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Climate Change and Moose: Moose are like canaries in the coal mine
While capturing 179 moose calves and attaching radio collars to them, researchers counted an average of 47,371 ticks on each animal, with a high count of more than 96,000.
Since each adult female tick can suck up to three milliliters of blood from its host, Pekins said the high number of ticks could drain the blood of a moose calf in two to three weeks. As a result, in four out of the five years of the study, at least half of all moose calves that researchers were following died; in New Hampshire and western Maine, the mortality rate was 70 percent…
Chronicles of the Rings: What Trees Tell Us
Reading the climate stories trees tell will help with forecasting. “One of the big questions in the field is what’s going to happen to the jet stream,” said Dr. Trouet. “This data helps the modeling of climate change become more reliable.”
Trees, it seems, are giant organic recording devices that contain information about past climate, civilizations, ecosystems, and even galactic events, much of it many thousands of years old…
As climate change bites in America’s midwest, farmers are desperate to ring the alarm
“Richard Oswald did not need the latest US government report on the creeping toll of climate change to tell him that farming in the midwest is facing a grim future, and very likely changing forever.
For Oswald, the moment of realisation came in 2011.
The 68-year-old lives in the house he was born in and farms 2,500 acres with his son, some of it settled by his great-great-grandfather. The land sits where the Missouri river valley is about four miles wide.
Growing up, Oswald heard tales of a great flood in 1952 which prompted the army to construct levees…”
The Midwest flooding has killed livestock, ruined harvests and has farmers worried for their future
(CNN)Farmers in parts of Nebraska and Iowa had precious little time to move themselves from the floodwaters that rushed over their lands last week, so many left their livestock and last year’s harvest behind.
Now as they watch the new lakes that overtook their property slowly recede, some have a painfully long time to reflect: They lost so much, staying in business will be a mighty struggle.
Across parts of the Midwest, hundreds of livestock are drowned or stranded; valuable unsold, stored grain is ruined in submerged storage bins; and fields are like lakes, casting doubt on whether they can be planted this year.
Farm Bureau Shows Little Concern About Climate Change Agricultural Effects
Those of us who don’t grow our own food may lose sight of how much risk is involved in agriculture. But the recent floods in the Midwest are a startling reminder that farming can be a precarious occupation because of climate change, with its unpredictable and sometimes downright wild weather.
Not enough water or far too much; sweltering days or frigid ones; and unexpected shifts in the timing of all these things can put farmers in trouble. As the headline of a worthwhile overview story in The Guardian puts it, “As Climate Change Bites in America’s Midwest, Farmers are Desperate to Ring the Alarm.”
Greta Thunberg, schoolgirl climate change warrior: ‘Some people can let things go. I can’t’
One day last summer, aged 15, she skipped school, sat down outside the Swedish parliament – and inadvertently kicked off a global movement.
Greta Thunberg cut a frail and lonely figure when she started a school strike for the climate outside the Swedish parliament building last August. Her parents tried to dissuade her. Classmates declined to join. Passersby expressed pity and bemusement at the sight of the then unknown 15-year-old sitting on the cobblestones with a hand-painted banner.
Eight months on, the picture could not be more different. The pigtailed teenager is feted across the world as a model of determination, inspiration and positive action. National presidents and corporate executives line up to be criticised by her, face to face. Her skolstrejk för klimatet (school strike for climate) banner has been translated into dozens of languages. And, most striking of all, the loner is now anything but alone…
Greta Thunberg: Saving Your World
“Greta Thunberg cut a frail and lonely figure when she started a school strike for the climate outside the Swedish parliament building last August. Her parents tried to dissuade her. Classmates declined to join. Passersby expressed pity and bemusement at the sight of the then unknown 15-year-old sitting on the cobblestones with a hand-painted banner.
Eight months on, the picture could not be more different. The pigtailed teenager is feted across the world as a model of determination, inspiration and positive action. National presidents and corporate executives line up to be criticised by her, face to face. Her skolstrejk för klimatet (school strike for climate) banner has been translated into dozens of languages. And, most striking of all, the loner is now anything but alone…” [excerpt from The Guardian].
Greta leads the world in fighting climate change because she confronts people with reality—while using language that connects to what people care about and provides us with a way to change. Check out a video compilation of her speeches.
Why the US bears the most responsibility for climate change, in one chart
“Carbon dioxide emissions reached a record high in 2019, according to a report published Wednesday by the Global Carbon Project. The report also found that the rate of emissions growth is slowing down among some of the world’s largest emitters.
But climate change is a cumulative problem, a function of the total amount of greenhouse gases that have accumulated in the sky. Some of the heat-trapping gases in the air right now date back to the Industrial Revolution. And since that time, some countries have pumped out vastly more carbon dioxide than others…”
Climate change will have profound effects on the Great Lakes region
A new report commissioned by the Environmental Law and Policy Center urges Great Lakes states to mitigate and prepare for the “profound” effects of climate change.
The report, authored by more than a dozen Midwest and Canadian researchers, says Great Lakes states will see more very hot days, increases in heavy rainfall and flooding, declines in crop yields, and threats to drinking water…
An indigenous tribe in Washington is strategically placing beavers around to help salmon
The sentiment that Castor canadensis is little more than a tree-felling, water-stealing, property-flooding pest is a common one. In 2017, trappers in Washington State killed 1,700 “nuisance” beavers, nearly 20 times more than were relocated alive. In neighboring Oregon, the herbivorous rodents are classified as predators, logic and biology notwithstanding. California considers them a “detrimental species.” Last year alone, the U.S. Department of Agriculture eliminated more than 23,000 conflict-causing beavers nationwide.
Running countercurrent to this carnage is another trend: the rise of the Beaver Believer. Across North America, many scientists and land managers are discovering that, far from being forces of destruction, beavers can serve as agents of water conservation, habitat creation, and stream restoration…