[MCN] Another climate variety pack or mini-anthology

Mon Nov 16 14:23:04 EST 2020

 <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/uok-mnf111620.php>
News Release 16-Nov-2020 <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/uok-mnf111620.php>
Media, NGO framing of climate change affects how people think about issue: studies <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/uok-mnf111620.php>
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
RESEARCH NEWS RELEASE <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/uok-mnf111620.php>
 <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/uok-mnf111620.php>
In a pair of studies, Hong Tien Vu of the University of Kansas found that the way media organizations and global climate change NGOs frame their messages on the topic does in fact influence how people look at the issue, which in turn affects what action, if any, is taken to fight the problem. <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/uok-mnf111620.php>
 <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/uok-mnf111620.php>
JOURNAL The Agenda Setting Journal <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/uok-mnf111620.php>

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/uok-mnf111620.php <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/uok-mnf111620.php>

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News Release 16-Nov-2020 <https://www/>
Antarctica <https://www/> : Recent climate extremes have driven unprecedented changes in the deep ocean <https://www/>
CSIRO AUSTRALIA
RESEARCH NEWS RELEASE <https://www/>
New measurements reveal a surprising increase in the amount of dense water sinking near Antarctica, following 50 years of decline. <https://www/>
JOURNALNature Geoscience <https://www/>

Excerpt from release - "We found that an unusual combination of two climate phenomena drove the renewal of bottom water formation: an extreme El Niño event occurring at the same time as stronger and southward-shifted westerly winds," said Dr Silvano. "These results show how remote forcing can influence Antarctic processes and climate.”

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/ca-rce111620.php <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/ca->

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 <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/cuot-gb111320.php>
News Release 16-Nov-2020 <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/cuot-gb111320.php>
'The global built environment sector must think in new, radical ways, and act quickly' <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/cuot-gb111320.php>
CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
RESEARCH NEWS RELEASE <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/cuot-gb111320.php>
 <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/cuot-gb111320.php>
The construction sector, the real estate industry and city planners must give high priority to the same goal - to drastically reduce their climate impacts. Powerful, combined efforts are absolutely crucial for the potential to achieve the UN's sustainability goals. And what's more - everything has to happen very quickly. These are the cornerstones to the roadmap presented at the Beyond 2020 World Conference. <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/cuot-gb111320.php>
MEETING -- Beyond 2020 <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/cuot-gb111320.php>
 <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/cuot-gb111320.php>
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Nature Climate Change Published: 16 November 2020 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-00938-y#article-info>
Heat tolerance in ectotherms scales predictably with body size

Ignacio Peralta-Maraver & Enrico L. Rezende 

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that animals are decreasing in size as a general response to global warming, for reasons that remain unclear. Here, by analysing ectotherm death time curves that take into consideration the intensity and duration of a thermal challenge, we show that heat tolerance varies predictably with size. Smaller animals can maintain higher body temperatures than larger ones during short periods, but cannot maintain higher body temperatures over long periods as their endurance declines more rapidly with time. Body size effects and adaptive variation in heat tolerance may have been obscured in the past by these unaccounted for temporal effects. With increasing size, thermal death occurs at relatively lower metabolic rates with respect to rest at a non-stressful temperature, which might partly explain the reported reductions in organism size with climate warming and shed light on the mechanisms that underlie scaling.

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 <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/cuot-gb111320.php>
Seawatch: UAF study finds sizes of four salmon species shrinking <https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.homernews.com/news/seawatch-uaf-study-finds-sizes-of-four-salmon-species-shrinking/&ct=ga&cd=CAEYAioTMTQ0NjgwNzQ5MTk3ODQ2MTMxNjIaNTVhMjBiMWU5MmY1MDdlZDpjb206ZW46VVM&usg=AFQjCNEpBehd1RWLomu1T3UDvtuoxIVKDA>
Homer News
With this huge database, the team was able to see patterns of body size ... The two major factors behind this change in sizes is climate change and …

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Concluding 4 paragraphs : I see this latest declaration of the  Green New Deal as every bit as prosocial as it is pro-environment and, for that matter, economically friendly. It’s advocates aren’t afraid to confront the long-running trend of antisocial economic inequality that Business Week had spelled out for all to see in 1994: “The gap between high- and low-income families has widened steadily since about 1980, hitting a new high every year since 1985.”

This trend has long held risks of its own, and, like the dire risk from the changes we’ve been forcing on the climate, the dangers of concentrated wealth have been hiding in plain sight. Around the same time that Business Week summarized the situation, two of the Wall Street Journal’s senior writers, Alan Murray and Albert Hunt, warned that if the trend continued it would set off a reaction that would make the long and bloody French Revolution of the 1790s seem like a picnic outing.

That’s not a rosy picture for anyone to ponder, but it hasn’t gone away. Indeed, The Washington Post reported on February 7 2019 that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell warned that income inequality is the nation’s biggest economic challenge in the coming decade. As quoted by the Post, Powell said income growth for middle- and working-class Americans “has really decreased,” while “growth at the top has been very strong.”

He said we need to do something about it; “We have some work to do to make sure that the prosperity we do achieve is widely spread.” The Fed chairman didn’t endorse or even mention the Green New Deal, but he seems to have its back on at least that one important issue.

<<https://mountainjournal.org/why-rising-temps-mean-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it <https://mountainjournal.org/why-rising-temps-mean-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it>>>

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Plants and animals aren't so different when it comes to climate
A new study reveals that plants and animals are remarkably similar in their responses to changing environmental conditions.

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA  NEWS RELEASE 24-MAR-2020

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200324202037.htm

Despite fundamental differences in their biology, plants and animals are surprisingly similar in how they have evolved in response to climate around the world, according to a new study published this week in Nature Ecology and Evolution <<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1158-x <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1158-x>>>.

Plants and animals are fundamentally different in many ways, but one of the most obvious is in how they deal with temperature.

"When it gets sunny and hot where they are at a given moment, most animals can simply move to find some shade and cool down," said lead study author John J. Wiens, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. "Plants on the other hand, have to stay where they are and tolerate these higher temperatures."

Together with Hui Liu and Quing Ye from the South China Botanical Garden, Wiens analyzed climatic data from 952 plant species and 1,135 vertebrate species. They included many major groups of flowering plants, from oaks to orchids to grasses, and all major groups of terrestrial vertebrates including frogs, salamanders, lizards, snakes, turtles, crocodilians, birds and mammals.

The team used climatic data and detailed evolutionary trees to test 10 hypotheses about the temperature and precipitation conditions where each species occurs and how these change over time among species. This set of conditions is also known as the "climatic niche" of each species.

The climatic niche of a species reflects where it can live, Wiens explained - for example, in the tropics versus the temperate zone, or at sea level versus the top of a mountain - and how it will respond to climate change.

A species with a wide climatic niche can range widely across many different conditions and may be especially resilient to climate change. A species with a narrow niche, on the other hand, may have a small distribution and may be especially vulnerable to climate change. Understanding climatic niches is critically important for answering many of the most fundamental and urgent questions in ecology and evolution.

For all 10 hypotheses the authors tested, they found that plants and animals showed similar patterns of niche evolution. For example, on average, each plant and animal species lives across a similar breadth of environmental conditions. The breadth of conditions that each species lives in also changes in the same way across the globe in both groups, with plant and animal species in tropical regions found in only a narrow range of temperatures and those in temperate zones tolerating a broad range of temperatures. Furthermore, climatic niches of plants and animals change at similar rates over time.

These results can help explain many fundamental patterns in nature. For example, different sets of plant and animal species tend to occur at different elevations, which differ in temperature and precipitation. In the southwestern United States, for example, different elevations are home to different sets of plant and animal species, from low-lying deserts to grasslands to oak woodlands to pine forests to spruce-fir forests at the higher elevations.

"Since each plant and animal species tolerates a similar, limited breadth of climatic conditions - on average - you end up with different sets of both plant and animal species at different elevations along a mountain slope," Wiens explained.

These findings may also help explain why different sets of species occur in temperate regions and tropical regions in both groups, and why plants and animals tend to have biodiversity hotspots and high species numbers in the same places - for example, the Andes mountains of South America.

The study also suggests how future climate change may impact plant and animal species.

"The finding that plants and animals have similar niche breadths and rates may help explain why local extinctions from climate change have occurred at similar frequencies in plants and animals so far, and why similar levels of species extinction are predicted for both groups in the future," said Wiens. "Species with broader niches and faster rates may be better able to survive climate change over the next 50 years, and niche breadths and rates are very similar between plants and animals overall."

Furthermore, the finding that species are adapted to a narrower range of temperatures in the tropics helps explain why a higher frequency of extinctions is predicted there than in the temperate zone, even though warming may be similar or even greater at higher latitudes.

The authors also found that in both plants and animals, species seem to have more difficulty adapting rapidly to hotter temperatures and drier conditions than to cooler and wetter conditions. Therefore, both plants and animals may have a particularly difficult time adapting to increasing temperatures and droughts related to global warming.

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I Am Greta' director explains the 'extreme hatred' the young climate activist has received online <https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEC4hNHQVgmNshczAM5A7Xo8qGQgEKhAIACoHCAow4bOVCzDCl6sDMN-jxgY?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen>
Nathan Grossman, director of the new documentary, "I Am Greta," started filming Thunberg in 2018 — well before she became the global face of the ...
Yahoo Entertainment <https://news.google.com/publications/CAAqBwgKMOGzlQswwperAw?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen>
8 hours ago

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“Decarbonization of the world’s economy would bring colossal disruption of the status quo. It’s a desire to avoid that change — political, financial and otherwise — that drives many of the climate sceptics. 

Still, as this journal has noted numerous times,it’s clear that many policymakers who argue that emissions must be curbed, and fast, don’t seem to appreciate the scale of what’s required.”

EDITORIAL
NATURE  21 FEBRUARY 2018

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“...many scientists say deep emissions cuts are necessary … to prevent … dangerous consequences of global warming. 

"Getting from here to there would require a massive economic shift.”

Rachel Pannett and Jeffrey Ball. “Australia Approves Energy Bill.”  
The Wall Street Journal  p.A7, August 21, 2009

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Global Change Biology November  2020 
https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15307 <https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15307>

Rapid deep ocean deoxygenation and acidification threaten life on Northeast Pacific seamounts

Tetjana Ross <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/doSearch?ContribAuthorStored=Ross%2C+Tetjana>  Cherisse Du Preez <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/doSearch?ContribAuthorStored=Du+Preez%2C+Cherisse>  Debby Ianson <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/doSearch?ContribAuthorStored=Ianson%2C+Debby>

Abstract
Anthropogenic climate change is causing our oceans to lose oxygen and become more acidic at an unprecedented rate, threatening marine ecosystems and their associated animals. In deep‐sea environments, where conditions have typically changed over geological timescales, the associated animals, adapted to these stable conditions, are expected to be highly vulnerable to any change or direct human impact. Our study coalesces one of the longest deep‐sea observational oceanographic time series, reaching back to the 1960s, with a modern visual survey that characterizes almost two vertical kilometers of benthic seamount ecosystems. Based on our new and rigorous analysis of the Line P oceanographic monitoring data, the upper 3,000 m of the Northeast Pacific (NEP) has lost 15% of its oxygen in the last 60 years. Over that time, the oxygen minimum zone (OMZ), ranging between approximately 480 and 1,700 m, has expanded at a rate of 3.0 ± 0.7 m/year (due to deepening at the bottom). Additionally, carbonate saturation horizons above the OMZ have been shoaling at a rate of 1–2 m/year since the 1980s. Based on our visual surveys of four NEP seamounts, these deep‐sea features support ecologically important taxa typified by long life spans, slow growth rates, and limited mobility, including habitat‐forming cold water corals and sponges, echinoderms, and fish. By examining the changing conditions within the narrow realized bathymetric niches for a subset of vulnerable populations, we resolve chemical trends that are rapid in comparison to the life span of the taxa and detrimental to their survival. If these trends continue as they have over the last three to six decades, they threaten to diminish regional seamount ecosystem diversity and cause local extinctions. This study highlights the importance of mitigating direct human impacts as species continue to suffer environmental changes beyond our immediate control.

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"We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that 
we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing."

"We are not able even to  think  adequately about the behavior that 
is at the annihilating edge."

R. D. Laing. Introduction, The Politics of Experience. 
1967, New York. Pantheon Books, a division of Random House

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“Consumer expectations of ever-higher living standards were fuelled by more lenient and readily available bank lending, …. Social status and identity became closely associated with consumption, in particular with the concept of luxury. 

"Identifying oneself with the good life meant being able to live beyond traditional understandings of basic needs. Debt was the price 
one paid for the joys of being part of a hedonistic consumer culture.”

Kenneth Dyson. The Morality of Debt. Foreign Affairs. May 3, 2015
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-05-03/morality-debt <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-05-03/morality-debt>

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“When the real estate and insurance industries more aggressively translate the risk of weather/climate volatility to each person's pocketbook, the hue and cry will be huge. We are at the threshold of that collective cry.”

<<https://www.greenbiz.com/article/why-real-estate-and-insurance-lobbies-will-have-huge-influence-climate-policy <https://www.greenbiz.com/article/why-real-estate-and-insurance-lobbies-will-have-huge-influence-climate-policy>>>

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