PLANET IN PERIL

Nature Research Will a changing climate make such events more frequent?  The answer? S ee footnote ! Lava flow from Kilauea south of Hawai'i Volcanoes Nat'l. Park. Photo by Ekrem Canli. A paper appearing in  Nature today,  suggests, t he 2018 eruption of the Kīlauea Volcano in Hawai’i may have been activated by extreme rainfall.  The findings indicate that rainfall should be taken into account when assessing volcanic hazards. Rainfall is known to trigger seismic events and can alter volcanic activity. However, observations of such effects are limited to the shallow subsurface of the volcano, and it is unknown whether rainfall can activate deep magma movement. The eruption of the Kīlauea Volcano in Hawai’i was complex and multi-stage, but its trigger has been unknown. From May to August 2018, rifts opened around Kīlauea and the summit exhibited explosive eruptions and caldera collapse.  Jamie Farquharson and Falk Amelung examined the impact of rainfall on the 20

by Larry Powell An Australian sun, shrouded in bushfire smoke. A public domain photo. As Kermit the frog famously said, “It isn’t easy being green.” And, in a world which is, by necessity, now consumed in the battle against a pandemic, it’s even harder. It’s almost as if that other “existential threat,” manmade climate change, has been forgotten, even tho it never really received the attention it deserved in the first place!   It’s both encouraging and bewildering to watch just how this latest, terrible and unprecedented chapter in our history, is playing out;   E ncouraging because so many of us are actually heeding the advice of our best minds in epidemiology by hand-washing, physical-distancing and self-isolating. This is surely saving countless lives from the deadly maw of the “Covid beast.” By contrast, our climatologists - who’ve been warning us for a generation that our planet is on a dangerous trajectory toward “hothouse Earth” if we don’t eliminate or drasticall

WORLD  LAND  TRUST Bush meat for sale in Togo. Photo by  PGskot As the news continues to be dominated by the Covid-19 crisis, CEO Jonathan Barnard reflects on the conversations about conservation that have arisen from the pandemic. Story here.

PHYS ORG Rainforest foliage in Nightcap National Park, NSW Wales, an international heritage site hit hard by the bushfires. Photo by Naught101 Recent wildfires in Australia torched more than 48,000 square miles of land (for context, more than 40 Riding Mountain National Parks). The fires impacted ecologically sensitive regions, including an area called the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Site. This region contains a vast concentration of living plants with fossil records from tens of millions of years ago, according to Peter Wilf. Story here. RELATED: The hand of man shows through once again in another climate catastrophe.

NATURE The amount of CO 2  released into the end-Triassic atmosphere from volcanic eruptions was likely comparable to the projected total amount of anthropogenic (manmade) CO 2  that will be emitted during the 21 st  century. The findings are published in  Nature Communications . Such large volumes of volcanic CO 2  likely contributed to end-Triassic global warming, sea level rise, and ocean acidification. The end-Triassic extinction (approximately 201 million years ago) resulted in the demise of large proportions of all marine and terrestrial species. It is thought that this extinction was caused by dramatic climate change and rising sea levels which, are known to have occurred at that time. Volcanic CO 2  released during the large volume Central Atlantic Magmatic Province eruptions has been considered as an important contributor to the process, but this is debated. Manfredo Capriolo and colleagues found evidence of abundant CO 2  in basaltic rocks from the end-Triassic Ce

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment . Stefan Müller (climate stuff) from Germany Fundamental changes to the fashion business model, including an urgent transition away from ‘fast fashion’, are needed to improve the long-term sustainability of the fashion supply chain, argue Kirsi Niinimäki and colleagues in a Review published in  Nature Reviews Earth & Environment . The fashion industry is the second largest industrial polluter after aviation, and accounts for up to 10% of global pollution. However, the industry continues to grow, despite rising awareness of the environmental impacts, in part owing to the rise of fast fashion, which relies on cheap manufacturing, frequent consumption, and short-lived garment use. The authors identify the environmental impacts of the fashion supply chain, from production to consumption, focusing on water use, chemical pollution, CO 2  emissions and textile waste. For example, the industry produces over 92 million tonnes

University of Göttingen Actual number of infections may already have reached several tens of millions. Story here.

nature Bushfire smoke shrouds the Blue Mountains, as seen from Sydney Harbour Bridge, Dec.,2019. Photo by Sardaka. The first study to estimate health effects from Australia’s extreme fires suggests that several thousand extra people were admitted to hospital. Story here.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism The summer’s Amazon fires were three times more common in the areas supplying cattle to abattoirs than elsewhere in the rainforest. Details here.

nature Updates on the respiratory illness that has infected hundreds of thousands of people and killed several thousand. Story here.

The Guardian Scientists are tracing the path of Sars-CoV-2 from a wild animal host – but we need to look at the part played in the outbreak by industrial food production. Story here.