as microplastics, heavy metals, pathogens and pharmaceuticals, emitted into waterways could cause “severe water degradation in the future.”
- Modeling the escalating impact of nitrogen pollution on water quality, the scientists found that more than 3,000 river basins globally are at risk of water scarcity by 2050 in one future scenario. That finding comes along with concern that climate change could exacerbate water quality decline and increased scarcity.
- Nitrogen pollution and water contamination by heavy metals and pathogens have serious known public health consequences, while health impacts from microplastics and pharmaceuticals need far more research.
- The researchers suggest solutions that include curbing nitrogen pollution through better fertilizer management practices and improved wastewater treatment.

Planetary boundary pioneer Johan Rockström awarded 2024 Tyler Prize
- The 2024 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement will go to Johan Rockström who led the team of international researchers who originated the planetary boundary framework in 2009.
- The theory defines a scientifically based “safe operating space for humanity” to safeguard stable Earth conditions established in the Holocene when civilization arose, with the intention of preventing dangerous tipping points in the Anthropocene — a new era in which humanity has the capacity to wreak havoc on Earth systems.
- In a new interview with Mongabay, Rockström discusses how the planetary boundaries framework formulates quantified safe limits to protect nine Earth systems (including climate, biodiversity, freshwater and more), all vital for sustaining life and he shares some updates on this cutting-edge research.
- “Planetary sustainability is a security issue because staying within planetary boundaries gives us stable societies, food security, water security and reduces conflicts,” says Rockström. “Placing planetary boundaries at the UN Security Council positions sustainability, climate, biodiversity, water, where it belongs — in security.”

U.S. natural gas expansion would surrender world to fatal warming, experts say
- The United States is planning a major expansion of its export infrastructure for liquified natural gas (LNG), a fossil fuel mostly containing methane. Public outcry in the U.S. over the risk to the global climate forced U.S. President Joe Biden to pause the LNG permitting process for reconsideration in January.
- However, the U.S. continues investing billions in new LNG infrastructure abroad. Scientists and climate activists around the globe are warning that LNG expansion renders U.S. climate commitments unreachable, locks in fossil fuel emissions for decades and could trigger catastrophic warming.
- LNG emits more than coal when exported due to massive leaks of methane into the atmosphere during oceanic transport, a preprint study has found. Another report estimates that emissions from planned U.S. LNG exports, if all 12 facilities are approved, would total 10% of the world’s current greenhouse gas emissions.
- Climate impacts around the world would be severe, scientists say. Drought in Europe, for example, is already leading to higher food and energy prices, creating conditions for poverty even in developed nations, while a tipping point in the Amazon Rainforest could lead to mass deaths due to extreme heat and humidity.

Agricultural nitrogen pollution is global threat, but circular solutions await
- Nitrogen is an essential element for living organisms, needed to build DNA, proteins and chlorophyll. Although nitrogen makes up nearly 80% of the air we breathe, it’s availability to plants and animals is extremely limited. As a result, nitrogen has been a limiting factor in crop growth since the dawn of agriculture,
- Humanity shattered those limits with the Haber-Bosch process to make ammonia and synthetic fertilizers, driven by fossil fuels, and now used in vast amounts on crops. But that nitrogen influx has disrupted Earth’s natural nitrogen cycle. Today, nitrogen pollution is causing overshoot of several planetary boundaries.
- Nitrates pollute waterways, causing eutrophication. Nitrous oxide is a powerful greenhouse gas and an ozone-depleting substance. Ammonia is a cause of air pollution, with severe health impacts. Nitrogen is also used to produce potentially long-lived synthetic substances that themselves can become pollutants.
- Better agricultural management and technology could cut a third or more of nitrogen pollution. Circular economy solutions include better fertilizer efficiency, enhanced natural nitrogen fixation, and recovery and reuse of wasted nitrogen. Societal changes are also needed, including a shift in human diet away from meat.

Earth on ‘devastating trajectory’ to global tipping points. But there’s hope.
- A new report on global tipping points warns of imminent serious disruptions in major Earth systems if global temperatures continue rising due to human-induced climate change.
- It suggests that current levels of warming will likely push five major Earth systems past their tipping points, and another three will follow if global temperatures exceed 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) of warming above preindustrial levels.
- However, along with these dire warnings, the report also notes the launch of positive tipping points within society, such as the rollout of renewable energy technologies.
- Other reports also describe the urgency to enact positive change as humanity continues pumping carbon into the atmosphere, wreaking havoc on the environment.

Carbon credit certifier Verra updates accounting method amid growing criticism
- The world’s largest carbon credit certifier, Verra, has overhauled its methods for calculating the climate impacts of REDD projects that aim to reduce deforestation.
- REDD stands for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
- The emissions reductions from these projects can be sold on the voluntary carbon market to individuals and companies, which proponents say provides a vital stream of funding for forest conservation.
- The update changes the process for calculating deforestation baselines, which help determine how effective a project has been at reducing forest loss and keeping the carbon those trees contain out of the atmosphere.

Can impermanent carbon credits really offset forever emissions?
- A team of researchers has put forth a method that they say makes it possible to compare credits for carbon from forests projects against more permanent storage solutions.
- The carbon emissions that these credits are meant to offset can last for hundreds, if not thousands, of years in the atmosphere. Forests, by comparison, are subject to fires, disease and deforestation, meaning that their climate benefits can be more temporary than longer-term solutions, such as direct air carbon capture.
- By “discounting” the credits from forest carbon projects based on conservative upfront estimates of how long a forest will safeguard or sequester carbon, the authors say that “like-for-like” comparisons would be possible.
- The team published their work Oct. 30 in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Circular economy poised to go beyond outdated oil, gas and coal, experts say
- The exploitation of oil, gas and coal is now destabilizing all nine planetary boundaries and driving a triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. The solution, experts say, is to move from a hydrocarbon-based linear economy to a diversified circular economy. This is Part 3 of a three-part miniseries.
- To step back from dangerous environmental thresholds, humanity needs to cut its use of fossil fuels, petroleum-based synthetic fertilizers and petrochemicals (especially plastics), with many analysts unequivocal about the unlikelihood of utilizing oil, gas and coal resources to implement a global circular economy.
- To achieve a circular economy, fossil fuels need to be phased out and alternative energy sources put in place. Bio-fertilizers need to be adopted and scaled up, and nitrogen fertilizers must be managed better to prevent overuse. Plastic production needs to be curbed, with a ban of single-use plastics as a start.
- Unfortunately, the world isn’t on target to achieve any of these goals soon, with surging oil and natural gas production by the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Russia expected to push the planet past the maximum 2° C (3.6° F) temperature increase agreed to in the 2015 Paris Accord — putting Earth at risk of climate catastrophe.

Beyond Climate: Fossil fuels rapidly eroding Earth’s ‘safe operating space’
- This exclusive three-part Mongabay mini-series explores how the oil, natural gas and coal industry are destabilizing nine vital Earth systems, which create a “safe operating space” for humanity and other life on the planet.
- The first story in the series examined some of the direct detrimental impacts of fossil fuels, petroleum-based agrochemicals and petrochemicals (such as plastics) on climate change, biodiversity loss, nitrogen pollution of the world’s oceans and other forms of pollution.
- This story looks at the direct and indirect impacts that hydrocarbon production is having as it destabilizes Earth’s freshwater systems; influences rapid land use change; pollutes air, land and water; potentially contributes to ozone layer decay; and ultimately impacts life on Earth.
- Scientists say humanity’s actions — inclusive of burning fossil fuels and producing petrochemical and agrochemical products — has already pushed Earth into the danger zone, overshooting six of nine critical planetary boundaries. Unless we pull back from these violated thresholds, life as we know it is at risk.

Forests hold massive carbon storage potential — if we cut emissions
- A new study finds forests could potentially store 226 billion metric tons of carbon if protected and restored, or about one-third of excess emissions since industrialization.
- Nearly two-thirds of this potential lies in conserving and letting existing forests mature.
- The authors say that restoring deforested areas through community-driven approaches such as agroforestry and payments for ecosystem services is essential.
- Planting trees can’t replace cutting fossil fuel emissions, as climate change threatens forests’ carbon uptake.

Beyond climate: Oil, gas and coal are destabilizing all 9 planetary boundaries
- It’s well known that the fossil fuel industry made the industrial age possible and raised much of humanity’s living standard, while also causing the current climate crisis. Less known is how oil, gas and coal are destabilizing other vital Earth operating systems — impacting every biome. This is Part 1 of a three-part exclusive Mongabay miniseries.
- Scientists warned this year that, of the nine identified planetary boundaries, humanity has now overshot safe levels for six — climate change, biosphere integrity, land system change, novel entities (pollution), biogeochemical flows of nitrogen and freshwater change.
- Fossil fuels, petroleum-based agrochemicals and petrochemicals (including plastics) are now significantly contributing to the destabilization of all nine planetary boundaries, based on the review of numerous scientific studies and on the views expressed by dozens of researchers interviewed by Mongabay for this article.
- According to multiple experts, if humanity doesn’t find alternative energy sources and phase out fossil fuels, agrochemicals and petrochemicals, then their production will continue driving the climate crisis; polluting the atmosphere, water and land; creating deoxygenated kill zones in the world’s oceans; and poisoning wildlife and people.

Betting on biodiversity: Q&A with Superorganism’s Kevin Webb & Tom Quigley
- Superorganism is a newly launched venture capital firm, touted to be the first that’s dedicated to addressing the biodiversity crisis.
- The firm aims to support startups that are developing and deploying technology to prevent biodiversity loss and protect nature.
- The firm’s early portfolio includes companies that are working to tackle extinction drivers and finding solutions that lay at the intersection of biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation.

Record North Atlantic heat sees phytoplankton decline, fish shift to Arctic
- Scientists warn that record-high sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean this year are having consequences for sea life.
- As marine heat waves there have worsened over the years, populations of phytoplankton, the base of the oceanic food chain, have declined in the Eastern North Atlantic.
- With experts predicting more heat anomalies to come, North Atlantic fish species are moving northward into the Arctic Ocean in search of cooler waters, creating competition risks with Arctic endemic species and possibly destabilizing the entire marine food web in the region.
- Lengthening and intensifying marine heat waves around the globe are becoming a major concern for scientists, who warn that the world will see even greater disruptions to ocean food chains and vital fisheries, unless fossil fuel burning is curtailed.

Taking the global pulse of biodiversity monitoring: Q&A with Andrew Gonzalez
- A group of scientists have put forward a proposal to set up a global network that centralizes biodiversity monitoring and facilitates seamless sharing of data.
- The group wants its proposed Global Biodiversity Observing System (GBiOS) to function similarly to the network of local weather monitoring stations across the world, whose data are used to analyze and monitor climate change.
- While the technology being used to monitor biodiversity has become more sophisticated over the years, there still exists a void in getting different communities to work together to address the broader challenges in dealing with the biodiversity crisis.
- “We would not only federate people who are working together more effectively, but also fill many of the gaps in the data that currently exist in the biodiversity field,” Andrew Gonzalez, who is leading the proposal for GBiOS, told Mongabay.

‘We don’t have much time’: Q&A with climate scientist Pierre Friedlingstein
- “It’s not going in the right direction yet,” Pierre Friedlingstein tells Mongabay of the effort to meet the Paris Agreement goals; a member of the IPCC and a climate professor, he says he’s mildly optimistic about the trend in global emissions.
- Friedlingstein says he’s hoping deforestation will go down in the coming years in Brazil, but he’s not sure that Indonesia, another major global carbon sink, is ready to go in the right direction at the moment.
- He says the COVID-19 pandemic showed that climate is still “not on the top of the list” of government priorities, given that all nations sought to boost economic growth after lockdowns, despite the carbon emissions they incurred.

U.N. ‘stocktake’ calls for fossil fuel phaseout to minimize temperature rise
- The U.N. climate change agency published a new report Sept. 8 confirming that while there has been progress on climate change mitigation since the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, more needs to be done to limit the global rise in temperatures at 1.5°C (2.7°F) above pre-industrial levels.
- The report is an element of the global stocktake, a Paris Agreement-prescribed inventory of progress toward climate-related goals.
- The authors of the report called for phasing out fossil fuels and ramping up renewable energy.
- The global stocktake process will conclude at the U.N. climate conference (COP28) beginning Nov. 30 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Sensing tech used in oil pipelines can also track Arctic sea ice, study shows
- Scientists have used undersea fiber-optic cables in the Arctic to remotely track the presence and extent of sea ice.
- Sea ice is usually monitored with the help of satellites; however, the lack of high-resolution images and the low frequency of data collection makes it difficult to do in-depth analysis.
- Using a method commonly employed to monitor oil pipelines and highways, the scientists looked for changes in signals sent down a fiber-optic cable in the Beaufort Sea that would indicate the presence of sea ice.
- While promising, the method can’t yet be used to measure the thickness of sea ice or to determine how far the ice extends to either side of the cable.

Study: Tricky balancing act between EV scale-up and mining battery metals
- A recent study finds rapidly switching to electric vehicles could significantly cut emissions but also increase demand for critical battery metals like lithium and nickel.
- Mining metals like lithium has major environmental impacts including deforestation, high water use, and toxic waste.
- Electrifying heavy-duty vehicles requires substantially more critical metals than other EVs and could account for 62% of critical metal demand in coming decades despite making up just 4-11% of vehicles.
- The researchers recommend policies to support recycling, circular economies, alternative battery chemistries, and coordinated action to balance environmental and material needs.

Indonesian voters want a clean energy plan, but candidates haven’t delivered
- Candidates running in Indonesia’s presidential election next year must make clear their plans for transition the country away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy, policy experts say.
- A survey shows young Indonesians, who make up the majority of potential voters, view environmental issues in general, and a just energy transition in particular, as crucial issues for a new president to tackle.
- However, none of the three hopefuls who have declared their candidacies to date have addressed these issues, with the survey reflecting a sense of pessimism among respondents.
- Indonesia, a top greenhouse gas emitter, has said it aims to hit net-zero emissions by 2060 and retire its existing fleet of coal-fired power plants, but continues to build more coal plants to serve its growing metal-processing sector.

The circular economy: Sustainable solutions to solve planetary overshoot?
- The current linear production and consumption economic model — labeled by critics as “take-make-waste” — is taking a heavy global environmental toll. The intensive use of primary resources and overconsumption are closely linked to climate change, biodiversity loss, large-scale pollution and land-use change.
- Experts and advocates argue that a circular economy model — revolving around reduced material use, reuse and recycling at its simplest — offers a potential route to achieving zero waste, reversing environmental harm and increasing sustainability of products and supply chains.
- In the absence of a firm definition, many interpretations of the circular economy exist. To be sustainable, circular economy solutions should be underpinned by renewable energy sources, reduction of material extraction, reduced consumption, and the regeneration of nature, according to researchers.
- Caution is needed, warn some, as not every circular solution is sustainable. Other experts state that to achieve its goals, the circular economy must include societal level change and go far beyond simply recycling or improving supply chains. How this economic model works will also look differently for nations across the globe.

Microbes play leading role in soil carbon capture, study shows
- Soil is a significant carbon reservoir, storing more carbon than all plants, animals and the atmosphere combined, making it crucial for addressing the climate crisis.
- Microbes, such as bacteria and fungi, are the primary drivers of carbon storage in soil, surpassing other soil processes by a factor of four, according to a new study in Nature.
- The efficiency of microbial metabolism plays a vital role in determining the amount of organic carbon stored in soils worldwide, according to the research, which also calls for improved soil carbon models for effective policies and climate solutions.
- Enhancing microbial efficiency can lead to increased carbon storage in soils, but further research is needed to understand how to achieve this.

Mycorrhizal fungi hold CO2 equivalent to a third of global fossil fuel emissions
- A recent study estimates that more than 13 billion metric tons of CO2 from terrestrial plants are passed on to mycorrhizal fungi each year, equivalent to about 36% of global fossil fuel emissions.
- The study highlights the overlooked role of mycorrhizal fungi in storing and transporting carbon underground through their extensive fungal networks
- Researchers analyzed nearly 200 data sets from various studies that traced carbon flow and found that plants allocate between 1% and 13% of their carbon to mycorrhizal fungi.
- Understanding the role of mycorrhizal fungi is essential for conservation and restoration efforts, as soil degradation and the disruption of soil communities pose significant threats to ecosystems and plant productivity.

Overlooked and underfoot, mosses play a mighty role for climate and soil
- Mosses cover a China-size area of the globe and have a significant impact on ecosystems and climate change, according to a new study.
- Researchers conducted the most comprehensive global field study of mosses to date to quantify how soil moss influences soil and ecosystem services in different environments on all seven continents.
- Soil mosses can potentially add 6.43 billion metric tons of carbon to the soil globally, an amount equivalent to the annual emissions of 2.68 billion cars.
- Moss-covered soil offers several other benefits, including cycling of essential nutrients, facilitating faster decomposition, and reducing harmful plant pathogens.

As Exxon bows out, industry takes step toward sustainable algae biofuels
- In February, ExxonMobil gave up its decade-long attempt to cultivate algae as a profitable and scalable feedstock for biofuel — a liquid alternative energy source needed to power aviation, ocean-going ships, and long-distance trucking, while also combating climate change.
- That corporate setback was offset by advances elsewhere in the industry: California-based algae biofuel company Viridos, which lost ExxonMobil as its partner, raised $25 million this year as it gained United Airlines, Chevron and Breakthrough Energy Ventures as investors to keep its algae project moving toward commercialization.
- Also, this year, the U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) funded four major algae biofuel and biomass projects to chart scalable production processes and achieve low-carbon intensity efficiency.
- Several of these algae initiatives are now moving from basic R&D into pilot programs, with scaled-up commercial production possibly just a few years away, according to industry experts. Environmentalists are concerned about future land, energy and fertilizer impacts during production, though say it is too early to assess potential commercialization effects.

How will climate change affect Latin America? Scientists respond to IPCC report
- Mongabay Latam spoke with scientists who contributed to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report about the effects in Latin America, opportunities for mitigation and adaptation and the contributions of Native cultures.
- IPCC released the latest report in March as a synthesis summarizing the six previous reports it has issued on the situation of the planet since 2015.
- The new scientific report warns once again of increased global warming, but also mentions that solutions exist with the help of technology and local communities.

Southern atmospheric rivers drive irreversible melting of Arctic sea ice: Study
- Arctic sea ice extent has reached its winter maximum extent for 2023 at 14.62 million sq. km., the fifth lowest on record. Combined with this year’s unprecedentedly small Antarctic sea ice summer minimum extent, global sea ice coverage reached a record low in January.
- Arctic sea ice is not only receding, but also seriously thinning. New research has found that a huge melt in 2007 and associated ocean warming kicked off a “regime shift” to thinner, younger, more mobile and transient ice that may be “irreversible.”
- A big reason why Arctic sea ice is declining even in the frigid polar winter is that atmospheric rivers, which carry warmth and rainfall like the deluges seen in California recently, are surging up from the south and penetrating the Arctic more often.

IPCC warns of ‘last chance’ to limit climate change via drastic emissions cuts
- The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its sixth “synthesis” report March 20, after its approval by world leaders at a weeklong meeting in Switzerland.
- The report’s authors conclude that immediate reductions in carbon emissions are necessary to limit the rise in the global temperature to 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
- Scientists, activists and observers are calling for an end to fossil fuel use.

Amazon deforestation linked to reduced Tibetan snows, Antarctic ice loss: Study
- Earth’s climate is controlled by a complex network of interactions between the atmosphere, oceans, lands, ice and biosphere. Many elements in this system are now being pushed toward tipping points, beyond which changes become self-sustaining, with the whole Earth system potentially shifting to a new steady state.
- A recent study analyzed 40 years of air temperature measurements at more than 65,000 locations to investigate how changes in one region rippled through the climate system to affect temperatures in other parts of the globe. Computer models then simulated how these links may be affected by future climate change.
- Researchers identified a strong correlation between high temperatures in the Amazon Rainforest and on the Tibetan Plateau. They found a similar relationship between temperatures in the Amazon and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
- Deforestation in the Amazon likely influences the Tibetan Plateau via a convoluted 20,000-kilometer (12,400-mile) pathway driven by atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. The study suggests that a healthy, functioning Amazon is crucial not only for the regional climate in Brazil, but for the whole Earth system.

Forest modeling misses the water for the carbon: Q&A with Antonio Nobre & Anastassia Makarieva
- An expanded understanding of forests’ role in moisture transport and heat regulation raises the stakes on the health of the Amazon Rainforest and the need to stop cutting trees.
- The biotic pump theory, conceived by scientists Anastassia Makarieva and the late Victor Gorshkov, suggests that forests’ impact on hydrology and cooling exceeds the role of carbon embodied in trees.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Makarieva and Brazilian scientist Antonio Nobre explain how the theory makes the case for a more urgent approach by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to protect the Amazon.

The EU banned Russian wood pellet imports; South Korea took them all
- In July 2022, the European Union responded to the war in Ukraine by banning the import of Russian woody biomass used to make energy. At roughly the same time, South Korea drastically upped its Russian woody biomass imports, becoming the sole official importer of Russian wood pellets for industrial energy use.
- The EU has reportedly replaced its Russian supplies of woody biomass by importing wood pellets from the U.S. and Eastern Europe. But others say that trade data and paper trails indicate a violation of the EU ban, with laundered Russian wood pellets possibly flowing through Turkey, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to multiple EU nations.
- EU pellet imports from Turkey grew from 2,200 tons monthly last spring to 16,000 tons in September. Imports from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan reportedly rose too, even though neither has a forest industry. A large body of scientific evidence shows that woody biomass adds significantly to climate change and biodiversity loss.
- Enviva, the world’s largest woody biomass producer, which operates chiefly in the Southeast U.S., may be the big winner in the Russian biomass ban. Since the war began, Enviva has upped EU shipments, and also announced a 10-year contract with an unnamed European customer to deliver 800,000 metric tons of pellets annually by 2027.

Protecting canids from planet-wide threats offers ecological opportunities
- Five species within the Canidae family are considered endangered. These species, while found far apart in North and South America, Asia and Africa, often share similar threats, including habitat loss, persecution, disease and climate change.
- For some at-risk canid species, loss of prey, particularly due to snaring, is a significant concern that can also exacerbate human-wildlife conflict. Ecosystem-level conservation that protects prey species populations is required to protect canids and other carnivore species, experts say.
- Conservationists and researchers emphasize that canids play important roles in maintaining the habitats in which they live. That makes protecting these predators key to restoring and maintaining functional ecosystems.
- In the face of widespread global biodiversity loss, some canid reintroductions are taking place and proving successful. These rewilding efforts are offering evidence of the importance of canids to healthy ecosystems and to reducing various ecosystem-wide threats, even potentially helping curb climate change.

The Netherlands to stop paying subsidies to ‘untruthful’ biomass firms
- On December 5, 2022, Mongabay featured a story by journalist Justin Catanoso in which the first ever biomass industry insider came forward as a whistleblower and discredited the green sustainability claims made by Enviva — the world’s largest maker of wood pellets for energy.
- On December 15, citing that article and recent scientific evidence that Enviva contributes to deforestation in the U.S. Southeast, The Netherlands decided it will stop paying subsidies to any biomass company found to be untruthful in its wood pellet production methods. The Netherlands currently offers sizable subsidies to Enviva.
- Precisely how The Netherlands decision will impact biomass subsidies in the long run is unclear. Nor is it known how this decision may impact the EU’s Sustainable Biomass Program (SBP) certification process, which critics say is inherently weak and unreliable.
- Also in December, Australia became the first major nation to reverse its designation of forest biomass as a renewable energy source, raising questions about how parties to the UN Paris agreement can support opposing renewable energy policies, especially regarding biomass — a problem for COP28 negotiators to resolve in 2023.

Australia rejects forest biomass in first blow to wood pellet industry
- On December 15, Australia became the first major economy worldwide to reverse itself on its renewable classification for woody biomass burned to make energy. Under the nation’s new policy, wood harvested from native forests and burned to produce energy cannot be classified as a renewable energy source.
- That decision comes as the U.S., Canada, Eastern Europe, Vietnam and other forest nations continue gearing up to harvest their woodlands to make massive amounts of wood pellets, in order to supply biomass-fired power plants in the UK, EU, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere.
- In the EU, forest advocates continue with last-ditch lobbying efforts to have woody biomass stripped of its renewable energy designation, and end the ongoing practice of providing large subsidies to the biomass industry for wood pellets.
- Science has found that biomass burning releases more carbon dioxide emissions per unit of energy produced than coal. Australia’s decision, and the EU’s continued commitment to biomass, creates a conundrum for policymakers: How can major economies have different definitions of renewable energy when it comes to biomass?

As EU finalizes renewable energy plan, forest advocates condemn biomass
- The EU hopes to finalize its revised Renewable Energy Directive (RED) soon, even as forest advocates urge last minute changes to significantly cut the use of woody biomass for energy and make deep reductions in EU subsidies to the wood pellet industry.
- Forest advocates are citing a new commentary published in Nature that argues that the EU’s continued expansive commitment to burning forest biomass for energy will endanger forests in the EU, the U.S. and elsewhere — resulting in a major loss in global carbon storage and biodiversity.
- Changing RED to meet forest advocate recommendations seems unlikely at this point, with some policymakers arguing that woody biomass use is the only way the EU can achieve its 2030 coal reduction target. The woody biomass industry is pressing for sustained biomass use and for continued subsidies.
- Russia’s threat of reducing or cutting off its supply of natural gas to the EU this winter is also at issue. In the EU today, 60% of energy classified as renewable comes from burning biomass. If RED is approved as drafted, bioenergy use is projected to double between 2015 and 2050, according to the just published Nature commentary.

Whistleblower: Enviva claim of ‘being good for the planet… all nonsense’
- Enviva is the largest maker of wood pellets burned for energy in the world. The company has, from its inception, touted its green credentials.
- It says it doesn’t use big, whole trees, but only uses wood waste, “tops, limbs, thinnings, and/or low-value smaller trees” in the production of woody biomass burned in former coal power plants in the U.K., EU and Asia. It says it only sources wood from areas where trees will be regrown, and that it doesn’t contribute to deforestation.
- However, in first-ever interviews with a whistleblower who worked within Enviva plant management, Mongabay contributor Justin Catanoso has been told that all of these Enviva claims are false. In addition, a major recent scientific study finds that Enviva is contributing to deforestation in the U.S. Southeast.
- Statements by the whistleblower have been confirmed by Mongabay’s own observations at a November 2022 forest clear-cut in North Carolina, and by NGO photo documentation. These findings are especially important now, as the EU considers the future of forest biomass burning as a “sustainable” form of renewable energy.

Millions are spent on climate research in Africa. Western institutes get most of it
- More than 75% of funds earmarked for Africa-related climate research go to institutes in the U.S. and Europe, according to a study in the journal Climate and Development.
- Of the $620 million that financed Africa-related climate research between 1990 and 2020, research institutions based in Europe and the United States received most of the funding ($480 million), while those located in Africa got less than 15% ($89.15 million).
- However, the analysis only provides an estimate for financing trends because it leaves out a host of agencies that fund climate research, like aid organizations, and crucially is restricted to English-language research.
- What is equally, if not more, worrisome, is that the prioritization of countries as sites for research doesn’t align with the severity of the climate risks or impacts a country faces.

New study identifies mature forests on U.S. federal lands ripe for protection
- A new mapping study conducted by NGOs finds that older forests in the U.S. make up about 167 million acres, or 36%, of all forests in the contiguous 48 states. About a third of this, or roughly 58 million acres, are on federal lands. The rest are controlled by non-federal entities, including large amounts held by private owners.
- Just 24% of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management forests are fully protected, with the rest being at various levels of risk from logging, offering the Biden administration an opportunity to more thoroughly protect far more old-growth and mature forests on federal lands in order to help meet U.S. climate goals.
- The new study identified a challenge inherent in this strategy: The majority of federal lands are in the West, but one of the highest concentrations of U.S. mature and old-growth forests is in the Southeast, where most older forests are on private property. Privately held old-growth and mature forests are poorly protected in the U.S.
- If the U.S. wants to broaden its carbon emission reduction strategy, say researchers, then mature forest conservation should include both federal and private holdings. Private forests could be protected via state regulation, utilizing conservation easements and payments for verifiable carbon offsets, along with land trust acquisition.

2022: Another consequential year for the melting Arctic
- Arctic sea ice extent shrank to its summertime minimum this week — tied with 2017 and 2018 for the 10th lowest ever recorded. However, the last 16 consecutive years have seen the least ice extent since the satellite record began. Polar sea ice extent, thickness and volume all continue trending steeply downward.
- Arctic air temperatures were high this summer, with parts of the region seeing unprecedented heating. Greenland saw air temperatures up to 36° F. above normal in September. Canada’s Northwest Territories saw record highs, hitting the 90s in July. Sea temperatures also remained very high in many parts of the Arctic Ocean.
- Scientists continue to be concerned as climate change warms the far North nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet, sparking concern over how polar warming may be impacting the atmospheric jet stream, intensifying disastrous extreme weather events worldwide, including heat waves, droughts and storms.
- While a mostly ice-free Arctic could occur as early as 2040, scientists emphasize that it needn’t happen. If humanity chooses to act now to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, downward sea ice extent and volume trends could potentially be reversed.

Agulhas Current enigma: An oceanic gap in our climate understanding
- Comprehending the workings of western boundary ocean currents, like those of the Agulhas Current off the South African coast, may hold a key to Earth’s climate system. But understanding this particular current is hampered by a major lack of in-situ data. This gap leaves us in the dark about local, regional and global climate impacts.
- The Agulhas Current, located in the Indian Ocean, is one of the most energetic ocean current systems in the world. Changes to it can impact local weather in South Africa and elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, and perhaps influence large-scale climatic changes in the Northern Hemisphere and globally as well.
- However, it is not clear how and what these impacts may be, or when they may occur. With climate change escalating rapidly due to unabated human carbon emissions, it is now more important than ever that we understand the impacts of Southern Hemisphere ocean currents, and integrate their actions into climate models.
- But attempts at long-term monitoring of the Agulhas Current System have not been fully successful. Accomplishments and failures to date have underscored significant local research capacity challenges, and differences in the approach to, and financing of, ocean science in the Global North as compared to the Global South.

EU votes to keep woody biomass as renewable energy, ignores climate risk
- Despite growing public opposition, the European Parliament voted this week not to declassify woody biomass as renewable energy. The forest biomass industry quickly declared victory, while supporters of native forests announced their plan to continue the fight — even in court.
- The EU likely renewed its commitment to burning wood as a source of energy largely to help meet its target of cutting EU carbon emissions by 55% by 2030, something it likely couldn’t achieve without woody biomass (which a carbon accounting loophole counts as carbon neutral, equivalent to wind and solar power).
- Scientific evidence shows that burning wood pellets is a major source of carbon at the smokestack. The European Union also likely continued its embrace of biomass this week as it looks down the barrel of Russian threats to cut off natural gas supplies this winter over the EU’s opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
- While the EU decision maintains that whole trees won’t be subsidized for burning, that natural forests will be protected, and that there will be limits to logging old growth and primary forests, these provisions include legal loopholes and were not backed with monitoring or enforcement commitments. No dates were set for biomass burning phase down.

Even without human-driven deforestation, climate change threatens some forests
- In a study published in Science, researchers analyzed a set of climate and ecosystem models to predict the risks that climate change poses to forests.
- The models displayed consistent risks to forests in western North America, drier tropical forests like the southeastern Amazon, and northern boreal forests.
- Researchers say their findings speak to the need to be careful when evaluating the role trees can play as a climate solution.

Warming has set off ‘dangerous’ tipping points. More will fall with the heat
- A new study warns that multiple tipping points will be triggered if global warming exceeds 1.5°C (2.7°F) above pre-industrial levels.
- The researchers say humanity is already at risk of passing five tipping points, including the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheets and the mass die-off of coral reefs, at the current levels of warming, and that the risk will increase with each 0.1°C (0.18°F) of warming.
- While many nations have committed to the 2015 Paris Agreement, which stipulates that warming should be limited to 1.5°C, it’s unclear whether this goal will be achieved.

For lightning-prone communities in Bangladesh, new warning system may not be enough
- An average of four people a week are killed by lightning in Bangladesh, and the problem is expected to get worse as climate change increases the frequency of lightning strikes.
- Most of the victims tend to be farmers and fishers, who, like members of other poor communities around the world, are bearing the brunt of climate change impacts.
- The Bangladesh Meteorological Department has rolled out an early-warning system, based on modeling developed in collaboration with NASA, that it says will provide up to 54 hours’ warning of potential lightning strikes.
- But experts say the communities most in need of these alerts are those who don’t have access to the technology, and have called for other measures, such as building lightning arresters in open fields and wetlands, to protect vulnerable communities.

Is having fewer kids the answer to the climate question? | Problem Solved
- The human population is expected to reach 8 billion literally any day now, and nearly 10 billion people some time this century.
- With the planet also swiftly approaching 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) of warming above pre-industrial levels, activists and scientists are urging any solution to keep temperatures from shooting higher into the danger zone.
- Research suggests that the single biggest thing anyone can do to reduce their impact on the environment, and the climate, is to choose to have one less child. But that simple solution is complicated by thorny economic, ethical, social and political issues.
- On this episode of Problem Solved, we unpack the research, and examine this sensitive and controversial question: Is choosing collectively to have fewer children really a viable solution to our climate change and/or resource overuse crises?

Biomass cofiring loopholes put coal on open-ended life support in Asia
- Over the past 10 years, some of Asia’s coal-dependent, high-emitting nations have turned to biomass cofiring (burning coal and biomass together to make electricity) to reduce CO2 emissions on paper and reach energy targets. But biomass still generates high levels of CO2 at the smokestack and adds to dangerous global warming.
- In South Korea, renewable energy credits given for biomass cofiring flooded the market and made other renewables like wind and solar less profitable. Although subsides for imported biomass for cofiring have decreased in recent years, increased domestic biomass production is likely to continue fueling cofiring projects.
- In Japan, renewable energy subsidies initially prompted the construction of new cofired power plants. Currently, biomass cofiring is used to make coal plants seem less polluting in the near term as utilities prepare to cofire and eventually convert the nation’s coal fleet to ammonia, another “carbon-neutral” fuel.
- In Indonesia, the government and state utility, encouraged by Japanese industry actors, plan to implement cofiring at 52 coal plants across the country by 2025. The initiative will require “nothing less than the creation of a large-scale biomass [production] industry,” according to experts.

In Congo, a carbon sink like no other risks being carved up for oil
- New research has revealed that the peatlands of the Congo Basin are 15% larger than originally thought.
- This area of swampy forest holds an estimated 29 billion metric tons of carbon, which is the amount emitted globally through the burning of fossil fuels in three years.
- Beginning July 28, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where two-thirds of these peatlands lie, will auction off the rights to explore for oil in 27 blocks across the country.
- Scientists and conservationists have criticized the move, which the government says is necessary to fund its operations. Opponents say the blocks overlap with parts of the peatlands, mature rainforest, protected areas, and a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Brazil’s new deforestation data board sparks fear of censorship of forest loss, fires
- A new council set by the Brazilian government to vet deforestation and forest fire data from the country’s space agency has been widely slammed as a political ploy to aid President Jair Bolsonaro’s reelection bid.
- The National Institute of Space Research (INPE) has provided and analyzed deforestation and forest fire data in the Amazon since 1988 and is globally renowned for its monitoring expertise, but was left out of the new council.
- The Bolsonaro government has questioned the credibility of INPE’s data since taking office in 2019, drawing outrage from scientists and researchers for claiming that data showing a spike in deforestation under Bolsonaro was false.
- Experts have raise concerns that the new council could prevent the release of annual deforestation data, scheduled at the same time as this year’s elections, that are expected to show an alarming increase in both forest loss and fires.

‘The volume of water is beyond control’: Q&A with flood expert M. Monirul Qader Mirza
- An early start to the monsoon and unusually heavy rains have caused massive flooding in northeastern Bangladesh, leaving millions of people stranded in floodwaters.
- The Meghna River Basin is accustomed to these flash floods, but the scale of the disaster this year has been compounded by human encroachment and development in the watershed region, said M. Monirul Qader Mirza, a water management expert.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Mirza emphasized the need for infrastructure planning to consider river and rainfall dynamics to mitigate flood risk, and to have an early-warning system in place to minimize damage.
- Mirza also said that identifying the role of climate change in the problem is complex and requires extensive studies and modeling, but added it’s indisputable that rainfall patterns have become increasingly erratic.

End old-growth logging in carbon-rich ‘crown jewel’ of U.S. forests: Study
- A recent study of the Tongass National Forest, the largest in the United States, found that it contains 20% of the carbon held in the entire national forest system.
- In addition to keeping the equivalent of about a year and a half of the U.S.’s greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere, the forest is also home to an array of wildlife, including bald eagles, brown bears and six species of salmon and trout.
- Scientists and conservationists argue that the forest’s old-growth trees that are hundreds of years old should be protected from logging.
- They are also hoping that efforts by the administration of President Joe Biden are successful in banning the construction of new roads in the Tongass.

As biomass burning surges in Japan and South Korea, where will Asia get its wood?
- In 2021, Japan and South Korea imported a combined 6 million metric tons of wood pellets for what proponents claim is carbon-neutral energy.
- Large subsidies for biomass have led Japan to import massive amounts of wood pellets from Vietnam and Canada; two pellet giants, Drax and Enviva, are now eyeing Japan for growth, even as the country may be cooling to the industry.
- South Korea imports most of its pellets from Vietnamese acacia plantations, which environmentalists fear may eventually pressure natural forests; South Korea wants to grow its native production sixfold, including logging areas with high conservation value.
- Vietnam may soon follow Japan and South Korea’s path as it phases out coal, and experts fear all this could add massive pressure on Southeast Asian forests, which are already among the most endangered in the world.

EU Parliament’s Environment Committee urges scale back of biomass burning
- The European Parliament’s Environment Committee this week made strong, but nonbinding, recommendations to put a brake on the EU’s total commitment to burning forest biomass to produce energy. While environmentalists cautiously hailed the decision, the forestry industry condemned it.
- A key recommendation urges that primary woody biomass (that made from whole trees) to produce energy and heat no longer receive government subsidies under the EU’s revised Renewable Energy Directive (RED).
- Another recommendation called for primary woody biomass to no longer be counted toward EU member states’ renewable energy targets. Currently, biomass accounts for 60% of the EU’s renewable energy portfolio, far more than zero-carbon wind and solar.
- The Environment Committee recommendations mark the first time any part of the EU government has questioned the aggressive use of biomass by the EU to meet its Paris Agreement goals. A final decision by the EU on its biomass burning policies is expected in September as part of its revised Renewable Energy Directive.

Geoengineering Earth’s climate future: Straight talk with Wake Smith
- A new book, “Pandora’s Toolbox: The Hopes and Hazards of Climate Intervention,” explores a number of ideas for pulling carbon out of the atmosphere or artificially cooling the planet, known collectively as geoengineering.
- The book argues that such dire actions may need to be taken by future generations to combat climate change, and if so, those generations deserve to inherit research done now to understand the potential impacts and feasibility of geoengineering.
- One tool whose implementation is likely inevitable, according to the book, is pulling carbon from smokestacks and the air and then sequestering it deep in the Earth, a technology currently happening at a very small scale. Another approach, far more controversial, would be to inject aerosols into the stratosphere to cool the Earth.
- None of these methods precludes the need to decarbonize now and fast. But given the dangerous trajectory of climate change, author Wake Smith argues that suffering future generations may decide to pull the geoengineering trigger.

Missing the emissions for the trees: Biomass burning booms in East Asia
- Over the past decade, Japan and South Korea have increasingly turned to burning wood pellets for energy, leaning on a U.N. loophole that dubs biomass burning as carbon neutral.
- While Japan recently instituted a new rule requiring life cycle greenhouse gas emissions accounting, this doesn’t apply to its existing 34 biomass energy plants; Japanese officials say biomass will play an expanding role in achieving Japan’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 46% by 2030.
- South Korea included biomass burning in its renewable energy portfolio standard, leading to 17 biomass energy plants currently operating, and at least four more on the way.
- Experts say these booms in Asia — the first major expansion of biomass burning outside Europe — could lead to a large undercounting of actual carbon emissions and worsening climate change, while putting pressure on already-beleaguered forests.

Freshwater planetary boundary “considerably” transgressed: New research
- Earth’s operating systems have stayed in relative balance for thousands of years, allowing the flourishing of civilization. However, humanity’s actions have resulted in the transgressing of multiple planetary boundaries, resulting in destabilization of those vital operating systems.
- This week scientists announced that humanity has transgressed the freshwater planetary boundary. Other boundaries already crossed are climate change, biosphere integrity, biogeochemical cycles (nitrogen and phosphorous pollution), land-system change, and novel entities (pollution by synthetic substances).
- In the past, the freshwater boundary was defined only by “blue water” — a measure of humanity’s use of lakes, rivers and groundwater. But scientists have now extended that definition to include “green water” — rainfall, evaporation and soil moisture.
- Scientists say soil moisture conditions are changing from boreal forests to the tropics, with abnormally dry and wet soils now common, risking biome changes. The Amazon, for example, is becoming far dryer, which could result in it reaching a rainforest-to-savanna tipping point, releasing large amounts of stored carbon.

Unseen crisis: Threatened gut microbiome also offers hope for world
- Plants and animals provide a home within themselves to an invisible community of microbes known as the microbiome. But these natural microbial communities are being degraded and altered by human-caused biodiversity loss, pollution, land-use change and climate change.
- On the macro level, habitat loss and diminished environmental microbe diversity, particularly in urban environments, is altering the gut microbiomes of humans and wild animals. Studies have linked microbiome changes to higher risk of chronic and autoimmune diseases.
- Coral bleaching is an extreme example of climate stress-induced microbiome dysfunction: During heat waves, beneficial microbes go rogue and must be expelled, leaving the coral vulnerable to starvation. Microbiome resilience is key to determining corals’ ability to acclimate to changing ocean conditions.
- There are solutions to these problems: Inoculating coral with beneficial microbes can reduce bleaching, while the restoring natural green spaces, especially in socioeconomically deprived urban areas, could encourage “microbiome rewilding” and improve human and natural community health.

Beyond CO2, tropical forests a ‘cool’ solution to climate crisis, study finds
- Forests, increasingly looked to for their role in addressing climate change, can draw carbon from the atmosphere, but they also have more localized impacts on temperature and weather.
- Forests are responsible for about 0.5°C (0.9°F) of cooling globally when their ability to sequester carbon and these biophysical effects are considered, a recent study has found.
- Tropical forests, with their speedy uptake of carbon and the local cooling they provide — by humidifying the air, for example — are considered a “double win” for the climate.

Tropical trees’ growth and CO2 intake hit by more extreme dry seasons
- A new study has found that dry seasons that are warmer and drier than usual can stunt the growth of tropical trees, causing them to take in less carbon dioxide.
- While trees tend to grow more during the wet season, the researchers found that the dry season actually had a stronger impact on tree growth than the wet season.
- As climate change continues to raise temperatures, tropical trees could face increased risk of mortality and the possibility of becoming a net source of carbon, rather than a carbon sink.

Robot revolution: A new real-time accounting system for ocean carbon
- Oceans are key to understanding climate change, seeing as they take up and store 25% of the carbon that human activities add to Earth’s atmosphere. But there are big gaps in our knowledge regarding ocean carbon storage and release, and how it is evolving as climate change unfolds, a problem scientists are now addressing.
- An international deployment of thousands of robotic floats, fitted with sophisticated biogeochemical sensors, is underway and already providing real-time data that scientists can integrate into ocean carbon budgets and climate models. Many more floats are coming, with the capacity to operate in remote regions.
- One such place is the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, which accounts for almost half of the worldwide oceanic carbon sink. Windier conditions there, caused by climate change, are churning up more carbon-rich waters from the depths, releasing stored carbon and introducing unforeseen variability into ocean carbon emission estimates.
- Robots are starting to monitor these emissions in real time. More accurate ocean carbon budgets will improve accounting of land-based carbon dioxide emissions, help create more accurate assessments of how well global carbon agreements such as the Paris Agreement are meeting goals, and will help assess ocean carbon dioxide removal plans.

International funding nowhere near enough for Indonesia to cut emissions: Study
- Indonesia will have to come up with its own funding schemes to have any chance of achieving its carbon emissions reduction target by 2030, a new study says.
- The government has calculated that it needs $323 billion in funding from the international community to slash emissions by 41%, but received just $6.4 million between 2007 and 2019, the study found.
- It found that Indonesia faced difficulties accessing international climate grants, with donors often prioritizing their own interests or preferring countries with lower incomes than Indonesia.
- A potential source of funding could be the sale of government debt that’s a combination of environmental (green) bonds and Islamic-compliant bonds, known as sukuk, the study says.

IPCC report calls for ‘immediate and deep’ carbon cuts to slow climate change
- A new report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finds that the world could face a more than 3° Celsius (5.4° Fahrenheit) increase in the global average temperature over pre-industrial levels based on current carbon emissions.
- However, the authors of the report say investment in renewable energy, green building and responsible land use could lower emissions enough to stay below an increase of 1.5°C (2.7°F), a target identified at the 2015 U.N. climate conference that scientists predict would avoid the worst impacts of global warming.
- Addressing continued global carbon emissions will require trillions, not billions, of dollars in financing from public and private sources to cut emissions, the report finds.
- Its authors also say that including Indigenous and local communities from the beginning in land-use decisions aimed at climate change mitigation is critical.

Reaching the Paris Agreement without protecting Indigenous lands is “impossible”, says report
- A new report by the Forest Declaration Assessment says that fulfilling the Paris Agreement won’t be possible without acknowledging and supporting the crucial role of Indigenous peoples and other local communities’ (IPLCs) in protecting lands.
- About 90% of IPLC lands are carbon sinks, say the report authors, Climate Focus and the World Resources Institute (WRI), which analyzed the IPLC lands in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru.
- Each hectare of IPLC land sequesters an average of 30 metric tons of carbon every year, about twice as much as lands outside IPLC protection. This equates to about 30% of the four nation’s Paris Agreement targets.
- Countries should facilitate the titling of all IPLC lands, ensure consent to development projects, commit to protecting environmental defenders and make sure IPLCs are included in U.N. targets, says the report.

Traditional knowledge guides protection of planetary health in Finland
- Undisturbed peatlands act as carbon sinks and support biodiversity. Finland has drained 60% — more than 60,000 km2 (23,000 mi2) — of its peatlands, releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and destroying entire ecosystems.
- But scientists and Finnish traditional and Indigenous knowledge holders are collaborating to rewild and protect peatlands and associated forests and rivers, turning them into carbon sinks again, while bringing back wildlife and supporting fishing, hunting, and even tourism, offering economic benefits to local communities.
- These Finnish collaborations are already serving as both inspiration and guide to those seeking to use rewilding to curb climate change, enhance biodiversity, create sustainable land use systems, and restore forest, freshwater and wetland ecosystems, while supporting traditional communities.
- “Rewilding is very much about giving more freedom to nature to shape our landscapes, and looking at nature as an ally in solving socioeconomic problems,” says Wouter Helmer former rewilding director of Rewilding Europe. “It’s a holistic way of putting nature back on center stage in our modern society.”

The Great Barrier Reef is bleaching — once again — and over a larger area
- The Great Barrier Reef is currently experiencing its sixth mass bleaching event, and the fourth event of this kind to happen in the past six years.
- Based on aerial surveys that were concluded this week, bleaching has affected all parts of the Great Barrier Reef, with the most severe bleaching occurring between Cooktown, Queensland, and the Whitsunday Islands.
- Sea surface temperatures around the Great Barrier Reef have been higher than normal, despite the region going through a La Niña climate pattern, which usually brings cooler, stormier weather.
- Climate change remains the biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef and other reefs around the world, experts say.

Marine cold spells, a potential buffer against warming seas, are fading away
- A new study has found that marine cold spells have decreased in number and intensity since the 1980s due to climate change.
- Marine cold spells can have both negative and positive impacts on the environment; they can wreak havoc on ecosystems like coral reefs, but they can also buffer the impacts of heat stress during marine heat waves.
- While marine cold spells are decreasing, marine heat waves are increasing — but the relationship between these two kinds of events still isn’t clear, the study says.

Ships sunk in nuclear tests host diverse corals, study says. But do we need them?
- Researchers surveyed 29 warships at Bikini Atoll and Chuuk Lagoon and found that they hosted up to a third of coral genera found on natural reefs in neighboring regions.
- This study has led researchers to ask a controversial question: Can these kinds of shipwrecks act as biodiversity havens for corals?
- While the study does not provide an answer to this question, the authors say this idea should be explored.
- Climate change is one of the biggest threats to coral reefs since rising temperatures can cause widespread bleaching events.

Multiyear ice thinner than thought as Arctic sea ice reaches winter max: Studies
- Arctic sea ice has reached its yearly maximum extent at 14.88 million sq. km., the 10th lowest on record. The up-and-down story of sea ice extent in the past year highlights how unpredictable it can be from season to season, even as the overall decline continues.
- A study employing new satellite data found that Arctic multiyear sea ice — ice that survives the summer melt — is thinning even faster than previously thought and has lost a third of its volume in just two decades.
- This comes as Antarctic sea ice extent hit a record summer low, raising questions whether it is beginning a long-term decline, although experts are wary of drawing conclusions yet.
- While summer Arctic sea ice is predicted to mostly disappear by 2050, a new study suggests we could likely preserve it through 2100 by aggressively cutting methane emissions by 2030, along with reaching net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050.

Climate-positive, high-tech metals are polluting Earth, but solutions await
- Green energy technology growth (especially wind, solar and hydropower, along with electric vehicles) is crucial if the world is to meet Paris climate agreement goals. But these green solutions rely on technology-critical elements (TCEs), whose production and disposal can be environmentally harmful.
- Mining and processing of TCEs requires huge amounts of energy. Mines use gigantic quantities of fresh water; can drive large-scale land-use change; and pollute air, soil and water — threatening biodiversity. TCEs may also become pollutants themselves when they are disposed of as waste.
- We know relatively little about what happens to TCEs after manufacture and disposal, but trace levels of many critical elements have been detected in urban air pollution, waterways and ice cores. Also of concern: Rare-earth elements have been detected in the urine of mine workers in China.
- Green mining technologies and new recycling methods may reduce the impacts of TCE production. Plant- and microbe-based remediation can extract TCEs from waste and contaminated soil. But experts say a circular economy and changes at the product design stage could be key solutions.

Activists vow to take EU to court to fight its forest biomass policies
- The European Union continues burning forest biomass to produce energy, a policy science has shown to be climate destabilizing, destructive to forests and biodiversity. International NGOs and their lawyers — to stop the EU going further down what they see as a path of planetary endangerment — is ready to take the EU to court.
- The plaintiffs contend that the European Union is violating its own rules dictating that European Commission policies be based in “environmentally sustainable economic practices” for companies, investors and policymakers.
- Activists argue that the EU, in creating its current bioenergy and forestry policies, has disregarded numerous scientific studies demonstrating the environmental harm done by forest biomass — the harvesting and burning of wood pellets to make electricity. Some legal experts say the activists’ bid to be heard in court is a long shot.
- A November study adds data and urgency to the ongoing battle. Researchers found that unless current policies change, global demand for biomass-for-energy will triple by 2050, further impacting intact forests ability to act as carbon sinks and undermining emissions-reduction requirements under the Paris Agreement.

In destroying the Amazon, big agribusiness is torching its own viability
- A new study has found that the transition zone between the Amazon and Cerrado in the northeast of Brazil has heated up significantly and become drier in the past two decades.
- The research points to deforestation in the Amazon and global climate changes as factors prolonging the dry season and warming up the region, leaving it susceptible to severe droughts and forest fires.
- Ironically, the changes being driven by the intensified agricultural activity are rendering the region less suitable for crop cultivation.
- The authors of the new study say there needs to be a balance of sustainable agricultural solutions and an environmentally focused political agenda to protect the region’s ecosystems, its economy, and its people.

Aerosol pollution: Destabilizing Earth’s climate and a threat to health
- Aerosols are fine particulates that float in the atmosphere. Many are natural, but those haven’t increased or decreased much over the centuries. But human-caused aerosols — emitted from smokestacks, car exhausts, wildfires, and even clothes dryers — have increased rapidly, largely in step with greenhouse gases responsible for climate change.
- Aerosol pollution kills 4.2 million people annually, 200,000 in the U.S. alone. So curbing them rapidly makes sense. However, there’s a problem with that: The aerosols humanity sends into the atmosphere presently help cool the climate. So they protect us from some of the warming that is being produced by continually emitted greenhouse gases.
- But scientists still don’t know how big this cooling effect is, or whether rapidly reducing aerosols would lead to a disastrous increase in warming. That uncertainty is caused by aerosol complexity. Atmospheric particulates vary in size, shape and color, in their interactions with other particles, and most importantly, in their impacts.
- Scientists say that accurately modeling the intensity of aerosol effects on climate change is vital to humanity’s future. But aerosols are very difficult to model, and so are likely the least understood of the nine planetary boundaries whose destabilization could threaten Earth’s operating systems.

As Australia faces new fire reality, forest restoration tactics reevaluated
- More than 24 million hectares (59 million acres) burned during Australia’s devastating “Black Summer” bushfire season of 2019-2020, which formed part of a confirmed climate change-driven trend of worsening fire weather and larger, more intense forest fires.
- Scientists are still assessing the extent of the damage and are calling for a greater focus on understanding the effects of fires. Bushfires in Australia have been worsening for more than two decades as escalating drought places pressure on forest resilience and recovery.
- Since 2003, alpine ash (Eucalyptus delegatensis) and mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnens), the world’s tallest flowering plant, have been the focus of Victoria state’s largest post-fire reseeding effort ever. But the Black Summer fires caused foresters to reevaluate the effectiveness and future of this initiative.
- With future wildfires expected to see ferocity equal to the 2019-20 fire season, forest managers are questioning traditional tree restoration approaches, with some even wondering if regrowing forests is viable. Researchers are actively testing more interventionist approaches, such as replanting seeds and seedlings with genetically fire-resilient traits.

Two storms in two weeks carve trail of death and destruction in Madagascar
- Batsirai, a category 4 cyclone, struck Madagascar’s eastern coast on Feb. 5, leaving 10 people dead.
- The island nation is still recovering from another tropical storm, Ana, which made landfall on Jan. 22 and left dozens dead and hundreds of thousands homeless.
- Data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that 12 storms of category 4 or 5, the highest level, made landfall on Madagascar between 1911; of these 12, eight occurred since 2000.

Efforts to dim Sun and cool Earth must be blocked, say scientists
- Scientists are calling on political institutions to place limits on solar geoengineering research so that it cannot be deployed unilaterally by countries, companies or individuals.
- Long-term planetary-level geoengineering interventions of this kind are unprecedented and extremely dangerous, say the academics behind the letter, and should not therefore be experimented with outdoors, receive patents, public funds or international support.
- Solar geoengineering’s leading proposal — injecting billions of aerosol particles into the Earth’s stratosphere — could have severe, unintended and unforeseen consequences. Modelling suggests that it may cause drying in the Amazon rainforest
- In addition, if solar geoengineering were deployed, it would need to be maintained for decades. Sudden discontinuance would result in Earth facing what scientists call termination shock, with a sudden temperature rise due to existing atmospheric carbon emissions which would have been masked by cooling stratospheric aerosols.

Indigenous food systems can provide game-changing solutions for humankind (commentary)
- Although strides have been made in agricultural systems to feed the world population, they have also led to increased emissions and biodiversity loss.
- Indigenous food systems, practiced over millennia, can provide solutions, as shown in a recent report whose findings have spurred scientists and a coalition of several countries to work together to preserve and strengthen Indigenous food systems.
- This article is the last of an eight-part series showcasing Indigenous food systems covered in the most comprehensive FAO report on the topic to date.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Small coffee farmers lay their chips on smart agriculture to overcome climate crisis in the Cerrado biome
- A long drought followed by a strong freeze in 2020 damaged the coffee harvest in Brazil, the world’s biggest producer and exporter of the crop.
- Small farmers in the Cerrado region who generally don’t use irrigation because of the area’s historically abundant rainfall were hit the hardest.
- To take on the challenges brought on by the changing climate, coffee farmers in the Cerrado have joined a climate-smart agriculture program.
- The strategies adopted for more resilient crops include agroforestry, connected landscapes, and water resource management.

Tom Lovejoy, prominent conservation biologist, dies at 80
- Tom Lovejoy, a prominent and influential conservation biologist who helped catalyze a global movement to save life on Earth as we know it, has died. He was 80.
- Lovejoy was known as a pioneer of modern conservation efforts, a passionate advocate for wildlife and wild places, and a big thinker who proposed daring and innovative ideas.
- Lovejoy is credited with coining the term “biological diversity”, developing the concept of “debt-for-nature” swap programs, and being one of the earliest to sound the alarm about the global extinction crisis.
- “Tom was a beloved icon in the conservation field: a mentor to many, a friend to all,” said conservation biologist and ethnobotanist, Mark Plotkin. “He fought for biodiversity and against climate change through his ideas, writings, projects, initiatives and all he trained and inspired.”

The past, present and future of the Congo peatlands: 10 takeaways from our series

This is the wrap-up article for our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. In the first half of December, Mongabay published a four-part series on the peatlands of the Congo Basin. Only in 2017 did a team of Congolese and British scientists discover that a […]
Carbon and communities: The future of the Congo Basin peatlands
- Scientific mapping in 2017 revealed that the peatlands of the Cuvette Centrale in the Congo Basin are the largest and most intact in the world’s tropics.
- That initial work, first published in the journal Nature, was just the first step, scientists say, as work continues to understand how the peatlands formed, what threats they face from the climate and industrial uses like agriculture and logging, and how the communities of the region appear to be coexisting sustainably.
- Researchers say investing in studying and protecting the peatlands will benefit the global community as well as people living in the region because the Cuvette Centrale holds a vast repository of carbon.
- Congolese researchers and leaders say they are eager to safeguard the peatlands for the benefit of everyone, but they also say they need support from abroad to do so.

Climate change agricultural impacts to heighten inequality: Study
- Major changes in crop productivity will be felt globally in the next 10 years according to new computer simulations. Climate impacts on crops could emerge a decade sooner than previously expected in major breadbasket regions in North America, Europe and Asia according to the new forecasts.
- Researchers combined five new climate models with 12 crop models, creating the largest, most accurate set of yield simulations to date. Corn could see yield declines of up to 24% by 2100, while wheat may see a boost to productivity. In some sub-tropical regions, climate impacts on crops are already being felt.
- High- and low-emissions scenarios project similar trends for the next 10 years, suggesting these agricultural impacts are locked-in. But actions taken now to mitigate climate change and alter the long-term climate trajectory could limit corn yield losses to just 6% by 2100.
- Climate adaptation measures such as sowing crops earlier or switching to heat- tolerant cultivars are relatively cheap and simple to implement, while other actions, such as installing new irrigation systems, require financial investment, planning, and time.

Holding agriculture and logging at bay in the Congo peatlands
- The peatlands of the Congo Basin are perhaps the most intact in the tropics, but threats from logging, agriculture and extractive industries could cause their rapid degradation, scientists say.
- In 2021, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced that it was planning to end a moratorium on the issuance of logging concessions that had been in place for nearly two decades.
- The move raised concerns among conservation groups, who say the moratorium should remain in place to protect the DRC’s portion of the world’s second-largest rainforest.
- Today, timber concession boundaries overlap with the peatlands, and though some companies say they won’t cut trees growing on peat, environmental advocates say that any further issuance of logging concessions in the DRC would be irresponsible.

Hold the tree planting: Protect ecosystems first for maximum carbon storage, study says
- When it comes to slowing climate change, there’s one natural solution that has recently gripped the world: large-scale tree planting and reforestation.
- But a new study warns that other natural climate solutions should be considered first.
- By comparing different natural climate solutions against four criteria, the study proposes a hierarchy: protect ecosystems first, then improve their management, and lastly restore them.
- Protecting natural ecosystems offered the greatest climate benefits, fairly quickly, at relatively low cost, while at the same time providing other benefits for people and wildlife, such as reducing the impact of extreme weather and yielding clean air and water.

Layers of carbon: The Congo Basin peatlands and oil
- The peatlands of the Congo Basin may be sitting on top of a pool of oil, though exploration has yet to confirm just how big it may be.
- Conservationists and scientists argue that the carbon contained in this England-size area of peat, the largest in the tropics, makes keeping them intact more valuable, not to mention the habitat and resources they provide for the region’s wildlife and people.
- Researchers calculate that the peatlands contain 30 billion metric tons of carbon, or about the amount humans produce in three years.
- As the governments of the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo work to develop their economies, they, along with many policymakers worldwide, argue that the global community has a responsibility to help fund the protection of the peatlands to keep that climate-warming carbon locked away.

The ‘idea’: Uncovering the peatlands of the Congo Basin
- In 2017, a team of scientists from the U.K. and the Republic of Congo announced the discovery of a massive peatland the size of England in the Congo Basin.
- Sometimes called the Cuvette Centrale, this peatland covers 145,529 square kilometers (56,189 square miles) in the northern Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and holds about 20 times as much carbon as the U.S. releases from burning fossil fuels in a year.
- Today, the Congo Basin peatlands are relatively intact while supporting nearby human communities and a variety of wildlife species, but threats in the form of agriculture, oil and gas exploration and logging loom on the horizon.
- That has led scientists, conservationists and governments to look for ways to protect and better understand the peatlands for the benefit of the people and animals they support and the future of the global climate.

Conflict and climate change are big barriers for Africa’s Great Green Wall
- Fourteen years since the launch of Africa’s Great Green Wall project, only 4% of the 100 million hectares (247 million acres) of land targeted for restoration in the Sahel region has actually been restored.
- Billions of dollars in new funding announced this year have raised hopes that the initiative to combat desertification will gain momentum, but experts and the reality on the ground point to money being far from the only hurdle.
- Funding restoration activities will cost $44 billion, with every dollar invested generating $1.20 in returns, a recent study in Nature Sustainability calculates.
- But experts have echoed concerns captured in the research that conflict and climate change are complicating efforts on the ground, with nearly half of the area identified as viable for restoration falling within the orbit of conflict zones.

In a warming world, deforestation turns the heat deadly, Borneo study finds
- New research identifies how rising localized temperatures driven by deforestation and global warming are increasing heat-related deaths and creating unsafe working conditions in Indonesia.
- In the Bornean district of Berau, 4,375 square kilometers (1,689 square miles) of forest were cleared between 2002 and 2018, contributing to a 0.95°C (1.71°F) increase in mean daily temperature across the district, according to the study.
- It concluded climate change temperature increases in the region caused an 8% rise in mortality rates in 2018, or more than 100 deaths annually, and an additional almost 20 minutes per day of unsafe work time.
- Based on the 2018 data, a projected 2°C (3.6°F) global temperature increase in deforested areas could result in a 20%increase in all-cause mortality — an additional 236-282 deaths per year — and almost five unsafe work hours per day.

Fighting climate change is a dirty job, but soils can do it | Problem Solved
- The Earth’s soil stores nearly three times as much carbon as all plants, animals and the atmosphere combined, researchers say.
- However, unchecked deforestation, modern industrialized agriculture, the failure to recognize Indigenous land rights, and the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels are all putting our crucial carbon sinks in the tropics and subarctic permafrost at risk of releasing much of that carbon.
- Experts agree that protecting soil is key to mitigating climate change, and to avoid breaching delicate planetary boundaries that are necessary to sustain human life on the planet.
- Doing so means fundamental shifts in how we grow our food, conserve and restore forests, and swiftly reduce our use of fossil fuels.

“Earthshine” from the Moon shows our planet is dimming, intensifying global warming
- Earth’s brightness, as seen from space, has dropped significantly over the past two decades.
- When the planet reflects less light, more sunlight reaches the ground and the sea, warming the atmosphere.
- A natural rise in Pacific Ocean temperatures in 2015-2017 made Earth even dimmer by reducing bright clouds over the western Americas, a new study concludes.

‘Standing with your feet in the water’: COP26 struggles to succeed
- As at every COP before it, negotiators at COP26 are struggling against time to reach an accord, with negotiators at Glasgow clashing over seemingly irreconcilable differences. With the science of climate change now dire, vulnerable nations are demanding strong specific language, while other nations seek to water it down.
- The group of nations dubbed the “Carbon Club” as long ago as the Kyoto Agreement negotiations in the 1990s, continues to offer the primary stumbling block. Those oil and/or coal producing nations include Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, Australia, Norway, the U.K. and often the U.S.
- The United States, while it has made a major sea change since the denialism of the Trump administration, continues to be cautious about any language that would threaten oil, gas and coal industry subsidies, or antagonize Republican members of Congress or coal company baron and West Virginia Dem. Sen. Joe Manchin.
- As the clock ticks, and the last hours of COP26 slip away, with street protestors increasingly frustrated at the lack of significant movement by the negotiators, the scene remains tense in Glasgow. With the summit now gone into overtime, the outcome of COP26 remains in the balance.

COP26: Are climate declarations and emission reduction pledges legally binding?
- The 2015 Paris Agreement is not a treaty between nations, but rather a voluntary accord between 194 nations signed by their legal representatives. As such, it is not deemed legally binding — preventing nations and corporations from being sued to force them to take legal responsibility for harmful carbon emissions and policies.
- Or at least, that was the accepted legal precedent regarding the Paris accord, as well as declarations and agreements made since 2015 at annual COP summits. This includes this year’s Glasgow U.K. climate conference where major declarations to end global deforestation and sharply curb methane emissions were made.
- However, some 1,800 lawsuits seeking to hold nations and corporations responsible for their climate change pledges and emissions are moving through the worlds’ legal systems. At least one major case has borne fruit: In May 2021, a court in The Netherlands ordered Royal Dutch Shell to slash carbon emissions far faster than pledged.
- It wasn’t international law that decided the case, but basic tort law: a legal obligation to not knowingly injure others. “Rights-based climate litigation is not some kind of scholarly fantasy; rather, it is turning out to be one of the most important tools civil society has to force governments to move more quickly,” says one legal expert.

COP26: E.U. is committed to forest biomass burning to cut fossil fuel use
- At COP26, Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s executive vice president, made clear that the E.U. is committed to ending its addiction to oil, gas and coal, but only if it can use the bridge of burning forest biomass to get to an eventual goal of fully utilizing truly renewable energy sources, like wind and solar.
- Timmermans maintains that the E.U. is committed to only burning “the right kind of biomass: You can collect dead wood, you can collect those elements of the forests that are no longer alive, fallen down, etc. That constitutes a serious amount of biomass.… As long as your definition is sustainable… we can work with biomass.”
- A forestry industry representative agrees: “The biomass we are currently using in Europe is about 95% based on local resources — that is residues from forestry and wood processing originating from Europe… We are currently harvesting significantly less than is regrowing annually in Europe.”
- But critics say whole trees are being burned to make wood pellets and ask how the E.U. can commit to both biomass burning and protecting carbon-storing forests. “No amount of allegedly nicer forest management can overcome the basic problem of large, immediate emissions from burning tons of biomass daily,” said one activist.

COP26: Surging wood pellet industry threatens climate, say experts
- With the U.N. climate summit (COP26) in its second week, Earth is on track to warm by 2.7° Celsius (4.86° Fahrenheit) by 2100, a catastrophic forecast based on projected carbon emissions. However, analysts say that those projections exclude major emissions currently escaping from biomass-burning power plants.
- A carbon accounting loophole in global climate change policy classifies burning woody biomass for energy as “carbon neutral,” and is accepted by the U.N. and many of the world’s nations. But scientists have proven otherwise, even as the forestry industry gets massive subsidies to produce millions of tons of wood pellets annually.
- Those subsidies are fueling rapid growth of the biomass industry, as forests are cut in the U.S., Canada, Eastern Europe, Russia, Vietnam, and Malaysia. The E.U. and U.K. are the largest biomass energy market, but with rapid expansion now occurring in Japan and South Korea, the biomass boom is just beginning.
- Scientists and activists say that to avoid disastrous global warming impacts, forest large biomass subsidies must end, which will make the industry unprofitable and free up funding for real climate solutions. But the topic is not even on the COP26 agenda, and action on the biomass burning issue anytime soon seems unlikely.

New restoration “Playbook” calls for political, economic, and social change
- Leading forest and climate experts have come up with a “playbook” for ecosystem restoration that accounts for climate change and forest loss as not just biophysical and environmental problems, but also deeply political, economic and social issues.
- It defines 10 principles for effective, equitable, and transformative landscapes that its authors say could be game-changing if followed.
- The playbook discusses the importance of ending fossil fuel subsidies and shifting those resources toward ecosystem restoration, renewable energy, and supporting the land rights of local and Indigenous communities that are protecting forests.
- The authors invite IUCN members and leaders at COP26 in Glasgow to consider adopting the Playbook to guide biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation in forests and, more broadly, call for structural changes from local to international scale.

Scientists urge Biden to remove logging, fossil fuels, biomass from budget bills
- More than 100 scientists have issued an open letter urging U.S. President Joe Biden and members of Congress to remove provisions promoting logging, forest biomass and fossil fuels from the multitrillion-dollar infrastructure and reconciliation (Build Back Better) bills.
- Both bills contain provisions for logging for lumber and for forest biomass energy, with the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 5.
- Although the infrastructure bill promises $570 billion in tax credits and investments to combat climate change, it also includes a mandate for 12 million hectares (30 million acres) of “additional logging on federal public lands over the next 15 years.”
- “The logging and fossil fuel subsidies and policies in the Reconciliation and Infrastructure Bills will only intensify the rate and intensity of our changing climate,” the letter states.

COP26 deforestation-ending commitment must hold leaders accountable (commentary)
- Yesterday at COP26 world leaders announced an agreement to reverse and end deforestation within a decade.
- But lacking language on transparency, regular milestones, a binding legal framework, and a focus on human rights, this commitment may fail as others have before it.
- The New York Declaration on Forests of 2014 pledged to halve deforestation by 2020 and end it by 2030, yet rates of forest loss have been 41% higher in the years since. If world leaders are sincere about ending deforestation this time, there is one simple message: prove it.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

COP26 Glasgow Declaration: Salvation or threat to Earth’s forests?
- The U.N. climate summit underway in Glasgow, Scotland, served as a venue this week to announce the Glasgow Declaration on Forests and Land Use to the world. Signed by 100 countries representing 85% of the globe’s forested land, it pledges to end or reduce deforestation by 2030.
- The declaration comes on the heels of the failed 2014 New York Declaration for Forests–which had more than 200 national, private and civil service supporters–that promised to cut deforestation by 50% by 2020 and end it by 2030. Since then, deforestation has risen, contributing an estimated 23% of total carbon emissions.
- While some hailed this week’s Declaration, others warned that it’s $19.2 billion could be used to convert natural forests to plantations, which under current U.N. rules are counted as “forests.” Plantations to produce palm oil, paper or wood pellets (burnt to make energy), lack biodiversity and are less efficient at storing carbon.
- Said one NGO critical of the Glasgow Declaration: “Just as we must wind down use of fossil fuels, it’s also time for the industrial logging development model to be retired. Countries should apply an absolute moratorium on any further conversion of [natural] forests [to industrial plantations] — whether technically ‘legal’ or ‘illegal.’“

As fossil fuel use surges, will COP26 protect forests to slow climate change?
- Despite the world’s commitment in Paris in 2015 to hold back the tide of global warming, carbon emissions continue rising, while impacts are rapidly escalating as heat waves, drought and extreme storms stalk the world’s poorest and richest nations — bringing intensified human misery and massive economic impacts.
- Once viewed optimistically, nature-based climate solutions enshrined in Article 5 of the Paris Agreement (calling for protections of carbon-storing forests, peat bogs, wetlands, savannas and other ecosystems) is now threatened by politics as usual, and by the unabated expansion of agribusiness and extraction industries.
- As world leaders gather in Scotland for the COP26 climate summit, scientists and advocates are urging negotiators to at last finalize comprehensive effective rules for Article 5, which will help assure “action to conserve and enhance, as appropriate, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases … including forests.”
- Over the first two weeks in November at COP26, the vision and rules set at Paris are to be settled on and fully implemented; John Kerry, co-architect of the Paris accord and President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, calls this vital COP the world’s “last best chance” to finally move beyond mostly empty political promises into climate action.

Forest biomass-burning supply chain is producing major carbon emissions: Studies
- U.S., U.K., and E.U. policymakers are failing to count the carbon emissions cost of the forest biomass industry, according to two new first-of-their-kind studies. Though biomass burning is legally classified as carbon neutral, the research found that none of the parties involved is counting emissions generated along the supply chain.
- One study estimated that wood pellets made in the U.S. and burned in the U.K. led to 13-16 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2019 alone, equal to the emissions of up to 7 million cars. Should biomass burning be instituted by other nations in the near future, a process already underway, the result could be climatically catastrophic.
- The findings should be carefully considered as representatives of the world’s nations prepare to meet for the COP26 climate summit in Scotland, said experts. “These studies make clear that current energy policy doesn’t match the overwhelming science on the impacts of biomass,” said a member of the U.K.’s House of Lords.
- However, there are presently no official plans to address the forest biomass carbon accounting issue at COP26, though NGOs are investigating inroads to negotiations.

Inland mangroves reveal a tumultuous climatic past — and hint at our future
- A new study concludes that the presence of inland mangroves along a river in southern Mexico was the result of climate change-driven sea level rise during the Pleistocene Epoch, some 115,000 to 130,000 years ago.
- The researchers’ analysis of the genetic history of the mangrove trees suggests that they are closely related to trees found on the coastline, and sediments nearby are similar to those found in ocean environments.
- Publishing their work Oct. 12 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team notes that their research highlights the impacts of global climate change.

Philippine-UK comic anthology looks to incite action on climate change
- Ten Years to Save the World is an upcoming online comic book anthology that puts the spotlight on 10 pressing climate change issues — five from the Philippines, five from the U.K. — and explores how each one can be addressed in the next decade.
- It’s a joint project between Komiket Philippines, the Lakes International Comic Art Festival (LICAF), and Creative Concern.
- The comic book anthology will be presented to world leaders at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.

Nitrogen: The environmental crisis you haven’t heard of yet
- The creation of synthetic fertilizers in the early 20th century was a turning point in human history, enabling an increase in crop yields and causing a population boom.
- But the overuse of nitrogen and phosphorus from those fertilizers is causing an environmental crisis, as algae blooms and oceanic “dead zones” grow in scale and frequency.
- Of the nine “planetary boundaries” that scientists say we must not cross in order to sustain human life, the boundary associated with nitrogen and phosphorus waste has been far surpassed, putting Earth’s operating system at risk.
- Global policymakers are beginning to slowly recognize the scale of the problem, as climate change threatens to make it worse. Absent major reforms to agribusiness practices, scientists are aiming to convince the world to reduce waste.

Researchers express alarm as Arctic multiyear sea ice hits record low
- Low sea ice concentration can create a misleading picture of sea ice health in the Arctic. Though extent is only at its 10th lowest since satellite records began in 1979, the waters north of Alaska this September are full of diffuse ice.
- Of great concern to scientists, the Arctic has lost 95% of its thick multiyear sea ice since 1985. Older, thicker ice acts as a buffer against future Blue Ocean Events, expected as early as 2035. A BOE would mark a year when most Arctic ice melts out in summer.
- It no longer takes a freak-weather year to reach near record-lows for extent or volume. 2020 saw a second-place finish in the record book, behind 2012.

We’ve crossed four of nine planetary boundaries. What does this mean?
- The Earth has nine Planetary Boundaries that determine the threshold beyond which human impact on Earth’s systems will put society at risk. We’ve already crossed four of these boundaries.
- Over the past year, Mongabay’s series on planetary boundaries has focused attention on the implications of crossing them.
- Below are some highlights that cover the consequences of crossing four of those boundaries (and solutions to address them), as well as the looming challenges in preventing humanity from overreaching the boundaries we have yet to cross.

In Peru, ancient food technologies revived in pursuit of future security
- Surrounded by mountains and eagles, a man from a highland community in Peru has built a stone and mud qolca, a food storage silo inspired by ancestral technologies.
- In his community, as in the rest of the Andes, increasingly erratic rainfall patterns and unexpected frosts and pest plagues threaten the rich local biodiversity and their generous harvests.
- Almost 500 years after the construction of the last qolca in the Cusco Valley, this new effort is a bid for a tomorrow without hunger in these times of pandemic and climate crisis.

Burning forests to make energy: EU and world wrestle with biomass science
- A major political and environmental dispute is coming to a boil in the run-up to COP26 in Scotland this November, as the EU and the forestry industry push forest biomass (turning trees into wood pellets and burning them to make electricity), claiming the science shows biomass is sustainable and produces zero emissions.
- Forest advocates and many scientists sit squarely on the other side of the argument, providing evidence that biomass burning is destructive to forests and biodiversity, is dirtier than coal, and destabilizing for the climate. Moreover, they say, the carbon neutrality claim is an accounting error that will greatly increase carbon emissions.
- These views collided in July when the European Commission called for only minor revisions to its legally binding Renewable Energy Directive (REDII) in regard to biomass policy as part of the EU Green Deal. Critics say the plan, if approved by the EU Parliament in 2022, will fail to protect global forests from the wood pellet industry.
- Here, Mongabay offers a review of the science on both sides of the biomass debate, summarizing key studies and reports, and providing links to primary sources for enhanced insight into these complex issues. The EU decision to include wood pellets as part of its clean energy mix could help shape global biomass policy at COP26.

Scientists look to wheatgrass to save dryland farming and capture carbon
- Intermediate wheatgrass is an imported grain that has been grown in the U.S. Great Plains and Intermountain West since the 1930s; but could it be used in marginal fields in dryland areas?
- Kernza, an intermediate wheatgrass bred by the Land Institute, is being planted in eastern Wyoming, where researchers from the University of Wyoming are uncovering whether the crop can help farmers stabilize and bolster their soils, while providing a profitable crop.
- Planting perennial crops, like Kernza, can help soil health and stability, retain moisture, and cut down on planting costs and greenhouse gas emissions from annual plantings.

2015-2016 El Niño caused 2.5 billion trees to die in just 1% of the Amazon
- New research shows how a combination of high temperatures, intense drought, and human-caused fires resulted in dramatic forest loss in the Lower Tapajós Basin in the Brazilian Amazon.
- According to the authors, forest reduction meant that one of the world’s largest carbon sinks generated almost 500 million tons of CO2 emissions, an amount higher than the annual emissions of developed countries such as the U.K. and Australia.
- Due to climate change, more frequent extreme droughts are predicted to affect most of the Amazon basin in this century; in this scenario, the 2015 El Niño could be seen as a window into the future.

Soil and its promise as a climate solution: A primer
- We know that soil feeds plants, but do we know how it got there in the first place? Soil forms via the interaction of five factors: parent material, climate, living beings, a land’s topography, and a “cooking” time that occurs on a geologic scale. Variations in these 5 factors make the world’s soils unique and extremely diverse.
- Soil acts as a carbon sink in the global carbon cycle because it locks away decomposed organic matter. But deforestation, various agricultural practices, and a changing climate are releasing it back into the atmosphere and oceans as carbon dioxide, resulting in an imbalance in global carbon budgets
- Tropical soils and permafrost hold the most soil carbon out of other biomes, making them conservation and research priorities in soil-centered climate solutions.
- Reforestation of previously forested lands is a viable solution to return carbon belowground, but it is not a fix-all. Changing industrial agricultural practices and giving high-carbon storage areas conservation status are key steps toward harnessing the soil’s carbon storage power.

New study says changes in clouds will add to global warming, not curb it
- Best estimates for global temperature increases due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 since the start of the industrial era are between +1.5C and +4.5C. A major reason for this huge range of uncertainty is how clouds will perform in a warmed world, with some modelers saying clouds will help cool the planet, while the majority say clouds will further warm it.
- Clouds add immense uncertainty to climate models because they contain so many variables (including altitude, size, turbulence, amount of ice crystals, quantity and particle chemistry), and also because they don’t fit neatly inside the global grid cell system that modelers use to estimate warming.
- A new study used a machine learning model to bypass previous cloud modeling problems. The researchers concluded that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will most likely lead to a 3.2C (5.76F) global temperature increase, almost exactly in the middle of the range estimated by the majority of current U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change models.
- Researchers within and outside the study agree more data and research is needed to confirm or alter these results.

A world of hurt: 2021 climate disasters raise alarm over food security
- Human-driven climate change is fueling weather extremes — from record drought to massive floods — that are hammering key agricultural regions around the world.
- From the grain heartland of Argentina to the tomato belt of California to the pork hub of China, extreme weather events have driven down output and driven up global commodity prices.
- Shortages of water and food have, in turn, prompted political and social strife in 2021, including food protests in Iran and hunger in Madagascar, and threaten to bring escalating misery, civil unrest and war in coming years.
- Experts warn the problem will only intensify, even in regions currently unaffected by, or thriving from the high prices caused by scarcity. Global transformational change is urgently needed in agricultural production and consumption patterns, say experts.

Old and new solutions pave way to net-zero emissions farming, studies show
- Agriculture and food account for one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, making these sectors critical in efforts to address our current overshoot of the climate planetary boundary. They are also having profound impacts on freshwater, biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles.
- New and emerging technologies could pave the way to net-zero emissions agriculture in the next two decades, using robotics, electric vehicles, improved crop varieties and distributed monitoring, according to a new study. Precision agriculture could cut emissions by 71% and help build soil carbon stores.
- A second study reports that microbial protein cultivation powered by solar panels could achieve up to 10 times higher protein yield per unit of land than staple crops like soybeans, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from land conversion and synthetic fertilizers.
- A third report shows that Europe could feed a projected population of 600 million by 2050 with organic farming alone, by reducing consumption of animal products to around 30% of our diet, implementing crop rotations, and reconnecting livestock and cropping systems via use of manure.

Lessons from the 2021 Amazon flood (commentary)
- In June 2021, the annual flood season in the western and central Amazon reached record levels, and dramatic scenes of inundated homes, crops and city streets captured attention beyond Amazonia. This event provides lessons that must be learned.
- The high flood waters are explained by climatological forces that are expected to strengthen with projected global warming. Damaging floods represent just one of the predicted impacts in Amazônia under a warming climate.
- The administration of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro must change its current denialist positions on global warming and its policies that encourage deforestation. The Amazon forest must be maintained for many reasons in addition to its role in avoiding climate change.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

As Arctic warms, scientists wrestle with its climate ‘tipping point’
- A leaked version of the newest science report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns of looming, potentially catastrophic tipping points for Arctic sea ice melt, tundra thaw, savannification of the Amazon rainforest, and other planetary environmental thresholds beyond which recovery may be impossible.
- But what are tipping points, and how does one pinpoint what causes them, or when they will occur? When studying a vast region, like the Arctic, answering these questions becomes dauntingly difficult, as complex positive feedback loops (amplifying climate warming impacts) and negative feedback loops (retarding them) collide with each other.
- In the Arctic, one working definition of a climatic tipping point is when nearly all sea ice disappears in summer, causing a Blue Ocean Event. But attempts to model when a Blue Ocean Event will occur have run up against chaotic and complex feedback loop interactions.
- Among these are behaviors of ocean currents, winds, waves, clouds, snow cover, sea ice shape, permafrost melt, subarctic wildfires, aerosols and more, with many interactions still poorly understood. Some scientists say too much focus is going to tipping points, and research should be going to the “radical uncertainty” of escalating extreme local events.

The science of forest biomass: Conflicting studies map the controversy
- A major political and environmental dispute is heating up as the forestry industry and governments promote forest biomass — cutting trees, turning them into wood pellets, and burning them to make electricity. They claim the science shows biomass to be sustainable, with the energy produced resulting in zero emissions.
- Forest advocates and many researchers sit squarely on the other side of the argument, providing evidence that forest biomass is destructive to forests and biodiversity, is dirtier than coal, and destabilizing for the climate. Moreover, they say, the carbon neutrality claim is an error that will greatly increase carbon emissions.
- These diverging viewpoints are colliding this week as the European Commission wrangles with revisions to its legally binding Renewable Energy Directive (REDII), with recommendations to the European parliament due this Wednesday, July 14, Analysts say the EU rules counting biomass as carbon neutral are unlikely to change.
- In this exclusive story, Mongabay provides a review of the science on both sides of the forest biomass debate, summarizing key studies and reports, and providing links to these primary sources to help readers decide for themselves.

As Arctic melt sets early July record, hard times lie ahead for ice: Studies
- Arctic sea ice fell to its lowest extent on record for this time of year on July 5, even though the spring had so far been relatively cool and stormy — conditions that, in the past, would have protected the ice.
- Three new studies help explain why. One found that increasing air temperatures and intrusion of warm water from the North Atlantic into the Barents and Kara Seas — a climate change-driven process known as Atlantification — are overpowering the ice’s ability to regrow in winter.
- Another study found that sea ice in coastal areas may be thinning at up to twice the pace previously thought. In three coastal seas — Laptev, Kara, and Chukchi — the rate of coastal ice decline increased by 70%, 98%, and 110% respectively when compared to earlier models.
- A third study found accelerated sea ice loss in the Wandel Sea, pointing to a possible assault by global warming on the Arctic’s Last Ice Area — a last bastion of multi-year sea ice which stretches from Greenland along the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Combined, this research shows Arctic ice may be in worse trouble than thought.

Playing the long game: ExxonMobil gambles on algae biofuel
- Algae biofuel initially looked promising, but a few key problems have thwarted major research efforts, including development of a strain of algae able to produce plentiful cheap fuel, and scaling up to meet global energy demand.
- Other alternative energy solutions, including wind and solar power, are outpacing algae biofuel advances.
- Much more investment in money and time is needed for algae biofuel to become viable, even on an extended timeline out to mid-century. While big players like Shell and Chevron have abandoned the effort, ExxonMobil continues work.
- In 2017, ExxonMobil, with Synthetic Genomics, announced they had used CRISPR gene-editing technology to make an algal strain that could pave the way to a low-carbon fuel and a sustainable future. But many environmentalists met the claim with skepticism, suspecting greenwashing.

Biofuel in Mexico: Uphill battle against bureaucracy, organized crime
- Biofuels based on pressed plant oils, and made especially from used cooking oil, could help Mexico’s public transport sector transition to a cleaner and climate-friendly energy era, according to researchers and industry entrepreneurs.
- But there is a lack of government regulatory support, while the nation’s new president is betting on fossil fuels and neglecting biodiesel options and nature-based climate solutions.
- As a result, small biodiesel producers have to operate in a legal gray zone, while industry entrepreneurs are held back in the development of the technology and the market.
- Mexico isn’t alone: Many nations large and small are struggling with hurdles imposed by fossil fuel-friendly governments and a lack of supportive regulations to create a level playing field for the rapid development and deployment of biodiesel and other climate-friendly alternative energy solutions.

Converting biowaste to biogas could power cleaner, sustainable Earth future
- Biogas made from organic materials — including food and agricultural waste, and animal or human manure — is a renewable, sustainable, affordable and inclusive energy alternative becoming increasingly available to households, farms, municipalities and nations.
- Converting biowaste into biogas, via anaerobic digestion technology, is a strategy that could contribute to multiple U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris climate agreement. Biodigesters are already in use to meet a range of energy needs around the world.
- Current limiting factors to the sector’s growth include technical and adaptive challenges, lack of awareness in many regions, and unsupportive policy instruments that can discourage biogas adoption.
- Ahead of COP26, the critically important U.N. climate meeting coming this November, the World Biogas Association is urging governments to integrate biogas into their Nationally Determined Contributions — their voluntary emissions reduction targets, as agreed to under the Paris Agreement.

Earth tipping points could destabilize each other in domino effect: Study
- A new risk analysis has found that the tipping points of five of Earth’s subsystems — the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the Greenland Ice Sheet, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Amazon rainforest — could interact with each other in a destabilizing manner.
- It suggests that these changes could occur even before temperatures reach 2°C (3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels, which is the upper limit of the Paris Agreement.
- The interactions between the different tipping elements could also lower critical temperature thresholds, essentially allowing tipping cascades to occur earlier than expected, according to the research.
- Experts not involved in the study say the findings are a significant contribution to the field, but do not adequately address the timescales over which these changes could occur.

Bigger is badder when it comes to climate impact of farms in the Amazon
- A 20-year analysis of satellite data shows significant temperature differences in agricultural lands in southern Amazonia, depending on farm size.
- Extensively deforested commercial farms are up to 3 °C (5.4 °F) warmer than adjacent forests, while on smaller farms this difference is 1.85 °C (3.3 °F).
- Management practices that try to balance productivity with the maintenance of essential ecosystem services, such as the water cycle, will be crucial to preserving the Amazon’s remaining forests, the study’s authors say.

Forest advocates press EU leader to rethink views on biomass and energy
- EU officials are currently working to finalize REDII renewable energy policy revisions and amendments by mid-July for EU parliamentary review. One component of that review is to determine whether forest biomass burning will continue to be considered carbon neutral by the 27 EU member states.
- Current science is clear: burning forest biomass to make energy is not carbon neutral, and the burning of wood pellets is dirtier per unit of electricity than burning coal. But the forestry industry and EU continue defending biomass, prompting an open letter from forest advocates harpooning the policy.
- In the leadup to the updated REDII policy revision proposals, European Commission Exec. VP Frans Timmermans says he truly values forests, but simultaneously believes that cutting them down and burning them to make electricity remains viable climate policy. More than 50% of the EU’s current wood harvest is being burned for energy.
- “Ecocide threatens the survivability of our forests. I certainly don’t underestimate the challenges we face, but still, I believe [burning forest] biomass can play a very useful role in the energy transition,” says Timmermans.

Scientists call for solving climate and biodiversity crises together
- A new report from United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) highlights the importance of confronting climate change and biodiversity loss together.
- Global climate change and the unprecedented loss of species currently underway result from a similar suite of human-driven causes, the report’s authors write.
- As a result, solutions that take both issues into account have the best chance of success, they conclude.

Study shows it took the Amazon as we know it over 6 million years to form
- An asteroid impact near Mexico 66 million years ago triggered an ecological catastrophe that claimed nearly half of all plant species and took Amazon forests more than 6 million years to recover from.
- Colombian researchers analyzed fossilized pollen and leaves and found plant diversity declined by 45% after the impact; when plant diversity finally recovered, open forests of ferns and conifers had been replaced by dense, closed-canopy forests dominated by flowering plants.
- The researchers suggested three interlinked explanations for the sudden transition: the extinction of large-bodied dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous reduced forest disturbance; dust from the impact acted as a fertilizer; conifers were more likely to go extinct.
- In the time periods studied, Earth’s climate was warmer and CO2 levels were higher, showing that climate alone is not enough to trigger a forest-to-savanna transition, with the pace of warming and deforestation the crucial puzzle pieces that determine whether today’s forests can survive.

The key to averting environmental catastrophe is right beneath our feet
- Billions of years ago, the first soils served as a cradle for terrestrial life. Today, the land beneath our feet underpins a multitrillion-dollar, global agricultural industry and provides food for nearly 8 billion humans, along with countless wild and domestic species. But soils are in global crisis.
- We are now living in the “danger zone” for four of the nine planetary boundaries: climate change, biodiversity, land-use change, and biogeochemical flows. All four are intimately linked to soil health. Soils hold 80% of all the carbon stored on land.
- Deteriorating soil health is already gravely impacting lives and livelihoods. Land degradation due to human activities costs around 10% of global gross product. When combined with climate change effects, soil degradation could reduce crop yields by 10% globally by 2050.
- There is an inevitable delay between recognizing global problems and enacting solutions, and seeing the resulting boost to ecosystem services. That’s why we must act now if we are to leverage soil ecosystems in the fight against disastrous global environmental change.

Ever-evolving Montreal Protocol a model for environmental treaties
- Since the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987, countries have been phasing out most ozone-damaging chemicals, helping protect the Earth’s protective shield. In this exclusive Mongabay interview, Megumi Seki, Acting Executive Secretary of the UN Environment Programme’s Ozone Secretariat, reviews the history and future of the landmark treaty.
- The Montreal Protocol phase-down has also helped prevent further climate warming. But the HFCs — replacement gases employed by industry as refrigerants and for other uses — while not harmful to the ozone layer, have been found to be powerful greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.
- In 2016, national delegates agreed on the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which calls for cutting the production and use of HFCs by 80–85% by the late 2040s. The amendment entered into force at the start of 2019, with the goal of avoiding additional warming by up to 0.4°C (0.72 °F) by the end of the century.
- The early steps of the Montreal Protocol, and its ongoing adjustments including the Kigali Amendment, provide vital clues as to how to effectively negotiate, implement, update, and succeed in moving forward with other future environmental treaties.

The HFC challenge: Can the Montreal Protocol continue its winning streak?
- Since the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987, countries have phased out most of the ozone-damaging gases, but their replacements, the HFCs, are powerful greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.
- In 2016, national delegates agreed on the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which calls for cutting the production and use of HFCs by 80–85% by the late 2040s. The amendment entered into force at the start of 2019, with the goal of avoiding additional warming by up to 0.4°C (0.72 °F) by the end of the century.
- The future success of the Kigali Amendment faces several challenges, including countries inaccurately estimating their emissions of HFCs, the need for affordable alternatives, and the fact that the major producers of HFCs (China, the United States and India) have not yet signed the treaty.
- Scientists and policymakers continue to address these challenges, with the U.S. and China having recently announced their intent to ratify the treaty. Also, the U.S. this week signaled its commitment to aggressively cutting the use and production of HFCs via a new, proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule.

Reversing warming quickly could prevent worst climate change effects: Study
- Irreversible and catastrophic environmental tipping points could still be avoided, even if we exceed global emission reduction targets — provided the world is able to reverse overshoot quickly, according to researchers.
- Simple mathematical models of four earth system tipping elements reveal a lag between overshooting the threshold and irreversible change. “Slow-onset” elements like icecap melt operate on century-long timescales, while Amazon dieback could pass a point of no return in just decades.
- However, experts warn that the models fail to take interactions between different tipping elements into account, which could shorten the amount of time a threshold can be overshot. Many of these interactions are poorly understood, making them difficult to include in climate models.
- Researchers say these results show there is still good reason to take action to mitigate global warming, even if we do overshoot the Paris Agreement target of 1.5°C. Some warn the study results could be used as an excuse to tolerate further delays on global climate action.

‘Profound ignorance’: Microbes, a missing piece in the biodiversity puzzle
- Researchers are certain that human activity has resulted in a decline in plant and animal species. But a huge unknown remains: what impacts have human actions —ranging from climate change, to ocean acidification, deforestation and land use change, nitrogen pollution, and more — had on the Earth’s microbes?
- A new paper poses this significant question, and offers a troubling answer: Science suffers from “profound ignorance” about the ways in which microbial biodiversity is being influenced by rapid environmental changes now happening on our planet.
- Researchers are supremely challenged by the microbial biodiversity question, finding it difficult to even define what a microbe species is, and uncertain how to effectively identify, analyze and track the behaviors of microbes on Earth —microorganisms estimated to be more numerous than stars in the known universe.
- We do know microbes play crucial roles — helping grow our food, aiding in the sequestering and release of soil carbon, curing and causing disease, and more. One thing researchers do agree on: knowing how human activities are influencing the microbial world could be very important to the future of humanity and our planet.

Leaders make bold climate pledges, but is it ‘all just smoke and mirrors?’: Critics
- Forty nations — producers of 80% of annual carbon emissions — made pledges of heightened climate ambition this week at U.S. President Joe Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate. But as each head of state took to the podium, climate activists responded by pointing to the abysmal lack of action by those nations.
- As the U.S. promised to halve its emissions by 2030, advocates noted the lack of policies in place to achieve that goal, and the likelihood of intense Republican political resistance. China promised at the summit to eliminate coal plants, but 247 gigawatts of coal power is currently in planning or development stages there.
- The UK, EU, Japan, and South Korea all pledged to do more, but all are committed to burning forest biomass to replace coal — a solution relying on a longstanding carbon accounting error that counts forest biomass as carbon neutral, though scientists say it produces more emissions than coal per unit of electricity made.
- “This summit could be a critical turning point in our fight against climate change, but we have seen ambitious goals before and we have seen them fall flat. Today’s commitments must be followed with effective implementation, and with transparent reporting and accurate carbon accounting,” said one environmental advocate.

With British Columbia’s last old-growth at risk, government falters: Critics
- British Columbia’s ruling New Democratic Party last autumn pledged to conserve 353,000 hectares (1,363 square miles) of old-growth forest. But so far, the NDP has largely failed to act on this pledge, even as forestry companies rush to procure and cut old-growth in the Canadian province.
- Unless the government acts quickly on its commitment, BC’s last old-growth could be gone in as little as 5-10 years say some forest ecologists. In addition, intense logging could mean that Canada is not going to meet its Paris Climate Agreement carbon-reduction goals.
- While the NDP promised a new policy boosting forest perseveration over forestry, critics say that — despite its rhetoric — the government continues to prop up an industry in decline to help rural communities in need of jobs.
- While it’s not now cutting BC old-growth, activists worry over the acquisition by U.K. Drax Group of BC’s largest wood pellet producer, Pinnacle Renewable Energy and its seven BC pellet mills. Drax provides up to 12% of the U.K.’s energy at the world’s largest pellet-burning plant. Its BC exports to Japan are also expected to grow.

Podcast: Though humanity exceeds key ‘planetary boundaries’ there are many solutions
- On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with two recent contributors to our “Covering the Commons” special reporting project who wrote pieces that deal with the concept of Planetary Boundaries and how we can build a more sustainable future.
- Claire Asher tells us about her recent article detailing the nine Planetary Boundaries, the four environmental limits we’ve already exceeded, and the chances 2021 offers us to make transformative change.
- Andrew Willner discusses his recent article on how a “New Age of Sail” might soon transform the international shipping industry, the sixth-largest source of carbon emissions in the world.

The nine boundaries humanity must respect to keep the planet habitable
- All life on Earth, and human civilization, are sustained by vital biogeochemical systems, which are in delicate balance. However, our species — due largely to rapid population growth and explosive consumption — is destabilizing these Earth processes, endangering the stability of the “safe operating space for humanity.”
- Scientists note nine planetary boundaries beyond which we can’t push Earth Systems without putting our societies at risk: climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol pollution, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows of nitrogen and phosphorus, land-system change, and release of novel chemicals.
- Humanity is already existing outside the safe operating space for at least four of the nine boundaries: climate change, biodiversity, land-system change, and biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus imbalance). The best way to prevent overshoot, researchers say, is to revamp our energy and food systems.
- In 2021, three meetings offer chances to avoid planetary boundary overshoot: the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Kunming, China; the U.N. Climate Summit (COP26) in Glasgow, U.K.; and the U.N. Food Systems Summit in Rome. Agreements with measurable, implementable, verifiable, timely and binding targets are vital, say advocates.

As Arctic sea ice hits annual maximum, concern grows over polar ice loss: Studies
- Arctic sea ice reaches its annual maximum extent in March. But while ice extent is high this year, scientists are far more concerned by the drastic loss of sea ice volume, which continues its steady decline.
- A new study has documented drastic ice loss in both the north and south polar regions; scientists found that the single biggest reduction came from Arctic sea ice — the Earth lost 7.6 trillion metric tons of it in the last three decades.
- Another new study shows that the last bastion of old, thick multiyear ice in the Arctic, north of Greenland and Ellesmere Island, is diminishing as the stability of the Nares ice arches declines — blockages which work like a cork in a bottle to stop multiyear ice from flowing out into the Atlantic.
- Meanwhile, researchers warn about the urgent need for new Arctic monitoring satellites. Currently there is just one in operation, the DMSP-F18 satellite, and it has already been in orbit more than a decade. Its failure could leave researchers blind and disrupt an Arctic ice database continuous back to 1978.

Dutch to limit forest biomass subsidies, possibly signaling EU sea change
- The Dutch Parliament in February voted to disallow the issuing of new subsidies for 50 planned forest biomass-for-heat plants, a small, but potentially key victory for researchers and activists who say that the burning of forests to make energy is not only not carbon neutral, but is dirtier than burning coal and bad climate policy.
- With public opinion opposing forest biomass as a climate solution now growing in the EU, the decision by the Netherlands could be a bellwether. In June, the EU will review its Renewable Energy Directive (RED II), whether to continue allowing biomass subsidies and not counting biomass emissions at the smokestack.
- Currently, forest biomass burning to make energy is ruled as carbon neutral in the EU, even though a growing body of scientific evidence has shown that it takes many decades until forests regrow for carbon neutrality to be achieved.
- The forestry industry, which continues to see increasing demand for wood pellets, argues that biomass burning is environmentally sustainable and a viable carbon cutting solution compared to coal.

U.N. report lays out blueprint to end ‘suicidal war on nature’
- According to a new report from the United Nations Environmental Programme, the world faces three environmental “emergencies”: climate change, biodiversity loss, and air and water pollution.
- U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said we should view nature as “an ally,” not a foe, in the quest for sustainable human development.
- The report draws on assessments that quantify carbon emissions, species loss and pollutant flows to produce what the authors call concrete actions by governments, private companies and individuals that will help address these issues.

500+ experts call on world’s nations to not burn forests to make energy
- Last week, more than 500 top scientists and economists issued a letter to leaders in the US, EU, Japan, South Korea, and the UK, urging them to stop harvesting and burning forests as a means of making energy in converted coal burning power plants.
- The burning of forest biomass to produce electricity has boomed due to this power source having been tolerated as carbon neutral by the United Nations, which enables nations to burn forest biomass instead of coal and not count the emissions in helping them meet their Paris Climate Agreement carbon reduction targets.
- However, current science says that burning forest biomass is dirtier than burning coal, and that one of the best ways to curb climate change and sequester carbon is to allow forests to keep growing. The EU and UK carbon neutrality designations for forest biomass are erroneous, say the 500 experts who urge a shift in global policy:
- “Governments must end subsidies… for the burning of wood…. The European Union needs to stop treating the burning of biomass as carbon neutral…. Japan needs to stop subsidizing power plants to burn wood. And the United States needs to avoid treating biomass as carbon neutral or low carbon,” says the letter.

Will new US EPA head continue his opposition to burning forests for energy?
- Under President Donald Trump the U.S. made moves toward legally enshrining the burning of forest biomass to make energy on an industrial scale as a national policy. That same policy has been embraced by the United Kingdom and European Union, helping them move toward a target of zero carbon emissions — at least on paper.
- However, the carbon neutrality label given to the burning of woody biomass to make energy, first proclaimed under the Kyoto Protocol, then grandfathered into the Paris Climate Agreement, has been found by science over the last decade to be more accurately characterized as a risky carbon accounting loophole.
- Current science says that carbon neutrality achieved from burning wood pellets would take 50-100 years to achieve, time the world doesn’t have to slash its emissions. Further, burning woody biomass is inefficient, and dirtier than coal.
- Michael S. Regan, President Biden’s choice for EPA head, wrestled with the problem of producing wood pellets for use as energy while leading North Carolina’s environmental agency. Now he’ll be contending with the issue on a national and possibly global scale. His past views on the topic are laid out in this story in detail.

Seven financial firms key to rooting out deforestation, report finds
- Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and index funds are some of the most popular investment tools available, popular among individual and institutional investors alike.
- Just a handful of asset management firms control between 60% and 70% of these funds, according to a recent report from the financial think tank Planet Tracker.
- Planet Tracker’s analysis found that $9.3 billion from ETFs is invested in a set of 26 companies engaged in the soybean trade and linked to deforestation.
- The report concludes that the financial firms in which ETFs and index funds are concentrated are critical in addressing financial support for deforestation.

In sweeping executive orders, Biden brings climate to the forefront of U.S. policy
- On Wednesday, the Biden administration issued a series of executive orders on climate change, proposing an expansive plan that it says is the most ambitious in U.S. history.
- The orders formalized promises made by Biden during his presidential campaign.
- Included in the orders are a moratorium on oil and gas drilling on federal lands as well as a proposal to conserve 30 percent of U.S. land and oceans.

IPBES report details path to exit current ‘pandemic era’
- A new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) calls for a “transformative change” in addressing the causes of virus outbreaks to prevent future pandemics and their devastating consequences.
- Human-driven climate change, the wildlife trade, and conversion of natural ecosystems all increase the potential for the spillover of viruses that infect animals to people.
- The current COVID-19 pandemic is likely to cost the global economy trillions of dollars, yet preventive measures that include identification of the hundreds of thousands of unknown viruses that are thought to exist would cost only a fraction of that total.

Antarctic Ice Sheet is primed to pass irreversible climate thresholds: Researchers
- New research finds that the world’s oceans could rise by roughly 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) due to the partial reduction of the Antarctic Ice Sheet over a period extending beyond 2100.
- Importantly, the new study finds that it will be difficult to reverse Antarctica’s ice loss after the world reaches 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming above pre-industrial levels — likely to occur in this century.
- The study suggests that in addition to the long-term partial collapse of the ice sheet at 2 degrees C of warming, an increase of 6-9 degrees C would trigger the loss of more than 70% of the ice sheet’s present-day volume. At more than 10 degrees C of warming, Antarctica would be committed to becoming “virtually ice-free.”
- However, predicting precisely when and how the Antarctic Ice Sheet will respond to temperature changes this century — and how much of it may melt over the next 80 years — has proven difficult and is the subject of continuing research.

Brave New Arctic: Sea ice has yet to form off of Siberia, worrying scientists
- After a summer that saw record Siberian fires and polar temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit, along with near record low sea ice extent in September, the Arctic Ocean’s refreeze has slowed to a crawl.
- The Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea are, at this point, failing to re-freeze as rapidly as in the past. Scientists see all of these worrying events, along with many other indicators including fast melting permafrost, as harbingers of a northern polar region that may be entering a new climate regime.
- Models predict the Arctic will be ice-free in summer by 2040 or 2050, with unforeseen negative impacts not only in the Far North, but on people, economies and ecosystems around the globe. One major concern: scientists worry how changes in the Arctic might alter temperate weather systems, impacting global food security.
- “We’re conducting this blind experiment, and we don’t yet know the real implications,” one sea ice researcher tells Mongabay. “How do you sell climate change to be as much of an emergency as COVID-19? Except that it will kill a lot more people.”

The Amazon savanna? Rainforest teeters on the brink as climate heats up
- A new study has found that 40% of the Amazon is at risk of turning into savanna due to decreases in rainfall.
- The paper’s authors used satellite data, climate simulations and hydrological models to better understand the dynamics of rainfall across the tropics and their impacts on the stability of tropical forest ecosystems.
- The team’s simulations suggest that sustained high greenhouse gas emissions through the end of the century could shrink the minimum size of the Amazon by 66%.

Hotter tropics may worsen climate change, reforestation could lessen it: Studies
- Researchers know tropical forests play an important part in regulating the global climate, but there is great uncertainty still as to how various forest mechanisms will work as the world warms in the years ahead.
- Two new studies shed light on the problem: one finds that a hotter global climate could release far more carbon from tropical soils than currently believed. The research conducted in Panama found that soil carbon emissions increased by 55% over two years when those soils were heated by four degrees Celsius.
- However, more research is needed to see if such large losses would be maintained over time, as well as what future results might be in other tropical forests and soils around the world.
- In another study conducted in Malaysia, scientists determined that active restoration of degraded tropical forests could be a key tool for lowering atmospheric CO2 concentrations, potentially curbing climate change and helping moderate global temperatures.

Arctic Sea ice melts to second-place finish at annual minimum
- At the annual September Arctic sea ice minimum this year, the ice extent was reduced to just 3.74 million square kilometers, a low that surpassed every year since 1979 except 2012, which saw a minimum of 3.41 million square kilometers.
- While 2012 was an anomaly (a year in which an immense August cyclone shattered the weakened ice), 2020 came very close to that record, but without any such storm, though the region did see intense July and August heat.
- A new study finds, once again, that what starts in the Arctic doesn’t stay there. Researchers say that Asia is seeing lengthier bouts of extreme storms, droughts, heat and cold as weather systems stall there, possibly due to a weakening Northern Hemisphere jet stream — an effect thought to be due to Arctic warming.
- In other new research, scientists say a layer of warm Atlantic water entering the Arctic, which had always stayed down deep in the past, is starting to rise toward, and mix with, colder surface waters. That mixing could be fatal to the Arctic sea ice in the future — with unknown, but potentially dire impacts on global climate stability.

Are forests the new coal? Global alarm sounds as biomass burning surges
- As climate change rapidly escalates with worsening impacts, and with standing forests vital to achieving global warming solutions, the forest biomass industry is booming. While the industry does utilize wood scraps, it also frequently cuts standing forests to supply wood pellets to be burned in converted coal power plants.
- Though current science has shown that burning the world’s forests to make electricity is disastrous for biodiversity, generates more emissions than coal, and isn’t carbon neutral, a UN policy established in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol erroneously counts energy produced from forest biomass as carbon neutral.
- As a result, nations pay power companies huge subsidies to burn wood pellets, propelling industry growth. While the industry does utilize tree residue, forests are being cut in the US, Canada, Russia, Eastern Europe and Vietnam to supply pellets to the UK, EU and other nations who can claim the energy creates zero emissions.
- So far, the UN has turned a blind eye to closing the climate destabilizing carbon accounting loophole. The Netherlands, which now gets 61% of its renewable energy from biomass, is being urged to wean itself off biomass for energy and heat. If the Dutch do so, advocates hope it could portend closure of Europe’s carbon loophole.

Can we predict where Amazon fires will occur? And to what end?
- If it was possible to accurately forecast where Amazon fires were most likely to occur each year, it should theoretically be far easier to prevent and control those fires.
- Amazon fires are currently predicted in two ways: first, based on deforestation, much of it illegal, that occurs in the wet months before the annual fire season; it is these deforested areas that are most often set on fire in the dry months of July through September.
- Second, it’s also possible to predict the approximate severity and Amazon region in which fires may occur based on climate and drought forecasts for the biome, often based on ocean temperatures.
- But being able to predict where Amazon fires might occur is only a first step. A strong, proactive government response is also needed to prevent and control fires, and in order to apprehend and prosecute those who set them ablaze in the Amazon.

In Brazil, human action and climate change are drowning a community
- In the old seaside resort of Atafona on the coast of Rio de Janeiro, the Atlantic Ocean has been destroying streets, houses and businesses for more than 50 years, claiming at least 500 buildings.
- The damming of the Paraíba do Sul River and destruction of forests along its banks are seen as factors in the river’s silting and throttled water flow, which has allowed the sea to advance up the mouth of the river where Atafona is located.
- According to researchers, climate change is speeding up the rate of coastal erosion through increased frequency and intensity of extreme surges and storms; in Atafona, the sea advances 3 meters (10 feet) a year.
- According to the International Organization for Migration, environmental impacts displaced 295,000 people were in Brazil in 2019; worldwide, the figure exceeds that of displacements caused by internal conflicts.

Climate change could put tropical plant germination at risk: Study
- Under a worst-case climate change scenario, more than 20% of plant species in the tropics may experience temperatures too high for their seeds to germinate by 2070, according to an analysis of seed germination data compiled by the UK’s Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.
- Under that same worst-case scenario, over half of tropical species may see reduced rates of germination by 2070 as well, the study reports, while many temperate species at high latitudes will move closer to their optimum temperature and may experience increased germination success as a result.
- The analysis shows that 26% of tropical species and 10% of temperate species are already experiencing temperatures above their optimum. Some plants are found living at sites where temperatures are already above their maximum, suggesting that their lineage in that location may be effectively extinct.
- Plants that find themselves outside of optimum or tolerable temperature ranges may be able to migrate to higher latitudes or altitudes, and existing diversity can offer a reservoir of genetic variation for species to adapt, but physiological limits and long generation times may mean even diverse species struggle.

Burning down the house? Enviva’s giant U.S. wood pellet plants gear up
- An outdated Kyoto Climate Agreement policy, grandfathered into the 2015 Paris Agreement, counts electrical energy produced by burning biomass — wood pellets — as carbon neutral. However, new science demonstrates that burning forests for energy is dirtier than coal and not carbon neutral in the short-term.
- But with the carbon accounting loophole still on the books, European Union nations and other countries are rushing to convert coal plants to burn wood pellets, and to count giant biomass energy facilities as carbon neutral — valid on paper even as they add new carbon emissions to the atmosphere. The forest industry argues otherwise.
- It too is capitalizing on the loophole, building large new wood pellet factories and logging operations in places like the U.S. Southeast — cutting down forests, pelletizing trees, and exporting biomass. A case in point are the two giant plants now being built by the Enviva Corporation in Lucedale, Mississippi and Epes, Alabama.
- Enviva and other firms can only make biomass profitable by relying on government subsidies. In the end, forests are lost, carbon neutrality takes decades to achieve, and while communities may see a short-term boost in jobs, they suffer air pollution and the risk of sudden economic collapse if and when the carbon loophole is closed.

Scientists launch ambitious conservation project to save the Amazon
- The Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA), an ambitious cooperative project to bring together the existing scientific research on the Amazon biome, has been launched with the support of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
- Modeled on the authoritative UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, the first Amazon report is planned for release in April 2021; that report will include an extensive section on Amazon conservation solutions and policy suggestions backed up by research findings.
- The Science Panel for the Amazon consists of 150 experts — including climate, ecological, and social scientists; economists; indigenous leaders and political strategists — primarily from the Amazon countries
- According to Carlos Nobre, one of the leading scientists on the project, the SPA’s reports will aim not only to curb deforestation, but to propose an ongoing economically feasible program to conserve the forest while advancing human development goals for the region, working in tandem with, and in support of, ecological systems.

Corn growers in Brazil’s Cerrado reap a hostile climate of their own making
- Agribusiness entities that deforested vast swaths of the Cerrado biome in Brazil to grow corn are now suffering a drop in production because of climate changes brought about by their own actions.
- That’s the finding of a new study that shows the loss of native vegetation has led to more warm nights and changes in rainfall patterns, affecting corn crops that require moderate temperatures and reliable rainfall.
- The study’s authors say everyone loses from this scenario, and call for keeping the native vegetation in place as much as possible.
- International pressure and a serious commitment from agribusiness, which is largely resistant to efforts to preserve the Cerrado, might be the way to stop deforestation, they suggest.

Siberian heat drives Arctic ice extent to record low for early July
- On June 17, 2020, a Siberian town registered a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest ever recorded above the Arctic Circle. High temps across the region are driving impacts of great concern to scientists, firefighters, and those who maintain vulnerable Arctic infrastructure, including pipelines, roads, and buildings.
- The Siberian heat flowed over the adjacent Arctic Ocean where it triggered record early sea ice melt in the Laptev Sea, and record low Arctic sea ice extent for this time of year. While 2020 is well positioned to set a new low extent record over 2012, variations in summer weather could change that.
- The heat has also triggered wildfires in Siberia, releasing 59 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in June and drying out the region’s tundra. Some blazes are known as “zombie fires” possibly having smoldered underground all winter between 2019 and 2020.
- Also at risk from the rapid rise in warmth is civil and militaryinfrastructure, built atop thawing permafrost. As Siberia heated up this year, a fuel tank at a Russian power plant collapsed, leaking 21,000 tons of diesel into the Ambarnaya and Dadylkan rivers, a major Arctic disaster. Worse could come as the world continues warming.

Forests are a solution to climate change. They’re also vulnerable to it
- Forest-based solutions play an important role in addressing climate change, but the risks to forests from climate change also need to be calculated, according to a newly published paper in Science.
- For forests to be good carbon-removal investments, they need to be relatively permanent, meaning that the plants and soil in a forest will absorb carbon and keep it locked away for decades or centuries. Climate change threatens that permanence.
- The authors lay out a road map for assessing permanence, which includes forest plot data, remote sensing, and vegetation modeling.
- The authors urge policymakers to be sure forest-based, natural climate solutions are done with the best available science. Likewise, scientists are urged to improve tools for sharing information across different groups outside of science.

British Columbia poised to lose ‘white rhino of old growth forests’
- In the public imagination, British Columbia is swathed in green and famous for its towering old growth forests. But while the provincial government says 23% of BC’s forests are old growth, a new study finds that a mere 1% remains with tall trees.
- Intense pressure is now being put on the remaining trees by a forestry industry eager to capitalize on nations desperate for new “carbon neutral” sources of energy, including the revamping of coal-fired power plants to burn wood pellets.
- But while the UN says burning biomass in the form of wood pellets is carbon neutral, ten years-worth of new data says that burning trees to make electricity could help put the world on a glide path to climate catastrophe — exceeding the maximum 2 degree Celsius temperature increase target set by the Paris Climate Agreement.
- A recently elected progressive government in BC is weighing its policy options as it negotiates a new provincial forest plan, trying to satisfy the dire need for forestry jobs and a growing economy, while conserving old growth forests which store large amounts of carbon as a hedge against climate disaster. The outcome is uncertain.

Climate conundrum: Could COVID-19 be linked to early Arctic ice melt?
- The COVID-19 pandemic has yielded unexpected environmental benefits, as wildlife explore urban streets and 2020 carbon emissions drop by the largest amount since World War II. But now researchers are wondering if a record hot and sunny start to the Arctic sea ice melt season could be linked to the Coronavirus lockdown.
- The possible cause: a reduction in atmospheric sulphate aerosol pollutants emitted by factories, ships and other sources. Sulphate aerosols increase the amount of clouds and brighten the atmosphere, reflecting more solar heat, thus masking global warming intensity — and making the Arctic cloudier and colder.
- Scientists are working to determine if, and by how much, sulphate aerosols have declined due to the industrial slowdown brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
- These figures could help them more precisely determine how aerosols have been inhibiting atmospheric heating around the world, especially in the Arctic. One study found that sulphate aerosol-seeded clouds could be masking about a third of all warming from greenhouse gases. However, the question is far from settled.

They survived centuries of elephant onslaught. Now climate change is killing these iconic baobabs
- A years-long drought across Southern Africa, exacerbated by climate change and over-use of water by industry, has driven elephants into South Africa’s Mapungubwe National Park.
- Here, they tear into the park’s centuries-old babobab trees to get at the moist interior.
- While the babobabs have evolved to tolerate occasional elephant damage and benefit from elephants eating their fruit and dispersing the seeds, the damage done during times of drought is extensive and often deadly for the trees.
- The elephants, for their part, no longer have room to maneuver: they’re trapped between climate change, habitat destruction and poaching.

Green alert: How indigenous people are experiencing climate change in the Amazon
- Late rainfall, intense drought, dry riverbeds, more forest fires, less food available — indigenous communities across the Brazilian Amazon suffer social transformations due to climate change.
- Indigenous people believe that climate change has even affected their physical health: previously controlled diseases like measles and yellow fever, they say, have inexplicably reappeared in the rainforest, and even indigenous women’s menstrual cycles are beginning at an earlier age.
- Indigenous people have found many ways to take action and lessen the harm. These approaches include selecting and growing seeds that are more resistant to drought and heat, investing in frontline firefighters and even a smartphone app that offers information about climatic variations.

Scientists warn U.S. Congress against declaring biomass burning carbon neutral
- Some 200 U.S. environmental scientists have sent a letter to congressional committee chairs urging they reject new rules proposed in April under the Clean Air Act that would define biomass, when burned to produce energy, as being carbon neutral.
- The scientists say that biomass burning — using wood pellets to produce energy at converted coal-burning power plants — is not only destructive of native forests which store massive amounts of carbon, but also does not reduce carbon emissions.
- A long-standing UN policy, recognizing biomass burning as carbon neutral, has caused the U.S. forestry industry to gear up to produce wood pellets for power plants in Britain, the EU, South Korea and beyond. Scientists warn that the failure to count the emissions produced by such plants could help destabilize the global climate.
- The letter from environmental scientists concludes: “We are hopeful that a new and more scientifically sound direction will be considered by Members [of Congress] that emphasizes forest protections, and a shift away from consumption of wood products and forest biomass energy to help mitigate the climate crisis.”

Soy made the Cerrado a breadbasket; climate change may end that
- The Brazilian Cerrado is a vast tropical savanna covering over 20% of the nation’s landmass. More than half the Cerrado’s native vegetation — much of it biodiverse dry forest — has been converted to agribusiness, turning it into a breadbasket for Brazil and a key source of soy for China, the EU and other international markets.
- Brazilian soy cultivation is set to expand by 12 million hectares between 2021 and 2050, with the vast majority of that expansion happening in the Cerrado and especially on its agricultural frontier — a four-state region known as Matopiba.
- However, the Matopiba region (consisting of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia states) is more vulnerable to climate change than other parts of Brazil. Researchers say global warming on the savanna is also worsened by the conversion of native vegetation to croplands and pastures.
- Extensive conversion of native vegetation (which holds moisture in roots deep underground) into a soy monocrop (which stores little water) is becoming a major problem, as little Cerrado soy is currently irrigated. Scientists argue that the conservation of native vegetation must be actively pursued to save the Cerrado agricultural frontier.

Flooding devastates Ecuador’s indigenous communities in the Amazon
- Extreme floods in the Ecuadoran Amazon have left hundreds of indigenous people homeless.
- Such events have become more frequent, partly as a result of human-driven climate change.
- These communities have little to no access to basic services, which leaves them in an extremely vulnerable situation.
- Further complicating their plight is the global COVID-19 pandemic that has now made its way into Ecuador, one of the Latin American countries hit hardest by the coronavirus so far.

Ocean optimism: Study says we can restore marine health
- A new study finds that it’s possible to repair the world’s oceans to a substantial level in three decades, as long as appropriate measures are taken to protect vulnerable marine species and habitats, rebuild damaged ecosystems, and alleviate the pressures of climate change.
- Several models of success are used to demonstrate that repairing the oceans is a realistic goal, including the positive impacts of wildlife trade and hunting regulations to protect endangered species and critical habitats.
- The biggest challenge in reinstating global ocean health is mitigating the effects of climate change, the authors say.

Game changer? Antarctic ice melt related to tropical weather shifts: Study
- Scientists predominantly believe that the tropics have the largest influence on global weather. Now, new research suggests that the melting of Antarctic sea ice could impact places as far away as the equator.
- In one of the first studies to look at the link between Antarctic sea ice and tropical weather patterns, researchers found that melting sea ice in Antarctica is likely warming ocean surface temperatures, delivering more rain, and potentially creating El Niño-like effects in the equatorial Pacific.
- Earlier this year, another study found that accelerating sea ice melt in the Arctic could be linked to the intensification of Central Pacific trade winds, the emergence of El Niño events, and the weakening of the North Pacific-Aleutian Low Circulation. So it may be that Arctic and Antarctic changes are synergistically impacting the tropics.
- It’s expected that ice loss at both poles will combine to warm the equatorial Pacific surface ocean by 0.5℃ (0.9℉) and increase rain by more than 0.3 millimeters (0.01 inches) of rain per day in the region.

Arctic permafrost moving toward crisis, abrupt thaw a growing risk: Studies
- An estimated 1,400 gigatons of carbon is currently embedded in the world’s permafrost, mostly in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. By comparison, the atmosphere presently contains just 850 gigatons. Should a major proportion of existing permafrost thaw, the Earth could experience dramatic and very dangerous warming.
- Scientists are already seeing an escalation of permafrost thawing. Worse may lie ahead: one study found that for every 1 degree C rise in Earth’s average temperature, permafrost may release the equivalent of 4-6 years-worth of fossil fuel emissions — likely requiring adjustments in Paris Accord national carbon reduction targets.
- Knowing the rate and amount of gradual permafrost thaw will aid researchers in understanding just how quickly we need to cut human-caused emissions. But researchers are also deeply concerned about the possibility of abrupt permafrost thaws, over large areas.
- Abrupt thaws could shock the landscape into releasing far more carbon than if thawed slowly. Abrupt releases may trigger a feedback loop whereby permafrost emissions would warm the atmosphere, leading to more thaw and release. By not accounting for abrupt thaws, we may be underestimating permafrost carbon release impacts by 50 percent.

Climate fix? ‘Fertilizing’ oceans with iron unlikely to sequester more carbon
- Since the 1980s, scientists have studied whether adding iron to the oceans might represent a relatively simple and inexpensive solution to climate change.
- The idea is that adding iron would encourage the growth of carbon-munching marine phytoplankton that would pull carbon out of the atmosphere on a global scale.
- But a new study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that iron fertilization, as the process is called, is unlikely to work.

Success of Microsoft’s ‘moonshot’ climate pledge hinges on forest conservation
- One mechanism by which the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement incentivizes greenhouse gas reductions is via carbon offsets, payments that compensate nations, states and private landowners who agree to keep forests intact in order to preserve carbon storage capacity and biodiversity.
- But problems exist with forest carbon offset initiatives: corrupt landowners, lack of carbon accounting transparency, and low carbon pricing have caused wariness among investors, and failed to spur forest preservation.
- Now, in a landmark move, Microsoft has pledged to go “carbon negative” by 2030, and erase all the company’s greenhouse gas emissions back to its founding in 1975 by 2050. A big part of achieving that goal will come via the carbon storage provided by verified global forest conservation and reforestation projects around the globe.
- To achieve its goal, Microsoft has teamed with Pachama, a Silicon Valley startup, that seeks to accurately track forest carbon stocks in projects in the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon, the U.S. and elsewhere using groundbreaking advanced remote-sensing technology including LiDAR, artificial intelligence and satellite imaging.

Melting Arctic sea ice may be altering winds, weather at equator: study
- Scientists predominantly believe that the tropics have the largest influence on global weather, but new research suggests that climate change-driven Arctic heating and rapid melting of Arctic sea ice could impact places as far away as the equator.
- A new study, published today, found that accelerating ice melt in recent decades could be linked to Central Pacific trade wind intensification, the emergence of El Niño events, and a weakening of the North Pacific Aleutian Low Circulation — a semi-permanent low pressure system that drives post-tropical cyclones and generates strong storms.
- A 2019 study likewise revealed a close connection between winter Arctic ice concentration over the Greenland-Barents Seas and the El-Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the following winter. Another study out this month found that in prehistoric times, periods of major permafrost thawing were tied to an absence of Arctic summer sea ice.
- Other research has drawn connections between rising Arctic temperatures and changes in the jet stream — a fast-moving river of air that circles the northern polar region. A slowing of the jet stream, and its looping far to the south, is thought to be stalling temperate weather patterns, worsening droughts, storms and other extreme weather.

10 noteworthy books on conservation and the environment from 2019
- 2019 produced a number of notable books on the environment, ranging from the memoirs of researchers and journalists to how-to guides and prescient novels.
- Here’s a sample of what was published in the past year.
- They cut across a variety of environment-related themes, though climate change is a common point of meditation for many of the authors on the list.
- Inclusion on this list does not imply Mongabay’s endorsement of a book’s content; the views in the books are those of the authors and not necessarily Mongabay.

‘The tipping point is here, it is now,’ top Amazon scientists warn
- In the past, climate modelling has indicated an approaching Amazon tipping point when global climate change, combined with increasing deforestation, could result in a rapid Amazon shift from rainforest to degraded savanna and shrubland, releasing massive amounts of carbon to the atmosphere when the world can least afford it.
- Now, scientists Carlos Nobre and Thomas Lovejoy report that researchers are seeing evidence in both the atmosphere and on the ground that this tipping point has been reached and will worsen if no action is taken immediately to reverse the situation.
- They reference a NASA satellite study revealing an increasingly dry Amazon over time, which space agency scientists say is one of “the first indications of positive climate feedback mechanisms.” A 2018 study found that Amazon tree species adapted to wet climates were dying at record rates while dry-adapted trees thrived.
- It is urgent, the scientists say, that Brazil move away from unsustainable agribusiness monocultures of cattle, soy, and sugarcane, while launching a major reforestation project on already degraded lands in the southern and eastern Amazon, actions that could help Brazil keep its Paris Climate Agreement commitment.

Paris accord ‘impossible to implement’ if tropical forest loss not stopped
- Human activity is already threatening 80% of the world’s forests with destruction or degradation. Deforestation is also putting ecosystems and 50% of the world’s biodiversity at risk, along with forest peoples.
- Atop that, dense intact tropical forests serve as vital carbon sinks. But forest loss accounted for 8% of the world’s annual CO2 emissions in 2018, while intact tropical forest loss from 2000 to 2013 will result in over 626% more long-term carbon emissions through 2050 than previously thought, according to new research.
- Zooming in on just one example, 17% of the Amazon has been cleared at one time or another. Another 20% has been degraded. In 2019, the deforestation rate there shot up 30% from the year before. The risk is that climate change combined with deforestation could lead to an Amazon forest collapse, with huge releases of carbon.
- If tropical nations, and nations consuming forest products, but had the political will, then the world’s forests could be conserved. One approach: create buffers around intact tropical forests by reducing road networks while reforesting. Also, give indigenous groups more power to protect forests, as they’re proven to be the best stewards.

COP25: EU officials say biomass burning policy to come under critical review
- At a COP25 climate summit press conference on Thursday, December 12, Frans Timmermans, executive vice president of the EU and a Dutch politician answered a Mongabay question concerning the UN biomass carbon accounting loophole.
- When asked if the EU would close the loophole, he said: “The issue of biofuels needs to be looked at very carefully. We have to make sure that what we do with biofuels is sustainable and does not do more harm than that it does good.” A second EU official expressed a similar view. The issue won’t likely be reviewed until after 2020.
- This is perhaps the first acknowledgement by a top developed world official that the biomass loophole is a potential problem. The loophole encourages power plants that burn coal (whose carbon emissions are counted) to be converted to biomass — the burning of wood pellets (whose carbon emissions are counted as carbon neutral).
- Recent science shows that burning wood pellets is worse than burning coal, since more pellets must be burned to produce equivalent energy levels to coal. Also replacing plantation forests to achieve carbon neutrality takes many decades, time not available to a world that needs to quickly cut emissions over the next 20 years.

COP25: Wood pellet CEO claims biomass carbon neutrality, despite science
- Research has conclusively shown that burning biomass for energy is not carbon neutral. However, a biomass carbon accounting loophole currently enforced by the UN and the Paris Agreement says that burning trees in the form of wood pellets produces zero emissions, and so is classified with solar and wind power.
- Mongabay gained an exclusive interview with Will Gardiner, CEO of Drax, the United Kingdom’s largest biomass energy plant. He dismisses the science and asserts that his firm and $7.6 billion industry are meeting “a responsibility to our community, our shareholders and our colleagues to be a part of the escalating climate crisis.”
- Bill Moomaw — an international researcher on biomass-for-energy, and author of forest reports for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — counters Gardiner’s arguments: “It’s all about the money. The wood pellet industry is a monster out of control,” he said when interviewed at COP25.
- Despite repeated pleas from scientists, COP25 climate summit negotiators in Madrid failed to address the biomass carbon accounting loophole, as they did at COP24 — a lapse that, if allowed to persist, could help push emissions above a 2 degree Celsius planetwide average increase that the UN says could bring climate catastrophe.

Hopes dim as COP25 delegates dicker over Article 6 and world burns: critics
- Even as half a million protesters demonstrate outside, UN climate summit negotiators inside Madrid’s COP25 seem blind to the urgency of the climate crisis. In fact, instead of making effective progress, the rules they’re shaping to carry out the Paris Agreement’s Article 6 could worsen carbon emissions, not staunch them.
- For example, Article 6 doesn’t include rules to protect native forests. Instead it could promote turning forests into monoculture tree plantations — providing minimal carbon sequestration and no ecosystem services, while devastating biodiversity. Some critics think the policy may have been shaped by logging interests.
- The so-called biomass carbon accounting loophole is also not up for discussion. Its continuance will allow the burning of biomass wood pellets at power plants, energy production classified by the UN as carbon neutral. However, establised science has found that industrial biomass burning will add significantly to carbon emissions.
- According to activists at COP25, delegates are working to hide emissions and allow UN carbon accounting loopholes. One key aspect of Article 6 found in the original Paris Agreement which guaranteed “the protection of human rights” was deleted from a revised draft Saturday night, as was verbiage assuring civil society and indigenous consultations.

World is fast losing its cool: Polar regions in deep trouble, say scientists
- As representatives of the world’s nations gather in Madrid at COP 25 this week to discuss global warming policy, a comprehensive new report shows how climate change is disproportionately affecting the Arctic and Antarctic — the Arctic especially is warming tremendously faster than the rest of the world.
- If the planet sees a rise in average temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius, the polar regions will be the hardest hit ecosystems on earth, according to researchers, bringing drastic changes to the region. By the time the lower latitudes hit that mark, it’s projected the Arctic will see temperature increases of 4 degrees Celsius.
- In fact, polar regions are already seeing quickening sea ice melt, permafrost thaws, record wildfires, ice shelves calving, and impacts on cold-adapted species — ranging from Arctic polar bears to Antarctic penguins. What starts in cold areas doesn’t stay there: sea level rise and temperate extreme weather are both linked to polar events.
- The only way out of the trends escalating toward a climate catastrophe at the poles, say scientists, is for nations to begin aggressively reducing greenhouse gas emissions now and embracing sustainable green energy technologies and policies. It remains to be seen whether the negotiators at COP 25 will embrace such solutions.

COP25 may put climate at greater risk by failing to address forests
- COP25, originally slated for Brazil, then Chile, but starting today in Madrid comes as global temperatures, sea level rise, wildfires, coral bleaching, extreme drought and storms break new planetary records.
- But delegates have set a relatively low bar for the summit, with COP25’s primary goal to determine rules under Article 6 of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement for creating carbon markets among nations, cities and corporations as a means of incentivizing emission-reduction strategies.
- Policy experts warn that global forest conservation is not yet being actively incentivized as part of carbon market discussions, a possible lapse apparently backed by Brazil and the government of Jair Bolsonaro which has declared its plan to develop the Amazon basin — the world’s largest remaining rainforest and vital to sequestering carbon to curb climate change.
- COP25 also seems unlikely to address the UN biomass carbon accounting loophole, which allows nations to convert obsolete coal plants to burn wood pellets to produce energy, with the carbon emitted counted as “zero emissions” equivalent to solar and wind. Scientists warn that biomass burning, far from being carbon neutral, is actually worse than burning coal.

Fires and greenhouse gases fuel drying of the Amazon
- New research reveals that fires in the Amazon rainforest, used primarily to clear land for agriculture and ranching, are contributing to drier conditions caused by the emissions of climate-warming gases into the atmosphere.
- Fires release “black carbon,” which absorbs energy and causes temperatures to rise, as well as blocking the formation of clouds, creating drier conditions.
- The researchers caution that the rising demand for water combined with scarcer supplies could threaten the forest’s survival.

What’s at stake after Chile cancels its hosting of COP25?
- Massive protests triggered by social unrest over economic, justice and environmental issues have forced Chile to cancel its hosting of this year’s U.N. climate change summit in December.
- As the organizer of the 25th Conference of Parties, Chile was to have led the effort to bolster ambitions in the fight against climate change aimed at ensuring that global temperatures don’t increase by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
- On Oct. 31, a day after Chile’s president announced the cancellation, Spain offered to hold the conference on the scheduled dates, Dec. 2-13, in Madrid.

Research outlines ‘roadmap’ for land use to slow climate change
- A new study finds that the land sector could account for nearly one-third of the climate mitigation necessary to keep global temperatures below a 1.5-degree-Celsius (2.7-degree-Fahrenheit) rise over pre-industrial levels as referenced in the 2015 Paris climate accords.
- The research, drawing on other studies looking at the potential for various reforms, puts forth a roadmap for carbon neutrality in the land sector by 2040.
- In addition to measures such as forest protection and restoration, the paper’s authors also call for human behavior change and investment in carbon capture technologies.

Nature-based climate action no longer ‘the forgotten solution’
- At the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) held in San Francisco last year, nature-based solutions to the climate crisis — like keeping forests standing and restoring degraded ecosystems to enhance their carbon storage potential — were referred to as “the forgotten solution.”
- Though conservation of forests and other landscapes could be playing a crucial role in mitigating global climate change, renowned conservationist and UN messenger for peace Dr. Jane Goodall, in a speech delivered last September at the GCAS, said she had personally attended a number of conferences where forests went unmentioned. “Saving the forest is one third of the solution,” Goodall said. “We must not let it be the forgotten solution.”
- That message appears to have been heeded by a number of governments, companies, and civil society groups who committed to major nature-based climate initiatives at the UN Climate Summit held last Monday and the NYC Climate Week that concludes this weekend.

Call for scientists to engage in environmental movements strikes chord
- Scientists have a “moral duty” to partake in environmental movements such as the Extinction Rebellion and the Global Climate Strike, a pair of ecologists argues.
- The engagement of scientists could spark a deeper interest in — and action to address — these issues, they write.
- The participation of scientists will also lend credibility to the urgency of such movements, the scientists say.

As climate change disrupts the annual monsoon, India must prepare (Commentary)
- Over the past few decades, India’s total annual rainfall averages haven’t changed but the intensity of precipitation has increased as extreme weather events (EWEs) become more frequent and widespread. Today, the country witnesses more episodes of extremely heavy rainfall, as compared to the past’s consistent, well spread out seasonal rains.
- The nation’s meteorological department already admits that this is a clear impact of climate change. These intense storms pose a huge danger to India’s agriculture-based economy and to millions of farmers whose livelihoods still largely rely upon a consistent rainfall season. There are also periods of droughts interspersed with floods.
- The good news is that Indian authorities are aware of the change and are trying to tackle the impacts of shifting rainfall patterns and adapt to them.
- These extreme weather events are of global significance since more than 1.8 billion people live on the Indian subcontinent, and the impact in the South Asian region has economic fallout in other parts of the world. This post is a commentary. Views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

The Arctic and climate change (1979 – 2019): What the ice record tells us
- This story has been updated: 2019’s Arctic ice melt season started out with record heat and rapid ice loss. Though cooler weather prevailed in August, stalling the fall, by mid-September ice extent was dropping dramatically once again. Then this week, 2019 raced from fourth to second place — now behind only 2012, the record minimum.
- With 2019 providing no reversal over past years, scientists continue to document and view the Arctic Death Spiral with increasing alarm. This story reviews the 40-year satellite record, along with some of the recent findings as to how Arctic ice declines are impacting the global climate.
- Researchers are increasingly certain that melting ice and a warming Arctic are prime factors altering the northern jet stream, a river of air that circles the Arctic. A more erratic jet stream — with increased waviness and prone to stalling — is now thought to be driving the increasingly dire, extreme global weather seen in recent years.
- The 40-year satellite record of rapidly vanishing Arctic ice — as seen in a new NASA video embedded within this article — is one of the most visible indicators of the intensifying climate crisis, and a loud warning to world leaders meeting at the UN in New York next week, of the urgent need to drastically cut carbon emissions.

UN and policymakers, wake up! Burning trees for energy is not carbon neutral (commentary)
- On September 23, the signatories of the Paris Climate Agreement will gather at the United Nations for a Climate Action Summit to step up their carbon reduction pledges in order to prevent catastrophic climate change, while also kicking off Climate Week events in New York City.
- However, the policymakers, financiers, and big green groups organizing these events will almost certainly turn a blind eye toward renewable energy policies that subsidize forest wood burned for energy as if it is a zero emissions technology like wind or solar.
- Scientists have repeatedly warned that burning forests is not in fact carbon neutral, and that doing so puts the world at risk of overshooting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target.
- But that message has fallen on deaf ears, as lucrative renewable energy subsidies have driven exponential growth in use of forest wood as fuel. The world’s nations must stop subsidizing burning forest biomass now to protect forests, the climate, and our future. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author.

REDD+ more competitive than critics believe, study finds
- Critics have argued that the strategy known as REDD+, or reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, hasn’t adequately slowed emissions from forest loss in developing countries in the way it was intended.
- Introduced in 2007, REDD+ is meant to help individual countries earn money for development when they lower the amount of released carbon from clearing and degrading forests.
- In a recent paper focused on the South American country of Guyana, a team of researchers argues that the problems with REDD+ stem from its implementation at the project level.
- REDD+ implementation across the jurisdiction of an entire country would address nearly all of the problems with individual REDD+ projects, and societies would benefit more financially than they currently do from commercial forest uses such as gold mining and logging, the researchers say.

2019 in line for second lowest Arctic sea ice extent record
- 2019 has seen constant heat and melt conditioning of the Arctic sea ice, resulting in record, and near record, daily and monthly extent and volume stats over much of the melt season. The average volume for July, for example, fell to 8,800 cubic kilometers (2,111 cubic miles), a new record low.
- Whether 2019 will set a new all-time extent or volume record at the September sea ice minimum remains to be seen, with ice extent shrinking less quickly since mid-August, possibly putting this year in second place, though certainly among the top five record lowest minimums.
- The big news this year was the relentless heat in the Arctic, with record heat waves over Alaska, Scandinavia and Greenland, resulting in massive glacial runoff into the sea. Wildfires were rampant, with reindeer and fish including salmon possibly adversely impacted by very hot air and water temperatures.
- Whether or not 2019 sets a new sea ice extent or volume low record this September is incidental. What this year dramatically showed is that the climate crisis has anchored itself firmly in the Arctic, and shows no signs of easing over the long-haul.

From science to reporting (Insider)
- Environmental journalist and Mongabay freelance contributor Ignacio Amigo started his career as a scientist.
- After realizing that he was reading science features and studies outside his area of expertise, he realized that he really wanted to be a reporter.
- This post is insider content, which is available to paying subscribers.

Forests and forest communities critical to climate change solutions
- A new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlights the importance of land use in addressing climate change.
- The restoration and protection of forests could be a critical component in strategies to mitigate climate change, say experts, but governments must halt deforestation and forest degradation to make way for farms and ranches.
- The IPCC report also acknowledges the role that indigenous communities could play.
- The forests under indigenous management often have lower deforestation and emit less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Arctic in free fall: 2019 sea ice volume sinks to near record for June
- High temperatures and relentless sun caused Arctic sea ice volume and extent to plummet this June.
- The June 2019 monthly average for Arctic sea ice volume was 15,900 cubic kilometers (3,814 cubic miles), just short of the monthly average record set in 2017. But by the end of the month this year, a new daily record occurred as volume loss advanced rapidly, leaving just 12,047 cubic kilometers (2,890 cubic square miles) of sea ice on June 30 — that’s 106 cubic kilometers (25 cubic miles) lower than the previous record for this time of year.
- On July 10, Arctic sea ice extent for 2019 fell to 8.338 million square kilometers (3.219 million square miles), surpassing 2012’s record low of 8.359 million square kilometers (3.227 million square miles) for this time of year.
- While changing weather always dictates sea ice minimum extent and volume in September, scientists say that if conditions remain favorable for melt and ice export to the North Atlantic, then 2019 could beat all records. And because what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay there, that could mean trouble for the world’s weather.

Slight warming could be enough to heighten risk of malaria: Study
- New research has found that malaria parasites need less time to develop at lower temperatures than previously thought.
- Earlier research postulated that malaria transmission in cooler areas was unlikely because parasites took longer to mature than the lifespans of their mosquito hosts.
- The researchers found that the parasites needed between 31 and 37 days to develop at 18 degrees Celsius (64 degrees Fahrenheit) — substantially lower than the 56 days postulated by previous research and well within the lifespan of female mosquitoes.

Antarctic sea ice declining ‘precipitously’ since 2014, study finds
- After decades of overall increase, Antarctica’s sea ice has been rapidly decreasing since 2014, according to a new study.
- Between 2014 and 2017, Antarctica suffered a precipitous decline, losing more yearly average sea ice in just three years than that observed in the Arctic over a period of 33 years.
- There was a small increase in the yearly average sea ice in Antarctica from 2017 to 2018, but there has been a decline in 2019 again. Whether the small uptick in 2018 is a blip in an otherwise long-term downward trend of Antarctic sea ice extent or the start of a rebound, is difficult to say, Claire Parkinson of NASA writes.
- Whether the changes are because of climate change or something else also remains to be seen, researchers say.

Carbon to burn: UK net-zero emissions pledge undermined by biomass energy
- The United Kingdom and the European Union are setting goals to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But that declaration is deeply flawed, analysts say, due to a long-standing United Nations carbon accounting loophole that turns a blind eye toward the conversion of coal burning power plants to burning wood pellets.
- While the cutting of trees to convert them to wood pellets to produce energy is ultimately carbon neutral — if an equal number of new trees are planted — the regrowth process requires 50 to 100 years. That means wood pellets burned today, and in coming decades, will be adding a massive carbon load to the atmosphere.
- That carbon will add significantly to global warming — bringing more sea level rise, extreme weather, and perhaps, climate catastrophe — even as official carbon counting by the UN provides a false sense of security that we are effectively reducing emissions to curb climate change.
- Unless the biomass loophole is dealt with, the risk is very real that the world could easily overshoot its Paris Agreement targets, and see temperatures rise well above the 1.5 degrees Celsius safe limit. At present, there is no official move to address the biomass loophole.

’Livestock revolution’ triggered decline in global pasture: Report
- Since 2000, the area of land dedicated for livestock pasture around the world has declined by 1.4 million square kilometers (540,500 square miles) — an area about the size of Peru.
- A new report attributes the contraction to more productive breeds, better animal health and higher densities of animals on similar amounts of land.
- The report’s authors say that technological solutions could help meet rising demand for meat and milk in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, without reversing the downward trend.

Arctic sea ice extent just hit a record low for early June; worse may come
- The lowest Arctic sea ice extent in the 40-year satellite record for this time of year was set on June 10 with just 10.901 million square kilometers of ice remaining, dipping just below the previous record set in 2016 of 10.919 million square kilometers. This year’s record is likely to deepen at least for the coming days.
- Some scientists theorize that declining Arctic summer sea ice extent, which has fallen by roughly half since 1979, could be generating a cascade of harmful effects: as the Arctic melts, the heat differential between the Far North and temperate zone lessens, causing the jet stream (high altitude Northern Hemisphere winds), to falter.
- As the polar jet stream loses energy, it can fail to hug the Arctic Circle. Instead it starts to dip deeply into the temperate zone forming great waves which can block and stall weather patterns there, bringing long punishing bouts of rain and floods like those seen in the Midwest this spring, or extended heatwaves and drought.
- Arctic weather variations are too complex to predict in advance, but 2019 has made a strong start toward possibly beating 2012 for the lowest annual ice extent record. Records aside, the Arctic sea ice death spiral and the extreme weather it can trigger are adversely impacting agriculture, infrastructure, economics and human lives.

Chinese banks risk supporting soy-related deforestation, report finds
- Chinese financial institutions have little awareness about the risks of deforestation in the soy supply chain, according to a report released May 31 from the nonprofit disclosure platform CDP.
- China imports more than 60 percent of the world’s soy, meaning that the country could play a major role in halting deforestation and slowing climate change if companies and banks focus on stopping deforestation to grow the crop.
- Around 490 square kilometers (189 square miles) of land in Brazil was cleared for soy headed for China in 2017 — about 40 percent of all “converted” land in Brazil that year.
- As the trade war between the U.S. and China continues, China may increasingly look to Latin America for its soy, potentially increasing the chances that land will be cleared to make way for the crop.

The health of penguin chicks points scientists to changes in the ocean
- A recent closure of commercial fishing around South Africa’s Robben Island gave scientists the chance to understand how fluctuations in prey fish populations affect endangered African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) absent pressure from humans.
- The researchers found that the more fish were available, the better the condition of the penguin chicks that rely on their parents for food.
- This link between prey abundance in the sea and the condition of penguin chicks on land could serve as an indicator of changes in the ecosystem.

Extreme weather puts traditional livelihoods in peril in Sri Lanka, studies warn
- New assessments identify Sri Lanka’s northern region as a hotspot for climate change impacts, with the district of Jaffna named the top hotspot.
- The Global Climate Risk Index 2019 lists Sri Lanka as the second most impacted country in 2017 for having faced extensive losses due to climate catastrophes in a single year.
- With extreme weather events predicted to increase with rising levels of impact, the assessments call for rapid adaptation, particularly in terms of livelihoods vulnerable to an increasingly unpredictable climate.

’Green’ bonds finance industrial tree plantations in Brazil
- The Environmental Paper Network (EPN), a group of some 140 NGOs with the goal of making the pulp and paper industry more sustainable, released a briefing contending that green or climate bonds issued by Fibria, a pulp and paper company, went to maintaining and expanding plantations of eucalyptus trees.
- The report suggests that the Brazilian company inflated the amount of carbon that new planting would store.
- The author of the briefing also questions the environmental benefits of maintaining industrial monocultures of eucalyptus, a tree that requires a lot of water along with herbicides, pesticides and fertilizer that can impact local ecosystems and human communities.

’Unprecedented’ loss of biodiversity threatens humanity, report finds
- The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services released a summary of far-reaching research on the threats to biodiversity on May 6.
- The findings are dire, indicating that around 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction.
- The full 1,500-page report, to be released later this year, raises concerns about the impacts of collapsing biodiversity on human well-being.

Bird flu in Namibia’s penguins wanes, after killing nearly 500
- More than 450 African penguins, an IUCN-listed endangered animal, have died in an outbreak of bird flu on three islands off the coast of Namibia.
- The virus, H5N8, is thought to have been introduced to the colonies, which hold 96 percent of Namibia’s penguins, by another bird traveling from South Africa, where a similar outbreak occurred in 2018.
- The disease appears to be abating, and researchers are hopeful that the country’s penguins will recover.
- However, they continue to face threats from food shortages caused by overfishing and climate change.

Deforestation diminishes access to clean water, study finds
- A recent study compared deforestation data and information on household access to clean water in Malawi.
- The scientists found that the country lost 14 percent of its forest between 2000 and 2010, which had the same effect on access to safe drinking water as a 9 percent decrease in rainfall.
- With higher rainfall variability expected in today’s changing climate, the authors suggest that a larger area of forest in countries like Malawi could be a buffer against the impacts of climate change.

Arctic in trouble: Sea ice melt falls to record lows for early April
- As of April 9, the Arctic had around 13.6 million square kilometers (5.3 million square miles) of ice cover, putting it firmly below any other year on record for the same time of year, and nearly two weeks ahead of previous early April records set in 2017 and 2018.
- The implications of such low sea ice extent for this time of year is concerning to scientists. However, predicting seasonal ice melt is very difficult, and changes in Arctic weather could cause the early melt to stall, or even reverse to some degree.
- Two new Arctic studies are also troubling. Researchers have found that between 1998 and 2017, seventeen percent less ice exited shallow continental shelf seas — nurseries for sea ice — to reach the Central Arctic Ocean and Fram Strait. This loss in ice being transported could have serious implications for Arctic sea ice melt and impact biodiversity as well.
- A second study found that rising Arctic air temperatures are driving change across the entire ecosystem. Hotter temperatures are impacting forest and tundra growing seasons, increasing wildfires, boosting rain and snowfall, and melting ice — shifting the region from its 20th century condition into an unprecedented state.

Forests scramble to absorb carbon as emissions continue to increase
- A recent study suggests global forests are absorbing more carbon dioxide as atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations increase — but that they still can’t keep up with runaway CO2 emissions.
- The study finds that tropical forests, where growth is more robust, are more effective per given area at removing carbon from the atmosphere.
- Researchers say there’s still uncertainty about the ability of forests to increase their carbon-absorption capacity over the long term, especially if the climate heats up past a certain point.

As Arctic neared 2019 winter max, Bering Sea was virtually ice-free
- Though yet to be called officially by scientists, Arctic sea ice extent appeared to hit its annual maximum on March 13 when it covered 14.777 million square kilometers. The 2019 max stats are among the top ten lowest on record, and well below the 1981-2010 average maximum extent of 15.64 million square kilometers.
- One thing that stood out this winter was the extraordinarily low amounts of ice in the Bering Sea at the start of March, surpassing record lows seen in 2018 for the same dates. Seasonal ice in the Bering Sea is already known to be volatile, but it’s getting worse under climate change.
- A new study also found something remarkable on the opposite side of the Arctic: in recent years, according to the research, Greenland has been receiving more rain, including in winter.
- These rain events are triggering sudden, rapid ice melt and are responsible for a tremendous amount of annual runoff. Ultimately, these rains could prove catastrophic for the Greenland ice sheet, and for sea level rise.

EU sued to stop burning trees for energy; it’s not carbon neutral: plaintiffs
- Plaintiffs in five European nations and the U.S. filed suit Monday, 4 March, in the European General Court in Luxembourg against the European Union. At issue is the EU’s rapid conversion of coal-burning powerplants to burn wood pellets and chips, a process known as bioenergy. Activists see the EUs bioenergy policies as reckless and endangering the climate.
- Bioenergy was classified as carbon neutral under the Kyoto Protocol, meaning that nations don’t need to count wood burning for energy among their Paris Agreement carbon emissions. However, studies over the last 20 years have found that bioenergy, while technically carbon neutral, is not neutral within the urgent timeframe in which the world must cut emissions.
- In essence, it takes many decades for new tree growth to re-absorb the amount of carbon released from burning mature trees in a single day. But the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change last October said that the world has just 12 years – not decades – to drastically cut emissions or face likely disastrous temperature rise and climate impacts.
- The activists filing suit face a difficult fight. Only EU member states and EU institutions are generally given standing to challenge legislative acts. To gain standing, they will have to prove that they are being impacted by the EU’s bioenergy policies. The activists say that ending bioenergy coal plant conversions is vital if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Our brains can lead us astray when making ‘eco-friendly’ decisions
- Humans rely on a set of cognitive tools, developed to help us sustain interpersonal relationships, to govern our choices that affect the global climate, a pair of psychologists suggests.
- People who purchase food with “eco-friendly” labeling might be apt to buy more of it thinking of it as an offset, when, in reality, all consumption has a climate cost.
- The team suggests that more accurate labeling could help consumers understand which choices are “less bad” rather than “good” for the environment.

Study finds people apt to shrug off extreme weather as normal
- A new study published Feb. 25 that tracked Twitter posts on weather-related topics has found that people are quick to accept unusual weather as normal.
- The researchers calculated that we humans set our baseline for what we consider normal weather from what we’ve experienced in just the past two to eight years.
- The authors of the study write that, as people get used to wilder swings in temperature and other weather patterns, they might be reticent to find ways to deal with climate change or even see it as a problem.

For Indonesian presidential hopefuls, burning coal is business as usual
- Indonesia relies for more than half of its electricity on coal-fired power plants, and has plans to build dozens more in the coming years, bucking a worldwide shift away from fossil fuels and toward renewable sources of energy.
- Activists have called on President Joko Widodo and his challenger, Prabowo Subianto, to address the issue at their presidential debate on Feb. 17.
- Neither camp, however, has made any meaningful policy gestures on environmental issues, with a Widodo campaign spokesman even disputing the science on coal’s central role in climate change as merely “an opinion.”
- Instead, the incumbent, who enjoys a solid lead on his challenger, looks set to deepen Indonesia’s reliance on coal as the primary energy source.

2018 was the fourth hottest year on record
- According to independent analyses of the latest global temperature data by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 2018 was the fourth hottest year on record for planet Earth.
- The average global temperature in 2018 was 1.42 degrees Fahrenheit or 0.79 degrees Celsius above the 20th-century average, NOAA scientists determined. The average sea surface temperature was 1.19 degrees Fahrenheit (0.66 degrees Celsius) above average, while the land surface temperature was 2.02 degrees Fahrenheit (1.12 degrees Celsius) above average — both the fourth highest marks on record.
- The strongest warming trends have been observed in the Arctic region and its continued loss of sea ice. At the same time, declines in the ice sheets of Greenland and the Antarctic are contributing to sea level rise, while increasing temperatures are leading to longer fire seasons and more severe extreme weather events.

Warmer waters shrink krill habitat around Antarctica
- A new study has found that fewer young krill are surviving to adulthood around Antarctica as ocean temperatures have risen in the Southern Ocean in the past few decades.
- The researchers, who looked at decades of data on krill body lengths and abundance, found that the highest densities of krill had shifted southward by some 440 kilometers (273 miles) since the 1920s.
- The scientists note that the findings could alter food webs in the Southern Ocean.
- Currently, the internationally managed krill fishery does not take the location and size of the krill population into account.

The case for forests’ prominent role in holding off climate change
- The authors of a new report argue that investment in forests as a climate change mitigation strategy is just as important as addressing emissions from the energy sector.
- Despite the recognized potential contributions of forests to slowing the warming of the earth, they aren’t typically seen as a permanent solution to climate change.
- The authors of the report contend that provisions in the Paris rulebook, approved at the UN climate conference in Poland, are designed to hold countries responsible for changes to their forests so that such ‘reversals’ won’t go unaccounted for.

Antarctica now shedding ice six times faster than in 1979
- Antarctica’s ice is melting about six times faster than it was in the late 1970s.
- Between 1979 and 2017, melting ice caused the global sea level to rise by around 14 millimeters (0.55 inches).
- The pace at which ice is melting is also increasing: Through 1990, the continent lost 40 billion metric tons (44 billion tons) per year; between 2009 and 2017, that figure jumped to 252 billion metric tons (278 tons) annually.

COP24: Summit a step forward, but fails to address climate urgency
- COP24 ran into overtime over the weekend as delegates rushed to approve the Paris rulebook to set up a detailed mechanism for accomplishing and gauging the carbon reduction pledges made by the world’s nations in Paris at the end of 2015.
- But considering the urgency of action needed – with just 12 years left to act decisively to significantly cut emissions, according to an October IPCC science report – the COP24 summit proved to be less successful than many participants had hoped.
- On the negative side: the U.S., Russia and Saudi Arabia tried to undermine the gravity of the IPCC science report. Brazil successfully scuttled plans for an international carbon market. And COP24 failed to address the bioenergy carbon counting loophole, which incentivizes the harvesting and burning of trees to make energy by calling the process carbon neutral.
- On the positive side, “1,000 tiny steps” were made, including an improved transparency framework for reporting emissions; regular assessments called Global Stocktake to gauge emissions-reduction effectiveness at national levels starting in 2023; and an agreement to set new finance goals in 2020 to help vulnerable nations adapt to a warming world.

COP24: Will they stay or will they go? Brazil’s threat to leave Paris
- In October, Brazil elected far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency. During the campaign, he threatened to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, implement extreme environmental deregulation policies, and introduce mining into Amazon indigenous reserves, while also using incendiary language which may be inciting violence in remote rural areas.
- Just days before his election, Bolsonaro contradicted his past utterances, saying he won’t withdraw from the Paris accord. At COP24, the Brazilian delegation has fielded questions from concerned attendees, but it appears that no one there knows with certainty what the volatile leader will do once in office. He begins his presidency on the first of the year.
- Even if Bolsonaro doesn’t pull out of Paris, his plans to develop the Amazon, removing most regulatory impediments to mining and agribusiness, could have huge ramifications for the global climate. The Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, stores massive amounts of carbon. Deforestation rates are already going up there, and likely to grow under Bolsonaro.
- Some in Brazil hope that environmental and economic realities will prevent Bolsonaro from fully implementing his plans. Escalating deforestation is already reducing Amazon rainfall, putting aquifers and agribusiness at risk. Agricultural producers also fear global consumer perceptions of Brazil as being anti-environmental could lead to a backlash and boycotts.

COP24: Nations complicit in ignoring bioenergy climate bomb, experts say
- Twenty years ago science told policymakers that bioenergy – the burning of woody biomass – was a sustainable form of energy that was carbon neutral. The current United Nations carbon accounting system follows that guidance. However, new science has found the hypothesis to be wrong: bioenergy has been found to add significantly to carbon emissions.
- However, national delegations at the UN climate summit in Poland, COP24, as they wordsmith the Paris Rulebook, are stonewalling on the matter, doing nothing to close the bioenergy carbon accounting loophole. But nature can’t be fooled, which means that the undercounting of emissions could push the world past a climate catastrophe tipping point.
- Still, with the problem unaddressed, developed nations in the European Union and elsewhere continue burning woody biomass as energy, with the U.S., Canada and other nations happy to profit from the accounting error. Tropical nations like Brazil and Peru are eager to jump on the bioenergy bandwagon, a potential disaster for rainforests and biodiversity.
- Meanwhile, NGOs and scientists at COP24 have sought earnestly to alert the media and COP delegations to the bioenergy climate bomb and its looming risks, even going so far as to write language closing the loophole that could be inserted into the Paris Rulebook now being negotiated, but to no avail.

Extreme floods on the rise in the Amazon: study
- Scientists and the media have documented deepening drought in the Amazon basin. But a new study finds that flood events are significantly intensifying too, becoming five times more common over the last century.
- The effect is caused by a combination of factors, including an increase in strength of the Walker circulation – an ocean-driven pattern of air circulation that carries warm moist air from the tropical Atlantic across South America towards the Pacific, resulting in Amazon precipitation.
- Human-driven climate change is a major contributing factor to this increased Amazon basin flooding. Intensifying flood events result in lives and property lost, and significant harm to croplands, pastures and livestock.
- A better understanding of flood and drought dynamics, and better predictability due partly to this study, could help reduce this damage. How escalating changes in precipitation occurrence and intensity might be altering Amazon flora and fauna is uncertain, though new research shows that tree species composition is altering.

New picture of coral reef health opens avenues for saving them
- New research has identified five potential phases, or “regimes,” of coral reef health, helping scientists and ecosystem managers better assess the condition of reefs.
- The study also revealed that certain transitions from one phase to another were more likely to result from human-induced changes to the ocean.
- The authors of the study say the research could help identify new opportunities to save and improve the health of reefs.

As climate change takes its toll, world leaders call for adaptation
- A new global initiative led by former U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon aims to help the world adapt to the fallout from a changing climate.
- The Global Commission on Adaptation differs from current climate initiatives, which focus largely on mitigation, i.e. efforts to slow the emissions of greenhouse gases.
- The launch of the commission comes in the shadow of a new U.N. report warning of dire consequences from climate change affecting hundreds of millions of people around the world unless the global temperature rise is kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
- But even if this is achieved, Ban says, irreversible changes have been made that are already manifesting as unseasonal heat waves, more destructive storms, and other extreme weather events — which will require adaptation rather than mitigation by countries worldwide.

Land rights, forests, food systems central to limiting global warming: report
- In the wake of the dire, just released UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, a climate advocacy group known as CLARA (Climate, Land, Ambition and Rights Alliance) has published a separate report proposing that the world’s nations put far more effort into land sector measures to store carbon and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
- They suggest that these nature-oriented, land-based approaches could be far more effective, and more rapidly implemented, than relying on costly or largely untested high tech solutions such as bioenergy, carbon capture-and-storage, and geoengineering.
- Among the approaches CLARA proposes are the establishment of far stronger land rights for indigenous peoples (who are among the world’s best forest stewards), as well as a serious reduction in deforestation and the restoration of forest ecosystems worldwide.
- The CLARA report also calls for the transformation of agriculture (less tilling, less fertilizers, more support for small farms), and a global revolution in dietary habits, including a reduction in meat consumption and less food waste.

Fire fundamentally alters carbon dynamics in the Amazon
- With higher temperatures and increasingly severe droughts resulting from climate change, fires are becoming a more frequent phenomenon in the Amazon.
- New research finds that fires fundamentally change the structure of the forest, leading it to stockpile less carbon even decades after a burn.
- The research also shows that the burning of dead organic matter in the understory can release far more carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought.

Study finds widespread degradation, deforestation in African woodlands
- New research has found that deforestation rates between 2007 and 2010 in the woodlands of southern Africa were five times greater than previously thought.
- Similarly, carbon losses from the region during that time period were three to six times higher.
- The study used radar data, as opposed to visual satellite imagery, to measure the biomass found in southern Africa’s woodlands.
- Around 17 percent of the region’s area was degraded during the time period, the researchers found.

Brazil hits emissions target early, but rising deforestation risks reversal
- The decline in deforestation between 2016 and 2017 saved emissions of the equivalent of 610 million metric tons (672 million tons) of carbon dioxide from the Brazilian Amazon and 170 million metric tons (187 million tons) from the Cerrado, Brazil’s wooded savanna, according to the Brazilian government.
- The emissions reductions, announced Aug. 9, eclipsed the targets that the Brazilian government set for 2020.
- However, amid rising deforestation over the past few years, particularly in the Amazon, experts have expressed concern that the reductions in emissions might not hold.

The Arctic’s oldest, thickest ice is breaking up
- Strong southerly winds pushed sea ice away from Greenland’s north coast twice this year — a possible first.
- We’re unlikely to see a new record sea ice extent minimum in the Arctic Ocean come September 2018. Sea ice extent in the Arctic is currently clocking in at 5.396 million square kilometers (about 2.1 million square miles). That’s the good news.
- But the melt-out above Greenland has alarming implications for the future. If even the thickest, oldest ice is now susceptible to increased warming and changes in weather, what hope is there for the rest of the Arctic?

Soggier forest soils thwart the uptake of climate-warming methane
- A recent investigation has revealed that the ability of forest soils to absorb methane has declined over time, likely due to an increase in precipitation as a result of climate change.
- The authors of a new study found that methane uptake declined by as much as 89 percent, and a review of the scientific literature demonstrated that the phenomenon was taking place around the world.
- These findings suggest that current carbon budgets may be overestimating the amount of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas, that forest soils can siphon from the atmosphere, the scientists write.

Ocean acidity stifles coral-anchored communities
- Researchers working in the seas around Japan found that higher levels of carbon dioxide, like those found around volcanic vents in the ocean floor, diminish the diversity of corals and other lifeforms.
- The study took place at the convergence of marine temperate and subtropical climates.
- Their findings indicate that rising acidity could inhibit coral growth and reduce the number of species living in these ecosystems.

Tracking the shift of tropical forests from carbon sink to source
- Improved maps of carbon stocks, along with a better understanding of how tropical forests respond to climate change, are necessary to meet the challenge of keeping the global temperature below a 2-degree-Celsius (3.6-degree-Fahrenheit) rise, according to scientist Edward Mitchard of the University of Edinburgh.
- Currently, tropical forests take up roughly the same amount of carbon as is released when they’re cleared or degraded.
- But climatic changes, which lead to more droughts and fires resulting in the loss of tropical trees, could shift the balance, making tropical forests a net source of atmospheric carbon.

A warmer climate tinkers with Arctic spider’s choice of prey
- A team of researchers found that higher temperatures led Arctic wolf spiders to eat fewer insect-like springtails in study plots.
- Springtails eat fungus, an essential decomposer in the Arctic ecosystem, so with more springtails around in the warmer study plots, there was less decomposition.
- The scientists suggest that this change in prey preference could modulate the effects of a warming climate on the carbon that’s released from the thawing tundra.

First fern genomes sequenced — and they hold a lot of promise
- Despite being one of the most diverse groups of plants on the planet, ferns were until recently the only major plant group to not have their genomes sequenced.
- Now, for the first time ever, biologists have sequenced the genomes of two tiny ferns, Azolla filiculoides and Salvinia cucullata, and their findings have some major implications for agriculture.
- The fern experts now hope to sequence other fern genomes and unravel more fern secrets.

Nearly four decades of cycling race video reveals climate change’s effects
- A team of ecologists has used video from key locations along the route of the annual Tour of Flanders cycling race to understand how plants are responding to regional rises in temperature.
- After watching more than 200 hours of footage from 36 years of the race, the team found that trees began producing flowers and sprouting leaves earlier in the season.
- By 2016, trees were 67 percent more likely to have produced leaves by the time of the race than in the 1980s. By comparison, few if any trees had leaves before 1990.
- The researchers believe that analyses of video from other cycling races and similar annual events could yield new insights into the ecological changes that temperature changes instigate.

Rwandan people and mountain gorillas face changing climate together
- The Critically Endangered mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei), has been brought back from extinction’s brink in Rwanda, with numbers in the Virunga Mountains around Volcanoes National Park estimated at 604 individuals in 2016, up from 480 in 2010. But long-time observers say climate change is bringing new survival challenges to the area.
- Longer and deeper droughts in recent years have caused serious water shortages, which impact both local farmers and the mountain gorillas. People now must often go deep into the park to find clean water, which increases the likelihood of contact with the great apes, which increases the likelihood for the transfer of human diseases to the animals.
- Hotter temps and dryer conditions could also pressure farmers to move into gorilla habitat in future, as they seek more productive cropland at higher altitudes. Also, as the climate changes, bamboo availability may be decreasing, depriving gorillas of a favorite food. This could force troops to forage outside the park in croplands, possibly leading to conflict.
- Forced changes in diet could impact gorilla nutrition, making the great apes more susceptible to disease. A major disease outbreak could be disastrous due to low population numbers. Scientists urge more research to understand how climate change affects human behavior, which then affects gorillas, and how the fate of the two primates intertwines.

2018 Arctic sea ice melt season just got a big headstart
- This Spring, Arctic sea ice extent nearly achieved a new record low for May, but instead came in at second place at 12.2 million square kilometers (4.7 million square miles). That’s 310,000 square kilometers (120,000 square miles) greater than the all time May record set in 2016.
- While scientists and the media have focused in the past mostly on the September sea ice extent minimum, four years in a row of record winter Arctic heatwaves, along with a better understanding of ice melt mechanisms, has resulted in researchers putting much more attention on Spring events as the annual melt season gets underway.
- It is now understood that shrinking Arctic sea ice extent is having a significant influence on the global climate system, but extent isn’t all researchers are watching. They are becoming more and more concerned about the quality of the sea ice at the start of each melt season – thickness, as well as the disappearance of large amounts of multiyear ice.
- Thinner, more fractured ice, and more numerous Spring melt ponds make the Arctic ice more vulnerable to summer heatwaves and a warmer Arctic Ocean. As with May, June 2018 has so far seen rapid ice melt, with extent lagging only slightly behind the record set in June 2016. That doesn’t bode well for the September sea ice extent minimum.

Climate change could be killing Africa’s giant baobabs
- More than half of the oldest and largest trees in a recent study died — or had significant parts of their structures die — between 2005 and 2017.
- Nearly all of these trees were at least 1,000 years old, and one was nearly 2,500 years old.
- The researchers believe that higher temperatures and more than a decade of drought in southern Africa, likely due to climate change, may have killed these baobabs.

Higher incomes, not higher carbon dioxide levels, drive forest gains, study finds
- New research indicates that higher levels of economic development, rather than carbon dioxide, are responsible for some countries’ gains in forest cover.
- The findings contradict several climate change models that point to the role that higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere can play as a “fertilizer” for plants.
- Policy decisions should account for the role that development plays in the health of forests, the authors say.

Climate change could be intensifying dust storms in India, experts say
- In the past couple of weeks, severe dust storms, thunderstorms and lightning have hit several parts of India, resulting in the deaths of more than 150 people and injuries to at least 300 others.
- With the rise in global temperatures, the intensity of dust and thunderstorms is expected to increase in the future, experts say.
- But even though dust storms and thunderstorms are a common feature in India, there has been no focused work on studying the trends related to it.

Humpback whales near Antarctica making a comeback, study finds
- Humpback whales living around the Western Antarctic Peninsula seem to be recovering rapidly, indicated by females showing high pregnancy rates, a new study has found.
- Researchers also found a high proportion of females that are both lactating and pregnant, which is a sign that the humpback whale population there is growing.
- So far, changing climate in the Western Antarctic Peninsula has been beneficial for the humpbacks because of more ice-free days and more access to food. But long-term trends of climate change may be more problematic, the researchers write.

Warmer winters increasing risk of avalanches in the Himalayas, studies find
- Winters are getting warmer in northwest Himalayas, which is increasing the risk of avalanches, two new studies have found.
- Winter temperatures in the northwestern Himalayas have risen by 0.65 degrees Celsius on average over a period of 25 years, a team of Indian researchers found, which is higher than the global average rise of 0.44 degrees Celsius.
- During this 25-year study period, total winter precipitation also increased, but it was marked by an increase in rainfall and a decrease in snowfall, the study found.
- Rising temperatures have led to an increase in the frequency of avalanches in the Himalayas since 1970, a team of Swiss researchers found.

Australia to invest $379 million to protect the Great Barrier Reef
- Australia is set to invest more than 500 million Australian dollars ($379 million) in funding to protect the Great Barrier Reef.
- The investment will help restore water quality, tackle crown-of-thorns starfish attacks on coral, and fund research on coral resilience and adaptation.
- Some critics are, however, concerned that the funding aims to target strategies that have already being tried in the past, and have seen limited success.

UN forest accounting loophole allows CO2 underreporting by EU, UK, US
- Emissions accounting helps determine whether or not nations are on target to achieve their voluntary Paris Agreement reduction goals. Ideally, the global community’s CO2 pledges, adjusted downward over time, would, taken together, help keep the world from heating up by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 from a 1900 baseline.
- But scientists are raising the alarm that this goal may already be beyond reach. One reason: a carbon accounting loophole within UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines accepting the burning of wood pellets (biomass) as a carbon neutral replacement for coal — with wood now used in many European Union and United Kingdom power plants.
- Scientists warn, however, that their research shows that replacing coal with wood pellets in power plants is not carbon neutral. That’s partly because burning wood, which is celebrated by governments as a renewable and sustainable energy resource, is less efficient than coal burning, so it actually produces more CO2 emissions than coal.
- Also, while wood burning and tree replanting over hundreds of years will end up carbon neutral, that doesn’t help right now. Over a short timeframe, at a historical moment when we require aggressive greenhouse gas reductions, wood burning is adding to global emissions. Analysts say that this loophole needs to be closed, and soon, to avoid further climate chaos.

Beyond polar bears: Arctic animals share in vulnerable climate future
- The media has long focused on the impacts of climate change on polar bears. But with Arctic temperatures rising fast (this winter saw the warmest October to February temperatures ever recorded), a wide range of Arctic fauna appears to be at risk, though more studies are needed to determine precise causes, current effects on population, and future projections.
- Diminishing Arctic snow, especially in the spring, may leave wolverines without ideal places to den. Caribou and reindeer populations have been in serious decline due to natural population fluctuation, but scientists don’t know if their numbers will recover under changed climate conditions.
- Lemmings are also being impacted by diminishing snow, often leaving the rodents without cover in spring and autumn. Their decline could impact the predators that prey on them, including Arctic foxes, red foxes, weasels, wolverines, and snowy and short-eared owls.
- Snowy owls have raised concerns because the seabirds they hunt in winter, which congregate around small holes in the Arctic ice, could become more widely dispersed in broader stretches of open water and therefore be harder to prey on. Scientists say more study of Arctic wildlife is urgently needed, but funding and media attention remains sparse.

Amazon forest to savannah tipping point could be far closer than thought (commentary)
- In the 1970s, scientists recognized that the Amazon makes half of its own rainfall via evaporation and transpiration from vegetation. Researchers also recognized that escalating deforestation would reduce this rainfall producing effect.
- A 2007 study estimated that with 40 percent Amazon deforestation a tipping point could be reached, with large swathes of Amazonia switching from forest to savannah. Two newly considered factors in a 2016 study – climate change and fires – have now reduced that estimated tipping point to 20-25 percent. Current deforestation is at 17 percent, with an unknown amount of degraded forest adding less moisture.
- There is good reason to think that this Amazon forest to savannah tipping point is close at hand. Historically unprecedented droughts in 2005, 2010 and 2015 would seem to be the first flickers of such change.
- Noted Amazon scientists Tom Lovejoy and Carlos Nobre argue that it is critical to build in a margin of safety by keeping Amazon deforestation below 20 percent. To avoid this tipping point, Brazil needs to strongly control deforestation, and combine that effort with reforestation. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Tree-dwelling animals can ‘climb’ away from climate change, study finds
- A new study has found that the temperature within a tropical forest varies considerably, with tree canopies experiencing wider extremes of heating and cooling compared to the ground or soil.
- The range of canopy temperatures in tropical forests at the bottom of mountains overlaps considerably with those at the top of the mountains, which suggests that canopy animals likely have the physiology that might allow them to move across a mountain gradient freely unhindered by the climate.
- This implies that tree-dwelling tropical animals might be more resilient to climate change, according to the study.

Maps tease apart complex relationship between agriculture and deforestation in DRC
- A team from the University of Maryland’s GLAD laboratory has analyzed satellite images of the Democratic Republic of Congo to identify different elements of the “rural complex” — where many of the DRC’s subsistence farmers live.
- Their new maps and visualizations allow scientists and land-use planners to pinpoint areas where the cycle of shifting cultivation is contained, and where it is causing new deforestation.
- The team and many experts believe that enhanced understanding of the rural complex could help establish baselines that further inform multi-pronged approaches to forest conservation and development, such as REDD+.

Trump threatens NASA climate satellite missions as Congress stalls
- Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget would cut four NASA Earth Observation projects including three climate satellite missions: the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission; Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) pathfinder; and Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3).
- These missions are critical to ongoing climate change research, as well as to weather and air pollution forecasting. Without them, international scientists lose their “eyes in the sky” with potentially disastrous consequences for people not only in the United States, but the world round.
- The U.S. Congress has the final say on whether these satellite programs go forward or not. Their vote on the 2018 budget was delayed from September to December 2017, and now to 19 January, 2018. Whether the vote will occur then, or what the outcome might be, remains in question.
- As a result of Trump’s threatened cuts the international scientific community has been left in great uncertainty. It is currently scrambling to find a way to replace NASA’s planned Earth Observation missions and continue vital climate change, weather and pollution monitoring.

IUCN, UN, global NGOs, likely to see major budget cuts under Trump
- President Donald Trump has proposed cutting foreign aid funding to nations and inter-governmental organizations by 32 percent, about $19 billion – cuts the U.S. Congress has yet to vote on. Voting has been delayed since September, and is next scheduled for 19 January, though another delay may occur.
- One inter-governmental organization on Trump’s cutting block is the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) best known for its global Red List, the go-to resource for the status of endangered species planet-wide. Over the past four years the U.S. contributed between 5 and 9 percent of the IUCN’s total framework funding, and 4 to 7 percent of its programmatic funding.
- Currently it remains unclear just how much, or even if, the IUCN budget will be slashed by Congress, leaving the organization in limbo. Another organization potentially looking at major cuts under Trump is TRAFFIC, the international wildlife trade monitoring network.
- Also under Trump’s axe are the UN Population Fund ($79 million), the Green Climate Fund ($2 billion, which no nation has stepped up to replace), and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ($1.96 million annually, funding already replaced by other nations for 2018).

Reef bleaching five times more frequent now than in the 1980s, study finds
- Severe coral bleaching is now happening about every six years, whereas in the 1980s, it took place every 25 to 30 years.
- Severe bleaching can kill the reef’s constituent corals.
- It takes at least a decade for a reef to recover from bleaching.
- Unless humans act to halt the rise of global temperatures, scientists predict that we’re headed for a time when bleaching might be an annual occurrence.

So long, UNESCO! What does U.S. withdrawal mean for the environment?
- Since 2011, the U.S. has refused to pay its agreed to share to UNESCO as a Member Nation who has participated in and benefited from the organization’s scientific, environmental and sustainability programs. Now, President Trump has announced U.S. withdrawal from UNESCO, effective at the end of 2018.
- Experts say the pullout won’t in fact do any major damage to the organization, with most of the harm done to UNESCO when the U.S. went into arrears starting in 2011, with unpaid dues now totaling roughly $550 million. However, America’s failure to participate could hurt millions of Americans.
- UNESCO science initiatives are international and deal multilaterally with a variety of environmental issues ranging from basic earth science, climate change, freshwater, oceans, mining, and international interrelationships between indigenous, rural and urban communities.
- Among the most famous of UNESCO science programs are the Man and the Biosphere Programme and the World Network of Biosphere Reserves, now including 669 sites in 120 countries, including the United States.

Consensus grows: climate-smart agriculture key to Paris Agreement goals
- Attendees at the annual Global Landscape Forum conference in Bonn, Germany, this week sought approaches for implementing “climate-smart” agricultural practices to help keep global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.
- Some 40 percent of the earth’s surface is used for food production, with 400 million small farmers worldwide, plus industrial agribusiness, so policymakers understand that climate-smart agriculture, practiced broadly, could play a significant role in reducing carbon emissions and helping nations meet their Paris carbon-reduction pledges.
- Numerous agricultural management practices to reduce carbon emissions, enhance food security, productivity and profitability, are available now. They include wider use of cover crops, low and no till techniques, increased application of organic fertilizers such as manure, judicious use of chemical fertilizers, and the growing of crops bred for climate resiliency.
- These techniques are already being embraced to a degree in the U.S. and globally. Land of Lakes and Kellogg’s, for example, are insisting on sustainable farm practices from their suppliers, while John Deere is building low-till equipment that allows for “precision farming,” optimizing returns on inputs while preserving soils and soil carbon.

Amazon dam impacts underestimated due to overlooked vine growth: study
- New research on the rapid growth of lianas – native woody vines – on the artificial reservoir islands of the Balbina dam in the Amazon finds that forest communities there underwent a transformation as a result of severe habitat fragmentation, resulting in the altering of the carbon sequestration and emission balance.
- Some tree species are severely impacted by this extreme form of habitat fragmentation and die, while native lianas — woody vines that climb to reach the forest canopy — thrive and rapidly fill the biological niche left by failing trees.
- Trees, with their greater biomass, store more carbon in trunks and branches than lianas, so the carbon balance shifts as lianas dominate. Rather than sequestering carbon, these dam-created islands end up emitting carbon as the trees die.
- The rapid growth of lianas further contributes to the degradation of remnant tree communities challenged by fragmentation. Amazon dam environmental impact assessments don’t currently evaluate increased reservoir island carbon emissions.

Climate scientists see silver lining in Bali volcano’s ash cloud
- Scientists are monitoring the emission of sulfur dioxide from the ongoing eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Agung to better understand the climate-cooling effects of the particulate’s dispersal in the stratosphere.
- They hope that by artificially recreating the phenomenon, they can block the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface, and thereby “geoengineer” a cooler climate.
- However, progress in geoengineering is tempered by worries that the prospect of an easy solution could leave policymakers even more reluctant to make meaningful efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

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