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It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

The Startups betting on Off-Grid Living

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

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In the words of Greta Thunberg: “Adults keep saying, we owe it to the young people to give them hope. But I don’t want your hope, I don’t want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic.” That is precisely what younger generations are feeling these days, panic. The term eco-anxiety stems from the sense of hopelessness concerning the irrevocable future we face due to climate change. How do parents, teachers, friends, and individuals deal with this sensation?

Younger generations are progressively becoming aware of the reality our world is facing. How long do we have until it’s too late to save our earth from climate disaster? Can we rewind the clock? On Monday 21st of September, 2020, a climate clock was displayed by artists Gan Golan and Andrew Boyd warning us that there were 7 years, 101 days, 17 hours, 29 minutes, and 22 seconds until the Earth’s carbon budget is depleted based on the current emission rates. Many have praised this oeuvre d’art for the awareness it has brought to the people of New York City, however, could it be that we are making people hyper-aware of this reality — walking past a sign that warns you of the years, days, hours, and seconds left leading up to our potential doomsday is bound to overwhelm people. The constant influx of information concerning ecological disaster our society faces will indeed overpower us, especially today’s youth, so how do we overcome it?

1. Focus on your daily actions It may seem simple but focusing on your individual action to help the matter will reduce this sense of hopelessness. Aligning your actions with your beliefs will help you feel a sense of satisfaction.
2. Do not feel shame, none of us are perfectWhile it is important to align your actions with your beliefs, do not feel shame if you are not able to maintain the lifestyle you envisioned for yourself. Remind yourself that we live in a world that was built a certain way and you are swimming against the current.
3. Protect your surroundings Protecting your local community, nurturing your green areas, and the people around you will give you a sense of fulfillment – after all, when we nurture our surroundings, we indirectly nurture ourselves.
4. Find people that are compatible with youAlthough it is important to challenge our way of thinking and not constantly be surrounded in an echo-chamber, it is also fundamental to find people that are like-minded to you. A constant battle with climate-change deniers or simply, people that are not interested in what matters to you is bound to overwhelm you.

These four lifestyle changes might seem trivial to anyone facing eco-anxiety, and they might be, if they have already been incorporated into your lifestyle. Nonetheless, they are extremely important to one’s well-being. Although eco-anxiety is a term that has been recently coined, it does not take away the reality of its effects.

By: Estelle Radi

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Originally published in The Conversation by Alex Braczkowski on June 4, 2020 5.20am BST

Pangolins are one of the most illegally trafficked animals on the planet and are suspected to be linked to the current coronavirus pandemic.

Pangolins are also one of the world’s most threatened species but new efforts are underway to reintroduce pangolins to parts of Africa where the animal has been extinct for decades.

The reintroduction of pangolins has not been easy. But it’s vital to prevent this shy, mysterious creature from being lost forever.

A cute but threatened species

Pangolins are the only mammals wholly-covered in scales, which they use to protect themselves from predators. They can also curl up into a tight ball.

They eat mainly ants, termites and larvae which they pick up with their sticky tongue. They can grow up to 1m in length from nose to tail and are sometimes referred to as scaly anteaters.

But all eight pangolin species are classified as “threatened” under International Union for Conservation of Nature criteria.

There is an unprecedented demand for their scales, primarily from countries in Asia and Africa where they are used in food, cultural remedies and medicine.

Between 2017 and 2019, seizures of pangolin scales tripled in volume. In 2019 alone, 97 tons of pangolin scales, equivalent to about 150,000 animals, were reportedly intercepted leaving Africa.

There is further evidence of the illegal trade in pangolin species openly on social media platforms such as Facebook.

The intense global trafficking of the species means the entire order (Pholidota) is threatened with extinction. For example, the Temminck’s pangolins (Smutsia temminckii) went extinct in South Africa’s KwaZulu Natal Province three decades ago.

Reintroduction of an extinct species

Each year in South Africa the African Pangolin Working Group (APWG) retrieves between 20 and 40 pangolins through intelligence operations with security forces.

These pangolins are often-traumatised and injured and are admitted to the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital for extensive medical treatment and rehabilitation before they can be considered for release.

In 2019, seven rescued Temminck’s pangolins were reintroduced into South Africa’s Phinda Private Game Reservein the KwaZulu Natal Province.

Nine months on, five have survived. This reintroduction is a world first for a region that last saw a viable population of this species in the 1980s.

During the release, every individual pangolin followed a strict regime. They needed to become familiar with their new surroundings and be able to forage efficiently.

Previous releases, including early on in South Africa and in other countries such as the Philippines, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Thailand had minimal post-release monitoring.

Pangolins released immediately following medical treatment had a low level of survival for various reasons, including inability to adapt to their release sites.

A ‘soft release’ in to the wild

The process on Phinda game reserve involved a more gentle ease into re-wilding a population in a region that had not seen pangolins for many decades.

The soft release had two phases:

1. a pre-release observational period
2. an intensive monitoring period post release employing GPS satellite as well as VHF tracking tags.

The pre-release period lasted between two to three weeks and were characterised by daily walks (three to five hours) of individuals on the reserves. These walks were critical for acclimatising individuals to the local habitat, its sounds, smells and possible threats. It also helped them source suitable and sufficient ant and termite species for food.

Following that, the post release period of two to three months involved locating released pangolins daily at first, and then twice per week where they were weighed, a rapid health assessment was made and habitat features such as burrows and refuges monitored.

Phinda reserve manager Simon Naylor said:

A key component of the post release period was whether individuals gained or maintained their weight.

The way the animals move after release also reveals important clues to whether they will stay in an area; if they feed, roll in dung, enter burrows. Much of this behaviour indicates site fidelity and habitat acceptance.

Read more: No, Aussie bats won’t give you COVID-19. We rely on them more than you think

Following nine months of monitoring and tracking, five of the seven survived in the region. One died of illness while the other was killed by a Nile crocodile.

Why pangolin reintroduction is important

We know so little about this group of mammals that are vastly understudied and hold many secrets yet to be discovered by science but are on the verge of collapse.

The South African and Phinda story is one of hope for the Temminck’s pangolin where they once again roam the savanna hills and plains of Zululand.

The process of relocating these trade animals back into the wild has taken many turns, failures and tribulations but, the recipe of the “soft release” is working.

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Originally published on Ecowatch by John Judge

It’s a different kind of World Environment Day this year. In prior years, it might have been enough to plant a tree, spend some extra time in the garden, or teach kids the importance of recycling. This year we have heavier tasks at hand. It’s been months since we’ve been able to spend sufficient time outside, and as we lustfully watch the beauty of a new spring through our kitchen’s glass windows, we have to decide how we’ll interact with the natural world on our release, and how we can prevent, or be equipped to handle, future threats against our wellbeing.

When we emerge from our homes, it will be into a healthier planet than we left. Fewer cars, trucks, and planes have caused a significant reduction in pollution and an unprecedented improvement in air quality—so while we’ve been sick, the planet’s been healing. The question is how we can continue to allow the Earth to heal itself, and how we should treat it going forward.

When we rebuild our lives and economy, we need to embrace the opportunities of rebirth and build the foundation of a stronger ecosystem. The call to action is multifaceted. At its core it requires a commitment to conservation stewardship. Today our thoughts and our talking heads mull over the virus all day every day, but after this it will be easy to return to the divisive, polarized, and xenophobic conversations we’ve stepped away from. We need to eschew what may feel like a natural impulse and instead become what I call “Outdoor Citizens”—champions of the natural world who realize we are not just citizens of our cities, states, and countries, but of planet Earth, which nurtures and protects us even when our unique governments cannot.

A sustainable plan of action to preserve our planet and human health in the process requires a robust public-private collaboration by citizens and officials on local, state, and federal levels. For this to happen, we need to vote into office politicians whose environmental agendas, especially in relation to their views on the fossil fuel industry, align with our own. We also need an outdoor-centric economy underscored by investors who fund sustainability initiatives, and we need manufacturers who agree to abide by environmentally friendly production practices.

Our time working from home has shown our extraordinary ability to innovate and craft new technology. This wonderful quality can be used to put the levers of science, conservation stewardship, and data collection in each of our hands. Hardware, software, apps, wireless 5G communication, and the Internet of Things can empower all Outdoor Citizens to contribute to the cause of protecting our planet, whether it be through aggregating data, fostering local and global connections to strategize and implement environmental protections, or giving us the tools we need to monitor and lower our energy consumption and carbon footprint.

World Environment Day was put into motion almost fifty years ago by the United Nations as a response to a multitude of environmental threats. The same year it was established, in 1972, a variety of countries around the world passed legislation protecting the environment. New Zealand passed its Clean Air Act. The Wildlife Protection Act was enacted by India. Here in the US, Congress passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the first law of its kind in our country. Today with the growing threat of climate change, we again need active change.

As we continue to adapt to our new normal, post-pandemic, and as our scientists race to find ways to treat the virus, I am encouraged and excited by the knowledge that people will exit their homes with a newfound appreciation for the joy of being outdoors, and that we as a society are looking to see what we can do better. We stand on the shoulders of those who were the champions of the outdoors, and now it’s our turn to take bold action. The future of our planet and humanity will be defined by what we do today, and future generations will judge us on this. Let’s strive to become the greatest generation of conservationists. Let’s strive to be Outdoor Citizens.

John Judge is the president and CEO of the Appalachian Mountain Club, America’s oldest conservation and outdoors organization, and the author of The Outdoor Citizen: Get Out, Give Back, Get Active.

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originally published on EcoWatch on Jul. 11, 2019 11:00AM EST By Mallika Khanna

Chemical plants surround a cemetery in “Cancer Alley” in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Oct, 15, 2013. Giles Clarke / Getty Images

If you’ve read anything about climate change over the past year, you’ve probably heard about the IPCC report that gives a 12-year deadline for limiting climate change catastrophe. But for many parts of the world, climate change already is a catastrophe.

Recently in Bihar, one of the poorest states in India, more than 40 people were killed by a severe heat wave in just one day. A study by UNICEF suggests that “in the next decade, 175 million children will be hit by climate-related disasters in South Asia and Africa alone.” Closer to home, Miami’s steady sinking is depleting usable drinking water at an alarming rate.

The truth is, vulnerable communities have been dealing with the effects of climate change and environmental pollution for decades now.

The 85-mile stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans — aptly nicknamed Cancer Alley — is a stark example. Thanks to petrochemical pollution there, Louisiana at one point suffered the second-highest death rate from cancer in the U.S., with some localities near chemical plants getting cancer from air pollution at 700 times the national average.

This is no accident: Corporations deliberately target places like Cancer Alley because they’re home to socially and economically disadvantaged people whom the corporations assume can’t fight back.

There’s even a name for it: “least resistant personality profiles.” Sociologist Arlie Hochschild discovered this term in a 1984 study done by a consulting firm to determine where a waste board could build a plant without local communities complaining.

According to the study, the people least likely to protest having their health put at risk were typically “longtime residents of small towns in the South or Midwest, high school educated only, Catholic, uninvolved in social issues, and without a history of activism, involved in mining, farming, ranching, conservative, Republican, advocates of the free market.

“While this study only tells part of the story, it does a lot to explain why poor communities face the worst consequences of climate change and pollution. These inequities cut across racial lines: As Hochschild’s study shows, “least resistant personalities” include small town, working-class white communities in the South and Midwest, as well as poor black people in places like Cancer Alley.

The problem isn’t just corporations, but government at all levels.

After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, the federal government did next to nothing. The comparison between the responses to 9/11 and Hurricane Maria — whose death tolls were almost exactly the same — highlights just how overlooked the suffering caused to marginalized communities by climate change is.

The idea that environmentalism is an “elite” concern is a lie. Those who stand to gain the most from sweeping environmental protections are the marginalized people corporations assume can be put in toxic environments without fear of backlash.

That’s the best reason yet to support a Green New Deal, which would not only curb climate change, but also revitalize the U.S. economy, create millions of jobs, and create alternatives to harmful, unsustainable industries like the petrochemical industry in Cancer Alley that have harmed people for years.

That could make poor communities a lot less poor — and a lot more resilient.

The only way to move forward is to fight back against corporations that deliberately target the people they think can’t fight back — and against a government seemingly unconcerned about the effects of pollution and climate change. The catastrophe is happening now, but so is the movement to combat it.

Could a Green New Deal Boost the Farm and Food Justice Movement? – EcoWatch https://t.co/Jh5u5wkebg

— Green Energy (@GreenEnergy) December 26, 2018

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This is my story of becoming an apprentice to a living landscape. I moved from Mexico City to northern California earlier this year, and have been experimenting daily with new ways to converse with, to experience and be experienced, by non-human forms of life. It’s been a journey into an ecology of mind — a tale where the human psyche and imagination blossom and branch through entanglements with a planetary intelligence.

I am fascinated by the ways that human psychology meets and is formed by landscape. As such, this story is the first part of a series that explores how our synapses pattern through relation and reverence, and the remarkable necessity for human culture to co-evolve with an animate, beyond-human world.

My personal story follows this brief introduction that lays the ground for what’s to come. It’s part eco-philosophy, part poetry, part manifesto for all the human stories that emerge from wild wisdom.

Becoming Landscape

“We won’t get any story worth hearing until we witness a culture broken open by its own consequence.”

These words, by the great mythologist and storyteller Martin Shaw, engraved themselves in my memory since the first time I laid eyes on them. I knew them to be a compass that pointed toward something essential. Something I needed to learn. They fluttered like the tufted titmouse songbirds I admire every sunrise on my balcony, catching me off guard, indicating a new way of contemplating something precious, a note of original trenchant song in an ocean of static sound.

Something is happening these days. We are witnessing, locked down at home, drawn to the ingeniously orchestrated flicker of our screens, a culture and a worldview quivering at the seams, our kitsungi unable to hold gold for much longer. I won’t speak here to the many interpretations of what a virus is showing us or acting on behalf of.

I will instead wonder: How does a culture break open? How does it surrender itself to all the stories that already exist painted across the land and within our cells? I care about breaking a culture open because I want to participate in stories that are worth hearing. A story worth getting up every day to tell, joining in the chorus with all the waking delighting things of the world.

Today everyone seems to have an opinion about the emergence of “humanity’s new story”. Often taking place in well-meaning conversations, I find myself frustrated by the tendency to focus on human-centric narratives — devised by humans, through human ingenuity, to save humans, with us at the centre of the tale yet again.

However, when I picture a new human story, and that of a culture broken open, images of all non-human things flood in to my mind. Wildness breaks in. I see all the creatures and beings of the world making their way through broken shells and our tatters marching right into the human story, bringing us long forgotten expressions of life as ancient as the stars. Not new stories, but very, very, very old ones.

Is this what Martin Shaw could have meant? A human culture shattering, broken open by the consequence of climate breakdown, giving way to the necessary and ever-present entanglements with the beyond-human world? Of an impoverished human spirit that will no longer ignore the world that it inhabits?

Our human ecology of mind, our neuronal patterning, our intelligences and imagination, all emerged from an inherent and inescapable interconnection with planetary ecology of mind. Forgetful of this co-evolution, numbed to our actual co-dependence, we live in a world made by humans for humans with the lives of non-humans as simple base materials. Inputs. Resources on a balance sheet. Of instrumental use. And yet — we never left this vast intelligence. We are still living in it, within a planetary community of life, even if our artifices intend us to forget.

The human psyche unfolded over millennia, developing, germinating, intertwining within a larger planetary psyche, a planetary Gaian intelligence, that was the compass and map we drew upon for survival, the tinder wood for our fires and dew on our lips. Our Homo sapien brains, our neuronal pathways, jolted and fused and tenderly sprouted new branches every time our eyes scanned the complexity of a living world, trying to make sense of its miraculous expressions, our bodies learning how to live by sensing the minutest details of topographies, foraging, tracking, hunting. Worshiping. We were nomadic, and as we moved through landscape, we became landscape and landscape became us.

What does the Sixth Mass Extinction, the robotization and outsourcing of our senses and the destruction of the last primeval forests portend for the psyche of generations to come?

If the richness of human imagination is dependent on and emerges from the richness of a biodiverse landscape, then the disappearance of that landscape is a loss of all the ways we can read and understand ourselves and all of life through it.

The stories are being lost too. And stories matter. Stories build and destroy civilizations. They are the dark matter that fills the space between what we believe and what we do; the grey matter that branches in our psyche and leads us towards both great beauty and great insanity.

Yet — our stories, our mythos, our language, our creations, our dreams, are not uniquely ours. They did not originate in human thought separate from nature. Going a step further, I will say that our stories are those of the Earth dreaming us, and storying through us.

We need to seriously consider what will happen to our psychological health when we can’t inhabit and learn from an ecosystem in health. When we lose whatever wild wisdom and animal memory we have left. No virtual world can ever replace the mystery, let alone the embodied feeling in our nervous systems and brains, of what happens as we co-evolve with landscape.

The Hopi word for the wild, tumqua, means “hard to approach, hard to get hold of”. The wild requires of us to engage in earnest, as apprentices, humbled, empty bundles to be filled with curiosity. It is slippery, devious, mischievous, unforgiving, prolific, sentient, and indeed, initially hard to approach. We have to earn our keep.

Pretty words, sure, but what was I doing about it?

Consumed by a desire to come into direct relation with what I knew to be true, and, in all honesty, getting weary of my own hypocrisy, I moved home to live as close to wild land as possible. I have been living into self-experimentation, learning from a direct relationship with my immediate ecosystem, becoming an apprentice to living beings. Praying for them to claim me, to dream through me. For their consanguinity to seep through my synapses, rehydrating desiccated rivers, waking up my dormant psyche.

This first chapter is the beginning of that story, a few months in.

Part I

My barn having burned to the ground

I can now see the moon

– Mizuta Mazahide

Spring. The sky takes a long-awaited exhale. Deep within the earth, parched and crumbling pockets of air soak up thick raindrops like a sponge. Bacterial communities hum in delight, giddy with hydration. Ripples form on the creek and grow into roving bubbles, exploratory entities snuffed out when the next fat plump tells them it’s their time to go.

I inhale the landscape. A sprig of roadside rosemary rolls oily between my thumb and forefinger, satin eloquence, whiffs of sticky sweet sagebrush lingering in my nostrils, the nibbled freshness of hierba buena leaves between my teeth. I pass a bay tree on my right but keep going, saving the papery firmness of its leaves to be crumpled into pungent halves and quarters upon my return, ready for tonight’s soup. Quivering grasses. Clumps of ladybugs thick like fists. White-starred flowers leap from Indian lettuces like dancers by my feet, nature’s stop motion art whirling out of green saucers. Further up the hill, modest lilac bonnets of wild peas cunningly distract from the plant’s creeping vines as it works itself foxy and unseen up the forest’s stalks and stems, fixing nitrogen, sewing an ecosystem.

The landscape inhales me. A prolonged in-breath, months wide, each dawn a new trail, each crepuscular wandering a new seeing. Beings unfold. They tug at my hair while I gaze down transfixed at pygmy forests of clover, wild lily and parsley. I let them in. Branded upon my left thumb, a rite of passage — the faint trace of poison oak.

I learn their names as they learn mine, stepping forward one by one, invisible just a few hours before on the very same path, as if I was to understand that this is how they choose to be seen, prudent, watchful, coquettish. I feel unequipped, bumbling, awkward, ignorant. I yearn for a training I never had. An initiation that didn’t exist in my modern Swiss upbringing. An earth wisdom incomparable to acceleration and dissection.

I greet and sketch and taste and more than anything — I slow down. I listen. I pay my respects, sitting in mute conversation, knowing this land as a moving edible landscape of medicinal percipience, a woody family, a teeming ocean of sensitivity, a glint of silver sun among cadmium clouds. I purr quiet prayers among sunset groves, fumbling for words, surprised by the sudden burst of something distinctly sylvan pouring from my tongue.

Spring. A pallet of every conceivable color flourishes on the tip of nature’s brush. Humans call them wildflowers. They have hundreds of secret languages. Giant trilliums conversing in mottled cuneiform characters, mysterious hieroglyphs daubed mauve on thick leaves; morning glories announce the day in soft trumpets, while beside them, fiercely blazing Indian paintbrushes stand in companies, readying for the day ahead, their claret petals warmed with the new wine of the year.

In ravines, the dazzling poppies that graced California with the nickname Land of Fire drink sunshine from golden cups. Lupine hearkens to her namesake, her purple wolf claws scraping at the sky. The absurdly named white ramping fury, its petals like black tipped worms, chatters with ingenious Hendersoni shooting stars, both proud of their sultry forms, somewhere caught between maroon dart and birds of paradise.

My imagination blossoms with the discovery of every new being; every new relation enriches what it means to be human.

The stories flood in.

A million budding questions linger on my lips. Why only half the maple tree is covered with feathery moss. How a soft twig managed to perfectly pierce the center a leaf held aloft in the air. How a vine curled itself impossibly around a huckleberry tree and the tree absorbed it like an amorous lover. How the tiny mohawked titmice that live in the apple tree on my porch get the courage to defend their turf so fiercely, every morning attacking the gigantic, muscly squirrels that come for its food supply. I grin, giving new meaning to the term pecking order. I am aware of giving human characteristics to distinctly non-human beings, and wonder where this may be permitted. Dazzling irises in purple speckled gowns watch all this ruckus unfurl with quiet stately charm, holding a sylvan court on the forest floor.

Every element of the landscape begins to weave into my own story of coming to place. I feel my senses and animal nature expanding. Crow, woodpecker, honeybee, coyote, newt, granite, acorn, fire, alabaster glow, sagebrush and my own salty tears. All have their place here in this ecology of nature’s psyche.

I begin to understand what it really could mean to become an intelligence of the world, an extension of a living landscape, my synapses and soul patterning through relation and reverence.

WRITTEN BY: Alexa Firmenich

Co-Founder of Atlas Unbound // Journeys into the Wild, Systems Thinking & Regeneration, Weaving Stories and Paradigms // www.alexafirmenich.com

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originally published by The Conversation on May 15, 2020 10:05AM EST by James Renwick

Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz

Earth had several periods of high carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and high temperatures over the last several million years. Can you explain what caused these periods, given that there was no burning of fossil fuels or other sources of human created carbon dioxide release during those times?

Burning fossil fuels or vegetation is one way to put carbon dioxide into the air – and it is something we have become very good at. Humans are generating nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year, mostly by burning fossil fuels.

Carbon dioxide stays in the air for centuries to millennia and it builds up over time. Since we began the systematic use of coal and oil for fuel, around 300 years ago, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has gone up by almost half.

Originally published on The Conversation by James Renwick on May. 15, 2020 10:05AM EST

Apart from the emissions we add, carbon dioxide concentrations in the air go up and down as part of the natural carbon cycle, driven by exchanges between the air, the oceans and the biosphere (life on earth), and ultimately by geological processes.

Natural Changes in Carbon Dioxide

Every year, carbon dioxide concentrations rise and fall a little as plants grow in spring and summer and die off in the autumn and winter. The timing of this seasonal rise and fall is tied to northern hemisphere seasons, as most of the land surface on Earth is there.

The oceans also play an active role in the carbon cycle, contributing to variations over a few months to slow shifts over centuries. Ocean water takes up carbon dioxide directly in an exchange between the air and seawater. Tiny marine plants use carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and many microscopic marine organisms use carbon compounds to make shells. When these marine micro-organisms die and sink to the seafloor, they take the carbon with them.

Collectively, the biosphere (ecosystems on land and in soils) and the oceans are absorbing about half of all human-emitted carbon dioxide, and this slows the rate of climate change. But as the climate continues to change and the oceans warm up further, it is not clear whether the biosphere and oceans will continue absorbing such a large fraction of our emissions. As water warms, it is less able to absorb carbon dioxide, and as the climate changes, many ecosystems become stressed and are less able to photosynthesise carbon dioxide.

Earth’s Deep Climate History

On time scales of hundreds of thousands to millions of years, carbon dioxide concentrations in the air have varied hugely, and so has global climate.

This long-term carbon cycle involves the formation and decay of the Earth’s surface itself: tectonic plate activity, the build-up and weathering of mountain chains, prolonged volcanic activity, and the emergence of new seafloor at active mid-ocean faults.

Most of the carbon stored in the Earth’s crust is in the form of limestone, created from the carbon-based shells of marine organisms that sank to the ocean floor millions of year ago.

Carbon dioxide is added to the air when volcanoes erupt, and it is taken out of the air as rocks and mountain ranges weather and wear down. These processes typically take millions of years to add or subtract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

In the present day, volcanoes add only a little carbon dioxide to the air, around 1% of what human activity is currently contributing. But there have been times in the past where volcanic activity has been vastly greater and has spewed large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air.

An example is around 250 million years ago, when prolonged volcanic activity raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels dramatically. These were volcanic eruptions on a vast scale – lasting for around two million years and causing a mass extinction.

In the more recent geological past, the past 50 million years, carbon dioxide levels have been gradually dropping overall and the climate has been cooling, with some ups and downs. Once carbon dioxide concentrations became low enough (around 300 parts per million) between two and three million years ago, the current ice age cycle began, but the warming our emissions are causing is larger than the natural cooling trend.

While Earth’s climate has changed significantly in the past, it happened on geological time scales. The carbon in the oil and coal we burn represents carbon dioxide taken up by vegetation hundreds of millions of years ago and then deposited through geological processes over millennia. We have burned a significant proportion within a few centuries.

If human emissions of carbon dioxide continue to increase through this century, we could reach levels not seen for tens of millions of years, when Earth had a much warmer climate with much higher sea levels and no ice sheets.

James Renwick is a Professor, Physical Geography (climate science) at Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington.

Disclosure statement: James Renwick receives funding from the NZ Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment. He is affiliated with the NZ Climate Change Commission.

The post Climate Explained: What Caused Major Climate Change in the Past? appeared first on eco-nnect.

Yes I too was traumatized by Michael Moore’s documentary “Planet of the Humans”. It was a much needed slap in the face. A reality check we didn’t even realize we needed.

1. It’s severely pessimistic and will create anxiety at apocalyptic levels.
2. It cherry-picks and has profound bias opinions. However, it does unveil several underlying hard truths (check out our article on biofuels).
3. What did we learn after having watched it?
   • The biomass/biofuel industry is illusory and harmful. Yes, we can’t rely on this method entirely for energy production. Although each biomass footprint is different, which the movie fails to notice. For example waste-to-energy plants or algae fuel are more sustainable alternatives.
   • Solar panels and wind turbines have large production footprints. However, could they be made from better materials instead?
   • The movie fails to talk about wave and hydrogen power as better alternatives.
4. What are our takeaways from the movie?
   • Let’s be even more hopeful that people will make meaningful lifestyle changes to reduce our heavy energy demands on our planet overall.
   • Capitalism doesn’t work, can we think of a better system?
   • We are undergoing a green and technological revolution, not all hope should be lost if the transition phase isn’t perfect.
5. Do we recommend watching it?
   • Yes and No. Watch it, but take everything they say with a pinch of salt, and don’t lose hope!

Seaspiracy, the many takeaways: A must watch

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Originally published by ECOWATCH on Apr. 28, 2020 12:38PM EST byJordan Davidson

An unusual phenomenon happened in March and April when an enormous hole in the ozone layer formed over the Arctic. Last week, though, scientists tracking the hole noticed that it has closed, as CNN reported.Unlike the infamous hole in the ozone over Antarctica, which was caused by overuse of now illegal chemicals containing chlorofluorocarbons, the hole in the Arctic was caused by a combination of factors, including low Arctic temperatures, sunlight, pollutants and a particularly strong polar vortex, according to the Copernicus’ Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS), as CNN reported.

The unprecedented 2020 northern hemisphere #OzoneHole has come to an end. The #PolarVortex split, allowing #ozone-rich air into the Arctic, closely matching last week’s forecast from the #CopernicusAtmosphere Monitoring Service.More on the NH Ozone hole➡️https://t.co/Nf6AfjaYRi pic.twitter.com/qVPu70ycn4

— Copernicus ECMWF (@CopernicusECMWF) April 23, 2020

“These two are really different animals,” said Paul Newman, the chief scientist in the Earth Sciences Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, as Mashable reported. “This [Arctic ozone hole] is not comparable to the Antarctic ozone hole. If this was happening over the Antarctic we would be shouting for joy.”

The hole over Antarctica opens up every year from August until October. However, it has improved dramatically since ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons were banned in the 1994 Montreal Protocol. Last year, the Antarctic ozone hole was at its smallest since it was first discovered, as CNN reported.

While the COVID-19 lockdowns have improved air quality around the world and helped wildlife, the drops in pollution did not cause the ozone hole to close up.

“COVID19 and the associated lockdowns probably had nothing to do with this,” CAMS said on Twitter. “It’s been driven by an unusually strong and long-lived polar vortex, and isn’t related to air quality changes.”

The hole in the ozone above the Arctic started in March when unusual conditions trapped cold air over the North Pole for several weeks in a row. That triggered a circle of cold air, known as a polar vortex, which led to clouds high in the atmosphere. Those clouds interacted with pollutants from human emissions and depleted the ozone gases above the Arctic. The hole it opened up was roughly three times the size of Greenland.

The ozone layer, which sits between 9 and 22 miles from the earth’s surface, shields the planet from the sun’s damaging ultraviolet radiation. The hole above the Arctic would have only posed a threat to humans if it had traveled or expanded farther south, as Euronews reported.

“It’s unusual but not unexpected,” said Newman, of the recent Arctic ozone hole, to Mashable. “It’s unusual in that we only have events like this about once per decade.”

In 1997 and 2011, there were similar ozone depletions of the Arctic, according to Antje Innes, a senior scientist at the European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, who spoke to Mashable. However, the extent of ozone depletion was far greater during this one.

Scientists insist it is too early and too rare to say if the recent ozone depletion portends a new trend. “From my point of view, this is the first time you can speak about a real ozone hole in the Arctic,” said Martin Dameris, an atmospheric scientist at the German Aerospace Center, to Nature.

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