If Everyone Ate Beans Instead of Beef

Ecoanxiety is an emerging condition. Named in 2011, the American Psychological Association recently described it as the dread and helplessness that come with “watching the slow and seemingly irrevocable impacts of climate change unfold, and worrying about the future for oneself, children, and later generations.”

Soybeans in a silo at a cattle feed in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

It’s not a formal diagnosis. Anxiety is traditionally defined by an outsized stress response to a given stimulus. In this case, the stimulus is real, as are the deleterious effects of stress on the body.

This sort of disposition toward ecological-based distress does not pair well with a president who has denied the reality of the basis for this anxiety. Donald Trump has called climate change a fabrication on the part of “the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” He has also led the United States to become the only G20 country that will not honor the Paris Climate Accord, and who has appointed fossil-fuel advocates to lead the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency.

Read the story from The Atlantic by James Hamblin  - “If Everyone Ate Beans Instead of Beef.”

Greenland villagers evacuated after iceberg comes to town

GREENLAND - Residents of a village in Greenland are nervously watching the weather forecast after an 11 million-tonne iceberg floated almost to their doorstep.

A massive iceberg caused the evacuation
of the Greenland village of Innarsuit.

The iceberg grounded itself on the sea floor near the small village of Innaarsuit, in northwestern Greenland, which has a population of 169.

Their fate could depend entirely on the weather forecast.

Read the story from The Age - “Greenland villagers evacuated after iceberg comes to town.”

Strange clouds deliver much-needed rain to central Victoria

Dion Costigan was watching his boys skate in Eaglehawk, in central Victoria, when he turned and saw something in the sky like nothing he had ever seen before.

A shelf cloud formation looms over Bendigo
 as Victoria receives much-needed rain.

"I just thought, wow!" he said on Saturday morning.

"The line, the formation of clouds just had amazing colours in it, these light greys all the way down to black.”

Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Tom Delamotte said the cloud mass Mr Costigan and many other social media users captured was a shelf cloud formation.

Read the story by Joe Hinchillfe from The Age - “Strange clouds deliver much-needed rain to central Victoria.”

OUR FUTURE: Climate change and summer sports.

For any Australian sporting enthusiast, summer means cricket at the MCG, watching the world’s best tennis players at the Australian Open or simply appreciating the outdoors as you play sport yourself. 

Humans are not designed with withstand increasingly extreme heat.

But no matter what you are doing, it’s always extremely hot. What will happen to our sporting calendar as the climate continues to warm? I fear cancellation of sport events could become commonplace.

Last year, the Australian Open had to abandon play on a number of matches as temperatures soared past 40 degrees during qualifying rounds. Ticket sales have steadily reduced by thousands over the past few years as spectators opt to avoid the heat.

In February, in a first for both NSW Cricket and Rugby League, all graded games were cancelled one weekend due to dangerously hot weather.

Our bodies aren’t designed to withstand increasingly extreme heat. Health experts are concerned for a new generation of respiratory illness if temperatures continue to rise. Dr Liz Hanna said we’ll end up in a “contest of who copes best in the heat more than who is best in their sport”.

Perhaps we could be headed for a future of indoor sport or the rescheduling summer classics to winter months. But it’d be un-Australian to let our sporting events be sidelined this summer, so we need to start making some changes. 

Read the special report in The Advocate - “OUR FUTURE: Climate change and summer sports.”

Conservationists losing fight to save Alaska wildlife refuge from drilling

Washington: Carl Portman remembers watching, heartbroken, from Anchorage in 2005 as a US Senate effort to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge lost by two votes.

Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski has supported drilling
 in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge throughout her
political career. Her vote may be decisive. 

Now, 12 years later, another effort to open up the reserve to oil and gas drilling is working its way through Congress. And this time, the political winds have shifted.

Portman, now a top official of a pro-drilling group, has seen oil revenue improve the schools, roads and hospitals in Alaska, his home state. He said he was cautiously optimistic about the drilling measure, which is included in a sweeping bill to overhaul the tax code. Environmental activists and their allies in Congress, on the other hand, are on the cusp of forever losing the decades-long political battle over the refuge.

Read Lisa Friedman’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Conservationists losing fight to save Alaska wildlife refuge from drilling.”

Another e-flow - but do we need it?

We're on the river most days, so we were watching for the environmental flush due to start on Saturday. By Sunday morning it was creeping over the sandbar and The Boss wasn't all that happy about it.

The next environmnental flow is happening but you can see
a dark strip low along the far bank, still damp from the last one....

He reckons the south- and east-facing banks are still damp from the last e-flow, which happened over a month in June to late July. That followed an autumn flush back in February for a month - now there's this one for 23 days and another one planned for November.

There's a few fingers in the e-flow pie: the water is owned by the Commonwealth Government after its program of buy-backs to meet the targets of the Murray Darling Plan and the responsibility for that water rests with the Environmental Water Holder.

Our Catchment Management Authority then works with the Water Holder to schedule the flows appropriately and Goulburn Murray Water, which runs the storages, actually releases it and warns its irrigators with pumps on the river that a flush is coming.

Read the story by The General on Country News - “Another e-flow - but do we need it?”