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It’s an Ecological Trap: Global warming can turn Monarch Butterflies’ favorite food into poison
“LSU researchers have discovered a new relationship between climate change, monarch butterflies and milkweed plants. It turns out that warming temperatures don’t just affect the monarch, Danaus plexippus, directly, but also affect this butterfly by potentially turning its favorite plant food into a poison.
Bret Elderd, associate professor in the LSU Department of Biological Sciences, and Mattnew Faldyn, a Ph.D. student in Elderd’s lab from Katy, Texas, published their findings today with coauthor Mark Hunter of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan. This study is published in Ecology, a leading journal in this field…”
Mental health issues cropping up as financial stress continues on farms
“Organic dairy farmer Kevin Stuedemann knows how it feels to be on the verge of calling it quits.
After several producers in his area went out of business, Stuedemann’s milk buyer ended its contract with him on 30 days’ notice because there were no longer enough organic dairies nearby to justify sending a truck. With 70 cows producing milk, no customers and zero income, Stuedemann searched frantically for a new buyer and took an off-farm job to make ends meet…”
Republicans embracing climate change
Young Republicans, reformed lobbyists, and green Tea Partiers: Meet America’s “eco-right.”
Tanner’s nonprofit, Conservation Hawks, is part of a coalition of grassroots organizations trying to pull conservatives into the conversation about rising temperatures.
And it’s starting to work. There’s a small but growing alliance of concerned conservatives who want to reclaim climate change as a nonpartisan issue. This motley crew of lobbyists, Evangelical Christians, and far-right radicals call themselves the “eco-right.”
Yale Climate Opinion Maps 2018
These maps show how Americans’ climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy support vary at the state, congressional district, metro area, and county levels. Please see the most recent version of these maps here.
A new study shows that more Utahns are discussing climate change
Researchers have produced a new interactive Climate Opinion Map that allows users to see people’s climate change opinions across the U.S.
“What’s great about it is it’s relevant to anybody in any community across the country,” said Peter Howe, assistant professor of human-environment geography at Utah State University. “You know we make these numbers available all the way down to the county level.”
The most important thing you can do to fight global warming: End the climate “spiral of silence.”
Americans rarely talk about climate change—and they rarely hear about it in the media—a major new survey finds. But that silence reinforces the dangerously wrong notion that climate change isn’t an existential threat requiring urgent action.
There is good news. Land trusts are starting to help their supporters, and their communities, realize that the lands and waters they love are at stake—and that land conservation, while part of the solution, won’t be enough. I think you’ll appreciate the science to this changing approach…
Making photography tell the stories: If we lose the ice, we lose the entire ecosystem’
You, like Paul, a former marine biologist, can inspire change and help people connect the dots in compelling ways as we face 30 years to slow down climate change in a way that will save the species we love, and the communities as we know them. Why? Because, as Paul notes…
A dozen artistic responses to one of the greatest threats of our time
Human-induced climate change, which certain politicians deny and many of us choose to ignore, threatens the survival of every species on Earth…
Planting a mix of tree species ‘could double’ forest carbon storage
The new study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, looks at one such question – “How could the number of tree species present in a forest affect its ability to store carbon?”
The results show that the most diverse forests are “faster” at storing carbon, says study co-author Professor Bernhard Schmid, a plant biologist from the University of Zurich.
“With increased species richness, more carbon is stored both above and below ground – in trunks, roots, deadwood, mould and soil. You can roughly say that a diverse forest stores twice the amount of carbon as the average monoculture.”
How to talk about climate change: 5 tips from the front lines
“Greenhouse gas emissions need to decrease fast if we are to have any chance of keeping global temperature rises below dangerous levels, and it is hard to see how this will happen without greater, and more urgent, engagement with society.
We need more people talking about climate change more often, because we need to break out of the current climate echo chamber.
However, many people feel under-equipped to do this. If that is you, these five tips may help you over this barrier. They are the result of both my own experience, and lessons from behavioural experts…”