Smoke from rampant bush fires in Australia has been blanketing the cities of Sydney and Adelaide for almost two weeks. Although starting around mid-November, the sheer extent and ferocity of this year’s wildfires have climatologists pointing to climate change as a new culprit, adding fuel to the continent’s woes. Particularly intimidating wildfires have so far burnt hundreds of thousands of hectares to ashes while claiming six lives in the process.

Residents in various New South Wales regions are anxiously awaiting the approach of rampant fires, hoping that authorities will be able to curb their impact on local towns. The New South Wales Rural Fire Service has warned people in several affected areas that it is now too late to flee, as only greater danger awaits them if they were to attempt an evacuation at this stage of the chaos. A fire burning on the New South Wales coast has already consumed over 11,000 hectares, doubling in size as it marches inland.

Adding to the mayhem, residents elsewhere are being encouraged to leave areas authorities estimate will soon be beset by walls of fire raging through the wilderness, approaching suburban homes. Over 100 fires are currently burning on the continent, as hot, dry winds and a dearth of rain make conditions highly favourable for massive wildfires across Australia.

Part and parcel of colonial Australia

Fire has always defined historical Australia. Indeed, when James Cook first landed centuries ago, the local Aborigine population was in the process of systematically burning huge swathes of land as far as the eye could see. Observations in Cook’s journal state quite plainly that it appeared that the entire continent was ablaze. Author, mammalogist and palaeontologist Tim Flannery years ago offered his insights into the peculiar relationship Australia has with fire. His epic tale of the continent’s history, The Future Eaters, details the slow decimation of Australia’s megaherbivores at the hands of the Aboriginal population.

One upshot of this extinction was the resultant huge amount of dry matter left lying on the surface of the land, now out of the recycling loop. In the absence of animals eating millions of tons of plant matter each year, when intermittent wildfires did spring up, their effects became more deadly than anything that had gone before. Suffering the same fate as today’s modern Australians, the Aborigines developed a management approach today known as “fire-stick farming.” Hence Cook’s perception that the entire continent was ablaze, as Aborigines burnt vast swathes in one region, just as other areas were already regenerating after previous fires.

They did this, among other reasons, to compensate for the loss of grazers and browsers, which had historically kept the fuel load in balance. Since colonisers usurped the Aborigines’ ability to manage the extent and ferocity of such unnaturally intense fires, Australia has suffered repeated bouts of wildfire so intense, that many lives, houses and even towns have been lost over the centuries.

Particularly deadly bush fires in Australia are often precipitated by hot and windy or prolonged drought conditions. Such environmental contributors led to the Black Saturday fires in 2009 that killed 180 people. Previously, December 2006 gave rise to deadly and rampant fires, East Victoria suffered shocking fire damage in 2003, and in 1983 the “Ash Wednesday” wildfires startled the world as it watched Australia burn uncontrollably.

The Australian NGO, Climate Council, has observed that climate change induced by global warming has had a particularly devastating effect on the Australian continent, making for both more frequent and far more severe wildfires. Although hugely exacerbated after the industrial revolution, some observers note that the current wildfires are but the modern result of practices humans began on the continent thousands of years ago.

A continent defined by fire

Australia is largely populated by what scientists term scleromorphic plant species. The term refers to several typical attributes of such species, but also that they have reproductive methodologies able to withstand fire or, indeed, actually favoured by fire. Even though fire fighting preparedness is markedly higher on the continent than in most other nations, the combination of dry litter, combustible living vegetation and climate change-induced intensity makes wildfires in Australia especially devastating.

While there is still scientific debate as to whether the world is currently in an El Niño cycle (a persistent and intermittent weather pattern that means drought conditions for many southern hemisphere countries), the reality in Australia right now is one of unapproachable, rampant fires that consume everything in their path. For the average Australian citizen, exact scientific explanations mean little, as many now fear for their homes and the safety of their families.

Queensland and other regions remain on a knife-edge, as authorities apply more resources to quell blazes, while everything about the weather and the predictions for this summer’s weather as a whole, counts heavily against them.

L'articolo Australia Ablaze: Sydney Under a Cloud of Smoke Due to Bush Fires proviene da InsideOver.

Oil, electricity, the internet – all integral pillars of modernity. But our dependence on the planet’s most primordial resource – water – trumps them all. Oceans dominate the globe, but an infinitesimal proportion of the world’s wet stuff is fit for human consumption. As populations boom and the atmosphere heats, that scant supply is dwindling ever faster. We’re facing a full blown water crisis, experts warn, and there’s precious little time to reverse the trend.

Water is the great equaliser. Old or young, rich or poor, hydration unites us. Access to clean water is as basic a human right as you’ll find – but every day 2.1bn people struggle to source it. Water privation is worse in the developing world, but no single nation is sheltered from the looming crisis. In the planet’s warmest places, like the Middle East, deposits are running dry at an alarming rate; and in countries where supplies remain steady, there is evidence of sliding quality.

These are the findings of a new report by the World Bank, which examines the health, environmental, and economic consequences of diminishing clean water reserves. In poorer countries, up to 80% of domestic waste is released into natural waterways without treatment, the researchers found, infesting drinking supplies with faecal bacteria and other dangerous pathogens. As a nation’s GDP increases, so too does the presence of nitrogen (mostly from agricultural runoff), pharmaceutical pollutants, and plastic waste in its drinking water. 

‘Blue baby syndrome’, a fatal infant infliction caused by a lack of bodily oxygen, is but one condition closely correlated to worsening water quality, the report concluded. An increasing paucity of fresh water strains local food supplies, also, with harvest yields dropping sharply as salt concentrations surge. Rising sea-levels, growing dependence on coastal extraction, and mounting urban pollution drive down the fertility of farmland. The consequences are unfathomably grave – everyday food enough for 170 million people, the population of Bangladesh, is lost to contaminated water. 

Climate change is driving the crisis. With rising temperatures comes greater evaporation, depleting water reserves, and intensifying droughts. The warmer atmosphere is also holding more vapour, increasing the frequency of acutely heavy rainstorms, which, in turn, cause greater flooding and fresh water contamination. Explosive population growth is not helping matters. By 2025, 8bn people will roam the planet. Half will live in water-deprived areas, with a quarter facing what the World Resources Institute (WRI) describes as “extremely high” water stress. 

Jostling for control of dwindling supplies, water-driven conflict is predicted to intensify. Already wars are being fought for drinking rights, experts say. Amid Islamic State’s explosive mid-decade expansion across Iraq and Syria, Sunni militants seized control of dams along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, depriving Shi’ite holy cities like Karbala and Najaf of fresh water. Global warming will all but drain these waterways by 2100, “making conflict over what remains even more tempting if contested political control returns to the [area],” said Sagatom Saha of the Atlantic Council, a think tank.  

In Jordan, a lethal convergence of population growth and climate change is driving water availability to the brink. As rising temperatures bake the land, years of regional strife have driven hundreds of thousands of refugees to settle in the Middle Eastern state. Since 2006, the population has nearly doubled, putting unbearable stress on the underground aquifers which provide two-thirds of Jordan’s water. The country has twelve of these subterranean reservoirs – ten are being pumped at a deficit. More sustainable avenues exist, like the desalination of seawater, but lacking the fossil fuel wealth of its neighbours, Amman simply cannot afford to pursue such measures.

A nation not lacking liquidity (in any sense of the word) is the United States. With an economy 500 times the size of Jordan’s, and 60-fold its fresh water availability, Americans might hope to be sheltered from the crisis. They are not. While ‘day zero’ scenarios – when the taps run dry – are not a reality, from coast-to-coast there are issues of water quality. In Flint, Michigan, and Newark, New Jersey supplies are contaminated with lead-based toxins; and in California, almost a million people struggle with groundwater depletion and chemical contamination.

The water crisis is not going unchallenged, however. In an effort to address local limitations, large scale aid programmes are funnelling billions into regional sustainability projects. Jordan’s creaking water infrastructure is bolstered by $700m in US support, and around 60,000 handpumps – long considered a symbol of development aid – are installed in sub-Saharan Africa every year. But despite the investment, scarcely half of Jordan’s clean water comes from renewable sources – and at any one time, 40% of African handpumps are in need of repair.  

To truly turn the tide, experts say a more sweeping approach is needed. “At a high level, adaptation strategies must include planning responses to water demands increases, overhauling some of the current water policies, and investing in research and modeling of climate risk,” says Jose Pablo Ortiz Partida, a climate expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Also important is providing water education and training to farmers and the general public”.

Only when local, regional, and state actors are working in synchrony, can the world’s water crisis be adequately addressed. All efforts must be in tandem with broader climate change strategies – the two issues are inextricably linked. Until that happens, independent of location, wealth, or age, we’re all at risk.      

L'articolo The World Is Facing A Water Crisis proviene da InsideOver.

As the days lengthen and weather warms with the new season, a usual sight is the common bee – buzzing in his own bustle. Yet, as humble and inconspicuous as he may seem, he is crucial to the Earth’s ecosystem and humanity.

A study by York University published this month in the Journal of Insect Conservation found that the North American bumblebee is facing imminent extinction in Canada. According to its findings, the number of areas that the bee would be found in the country has decreased by 70%, and when compared to other species of bees, they have decreased by 89%. The researchers ranked the threat of extinction at the highest and most at-risk classification right before extinction.

Meanwhile across the seas, a recent report by the National Biodiversity Centre in Ireland said that a third of all Irish bee species could be extinct by 2030.

Yet this is not shocking nor is it something new. In the past few years, there has been an alarming and inexplicable disappearance of bees all around the world, with more far-reaching ramifications than simply what meets the eye.

Carl Chesick, the Executive Director of Center for Honeybee Research, a non-profit organisation in North Carolina, USA said: “Bees provide pollination for virtually all flowering plants, having co-evolved with many of them for 50-100 million years. In many industrial mono-culture agriculture systems, it is now necessary to rent/import honeybee colonies to ensure pollination and crop yield. This is because herbicides have been employed to kill all competition to the cash crop, and insecticides have killed the local native pollinators. Except when crop such as melons, berries, almonds, cherries, etc. are flowering, the vast expanses are “food deserts” for the bees. They must be removed as soon as the crops are pollinated or they will starve or be killed by subsequent spraying.”

Scientists have been mystified by the disconcerting bee disappearance and are still unable to pinpoint the true reason for the rapidly dwindling bee population. To date, the bee’s demise remains an amalgamation of mystery and supposition.

“We do not know why bees are dying at an unprecedented rate, but it’s safe to assume it’s something we (humankind) are causing,” Chesick explained.

“Speculation tries to be all-inclusive in asserting that it is a combination of climate change; loss of habitat; new diseases and parasites such as varroa mites which have recently jumped species; and chemical contamination of the environment. My own suspicion is that it stems from the massive use of chemicals whose interactions we haven’t even begun to analyse. I think these may be causing an auto-immune response in the bees similar to AIDS – but this is conjecture on my part.”

At present, there are no concrete solutions or quick fixes for the growing epidemic. And even if the absence of bees does not directly correlate to a result in a global famine for mankind, it is likely to result in shortages and soaring food prices.

“We need answers in a methodical elimination to find the exact cause,” Chesick admitted. “This would involve extensive laboratory testing of samples – something exorbitantly expensive until one considers the alternative to our future food security. We haven’t really started. Also, the powerful agro-chemical industry has a stake in obfuscating any blame they may share. Much of the research funding available to universities is funded by these corporations.”

L'articolo New Study Warns that Bees are Facing Extinction proviene da InsideOver.