#anthropogenic age

[whatifsandspheres]

I would like all of us to recognize that our planet is a living breathing being. More complex than any organism, and more complex than all of the ones alive now. It's more than just a rock in a time and place of orbit. It's dynamic. Again-- it's alive. When people talk about climate change they don't often recognize the perspective of how dynamic and multifaceted the planet is. There are cycles we haven't even begun to understand which are more powerful and defining than our mere little weather patterns. Even for our own species, for most of hominids existence, the planet knew different weather and climate patterns than what the puny last five generations have known. Even our own species of hominids, Homo sapiens sapiens has lived through a ~100kyear long ice-age! Our species has only been around for about 500-300ky, and only left the African continent within the last 100k years! That's not even long enough to develop significant genetic changes that would change the fact that we're primarily a generalized but tropical species! We need to get that into everyone's heads as fast as possible. Next, we must not diminish the effect of our global carbon emissions and ecosystem disturbances and destruction. Anthropogenic climate change factors are real and shouldn't be dismissed. What I'm saying is more important than that is the reminder of perspective and dynamism. Some people expect weather and climate patterns to be predictably repetitive and cyclical. That's not Earth. If you want to live in a climate controlled bunker, that's on you and your tin can, but not on Earth. On Earth even in a climate unaffected by our industrial pollutants and habitat destruction-- changes and fluctuations that are not easily predicted within one or several human generations are normal. There are other systems, there are other cycles and they have other compounding, neutralizing, or complex interacting and transmuting effects and manifestations.

Something deeply painful is the fact that seasons, especially fall, dont feel the same. Not because of individual maturity but because climate change has impacted the weather patterns so so so much that we cant even experience the same annual shifts that our ancestors have for centuries

I feel displaced, i yearn for the spring, summer, fall, and winter that i can barely remember experiencing

[transgenderer]

Early Neanderthal constructions deep in Bruniquel Cave in southwestern France

Very little is known about Neanderthal cultures1, particularly early ones. Other than lithic implements and exceptional bone tools2, very few artefacts have been preserved. While those that do remain include red and black pigments3 and burial sites4, these indications of modernity are extremely sparse and few have been precisely dated, thus greatly limiting our knowledge of these predecessors of modern humans5. Here we report the dating of annular constructions made of broken stalagmites found deep in Bruniquel Cave in southwest France. The regular geometry of the stalagmite circles, the arrangement of broken stalagmites and several traces of fire demonstrate the anthropogenic origin of these constructions. Uranium-series dating of stalagmite regrowths on the structures and on burnt bone, combined with the dating of stalagmite tips in the structures, give a reliable and replicated age of 176.5 thousand years (±2.1 thousand years), making these edifices among the oldest known well-dated constructions made by humans. Their presence at 336 metres from the entrance of the cave indicates that humans from this period had already mastered the underground environment, which can be considered a major step in human modernity.

The six structures are composed only of speleothems or fragments of speleothems (speleofacts), aligned and superimposed (A, B) (Extended Data Fig. 2a, b), or accumulated (C, D, E, F). A′ is a likely extension of A. Their contours are sometimes imprecise due to the calcite layer and stalagmitic regrowths that cover them. The orange spots represent the heated zones, all located on the construction elements. The red spot (structure B) represents a char concentration (mainly burnt bone fragments) on the ground (Extended Data Fig. 3, bottom left).

extremely old very strange neanderthal structures deep in a cave. one of the most exciting neanderthal results ive ever learned about, it so deeply impractical! there's no reason to go that deep in the cave, or to set fires on top of your weird stalactite pile, it feels certainly ritual!

[probablyasocialecologist]

Forest dieback means a decline in chronodiversity. This concept relates to biodiversity, or the variety of life on Earth, crudely measured as the number of species, or “species richness.” Conservation biologists make a precautionary assertion about that enumeration. They argue that safeguarding the maximum possible amount of genetic information created over millions of years of evolutionary history is wise and moral. The complement of species richness is temporal richness. The biosphere has further possibilities if it contains species of various evolutionary ages, species of various life strategies and life spans, and specimens of various ages within species. It is an ecological loss of doubled magnitude when a species-rich, age-rich rain forest becomes row upon row of monocultural, monochronic crops. Over the past two centuries, states and corporations—often working against local users and Indigenous activists—have divided the forested areas of the globe into binary zones: large industrial plantations of “ordinary” young trees and small inviolate preserves of “extraordinary” old trees. Before the awareness of anthropogenic climate change, preservation through segregation had its own logic—the logic of permanence. National groves were supposed to last forever. Now, in a time of fateful dynamism, these outdoor museums of olden trees may be doomed by their fixity.

[bonefall]

i believe a while back you mentioned that certain trees benefit from being cut but i cannot find the post? could you elaborate on that bc im Fascinated (curious eyes emoji)

That's coppicing! Funny you mention it actually, the next biome research post I'm gonna make (in the style of the moorland one) is British forests. It's not only good for an individual tree, coppiced woodland is like moorland in that it's an anthropogenic area that becomes extremely important for several animals. Butterflies, bluebells, nightjars...

But I'm getting ahead of myself. To coppice a tree, you cut it down to its stem, and then allow it to sprout back for a number of years. The length of time depends on the species and purpose you want the wood for. You can make perfect, straight poles for tools, beams for construction, bundles for firewood...

A coppiced tree does not die of old age. They can live forever, and produce wood for GENERATIONS. No need to clean-cut and devastate a woodland!

What's good about coppiced woodland is that it leaves the canopy clear. Clear canopy = sexy, sexy understorey. Lots of sunlight comes through which allows the growth of low-laying plants and berry bushes, lots of places for animals to eat and hide.

Downside tho is that if you don't come back and manage your beautifully coppiced grove, you will end up with a thick canopy of trees all the same age, blocking out the sun. That's bad. You're gonna see a recurring theme in all of this research that a TON of biomes in the UK REQUIRE human management and have really been suffering without proper stewardship.

Basically, coppicing without ongoing human management just results in a plantation (derogatory) with extra steps.

Lake cats did a lot more coppicing than modern Clan cats. Modern Clan cats don't really have the tools to cut hard trees like beech and hornbeam; they can only manage softer, thinner ones like birch and alder with their claws and stone tools. It's a lost art.

[eggtrolls]

Kinda crazy how one of the most lowkey but immediate consequences of climate change is making poison ivy rash worse. This isn’t a joke or an exaggeration — the anthropogenically increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are a direct cause of poison ivy plants not only getting bigger but also having higher levels of urushiol (cause of poison ivy dermatitis). And I don’t mean it’s gotten worse since the last Ice Age, I mean the urushiol concentrations in any random plant have doubled since the 1960s. We do not mention that enough in the ‘why we need to deal with climate change urgently’ messaging imho.

[simply-ivanka]

There is no climate emergency

A global network of over 1800 scientists and professionals has prepared this urgent message. Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.

Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming

The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.

Warming is far slower than predicted

The world has warmed significantly less than predicted by IPCC on the basis of modeled anthropogenic forcing. The gap between the real world and the modeled world tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.

Climate policy relies on inadequate models

Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as global policy tools. They blow up the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2. In addition, they ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.

CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth

CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.

Global warming has not increased natural disasters

There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, there is ample evidence that CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly.

Climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities

There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. If better approaches emerge, and they certainly will, we have ample time to reflect and re-adapt. The aim of global policy should be ‘prosperity for all’ by providing reliable and affordable energy at all times. In a prosperous society men and women are well educated, birthrates are low and people care about their environment.

[fatehbaz]

[T]hose who live and think at the shore, where the boundary between land and water is so often muddied that terrestrial principles of Western private property regimes feel like fictions, can easily understand how indebted we are to waterways. [...] [T]hese interstitial spaces underpin theories of not only liminality, but also adaptation, flow, and interconnection. Shorelines, indeed, do much to trouble the neat boundaries, borders [...] of the colonial imaginary [...].

Wading in the shallows long enough makes apparent that the shallows is not a place, but a temporal condition of submerging and surfacing through water. [...] And so thinking about shallows necessitates attention to the multiplicity of water, and the ways that tides, rivers, storm clouds, tide pools, and aquifers converse with the ocean to produce [...] archipelagic thinking.

For Kanaka Maoli, the muliwai, or estuary, best theorizes shoreline dynamics: It is not only where land and water mix, but also where different kinds of waters mix. Sea and river water mingle together to produce the brackish conditions that tenderly support certain plant and aquatic lives. It also informs approaches to aloha ʻāina, a Native Hawaiian place-based praxis of care. As Philipp Schorch and Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu explain,

the muliwai ebbs and flows with the tide, changing shape and form daily and seasonally. In metaphorical terms, the muliwai is a location and state of dissonance where and when two potentially disharmonious elements meet, but it is not “a space in between,” rather, it is its own space, a territory unique in each circumstance, depending the size and strength or a recent hard rain. [...]

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[T]he muliwai might be better characterized not as a space, but instead as a conditional state that undoes territorial logics. Muliwai expand and contract; withhold and deluge; nurture and sweep clean. It is not a space of exception. Rather, it is where we are reminded that places are never fixed or pure or static.

Chamorro poet Craig Santos Perez reminds us in his critique of US territorialism that “territorialities are shifting currents, not irreducible elements.” If fixity and containment limit, by design, how futures might be imagined beyond property, then the muliwai envisions decolonial spaces as ones of tenderness, care, and interdependence. [...]

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But what do we make of the muliwai, the shoal, or the wake, when its movements become increasingly erratic, violent, or unpredictable? [...] The disappearing glacier and the sinking island have become visual bellwethers for the so-called Age of the Anthropocene [...]. Because water has the potential to trouble the boundaries of humanness, it may furthermore push us to think through [...] categorical differences [...]. What happens when we turn our attention to the nonhuman in order to track anthropogenic mobilities; not to flatten the categories of human, but, rather, to consider the colonial mechanisms that produced hierarchies of bodies to begin with? [...] When we linger with waters at the shore, we open ourselves up to evidence that lands and waters are not distinct from each other, that they both flow and flee, and that keeping good relations is fundamental [...].

It is worth returning to the muliwai and its lessons in muddiness, movement, and care to think about the possibilities that emerge from the conditions of change that allow new life to take hold [...].

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Text by: Hi’ilei Julia Hobart. “On Oceanic Fugitivity.” Ways of Water series, Items, Social Science Research Council. Published online 29 September 2020. [Some paragraph breaks added by me.]

[fallingtowers]

amelia bedelia can you reverse the trend of anthropogenic climate change *watches in horror as a new ice age begins before my very eyes*

[thoughtlessarse]

A 2021 pledge by more than 100 nations to cut methane emissions from anthropogenic sources 30 percent by 2030 might not slow global warming as much as projected, as new research shows that feedbacks in the climate system are boosting methane emissions from natural sources, especially tropical wetlands. A new trouble spot is in the Arctic, where scientists recently found unexpectedly large methane emissions in winter. And globally, the increase in water vapor caused by global warming is slowing the rate at which methane breaks down in the atmosphere. If those feedbacks intensify, scientists said, it could outpace efforts to cut methane from fossil fuel and other human sources. Methane traps about 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, and scientists estimate it’s responsible for 20 to 30 percent of climate warming since the start of the industrial age, when atmospheric methane was at a concentration of about 0.7 parts per million. It has zig-zagged upward since then, spiking with the first fossil gas boom in the 1980s, then leveling off slightly before a huge surge started in the early 2000s. The amount of methane in the atmosphere reached about 1.9 ppm in 2023, nearly three times the pre-industrial level. About 60 percent of methane emissions are from fossil fuel use, farming, landfills, and waste, with the rest coming from rotting vegetation in wetlands in the tropics and Northern Hemisphere. In a paper published July 30 in Frontiers in Science, an international team of researchers wrote that “rapid reductions in methane emissions this decade are essential to slowing warming in the near future… and keeping low-warming carbon budgets within reach.”

continue reading

[americangeophysicalunion]

What is the age of groundwater venting at submerged karst sinkholes?

Dear AGU,  

Mysteries abound regarding ground water composition, inventories and fluxes. This is particularly true for the age of ground water venting from submarine and sublacustrine vents such as the submerged karst sinkholes in the Laurentian Great Lakes. Currently, we have no idea if the groundwater venting out of nearshore and offshore sinkholes in Lake Huron is days, years, centuries, or even many millennia old – even though this know-how is key to understanding aquifer recharge and turnover, assessing its contribution to lake levels and the potential for groundwater contamination and its transfer to the lake’s interior.

            Here onboard NOAA’s R/V Storm, divers have just brought up groundwater samples in airtight Van Dorn bottles from the bottom of Middle Island Sinkhole (~23 m depth). Working underneath the shade of an umbrella, research technician Tony Weinke and graduate student Cecilia Howard are carefully draining the groundwater samples into copper collection tubes that will be sealed without bubbles and exposure to atmosphere for sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) measurements. Since anthropogenic SF6 arose about 70 years ago, its presence or absence in venting groundwater will inform us if it is relatively young or quite old, respectively.   

— Bopi Biddanda and Tony Weinke, Annis Water Resources Institute, Grand Valley State University (https://www.gvsu.edu/wri/); Cecilia Howard and Diana Velazquez, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Michigan (https://lsa.umich.edu/earth); and Steve Ruberg, NOAA-Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab (https://www.glerl.noaa.gov/), Michigan.

[rmu-vincent]

This might seem like an...odd question but. What's the most unbearable situation you can imagine? In other words, what do you fear the most?

An odd question indeed. Such an unusual way to start a conversation, is it not? Taking all possible scenarios of the future into account is vital for successful and effective planning as well as goal setting. Having the ability to foresee every possible outcome seems like a dream that I would love to achieve one day, but truth be told, I am simply human. My abilities are limited.

However, the subject of fear and insecurity is one that has to be thoroughly explored in order for an individual to understand and be in control of themselves. Yet, 'the most unbearable situation' is a vague description; right now we are all suffering the consequences from anthropogenic issues, and I have not met anyone who would be my age and was not deeply disturbed by the state of the world. What I am implying here is that the global, more severe crisis—an apocalypse, if you will—is, without a doubt, one of the most terryfying scenarios I can think of.

In case you were craving a more personal answer, I might say that one of my most irrational and prominent fears had always been the fear of failure. It used to plague my mind when I was younger, but as the time went by, I realised that with the amount of effort I usually put into any task, failure is almost unattainable for me. After spending years on obtaining a certain career path, I truly believe there is not much that could influence my inevitable success.

[o-craven-canto]

This (from Wiki) is a graph of Earth’s temperature over the last 450,000 years. We are, in fact, in the middle of an ice age, the Quaternary Ice Age, defined by the year-round presence of ice at the poles (for now, *cough*). (For Earth’s history as a whole, permanent polar ice is in fact not the norm.)

The Quaternary Ice Age consists in a series of glacial periods, each about 50 to 100 thousand years long, in which glaciers may come down as far south as Paris and New York, separated by brief interglacials, each less than 20 thousand years, in which the polar ice withdraws behind the Polar Circles. That peak in temperature at the right edge of the graph is our own Holocene interglacial, which began 11,700 years ago. The whole of recorded history, everything from the development of agriculture onward, happened inside it, on the trail of a glacial period ten times longer. We could expect it to end, with the onset of another glacial period, some 10 or 20 thousand years from now, but the effects of anthropogenic climate change on this cycle are not yet predictable.

The last interglacial before ours is known as Eemian (in the European nomenclature) or Sangamon (in the American one). It was a very similar period of warming -- in fact, significantly hotter than our own times, with hippopotami wallowing in the Thames -- lasting from 130,000 to 115,000 years ago. Fifteen thousand years of mild weather, well long enough to fit a story as long and complex as the one from the first Levantine wheat farmers to us (and half again).

In that time, Homo sapiens was still a strictly African species, just making short-lived forays into the Near East; Eurasia belonged to our close cousins, Neandertals and Denisovans, and possibly to the last smatterings of Homo erectus in the southeastern jungles. Our dear brothers Neandertals, whose behavior is revealed ever more complex and imaginative, until their sudden disappearence in the middle of the next glacial period.

What were they up to, in the ice-free Europe of the long Eemian greenhouse, long enough for civilizations to rise and fall a dozen times, long enough to go from the stone sickle to the Mars rover? Most traces on the ground would have been erased when the glaciers came down again, the glaciers whose stupendous weight would carve giant lakes from Erie to Ladoga. What if they had already had better places to go to, when our conspecifics showed up in a land that was already depauperated by frost?

Why would anyone think the “little grey people” in UFOs are aliens? Have you any idea how many specific contingent events made up our evolutionary history, how vanishingly unlikely it would be for the human form to arise on another planet? Those are Neandertals, homesick after thirty thousand years of exile, and they’re coming home.

OK, fine, fine, a technological Neandertal civilization would have left massive evidence (intensive farming, driving out of megafauna, fossil fuel depletion, unusual metal concentrations) that we would have noticed, advancing glaciers would not have erased evidence so completely and in fact would not prevent us from seeing isotopic traces of technical activity, such a civilization would not have been confined to Europe and yet there is no trace whatsoever of pre-Homo sapiens human presence in the Americas or Australia, nor there is any trace of sapient activity in the Solar System older than the 20th century, and UFOs are most probably not real. Don’t take this too seriously, guys.

[lele-o-north]

World Dugong Day

Every year, on the 28th of May, it is celebrated the World Dugong Day! 🧜

Dugong is known as the sea cow (pic attached 🐮 - x). Why sea cow, you ask? These animals can be found in coastal environments feeding exclusively and extensively on seagrasses. The largest remaining population of Dugongs can be found in Australia (i), while the closest to the United Kingdom can be observed in the shallow waters of The Arabian Gulf (ii) 🌊

Why are dugongs important? 🧐

According to the Dugong & Seagrass Conservation Project (iii), dugongs contribute to maintaining balanced marine coastal environments, while also representing good indicators for local ecosystem health. Their presence is of course linked with seagrasses, which not only represents these herbivore mammals’ only source of food: seagrass sits at bottom of food chain in coastal environments (iv). Moreover, it provides important ecosystem services such as fish products, reduced erosion and flood protection (v). In other words, dugong presence is the manifestation of healthy ecosystem. Terrible news is: they are classified as vulnerable species (vi) 😰

Why are they declining? And how is climate change impacting their population? 😭

Dugongs are sensitive creatures not exempt from anthropogenic (modern age) disturbance. They have been largely hunted by humans for its meat, fat and oils, which caused significant population reduction (vi). Also, seagrass species are under extreme pressure due water quality variations largely driven by climate change (vii) and further human activity (viii). In addition, their slow reproduction rate and long life span (around 70 years) make them less resilient from not-environmentally friendly fishing practices (ix) 🎣

What can be done to support them? 💪

The Australian Great Barrier Reef and Marine Park Authority (i) provides the following recommendations:

1. Protect coastal habitats - Do not damage seagrass by dragging boats on underwater meadows and act against pollution, eutrophication and herbicide use deriving from land-based activities 🚜

2. Avoid use of mesh nets - Dugongs can get trapped in fishing nets 🥅

3. Boat responsibly - Dugongs are hard too spot while sitting on high speeding boats. Reduce speed while crossing shallow waters and seagrass meadows. If you spot one, it is likely it will not the only one in the area 🚢

4. Report - Just like for other sirenians, as well as cetaceans, it is essential to report injured/dead dugongs to local authorities ☎️

5. Donate - Dugong & Seagrass Conservation Project covers the conservation of dugongs and their associated seagrass ecosystems in eight countries in the Indo-Pacific region: Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mozambique, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste and Vanuatu. See more information here: https://www.dugongconservation.org/ 🙏

References:

i. https://www2.gbrmpa.gov.au/learn/animals/dugong#:~:text=Whether%20in%20protection%20areas%20or,flowing%20into%20creeks%20and%20rivers

ii. https://www.seaworldabudhabi.com/en/stories/meet-the-dugongs#:~:text=In%20the%20UAE%2C%20dugongs%20are,Marine%20Biosphere%20Reserve%20(MMBR)

iii. https://www.dugongconservation.org/about/about-dugongs-seagrass/

iv: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/marine-food-chain/7th-grade/

v: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5061329/#:~:text=Seagrass%20ecosystems%20play%20a%20multi,erosion%20and%20protection%20against%20floods

vi: https://nc.iucnredlist.org/redlist/amazing-species/dugong-dugon/pdfs/original/dugong-dugon.pdf

vii: https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/70204854#:~:text=A%20primary%20effect%20of%20increased,the%20patterns%20of%20sexual%20reproduction

viii: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4020-2983-7_24#citeas

ix: https://www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/env/pages/0fcb6106-b4e3-4f9f-8d06-f6f94bea196b/files/north-report-card-dugong.pdf

x (picture): https://theconversation.com/dugongs-looking-to-the-gentle-sea-creatures-past-may-guard-its-future-122902

[covenawhite66]

On level 3 – the key find was 35 crania of large herbivores, all from species with antlers or horns. Most were from aurochs and bison; five were deer; and two were narrow-nosed rhinoceroses (a now-extinct species that liked the same terrain as said vole before going extinct about 40,000 years ago

The archaeologists didn’t find the animals’ jaws and teeth in the cave. However, over a third of the crania they did find still had their antlers or horns, as well as the eye and nose bones. They were missing their cheekbones, though

Scientists speculate why with no consensus on the reason.

This work examines the possible behaviour of Neanderthal groups at the Cueva Des-Cubierta (central Spain) via the analysis of the latter’s archaeological assemblage. Alongside evidence of Mousterian lithic industry.

Level 3 of the cave infill was found to contain an assemblage of mammalian bone remains dominated by the crania of large ungulates, some associated with small hearths. The scarcity of post-cranial elements, teeth, mandibles and maxillae, along with evidence of anthropogenic modification of the crania (cut and percussion marks), indicates that the carcasses of the corresponding animals were initially processed outside the cave, and the crania were later brought inside.

This behaviour seems to have no subsistence-related purpose but to be more symbolic in its intent.

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

Links Roundup

The interwebs had so many interesting things to read this week! Here’s a links roundup of a few. 

Hurricanes Becoming So Strong That New Category Needed, Study Says

Where else would we start but at The Guardian, with an article about how much bigger and more intense the biggest, most intense hurricanes (and other cyclones) are becoming. You might call it doom and gloom, but the climate–adjacent scientist in me finds some weird satisfaction in seeing that, yes, retaining extra energy within the climate system because we’ve overinsulated it by adding extra greenhouse gas to the atmosphere is having spectacular effects. Honestly, we need to get our act together about reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to net zero ASAP (40 years ago would have been better). 

Should More British Homes Be Built Using Straw?

The BBC website had an interesting article about adding straw–packed panels to the exteriors of buildings (generally as they’re being newly constructed, given the size constraints) to improve their insulation. The straw is packed so tight that it’s fire resistant but not so tight that it doesn’t trap air inside the stuffing, thus serving effectively as insulation, vastly reducing how much you need to heat or cool a building. At the moment, here in Germany, they use thick slabs of Styrofoam, which release horrendously toxic fumes if the building catches on fire. Straw sounds like an interesting, non–toxic, sustainable alternative, especially if you consider how much waste straw is generated every time crops like wheat, rye, and even oilseed rape (Canola) are harvested. The main catch is that production of the panels would need to be scaled up quickly enough to matter in our fight against further climate change by reducing the amount of energy needed to keep buildings at a comfortable temperature. 

A US Engineer Had a Shocking Plan to Improve the Climate – Burn All Coal on Earth

This article, also on the BBC website, is about the opposite of trying to save energy, and it’s a quick history of our attitude toward anthropogenic global warming. Turns out, the sort of people who don’t want to admit it’s real today were the sort of people who used to think it would be great to burn all the fossil fuels to take the edge of the chillier aspects of climate. Bonkers. These were probably also the people who liked to think that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere would totally boost plant growth, and therefore crop yields, on a major scale. Also bonkers. 

Can Slowing Down Save the Planet?

The New Yorker published an interesting review of the book Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto, in which the Marxist philosopher Kohei Saito lays out the case for “degrowth communism”. He argues that green capitalism won’t be enough to save the planet—and us. It just looks good from a certain vantage point right now because it pushes the environmental and social costs of resource extraction and good production into the Global South. This allows consumers in the Global North to remain blissfully ignorant of the damage they’re (we’re) doing with their (our) unsustainable lifestyles and obsession with continuous economic growth. 

How Craftivism Is Powering 'Gentle Protest' for Climate

Back to the BBC for a fun article about “craftivism”. I’d never thought about this before, but it’s actually a thing that has touched almost all of our lives, even if we’re all thumbs with a terrible sense of aesthetics. Who hasn’t walked past a street pole or statue encased in guerilla knitwear? Even I knitted a pussyhat to wear to an anti–Trump demo on inauguration day (although I didn’t knit a pink one because I would rather die than wear pink, except utterly ironically). And—although perhaps I’m revealing my age here—who hasn’t seen at least a few squares of an AIDS quilt? On the whole, I think it’s good that people put their crafting skills to good political use. Otherwise—and this may be an unpopular opinion—our need to continually craft is just an extension of our unsustainable overproduction and overconsumption of goods. Everyone I know who knits (including myself) has already made more sweaters, hats, scarves, socks, and baby blankets than they can wear out in a lifetime and yet we keep on knitting. 

A Big Idea for Small Farms: How to Link Agriculture, Nutrition and Public Health

NPR had a great article that fits with our current podcast episode on regenerative farming with Solarpunk Farms. A literally existential crisis that we’re currently failing to tackle is that of how we grow food. The whole agricultural system is messed up from top to bottom. Food’s too cheap (and many people aren’t paid enough to be able to pay the real price of food, which is a whole other enormous issue). Because of this, farmers are pissed off and dependent upon subsidies from the governments they’d increasingly like to overthrow. Meanwhile, they’re frantically farming so intensively to try to bring in enough income that they’re destroying what’s left of our natural world. Their farming practices are degrading soils and polluting our air and waterways with fertilizers and petrochemical pesticides, destroying adjacent ecosystems and driving numerous species of plants and animals (including insects and other key invertebrates) to extinction. Related to this, we’re eating too much of the wrong stuff (meat, highly processed foods) and not enough of the rights stuff (fruits, nuts, seeds, and vegetables). Enter the solution: nutrition incentive programs that make it possible for people with lower incomes to obtain fruits and vegetables from smaller, regenerative farms. It’s a win for public health, a win for fruit and vegetable farming, which isn’t subsidized the way corn, soy, and wheat farming is, and it’s a win for the small percentage of food producers fighting not to be swallowed up by the Big Food companies who’ve all but monopolized the production of the food we eat. 

Tractor Chaos, Neo-Nazis and a Flatlining Economy: Why Has Germany Lost the Plot?  

Having started at The Guardian, we’ll bring things full circle and end there with a look at the situation here in Germany. Lots of us are increasingly concerned about the rise of the far right and... perhaps still flying under a lot of people’s radar... that angry farmers are going to end up ushering in the Fourth Reich. The op–ed says it all, while trying to maintain a sense of humor about it. As with so much else in the news these days, it makes you want to scream that we have more important things to be doing right now—that matter for the survival of billions of people—than withdraw into the hermit crab shell of authoritarianism. Their easy answers and general denial of the problems that need solving will only make life even more miserable for most people and allow all our existential problems, like widening wealth inequality, environmental devastation, and increasingly catastrophic climate change, to escalate even further before we begin dealing with them. 

Sci_Burst

To end on a happier note, here’s a shout out about Sci_Burst, a fun podcast from Australia about “science, popular culture, and entertainment”. They even have an episode on solarpunk. If you’re all caught up with us (including with all the extras on our YouTube channel), our feelings won’t be hurt if you give them a listen. 😊