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Introducing Beescape: A new online tool and community to support bees
A new online tool and community, called Beescape, enables beekeepers, or anyone interested in bees, to understand the specific stressors to which the bees in their managed hives, home gardens, or farms are exposed, according to researchers at Penn State…
“With data provided by beekeepers from agricultural, rural, and urban landscapes across multiple states, we will be able to develop high-quality predictive models that will be included in the website in the future,” said Melanie Kammerer Allen, graduate student in ecology at Penn State, who is involved in the project.
‘Mass extinction’ of bumblebees across Europe and North America result of climate crisis
When scientist Peter Soroye first saw the figures showing estimated bumblebee populations in North America had fallen by nearly 50% in a single generation, he thought it must be a typo.
He checked the numbers—the result of a long-term analysis of bumblebee populations published in the journal Science on Thursday—seven times to be sure they were accurate…
As big endowments spurn fossil fuel stocks, there’s one thing making this decision easy
As big endowment funds face mounting pressure to reduce their exposure to the fossil fuel industry, there’s one thing making their decision easier: the energy sector’s underperformance…
PIMCO Climate Bond Strategy: Investing in Sustainable Solutions
“Addressing climate change has become a priority for business leaders and policymakers globally as risks and realities mount and as people around the world become more concerned and engaged. Investors are demanding to be part of the climate solution, and we believe fixed income investments in particular can help drive the transition to net zero carbon emissions while seeking positive financial returns…”
Your land trust has a chance to be strategic and proactive
Calls for decarbonization are now coming from the boardrooms and executive suites of the world’s largest corporations and investment funds, in a fast-moving change that could reshape the global energy system and economy. Listen to why investment firms and companies are divesting.
I’ll be posting more about alternatives, but in the meantime, check out PIMCO’s climate investment funds.
Effective Communications: The power of reframing
Reframing, as Steve explains it, hinges on “deeper listening, connecting on values, and finding a better frame for productive collaboration.” At its core, there are four main steps to the reframing process when we are in dialogue with someone who may oppose our ideas.
Cash-strapped farms are growing a new crop: solar panels
Construction is slated to begin this spring on a 1.2-megawatt solar array on the Kominek farm (in Colorado). Some 3,300 solar panels will rest on 6-foot and 8-foot-high stilts, providing shade for crops like tomatoes, peppers, kale, and beans on a five-acre plot. Pasture grasses and beehive boxes are planned for the perimeter…
The vegetables will be sold through a community farm-share program, which allows neighbors to invest in the project in exchange for boxes of produce.
Byron Kominek said he hopes similar projects will soon follow. In 2018, Boulder County officials updated the local land-use codes to allow for community solar on land otherwise designated for agriculture, and Kominek plans to help train other farmers how to grow crops alongside solar panels. “The hope is that young farmers will have a better understanding of how to do this, and will go out to already built solar arrays, or planned solar arrays, and find a new profession,” he said.
What ballooning carbon emissions will do to trees
More scientific research could help to predict whether carbon-dioxide fertilization will safeguard the carbon sink, slowing the advance of climate change, or do “diddly.” But neither of the two countries best poised to conduct necessary studies—the United States, with its large science budget, and Brazil, which occupies the majority of the Amazon—seems likely to sponsor such research.
Climate change is transforming Western forests. And that could have big consequences far beyond wildfires.
The heat of a warming planet, like an artist’s palette knife on a canvas, etches its way across Western forests, slowly altering ecosystems that have flourished for centuries…
“As ecosystems change, there are going to be winners and losers,” said Thomas Veblen, a biogeographer and distinguished professor at the University of Colorado. “The regulator function of the forest could diminish…leading to more runoff and flash floods. With a reduction of the forest canopy, we are going to see the potential for greater erosion. The question is how much of the forest will fail to regenerate.”
Nature’s sleeping giant
Climate change is a global problem, and it requires solutions on a global scale. One of those is hiding in plain sight. Our lands provide an untapped opportunity – proven ways of both storing carbon and reducing carbon emissions in the world’s forests, grasslands and wetlands: natural climate solutions.
Natural climate solutions can help address climate change in three ways:
- Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), related to land use and changes in land use
- Capturing and storing additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
- Improving resilience of ecosystems, thereby helping communities adapt to the increase in flooding and dry spells associated with climate change…