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Climate change, habitat loss (and, yes, even cats) pose a greater threat to birds than windmills
Research quantifying the full scale of wind turbine activity’s impact upon birds both through their migratory patterns and killed by collision with wind turbines is a matter of current scientific studies. It is important to quantify these impacts, but it is also important to acknowledge that these impacts are certainly negligible compared to other drivers of bird mortality.
The number of birds killed by wind turbine collisions per year is estimated to be between 150,000 and 500,000, but when you put this number in perspective, it pales in comparison to other causes of bird mortality…
Solar panels help French winemaker keep climate change at bay
A roof of solar panels shades Pierre Escudie as he inspects the last plump grapes to be harvested at his vineyard in southwest France, after a year of hard frosts and blistering heat that damaged many of his neighbors’ crops.
The solar panels insulate the grapes during periods of extreme cold and shield them from the sun’s harsh rays during heat waves. The panels also rotate to allow more light to hit the vines on more overcast days…
Ancient grasslands guide ambitious goals in grassland restoration
Grasslands, which constitute almost 40% of the terrestrial biosphere, provide habitat for a great diversity of animals and plants and contribute to the livelihoods of more than 1 billion people worldwide. Whereas the destruction and degradation of grasslands can occur rapidly, recent work indicates that complete recovery of biodiversity and essential functions occurs slowly or not at all. Grassland restoration—interventions to speed or guide this recovery—has received less attention than restoration of forested ecosystems, often due to the prevailing assumption that grasslands are recently formed habitats that can reassemble quickly. Viewing grassland restoration as long-term assembly toward old-growth endpoints, with appreciation of feedbacks and threshold shifts, will be crucial for recognizing when and how restoration can guide recovery of this globally important ecosystem.
The Great Exhaustion: long-lasting pandemic effects
If you are feeling exhausted, and you are not quite sure why, you are not alone. At least once a week, I hear from patients and colleagues alike that “I am just so bone-tired, and I don’t know why.”
While I am not aware of the numbers and official statistics nationwide, I personally know many individuals who have at this point needed to take time off from work under the Family and Medical Leave Act due to COVID-19-related mental health difficulties.
Messaging guru offers list of words to use (and avoid) to build support for climate solutions
As a messaging expert, Luntz is now offering his advice on how activists should talk about the problem of climate change and solutions including clean energy, featuring his version of the ever-popular list of “words to use and lose”…
So you want to know how the Inflation Reduction Act can help you reduce your climate footprint
There are incentives for home efficiency, heat pumps, electric vehicles, home solar and battery storage, and more. But my favorite part of the bill (if I had to pick just one) is that, at its core, it incentivizes planning ahead…
Massachusetts Clean Energy Act eases path for agrivoltaic projects
The Act clarifies that an agrivoltaic project is to be treated as an agricultural use, meaning that the land can continue to be classified as agricultural land for property tax purposes and that the project is exempt from special permit requirements.
This change in law further illustrates the legislature’s intent to help farmers continue their farming operations by utilizing renewable energy, and particularly solar energy, as a means of maintaining their land in agricultural use.
Study shows worsening wildfire smoke is unraveling decades of air quality gains
Wildfire smoke now exposes millions of Americans each year to dangerous levels of fine particulate matter, lofting enough soot across parts of the West in recent years to erase much of the air quality gains made over the last two decades.
In late September, Stanford University researchers published this study that found residents of Western states were exposed to a 27-fold increase of harmful particulate matter pollution, known as PM2.5, between 2006 and 2020 as wildfires intensified.
The world’s forests do more than just store carbon, new research finds
Researchers from the U.S. and Colombia found that, overall, forests keep the planet at least half of a degree Celsius cooler when biophysical effects — from chemical compounds to turbulence and the reflection of light — are combined with carbon dioxide…
Keeping cattle on the move and carbon in the soil
The Obrechts stand at the forefront of an emerging collaboration between ranchers, conservation groups, and governmental agencies that aims to protect, restore, and revitalize the United States and Canada’s prairies — or what’s left of them…
Researchers estimate that grasslands could contain as much as 30 percent of the carbon stored in the Earth’s soil. Plowing them in order to plant crops releases large amounts of that carbon into the atmosphere…