18 Green Artists Who Are Making Climate Change And Conservation A Priority

18 Green Artists Who Are Making Climate Change And Conservation A Priority

Katherine Brooks, 07/15/2014 The Huffington Post

"The quality of place, the reaction to immediate contact with earth and growing things that have a fugal relationship with mountains and sky, is essential to the integrity of our existence on this planet," the famous American photographer Ansel Adams wrote in his autobiography. From the romantic painters of the late 18th century to Adams to contemporary figures like Pedro Reyes and Agnes Denes, artists have long had a fascination -- and deep respect -- for the planet on which we exist.

With the words "global warming" and "climate change" never far from the headlines, artists like Adams and co. are more relevant than ever. Tying together the scientific and creative worlds in acts of beauty and activism, sculptors, painters, photographers and more have the power to make environmentalism a priority and bring green initiatives to the forefront of cultural conversations. Behold, 18 green artists who are making climate change and conservation a priority.

1. Olafur Eliasson's Icebergs

Olafur Eliasson. Your waste of time. 2013. Installation view of EXPO 1: New York at MoMA PS1. Photo: Matthew Septimus.

For "Your waste of time," Olafur Eliasson displayed pieces of ice that broke off from Iceland’s largest glacier, Vatnajökull. Exhibited in a refrigerated gallery space powered by solar panels, the ice "sculptures" represented 800 years of Earthly existence, putting human's physical experience in perspective. "The obvious lesson of Mr. Eliasson’s installation, 'Your waste of time,' is that global warming is wreaking havoc on nature," Ken Johnson wrote in The New York Times last year.

2. David Maisel's Photographs of Open Pit Mines

David Maisel, The Mining Project (Butte, Montana 9), 1989, Archival Pigment Print, 2013, 48 x 48 inches, Edition of 5, Courtesy of the artists and Haines Gallery

At first glance, David Maisel's gorgeous photographs seem to celebrate the natural beauty of another planet, but his deep blue swirls and red craters actually depict the aerial appearance of environmentally impacted sites in the United States transformed by water reclamation, logging, military tests and mining. "With the mining sites, I found a subject matter that carried forth my fascination with the undoing of the landscape, in terms of both its formal beauty and its environmental politics," Maisel writes on his website.

3. Luzinterruptus' Waste Labyrinth

The art collective Luzinterruptus has a history of tackling political and social issues in Europe. The "Labyrinth of Plastic Waste" is but one example.

"We were looking to demonstrate, in a poetic manner, the amount of plastic waste that is consumed daily," Luzinterruptus explained in a statement. "In addition to focusing attention on the big business of bottling water, which leads to very serious problems in developing countries, whose citizens have watched as their aquifers have been privatized with impunity for the exclusive enrichment of large business owners and ruling classes without scruples."

4. Amanda Schachter and Alexander Levi's Harvest Dome

Architects Amanda Schachter and Alexander Levi's massive "Harvest Dome 2.0," assembled from 450 umbrellas and 128 bottles, once floated around the inlet of Inwood Hill Park in New York City. Deemed a piece of "performance architecture," the 24 by 18-foot structure further proves the world's garbage can we reused in many unexpected ways.

5. John Sabraw's Toxic Sludge Paintings

Using toxic runoff found in the Ohio River region, artist and professor John Sabraw produces his own DIY pigments -- bold yellows and reds that are sourced from the oxidized sludge of abandoned coal mines. Rather than using imported iron oxide from China to make his paint colors, he taps into the water's heavy metals left over from abandoned coal mines, bringing to light the region's pollution problem in the process.

"The artist, like the scientist, has a crucial role to perform in our society," Sabraw explained to HuffPost. "See things differently, act on this vision, report the failures and successes."

6. Naziha Mestaoui's Virtual Forests

Naziha Mestaoui's "One Beat One Tree" projects virtual forests onto city spaces, blurring the boundaries between the natural world and advancing technology. The digital trees actually grow in rhythm with a person's heartbeat, as viewers can connect to the series via a smart phone sensor. And with each virtual plant, a physical one is grown in regions throughout the world, from Europe and Latin America to Africa and Asia. Since its inception two years ago, the project has already sparked the growth of 13,000 trees.

7. Rachel Sussman's Oldest Things

Photographer Rachel Sussman has been traveling the globe for the past 10 years, searching for the world's oldest living things with camera in tow. From the Mojave Desert to the Australian Outback to Greenland's icy expanses, she captures portraits of organisms capable of lasting for 80,000 years, shining a light on our planet's resilience in the face of human intervention. "Extreme longevity can lull us into a false sense of permanence," Sussman wrote for Brain Pickings. "But being old is not the same as being immortal."

8. Barry Underwood's Electric Landscapes

Headlands (Outcrop)

Combining elements of painting, photography, performance, cinema and land art, Barry Underwood renders environmental issues like light pollution and deforestation in electric splendor."My attempt is to portray environmental issues that are not delivered in a heavy-handed way," Underwood explained to HuffPost. "Rather in a way that draws attention in a pleasing way, then if contemplated could unfold a message of dissidence or a natural discord."

9. Paulo Grangeon's 1,600 Pandas.

French sculptor Paulo Grangeon used an unlikely medium to illuminate the reality of animal endangerment across the world. For his traveling exhibit, "Pandas on Tour," he created 1,600 papier-mâché bears meant to represent the actual number of pandas left on the planet (recent estimates actually place the number slightly below that, at 1,596). Launched in 2008 in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund, Grangeon’s project has traveled to landmarks in more than 20 countries, including the Eiffel Tower.

10. Daan Roosegaarde's Vacuum

Ask a Dutch artist to solve the problem of blanket pollution in Beijing and what do you get? If you've tracked down Daan Roosegaarde, you'll get "Smog," a system of underground copper coils meant to suck up airborne particles using an electrostatic field. It's like a vacuum cleaner that operates on a similar principle to statically charged balloons.

11. Aida Sulova's Trash Cans

A Kyrgyz street artist named Aida Sulova confronted the rampant garbage problem in Bishkek by using trash bins as a canvas. According to Wooster Collective, the street artist pastes photographic images of open mouths on garbage cans throughout the city to “remind people that what they throw into the world, eventually ends up inside us."

12. Chris Jordan's Portraits of Consumption

Cell phones #2, Atlanta 2005

Photographer Chris Jordan puts consumption into perspective with his series "Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption." His works show the debris we as a society leave behind, from massive dumps of cell phones, to crushed cars and circuit boards, all squeezed together in hypnotic quantities. "I am appalled by these scenes, and yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination," Jordan explained in an email to The Huffington Post. "The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful; for me its consistent feature is a staggering complexity."

13. Gabriel Orozco's Found Objects

For the 2012 installation "Sandstars," Gabriel Orozco arranged over 1,200 objects from the Isla Arena, Mexico trash repository on the Guggenheim Museum's floor, accompanied by a dozen large, gridded photographs depicting the individual objects in a studio setting. The found treasures bring hints of the ignored wastelands into a gallery setting, forcing viewers to confront the effects of industrial and commercial refuse.

14. rAndom International's Rain Room

The 2013 phenomenon that was the "Rain Room" invited MoMA viewers to experience a deluge of falling water without getting wet. According to the museum's description for the exhibition EXPO 1: New York, "the work invites visitors to explore the roles that science, technology, and human ingenuity can play in stabilizing our environment."

15. Agnes Denes's Wheatfields

Agnes Denes, Wheatfield, 1982, Courtesy of the artist and Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects

Agnes Denes is a giant among land artists. Her most well-known project is probably the 1982 piece "Wheatfield -- A Confrontation," in which she planted a field of golden wheat on two acres of a landfill near Wall Street and the World Trade Center in Manhattan. She weeded, irrigated and cultivated the mini oasis, bringing the essence of rural America into the throngs of America's urban epicenter. The confrontation was between nature and artifice.

16. Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Surrounded Islands

Christo and the late Jeanne-Claude are well known for their massive land artworks that serve to remind viewers of the natural wonders scattered around the planet. For "Surrounded Islands," the two artists encircled 11 islands in Biscayne Bay, Miami with 6.5 million square feet of floating pink woven polypropylene fabric. In the process, they cleaned up 40 tons of garbage from the floating land masses.

17. Mathilde Roussel's Living Sulptures

French artist Mathilde Roussel created a series of living grass installations that take the shape of human beings. Made of recycled material and fabric filled with soil and wheat grass seeds, the pieces are meant to symbolize the centrality of food. "Observing nature and being aware of what and how we eat makes us more sensitive to food cycles in the world -- of abundance, of famine -- and allows us to be physically, intellectually and spiritually connected to a global reality," the artist explains.

18. Pedro Reyes' Grasshopper Burgers

Queens Museum, courtesy Laila Bahman

For "The People's United Nations (pUN)" exhibition at Queens Museum in New York, Mexican artist Pedro Reyes made climate change and geo-engineering points of focus for his diplomatic performance piece. He even served grasshopper burgers during a lunch break to participants in the 193-person assembly to highlight the carbon footprint of meat. "Protein from insects is the way of the future," the artist proclaimed to HuffPost.

AGU FM11 - Small climate changes, big ecological impacts

Uploaded on Dec 8, 2011

Press Conference from 2011 AGU Fall Meeting - Thu. 10 a.m. PST

Boreal forests, arctic tundra and other ecosystems can change very quickly -- even if the factor causing the change, such as a warming climate, is itself developing gradually. A slow rise in temperature can cause a complete "regime shift," making the ecosystem suddenly inhospitable for different plant and wildlife species. The potential for regime shifts looms in Alaska's boreal forest, according to new research. One tree species could die off -- and be replaced by grassland, instead of different warmth-tolerant tree species. Wildfires could spark regime shifts as well. Another new study finds that a regime shift 14,000 years ago wiped out one of the largest ecosystems ever, leading to the demise of megafauna like mammoth and wooly rhinoceros.

Detecting the impact of climate change on plants - Introduction

Published on Apr 6, 2012

On Tuesday 13th March 2012 the National Botanic Gardens hosted an evening of talks by international and national guest speakers exploring the impact that climate change is having on plants and animals.
This event was organised as a collaboration between the National Botanic Gardens, the Environmental Protection Agency, Trinity College Dublin and the National Biodiversity Data Centre as part of Dublin City of Science 2012.

Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity

Impact of Climate Change on Wildlife

Plant Productivity

NASA
Published March, 2013

Report: Top 12 ways the world can eliminate agriculture's climate footprint

Report: Top 12 ways the world can eliminate agriculture's climate footprint
April 25, 2014 sciencecodex.com

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (24 April 2014)—Annual carbon emissions from global agriculture can be reduced by as much as 50 to 90 percent by 2030—the equivalent of removing all the cars in the world—according to a comprehensive new report released by Climate Focus and California Environmental Associates. The study highlights twelve key strategies—led by reduced global beef consumption, reduced food waste and better farm nutrient management and production—that can deliver big climate wins while maintaining food security and building resilience.

The report, Strategies for Mitigating Climate Change in Agriculture, offers a silver lining to the grim prognosis delivered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this month. Overall, opportunities in Brazil, China, the European Union, India and the U.S. can provide the largest impact on global emissions.

The report, which reviewed and synthesized a wide range of literature on agriculture and climate change, including some unpublished data, stresses the fundamental yet under-emphasized role that consumption plays in fueling food-related emissions. It estimates that changing diets and reducing food waste in key countries could cut over three gigatonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

"By reducing the climate impact of the food we eat, we can improve our health and the health of the planet," said Dr. Charlotte Streck of Climate Focus, co-author of the study. "By making the way we produce food more efficient, farmers can reap the benefits of increased production while decreasing the environmental impacts of farming. The energy and transport sectors have seen a significant growth in innovation needed to ensure the long term sustainability of the sectors. It is time that agriculture followed."

The study also shows that making our food system more efficient and eating healthier food would allow us to feed the growing population, expected to surpass 9 billion people by 2050, and limit the sector's significant climate footprint.

"There are so many ways in which policymakers can help farmers boost productivity while mitigating climate change," Streck said. "We need to dispel the notion, once and for all, that productivity and sustainability can't work hand in hand."

Too Much of a Good Thing is Not a Good Thing

The report finds that 70 percent of direct greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture come from livestock, in particular from cows, sheep and other grazing animals. Much of these emissions could be eliminated if beef demand were reduced, particularly in two countries: the U.S., currently the world's biggest consumers of red meat, and China, where demand for beef is set to rise rapidly.

The U.S., where Meatless Mondays have taken hold and doctors increasingly advise patients to lay off the red meat, is already beginning to consume less beef. Per capita beef consumption dropped from its peak of 88.8 pounds in 1976 to 58.7 pounds in 2009, and consumer research indicates that the recent economic downturn alongside concerns of red meat's health impacts have suppressed beef consumption further—though consumption remains excessive by global standards. Considering beef's immense share of livestock carbon emissions—six times greater than poultry on a per unit basis—and its impact on tropical deforestation, the report recommends national public relations campaigns to continue this trend.

China, on the other hand, could avoid emissions if it were to shift away from its projected trend of becoming a beef eating nation. Increasingly affluent, and influenced by western culture, the country's consumers are poised to ramp up their red meat consumption by 116% by 2050.

"Because China already has a climate-friendly diet and hasn't yet embraced beef, it's still possible to discourage the consumption of more beef without changing the country's traditional beliefs and culture," said Amy Dickie of California Environmental Associates, co-author of the study. "Steering the Chinese diet in a more climate-friendly direction would yield enormous benefits for the country's health and food security—as well as the global climate."

The report cites the global public relations campaign designed to curb shark fin soup consumption in China, underpinned by the national government's prohibition on serving the dish at official banquets. These efforts cut shark fin imports by an enormous 50-70 percent, helping to conserve dwindling shark populations around the world. The report suggests that a similar effort could persuade diners to eat less meat altogether or, at least, to appreciate healthier, less water-intensive and less climate-intensive meats like pork or chicken.

Waste Not, Want Not

Eliminating food waste in the U.S. and China, as well as food loss in Sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia, could also put a major dent in agricultural emissions. Globally, between 30 and 40 percent of all food is lost as it travels along the supply chain from the farm to the consumer. As food waste is a byproduct of inefficient production, storage, distribution and consumption practices, there are vast opportunities for savings for farmers, the private sector and consumers. Some affordable fixes include the following.

In the U.S., confusion surrounding 'sell by' and 'best by' dates and other food labels, which often mislead consumers into tossing perfectly good food, should be addressed.

In the U.S. and the European Union, the practice of tossing an enormous amount of food for aesthetic reasons—not having the right shape or color—before it even reaches consumers should be discouraged.

In China and the U.S., portion sizes in restaurants and catering should be slimmed down.

In Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, improving cooling and storage practices would prevent spoilage and food losses.

Chew on This

Similar to the demand-side findings, many of the production-side recommendations focus on reducing emissions from ruminants, animals—including cows, sheep, goats and buffalo—with a four-chamber stomach that emit methane during the digestion process. This process, called enteric fermentation, more fondly referred to as 'cow burps,' is responsible for over 40 percent the agricultural sector's direct emissions.

"There's no way around it," said Streck. "Cows are incredibly inefficient food sources. They eat an enormous amount of feed and require a lot of land and water resources. Pigs, chickens and sustainably caught or raised fish, not to mention non-meat proteins are so much better for the climate—and healthier for people as well."

Streck noted, however, that for millions of farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa, cattle often offer a variety of benefits, such as providing essential protein and pulling ploughs and carts, that need to be considered when gauging what regions to target.

The report recommends two key tactics for eliminating livestock-production emissions. In Brazil, it can take up to 36 months for cows to reach slaughter weight. In the U.S., it only takes around 18 months. Improving grazing management in South America's cattle hub would make the country more efficient beef producers. Likewise, in India, feeding cattle and buffalo healthier diets would ramp up milk production while reducing the per-gallon climate footprint.

Farmers can also drastically reduce emissions by changing the way they grow food on their fields and pastures. In industrialized countries, particularly China, agriculture uses too much fertilizer. Most farmers in China could reduce fertilizer use by 30 to 60 percent without harming yields. Exacerbating this problem, coal—rather than more efficient natural gas—is used as the primary feedstock in Chinese fertilizer production. Fertilizer is also over-applied in India and the U.S., although domestic production is much more efficient.

Production Potential

The report recommends pairing demand-side interventions with efforts to improve the efficiency of production. One of the largest challenges in containing the growth of agricultural GHG emissions is the diffuse nature of production. In the aggregate, the emissions reduction potential of the agricultural sector through supply-based approaches is nearly 2 Gt CO2e per year by 2030, including efficiencies gained in fertilizer production in China. These emissions reductions represent about a 30 percent reduction from 2030 levels. In most cases, these interventions would yield productivity gains and ought to be in the best interest of farmers and governments.

Priority focus areas include: reducing emissions from the largest cattle herds that are not produced as efficiently as they could be (e.g., Brazil's cattle population and India's dairy herd), reducing fertilizer use and production in China, reducing rice emissions in Southeast Asia, and improving stored manure practices in industrialized livestock systems.

Carbon Storage

The report also stresses the unique role that agriculture can play in sequestering, or storing, carbon in croplands, grazing lands and agroforestry. The study suggests, for example, that Brazil could integrate silvopastoral systems—a combination of crops, trees and livestock—and boost the quality of the grasses on its pastures as a means to store carbon. In turn, feeding cattle higher-quality food could lead to fewer emissions from deforestation, as ranchers would not need to chop down forests to create new pastures.

"There is a scientific debate about how effective different practices are at sequestering carbon, and quantifying the impacts of these efforts can be a challenge. Nonetheless, it's undisputed that increasing carbon leads to increased soil fertility and water retention, a boost to farmers," Dickie said. "The world should embrace available opportunities to boost the carbon in agricultural systems as long as they complement efforts to reduce emissions and boost food security. Especially in cases when these practices require little effort but offer significant potential benefits."

Productivity Matters

On par with the transportation sector, the production and consumption of food is responsible for around a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. And when ranchers and farmers need new land for food production, they clear forests, making agriculture the leading cause of forest destruction, another major contributor to climate change.

"Agriculture is the largest cause of deforestation worldwide," Dickie said. "Improvements to agricultural practices, as we've highlighted in this report, have so many benefits, including a reduction in deforestation and pollution of waterways."

However, despite agriculture's massive contribution to climate change—as well as its potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—agriculture still hasn't received the attention it deserves at the international climate talks, the report states.

One reason for the holdup, Streck said, is the belief that agricultural productivity and sustainable farming are mutually exclusive. The report shows that this is not the case, she added.

High CO2 Makes Crops Less Nutritious

Higher atmospheric CO2 levels may reduce nutrients in crops such as wheat (seen here growing in Drummond, Idaho).

High CO2 Makes Crops Less Nutritious
Climate change could increase deficiencies in zinc and iron, new study suggests.
Eli Kintisch, MAY 7, 2014 National Geographic

Crops grown in the high-CO2 atmosphere of the future could be significantly less nutritious, a new study published today inNature suggests. Based on hundreds of experiments in the field, the work reveals a new challenge as society reckons with both rising carbon emissions and malnutrition in the future.

Scientists generally predict that crop yields could fall in a warmer world—though higher atmospheric CO2 by itself should raise yields, as plants find it easier to extract CO2 from the air to make carbohydrates. (Related: "Cornfields Could Yield Less by Midcentury.")

The effect climate change might have on the nutritional value of crops, as opposed to their yield, has been even murkier. Previous studies have given conflicting results.

In the largest study yet, Samuel Myers of Harvard University and colleagues report that the CO2 levels expected in the second half of this century will likely reduce the levels of zinc, iron, and protein in wheat, rice, peas, and soybeans. Some two billion people, the researchers note, live in countries where citizens receive more than 60 percent of their zinc or iron from these types of crops. Deficiencies of these nutrients already cause an estimated loss of 63 million life-years annually.

C3 Crops Hit Hardest

Conducted over six growth years on field sites in Japan, Australia, and the United States, the study compared crops grown in normal conditions with ones grown in nearby experimental plots where the air is enriched with CO2 via open-air sprayers. The current atmospheric CO2 level is 400 parts per million; in the enriched plots, it was between 546 and 586 parts per million, a level scientists expect the atmosphere to reach in four to six decades.

In addition to wheat, rice, peas, and soybeans, which all use a form of photosynthesis known as C3, Myers and his colleagues studied corn and sorghum, which use C4 photosynthesis, a faster kind. They found relatively little effect of CO2 enrichment on the nutritional value of the C4 crops.

In the C3 crops, however, they found significant declines in zinc and iron. The largest was a 9.3 percent drop in the zinc level in wheat. They also found reduced levels of protein in wheat, rice, and peas, but not in soybeans.

Myers says the "enormous number of observations" in the study, which involved multiple cultivars, or varieties, of each of the six crops, allowed a total of 143 comparisons between cultivars fed enhanced CO2 and cultivars that grew in normal air. "That gave us the statistical power to resolve a question which has been open in the literature," he says. "Crops are losing nutrients as CO2is going up."

Unfortunately, the new study sheds little light on why more CO2 in the atmosphere should mean less nutritious plants. One hypothesis has been that plants in an enriched atmosphere produce so much carbohydrate that it dilutes the other nutrients.

The new study seems to rule out that hypothesis: Instead of a uniform dilution of all other nutrients in the crops, it found that nutrients changed unevenly when CO2 was higher.

Quality and Quantity

The need to balance changes in yield against changes in the nutritional value of crops makes predicting the future of agriculture an even more complicated task, says Stephen Long, an agronomist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who did not participate in the study.

"Rising global CO2 increases yield and decreases water use by crops, and this is often presented as one positive of atmospheric change," Long says. But the Nature study's "significant" finding suggests that higher-CO2 environments will mean less nutritional crops, so that "increased quantity is at the expense of quality."

CO2 enrichment experiments at Long's university have also shown that rising CO2 levels lower crops' resistance to pests. By exposing the plants to levels of CO2 similar to those used in the Harvard-led study, says Long, crop damage from three major crop pests doubled.

Myers and his colleagues suggest there should be a global effort to develop new breeds of wheat, rice, peas, and soybeans that show resistance to higher CO2 levels. While the various cultivars of wheat, peas, and soybeans in their study all suffered similar nutrient losses in response to higher CO2, rice offered a ray of hope: Its cultivars varied wildly in their response. "So there may be some basis for breeding rice and potentially other strains that are less sensitive to this effect," says Myers.

Recent efforts by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to breed rice and other crops with enhanced nutrition under current atmospheric CO2 levels have shown some success, he notes. But those efforts haven't been without setbacks. "There's been some indications that when you do that, you often suffer yield declines," Myers says. "So it's not entirely clear that you can have your cake and eat it too."

Impossible to Conserve Nature As Is, Thanks to Climate Change

Climate-change-related conservation decisions have already proved contentious.

Impossible to Conserve Nature As Is, Thanks to Climate Change
A U.S. government-backed guide for land managers says global warming requires a fundamental shift in conservation

May 15, 2014, Elizabeth Harball and ClimateWire

When President Theodore Roosevelt visited the Grand Canyon in 1903, he famously admonished the attending crowd to avoid meddling with the landscape. "Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it," he said. True to Roosevelt's message, America's conservationists have since focused on maintaining the status quo, or at least restoring ecosystems to their natural state.

But due to the growing impacts of climate change, this can no longer continue, according to a new guide for land managers backed by multiple state and federal agencies.

"Addressing the growing threats brought about or accentuated by rapid climate change requires a fundamental shift in the practice of natural resource management in conservation," states the document, released yesterday by the National Wildlife Federation in partnership with the National Park Service, U.S. EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey and several other federal agencies and nongovernmental organizations.

"While managers traditionally have looked to the past for inspiration, increasingly we will be faced with future conditions that may have no historical analogs," it states.

The guide is intended to demystify climate adaptation for habitat and wildlife managers. It provides a step-by-step process evaluating how ecosystems may be vulnerable to climate change and how conservation goals might be altered for the best possible outcome.

'No longer possible' to maintain nature's status quo
But the guide's authors stress the "best possible outcome" may mean ecosystems that look very different from how they did in the past.

"It is going to be a very big shift over the coming decades," said Bruce Stein, the National Wildlife Federation's director for climate change adaptation, who helped edit the guide.

"There's going to be places where we're going to try to do our utmost to keep it the way it is," Stein said, "... but that's not going to be possible indefinitely; in fact in some places and for some things, it's not possible even now."

Climate-change-related conservation decisions have already proved contentious.

Scientists sharply disagree about whether to introduce new wolves to Isle Royale National Park in Lake Michigan to breed with the current pack, which is inbred and in decline. Proponents of a "genetic rescue" claim that ice bridges to the mainland are forming less frequently as the planet warms, meaning the wolves can't breed with outside populations. Others say the decline would have happened even without climate change (ClimateWire, Dec. 3, 2013).

As with the case of Isle Royale, getting all stakeholders on board with future conservation decisions isn't going to be easy, Stein said.

"If there's one thing we've learned in the conservation community, it's that you need that broad collaboration," he said. "That's going to be especially tough as we increasingly are called on to make hard choices."

Aiming at a moving target
But according to T. Douglas Beard Jr., chief of USGS's National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center, it is important for land managers to dive into climate change adaptation, even though future impacts aren't entirely predictable.

"We actually learn by doing—you put something in place, and then you evaluate when you're getting there," said Beard, who also contributed to the guide. "That's critical."

The guide encourages more agile management techniques that constantly take climate change into account, as well as strategies that can change depending on the outcome.

For example, land managers can restore coastal habitats to deal with saltwater intrusion while simultaneously providing migration corridors if those habitats become inundated due to sea-level rise—this effort is currently underway at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina.

Conserving a changing landscape may sound like a tall order, but Beard said he believes that, based on efforts he has witnessed over the past five years, America's land managers are up to the task.

"Maybe it's because they are actually now starting to see the real-life implications of climate change," Beard said.

Without clean air, we have nothing

Heavy smog in Shanghai. 'Authorities have had to instal gigantic TV screens to broadcast the sunrise.' Photograph: Eugene Hoshiko/AP

Without clean air, we have nothing
As smog contaminates Paris, Shanghai and other world cities, we should regard pollution as a crime against humanity

Luce Irigaray and Michael Marder, 17 March 2014  The Guardian

Air pollution is deteriorating in many places around the world. In Shanghai, such is the oppressive smog, covering the city with a toxic cloud, that authorities have had to instal gigantic TV screens to broadcast the sunrise. Salt Lake City has such poor air quality that chemicals in the atmosphere not only give it a different hue but leave residents with a foul, metallic taste in their mouths. Closer to home, Paris has experienced some of its worst air pollution in recent days, while in the EU as a whole, even at permitted concentrations, industrial and traffic-related pollution is harming cardiovascular health.

Is clean air, along with drinkable water, becoming one of the most precious resources on the planet? Or should we reframe the question and challenge the kind of thinking that converts everything, including the very air we breathe, into economically measurable reserves and commodities?

Today we live in a world so complicated and, moreover, organised so differently according to the cultures we belong to, that encountering each other as humans has become almost impossible. However, instead of asking what it means to be human, alleged experts in various domains discuss at great length how to establish coexistence among people. No doubt such an objective is both relevant and urgent, but in their debates, these experts in peace stray far from a solution, getting lost in technical detail without considering the universal sharing of life, from which we could start again. Even if it makes sceptics laugh, we have no viable solution other than to experience the universal human condition as that of a living being, standing naked in the garden that the earth is. After all, with every breath we take, we expose our lungs to the outside world, regardless of all the barriers we have erected between the environment and ourselves. The resistance to envisaging this alternative is due to a nihilistic preference for certain powers – be they material or spiritual, capitalist or cultural – over life itself. Such a stance is both suicidal and murderous, even though few people actually intend it to be so negative. How can they recover their taste for life and learn ways of cultivating it, in themselves, with others, and in the natural world?

The fact that public parks in cities become crowded as soon as the sun shines proves that people long to breathe in green, open spaces. They do not all know what they are seeking but they flock there, nevertheless. And, in these surroundings, they are generally both peaceful and peaceable. It is rare to see people fighting in a garden. Perhaps struggle unfolds first, not at an economic or social level, but over the appropriation of air, essential to life itself. If human beings can breathe and share air, they don't need to struggle with one another. And consequently, it appears to be a basic crime against humanity to contribute to air pollution.

Unfortunately, in our western tradition, neither materialist nor idealist theoreticians give enough consideration to this basic condition for life. As for politicians, despite proposing curbs on environmental pollution, they have not yet called for it to be made a crime. Wealthy countries are even allowed to pollute if they pay for it.

But is our life worth anything other than money? Are we, then, still living? Or, do we only sense what life could be when we enjoy green spaces?

The plant world shows us in silence what faithfulness to life consists of. It also helps us to a new beginning, urging us to care for our breath, not only at a vital but also at a spiritual level. We must, in turn, care for it, opposing any sort of pollution that destroys both our world and that of plants. The interdependence to which we must pay the closest attention is that which exists between ourselves and the vegetal world. Often described as "the lungs of the planet", the woods that cover the earth offer us the gift of breathable air by releasing oxygen. But their capacity to renew the air polluted by industry has long reached its limit. If we lack the air necessary for a healthy life (or, indeed, for any kind of life), it is because we have filled it with chemicals and undercut the ability of plants to regenerate it. As we know, rapid deforestation combined with the massive burning of fossil fuels, which are largely the remnants of past plants, is an explosive recipe for an irreversible disaster.

The fight over the appropriation of resources will lead the entire planet to an abyss unless humans learn to share life, both with each other and with plants. This task is simultaneously ethical and political because it can be discharged only when each takes it upon her – or himself – and only when it is accomplished together with others. The lesson taught by plants is that sharing life augments and enhances the sphere of the living, while dividing life into so-called natural or human resources diminishes it. We must come to view the air, the plants and ourselves as the contributors to the preservation of life and growth, rather than a mesh of quantifiable objects or productive potentialities at our disposal. Perhaps then we would finally begin to live, rather than being concerned with bare survival.

Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change

Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change

Filmed February 2013 at TED2013
“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,” begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And it's happening to about two-thirds of the world’s grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes — and his work so far shows — that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.

Wetlands likely to blame for atmospheric methane increases: Study

Wetlands likely to blame for atmospheric methane increases: Study
April 28, 2014 sciencedaily.com

A surprising recent rise in atmospheric methane likely stems from wetland emissions, suggesting that much more of the potent greenhouse gas will be pumped into the atmosphere as northern wetlands continue to thaw and tropical ones to warm, according to a new international study led by a University of Guelph researcher.

The study supports calls for improved monitoring of wetlands and human changes to those ecosystems -- a timely topic as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change prepares to examine land use impacts on greenhouse gas emissions, says Prof. Merritt Turetsky, Department of Integrative Biology.

Turetsky is the lead author of a paper published today in Global Change Biology based on one of the largest-ever analyses of global methane emissions. The team looked at almost 20,000 field data measurements collected from 70 sites across arctic, temperate and tropical regions.

Agnieszka Kotowska, a former master's student, and David Olefeldt, a post-doc at Guelph, also were among 19 study co-authors from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Finland, Germany and Sweden.

One of the strongest greenhouse gases, methane comes from agriculture and fossil fuel use, as well as natural sources such as microbes in saturated wetland soils.

The amount of atmospheric methane has remained relatively stable for about a decade, but concentrations began to rise again in 2007. Scientists believe this increase stems partly from more methane being released from thawing northern wetlands.

Scientists have assumed that wetland methane release is largest in the tropics, said Turetsky.

"But our analyses show that northern fens, such as those created when permafrost thaws, can have emissions comparable to warm sites in the tropics, despite their cold temperatures. That's very important when it comes to scaling methane release at a global scale."

The study calls for better methods of detecting different types of wetlands and methane release rates between flooded and drained areas.

Fens are the most common type of wetland in Canada, but we lack basic scientific approaches for mapping fens using remote sensing products, she said.

"Not only are fens one of the strongest sources of wetland greenhouse gases, but we also know that Canadian forests and tundra underlain by permafrost are thawing and creating these kinds of high methane-producing ecosystems."

Most methane studies focus on measurements at a single site, said co-author Narasinha Shurpali, University of Eastern Finland. "Our synthesis of data from a large number of observation points across the globe is unique and serves an important need."

The team showed that small temperature changes can release much more methane from wetland soils to the atmosphere. But whether climate change will ramp up methane emissions will depend on soil moisture, said Turetsky.

Under warmer and wetter conditions, much more of the gas will be emitted. If wetland soils dry out from evaporation or human drainage, emissions will fall -- but not without other problems.

In earlier studies, Turetsky found drying peatlands can spark more wildfires.

Another study co-author, Kim Wickland, United States Geological Survey, said, "This study provides important data for better accounting of how methane emissions change after wetland drainage and flooding."

Methane emissions vary between natural and disturbed or managed wetlands, says Wickland, who has helped the IPCC improve methods for calculating greenhouse gas emissions from managed wetlands.

Turetsky holds a Canada Research Chair in Integrative Ecology. She and her students examine how ecosystems regulate climate in field sites in Canada and Alaska.

Journal Reference:
Merritt R. Turetsky, Agnieszka Kotowska, Jill Bubier, Nancy B. Dise, Patrick Crill, Ed R. C. Hornibrook, Kari Minkkinen, Tim R. Moore, Isla H. Myers-Smith, Hannu Nykänen, David Olefeldt, Janne Rinne, Sanna Saarnio, Narasinha Shurpali, Eeva-Stiina Tuittila, J. Michael Waddington, Jeffrey R. White, Kimberly P. Wickland, Martin Wilmking. A synthesis of methane emissions from 71 northern, temperate, and subtropical wetlands. Global Change Biology, 2014; DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12580

Carbon loss from soil accelerating climate change

Research published in Science found that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere cause soil microbes to produce more carbon dioxide, accelerating climate change.

Carbon loss from soil accelerating climate change
April 24, 2014 sciencedaily.com

Research published in Science today found that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere cause soil microbes to produce more carbon dioxide, accelerating climate change.

Two Northern Arizona University researchers led the study, which challenges previous understanding about how carbon accumulates in soil. Increased levels of CO2 accelerate plant growth, which causes more absorption of CO2through photosynthesis.

Until now, the accepted belief was that carbon is then stored in wood and soil for a long time, slowing climate change. Yet this new research suggests that the extra carbon provides fuel to microorganisms in the soil whose byproducts (such as CO2) are released into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change.

"Our findings mean that nature is not as efficient in slowing global warming as we previously thought," said Kees Jan van Groenigen, research fellow at the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society at NAU and lead author of the study. "By overlooking this effect of increased CO2 on soil microbes, models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may have overestimated the potential of soil to store carbon and mitigate the greenhouse effect."

In order to better understand how soil microbes respond to the changing atmosphere, the study's authors utilized statistical techniques that compare data to models and test for general patterns across studies. They analyzed published results from 53 different experiments in forests, grasslands and agricultural fields around the world. These experiments all measured how extra CO2 in the atmosphere affects plant growth, microbial production of carbon dioxide, and the total amount of soil carbon at the end of the experiment.

"We've long thought soils to be a stable, safe place to store carbon, but our results show soil carbon is not as stable as we previously thought," said Bruce Hungate, director of the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society at NAU and study author. "We should not be complacent about continued subsidies from nature in slowing climate change."

Journal Reference:
Kees Jan van Groenigen, Xuan Qi, Craig W. Osenberg, Yiqi Luo, and Bruce A. Hungate. Faster Decomposition Under Increased Atmospheric CO2 Limits Soil Carbon Storage. Science, 2014 DOI: 10.1126/science.1249534

Prof Camille Parmesan - Biodiversity and Climate Change

Prof Camille Parmesan - Biodiversity and Climate Change
Published on Apr 17, 2014
The first Annual Plymouth Linnean Lecture was held on Wednesday 19th March 2014 at Plymouth University by Professor Camille Parmesan and was entitled "Biodiversity and Climate Change - Connecting the Past to the Future". This video acts as a permanent record of the Linnean Lecture Series and we welcome your comments and feedback. The lecture was presented jointly by Plymouth University and the Linnean Society of London. It was hosted by Dr Malcolm Scoble (Scientific Secretary to the Linnean Society of London) and this video includes his introduction and a Q&A with the audience.

With greenhouse gas emissions continuing to rise, Earth is rapidly approaching a climate regime not experienced for millennia; however, previous scientific studies can provide vital clues as to the potential impact this current episode could have on wildlife, with records showing many species shifted where they live, sometimes by more than 1000km, as glaciers moved in and out during the Pleistocene. To determine if modern species are also now moving in response to the warming of their environments due to climate change, we access recordings from amateur naturalists that detail the locations of species over time, building on Linné's simple system of classification, which recorded birds, butterflies and flowering plants from the 1760s and can be directly compared to current distributions. Using this method, we can show that some 40-50% of plants and animals have shifted their ranges towards the poles and up mountains, attempting to track the shifting climate.

AGW – what is the root cause?

AGW – what is the root cause?

Moses Seenarine, April 23, 2014

In a recent talk, ecologists Guy McPherson was asked if capitalism was the main cause of climate change. McPherson, aligning himself with Jensen, Keith and followers of the deep ecology movement, avows that the fundamental cause of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) is civilization, and that the only solution to AGW is collapse and anti-civilization. Both McPherson and Jensen assert that civilization arises quickly after adoption of agriculture, and collapses just as rapidly from population overshoot. Consequently, both view agriculture and civilization as a dead-end. However, recognizing that civilization is necessary to prevent nuclear power plants from melting down, McPherson concludes that we are damned if we do, and damned if we don't end civilization. Though he may be right in his conclusion, his premise of farming as a cul-de-sac is a misrepresentation based on a false dichotomy.

Using a reductionist binary approach, deep ecology proponents conclude that hunter-gathers are sustainable egalitarians who stand in sharp contrast to unsustainable, patriarchal agriculturalists who inevitably create population overshoot. However, they declare that the omnicidal agrarian path toward civilization is not a one-way street, and cherry-pick anecdotes to fabricate evidence of cultures they claim chose to reverse course and become anti-civilization hunter-gathers. With no expertise in palaeontology, archeology, anthropology, or the study of ancient cultures, McPherson and Jensen universalize assertion is unsupported and has never been peer-reviewed.

In Search of Repentant Hunter-Gathers

According to McPherson, at least three Native American cultures - the Mimbres, Olmec and Chaco - figured out that agriculture inexorably led to civilization, which was a problem, and consequently forsook agriculture to return to a hunter-gather diet. There is little archaeological evidence to support his conjecture, but McPherson insist this is a hard lesson modern humans have yet to learn.

The Mimbres were a group of small villages in southern New Mexico, each with less than 200 inhabitants, existing between approximately A.D. 100 and A.D. 1150. Destruction by looters of this archeological site means that pottery and other artifacts cannot be studied in situ, and important clues about Mimbres culture and history have been destroyed. The region experienced several harsh droughts, and there was significant depopulation. McPherson claim that they didn't store seed corn after the depopulation period, which confirms that Mimbreños made a conscious decision to be anti-civilization.

There are several problems with this analysis. First, there was never really a population explosion among the Mimbres, with 6, 000 being a peak estimate. During droughts, arable land remained along the river banks, and some Mimbres never migrated and continued farming. If or why the Mimbres didn't store seed, for how long, and how widespread, are all unclear. But even if true for an extended period, one anecdotal example of a complex culture does not prove the Mimbres became anti-agriculture and anti-civilization.

McPherson similarly claims that Anasazi and Olmecs decided to become anti-civ after collapse from the effects of cultivation. However, experts on the Anasazi have observed that severe droughts, religious upheaval, internal political conflict and warfare may have led them to abandon Chaco Canyon and migrate south into Mexico, where, significantly, they continued to practice agriculture. Furthermore, few Anasazi remained or returned to the canyon to live as hunter-gathers. Olmec researchers state that their collapse was due to volcanoes, earthquakes, silting up of rivers, and political conflict, and few, if any, make a case for collapse due to agriculture-led over-population. Olmec sites were never re-populated and successor Mayan cultures continued to rely heavily on agriculture. There is hardly no evidence to suggest the Mimbres, Olmec and Anasazi in Chaco Canyon resorted to hunter-gathering exclusively.

Myth of the Noble Savage?

If there is no anti-civilization exception to the agrarian dead-end, this leaves little room for hope for deep ecologists and their hunter-gather vision of the future. Finding repentant hunter-gathers is not their only problem. Deep ecologists fail to explain why many agricultural civilizations never collapsed, or why some farming groups have not experienced population overshoot. They do not explicate the rise and fall of hunter-gather groups in any general or specific context, distinguish between matriarchal or patriarchal agriculturalists, or discuss the relationship between collapse and patriarchy in a non-agrarian context. Collapse on Easter Island was not due to the adoption of farming, but to deforestation caused by patriarchal culture.

Many of deep ecology's basic assumptions are flawed. In contrast to their false dichotomy portraying hunter-gathers as pre-civilized groups with limited populations, Paleolithic discoveries indicate that hunter-gathers gathered in complex societies with large populations, and ancient megalithic sites demonstrate that pre-agrarian cultures were capable of transforming their environment. Recent research of the Pleistocene correlate the arrival of hunter-gathers with the extinction of mega-fauna, which establishes that extinction and collapse is not an agrarian phenomena. The elimination of mega-fauna in turn led to drastic habitat changes across wide areas of the globe.

Another false assumption made by deep ecologists is that hunter-gathers are egalitarian. The widespread practice of raiding, capture and gang rape of girls and women among Amazon hunter-gathers show just the opposite. Indeed, there is little evidence to suggest that the vast majority of hunter-gathers are egalitarian or ever were.

Agents and Agency 

With the collapse of modern civilization due to climate change all but assured, it is extremely important that we try to determine the root cause of AGW. Men are the main creators of civilization, yet it is interesting that two men would transfer male responsibility entirely to an ambiguous development method that is supposedly gender neutral.

Women-invented agriculture, food storage and processing technologies, are entirely dismissed, as are the flowering of cultures and consciousness due to these female discoveries. Women still are the majority of agricultural laborers, and feed much of the world, but their work is minimized by men who own and control most of the land they toil on. Female agrarian technology is organic and sustainable, and most women do not support deforestation for monoculture and factory farms.

Other scientists and environmentalists argue that industrialized civilization, not agriculture, is the root of all planetary destruction. However, industrialized civilization did not emerge fully formed out of the clear blue sky. The patriarchal mindset that created industrialized civilization existed before the Pleistocene, and is characterized by the objectification of nature and women as free resources for male competition and development.

Men's oppression of women and nature predates agricultural and industrial civilization. Focusing on agricultural and industrial civilization as the main causes for planetary collapse ignores the hegemonic agency that created both, minimizes ubiquitous male violence against women and nature, and provides men with a completely free pass. It means little to women and nature if industrial civilization ends and male dominance and patriarchal thinking remains.

Ecofeminist Analysis  

The root cause of AGW is the patriarchal destruction of nature, and inequality. Radical ecofeminists link the exploitation of animals and nature, and the oppression of women, to male desire for transcendence of both. Masculinity and male identity are viewed as the main cause of conflict, hierarchy, resource depletion, and collapse. Ecofeminists' solution is not a cul-de-sac, catch-22 anti-civ struggle that still seeks to transcend wild animals and females, but an anti-patriarchal movement based on equality with nature. And surviving examples of sustainable matriarchal agrarian cultures like the Minangkabau, Mosuo, Khasi, Bribri, Nagovisi and others, inspire hope that change is not only possible, but doable. 

How a Warming Planet Will Change What's on Your Plate

Lone wind turbine in a wheat field.

APR. 18, 2014 sciencefriday.com
How a Warming Planet Will Change What's on Your Plate

The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are out, and the news from the farm is dim. Researchers say climate change has already cut yields of wheat and corn, taking a bite out of gains achieved by better farming technology. Add in a growing world population, expected to hit nine billion by 2050, and you have what sustainability expert Jonathan Foley calls “one of the biggest dangers to the planet”: our need to eat.a

Farmers Seeking Heat Relief Signal Brazil Climate Peril

Photographer: Dado Galdieri/Bloomberg

Farmers Seeking Heat Relief Signal Brazil Climate Peril
Raymond Colitt, April 17, 2014

Coffee beans for export in the Minas Gerais state in Brazil.

Brazil may see a mass migration of crops and farm workers from huge swaths of currently tillable lands to more temperate zones as global warming takes hold, according to leading climate experts in the country.

Longtime Brazilian climate researcher Hilton Silveira Pinto points to the drought that’s cutting grain and coffee output this year as an indicator that rising global temperatures may already be impacting the country’s crops.

“This is a taste of what is to come in the future,” said Pinto, a professor at the Center for Meteorological and Climate Research Applied to Agriculture at the University of Campinas.

A study co-authored by Pinto that looks at projected warming trends shows Brazil’s soybean production may drop by as much as 24 percent and wheat output as much as 41 percent by 2020 as climate change reduces areas where the crops can grow.

Because Brazil is increasingly helping to feed the world, the import of that isn’t just Brazil’s problem. The nation last year dethroned the U.S. as the world’s top soybean exporter -- it sold 41.9 million tons to Asia, Europe and the Middle East last season -- and has led the world in sugar and coffee production for more than a century. It also exports more beef and orange juice than any other nation on earth.

Agriculture accounts for 25 percent of Brazil’s gross domestic product and more than one third of its annual exports. With its ample water resources and year-round temperate climate, Brazil has also attracted billions of dollars in agribusiness investments by opening vast tracts of tropical hinterland to farming and applying state-of-the-art technology to expand yields across all manner of crops.
Crop Losses

While the connection of warming to droughts and extreme weather is still being studied, there’s no doubt that warmer temperatures are affecting global crop output -- worldwide wheat yields are declining by about 2 percent a decade and those for maize by 1 percent, the United Nations said in a March 31 report.

Major grain producers in cooler climates such as Canada and Russia may fare better than Brazil as much of its tropical agriculture already operates at the upper limit of heat tolerance, said Eduardo Assad, a researcher at the government’s Embrapa agricultural technology agency who co-authored the study with Pinto.

In Brazil, heat and drought are already taking their toll. The worst dry spell in six decades is erasing an estimated 5 million metric tons from Brazil’s grain harvest this year, about the size of Egypt’s annual corn crop.

Unprecedented Temperatures

Hotter weather is already chasing some coffee production up to higher altitudes. Coffee growers in Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais states have been the hardest hit so far by drought and heat waves.

“If the unprecedented high temperatures we saw repeat themselves, we’d have a serious problem,” said Mauricio Miarelli, head of the Franca, Brazil-based growers association Cocapec.

Crop shifts may cause a mass migration of millions of rural workers, requiring major investments in infrastructure and logistics to accommodate them, according to Assad.

“Brazil’s agriculture will be rearranged,” he said. “Climate change is on our heels.”

‘Longer Droughts’

In the northeastern state of Bahia, three consecutive years of unusually intense drought that cut soybean output 16 percent in 2013 have triggered concern even among hardened farmers used to the harsh, semi-arid climate, said Jairo Vaz, the state agriculture secretary’s cabinet chief.

“Undeniably the droughts have become longer, more pronounced and temperatures have risen -- that hit our farmers hard,” Vaz said. The state’s 670,000 family farmers have lost roughly half of their livestock over the three years, he said.

Corn futures for July delivery declined 0.7 percent to $4.9975 a bushel at 10:38 a.m. on the Chicago Board of Trade, while soybean fell 0.6 percent to $14.9925 a bushel.

About a dozen new varieties of beans and corn that are more resistant to extreme heat and dryness have shown promising results, Embrapa’s Assad said. Still, with Brazil growing 800 to 900 crops, progress in research and development has been too slow and investments too small, he said.

Other measures pursued by the government include promoting an integration of farming and forestry where shade from trees reduces temperatures and maintains humidity.

The technique known as agro-forestry lacks the scale to quickly transform the way soybeans and corn are grown in areas like Mato Grosso, a state twice the size of Germany covered with crops that stretch beyond the horizon.

Financial Interest

“You can’t apply this technology overnight,” Caio Rocha, Brazil’s secretary for agriculture policies, said in a phone interview. “We’ll have to show farmers that it’s in their financial interest to do so.”

The impact of global warming on Brazil’s agriculture is far from consensus. Donald Keeney, a meteorologist at MDA Weather Services in Gaithersburg, Maryland, is among meteorologists who expect precipitation in central and northeastern Brazil to decline, paring agricultural output -- while production should increase in areas closer to the poles.

Scott Yuknis, the lead forecaster with Climate Impact Co. in Middleboro, Massachusetts, doesn’t agree. He ascribes the drought in Brazil this year as part of the ocean temperature changes that induce cycles that last several decades.

While experts like Assad and Pinto agree with Secretary Rocha that Brazil may be able to offset part of climate change with new technology, they argue progress has been too slow and assumes temperatures will not rise more than 2 degrees on average by the end of this century.

“The world is failing to slow emissions, meaning temperatures may rise more than 2 degrees,” said Assad. “If that happens, science has no answers for impact mitigation, we’ll be in uncharted territory.”

Climate, Trees, and Legacy: 03 - Lessons of Joshua Tree

Climate, Trees, and Legacy: 03 - Lessons of Joshua Tree
Published on Apr 11, 2014
In this third installment of traveling across the USA in 2014 evaluating the need for "assisted migration" of trees in a time of rapid climate change, Connie Barlow focuses on Joshua Tree of the Mojave Desert.

Her conclusions: (1) Experiment with assisted migration to learn the actual northern range limits of Joshua Tree (Yucca brevifolia) in today's climate. (2) People get possessive about their trees. (3) Value biodiversity over "native range."

Human impacts and climate adaptations encountered in California and Arizona include the world's largest Solar Electric Generating System: Ivanpah. Also, the vulnerability of Phoenix to drought that impairs the water flow within the Central Arizona Aqueduct system and that curtails electrical generation via the dams along the Colorado River.

The March 2014 AAAS climate report, "What We Know," is highlighted, along with the 2014 Working Group II report of the IPCC: "Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability."

The series host, Connie Barlow, is the founder of the citizen activist group Torreya Guardians. She is the author of "The Ghosts of Evolution" and is speaking along the 2014 route of The Great March for Climate Action (from Los Angeles to Washington D.C.).

Click on the timecodes below to advance immediately to topics:

00:45 Intro to forests and climate change
02:25 IPPC 2014 reportt "Impacts, Adaptation, Vulnerability"
04:12 trees are most vulnerable to climate change
07:15 what is / is not "assisted migration"
08:53 Lesson 3 on Joshua Tree begins
10:26 road trip in CA-AZ looking for Joshua Tree
23:22 extinction of Joshua Tree's seed disperser (sloth)
25:09 Joshua Tree lags behind in moving north
26:44 map of projected future range shift for Joshua Tree
28:44 plea to begin assisted migration experiment now
30:56 challenges of assisted migration in desert
33:01 "Leaf a Legacy" recommended action
33:38 moth pollinator must be moved north too
35:32 indehiscent v dehiscent fruits re seed dispersal
38:53 megaherbivores disperse seeds in their dung
41:43 Paul S. Martin and ghosts of evolution
43:48 some yuccas have fleshy fruit
44:40 Lesson 1: experiment with northern range now
45:25 Lesson 2: people get possessive with their trees
47:22 Lesson 3: biodiversity value trumps native range
50:39 Janzen & Martin 1982: ecological anachronisms
51:42 book "After the Ice" - Holocene migrations north
55:28 Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System
58:48 aqueducts in California and Arizona
01:00:10 Ten best and worst cities for climate change
01:02:25 AAAS report March 2014 on climate change

OTHER EPISODES in this series:

Pt 01: "Introduction" http://youtu.be/JqksZfXwO44
Pt 02: "Lessons of Torrey Pine" http://youtu.be/6MQ9smQyJ5k

Climate, Trees, and Legacy: 02 - Lessons of Torrey Pine

Climate, Trees, and Legacy: 02 - Lessons of Torrey Pine

Published on Mar 18, 2014

In this second installment of traveling across the USA in 2014 evaluating the need for "assisted migration" of trees in a time of rapid climate change, Connie Barlow focuses on America's rarest pine tree: the Torrey Pine of the foggy coast of southern California.

Her conclusions: (1) In this case, size of habitat doesn't matter; San Diegoans are so proud of their native tree that they are planting and watering it on lawns and street-sides. (2) Experience does matter — it matters greatly; though reading scientific papers is crucial for understanding the needs of trees, so is ground truthing. The venerable tradition of nature study and the kinds of simple outdoor experiments that Darwin excelled in will become increasingly important as plant zones head north faster than tree species can follow.

In addition to Torrey Pine, Connie encounters and draws lessons from Brazilian Pepper Tree, Navel Orange Trees, Cherimoya fruit trees, and California Torreya. She also reflects on the abundance of wind turbines in California and the drama of increasing drought and dwindling flows in California's aqueduct network — and thus the growing tension between residential and agricultural water demands in this most populous state.

The series host, Connie Barlow, is the founder of the citizen activist group Torreya Guardians. She is the author of "The Ghosts of Evolution" and is speaking along the 2014 route of The Great March for Climate Action (from Los Angeles to Washington D.C.).

Click on the timecodes below to advance immediately to topics:
00:44 - Summary of Assisted Migration (and the first action)
02:58 - The Great March for Climate Action
04:06 - Summary of Episode 1 three main points
11:48 - The Lessons of Torrey Pine (in California)
18:55 - Distinguishing Torrey Pine from Florida Torreya
22:39 - Cones, seeds, and fire ecology of Torrey Pine
29:26 - Lesson summary: Habitat size + Field experience
30:18 - California Torreya: importance of visits to four field sites
33:05 - Lessons of Brazilian Pepper Tree (exotic species)
36:43 - History of Navel Oranges in southern California
38:11 - Cherimoya Fruit - requires human pollination + dispersal
44:33 - Good news: Wind turbines bloom in California
45:43 - Bad news: droughts and dwindling water aqueduct flow
47:46 - Answer to Pt 1 puzzle: Townsend's Solitaire + Juniper
49:40 - Homework assignment: 2 videos to watch:
"Ghosts of Evolution - theme song by Connie Barlow"
"Strategies for Public Land Management for Adaptation to Climate Change"

OTHER EPISODES in this series:

Pt 01: "Introduction" http://youtu.be/JqksZfXwO44
Pt 03: "Lessons of Joshua Tree http://youtu.be/fZD8IlT8KU8

Climate, Trees, and Legacy: 01 - Introduction

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Climate, Trees, and Legacy: 01 - Introduction
Published on Jan 4, 2014

Connie Barlow introduces in January 2014 a learning and action series for helping trees adapt to climate change — species by species, decade by decade. Citizen naturalists are invited to research a favorite native tree species and begin to work with others to keep up with the northward movement of forest zones by planting and monitoring small numbers of wild seeds of common species onto private forested lands well north of where those seeds were collected.

This "assisted migration" in a time of unprecedented climate shift will be increasingly necessary in the decades ahead. Foresters can create the maps to show us where species will need to move to. But we citizen naturalists will play a complementary role in ensuring that the full diversity of genotypes keeps pace with a warming and drying continent.

Importantly, human action will mimic what birds, rodents, and other native seed dispersers have been able to accomplish on their own in previous periods of Earth history, when warming occurred at a slower, more natural pace.

Note: Three tree paintings by Illinois artist Mary Southard are included, as are several still shots from the 20th-century classic animated short film, "The Man Who Planted Trees."

The series host, Connie Barlow, is the founder of the citizen activist group Torreya Guardians. She is the author of "The Ghosts of Evolution."

Learn more about assisted migration: (2-min video)http://youtu.be/uz_pN3lvh7I and annotated list of articleshttp://www.torreyaguardians.org/assis...

Learn more about the work of Torreya Guardians: (75-min video)http://youtu.be/N_9SCSB5wfM and websitehttp://www.torreyaguardians.org

Learn more about "The Ghosts of Evolution" (5-min music video):http://youtu.be/A-kYjjphxJY

Click blue timecodes to advance to TOPICS in this video:

00:01 Climate adaptation as well as mitigation

02:30 50th anniversary of The Wilderness Act in 2014

03:23 Reservation, Restoration, Resilience, and Reconciliation Ecology

03:58 The Great March for Climate Action in 2014

06:12 Climate, Trees, and Legacy

08:27 Exploring the questions

09:06 QUESTION 1: How will trees move north as climate shifts?

14:23 Founding of Torreya Guardians and first action of assisted migration

19:22 Even common tree species will need help moving north

21:48 Book by Hazel Delcourt: Forests in Peril

25:20 Connie remembers her mother's stories of the Depression

27:08 "Leaf a Legacy"

30:43 QUESTION 1 (in detail): Assist the animals who disperse tree seeds?

33:09 QUESTION 2: Will forest fires in arid west defeat assisted migration?

37:06 QUESTION 3: How will trees move into and through wilderness areas?

39:44 Homework: What do trees mean to you? (Reflect on your life stages.)

LATER EPISODES:

Pt 02: "Lessons of Torrey Pine" http://youtu.be/6MQ9smQyJ5k
Pt 03: "Lessons of Joshua Tree" http://youtu.be/fZD8IlT8KU8