Environmental News

Back to Tonga, relief flights and ships are arriving but in some cases impeded where aid-givers have tested positive for COVID, That bad boy complicates everything.

On a lighter note

https://olympics.nbcsports.com/2022/01/24/tonga-olympic-flag-bearer-pita-taufatofua-tsnuami-gofundme/

Mr. Tongan Olympic abs is fund raising. Good on him. I assume he will not be at the Winter Olympics, where more clothing is worn

 

To some eyes, ecosystem-services studies are really good. For others, a way to push numbers around that accomplishes not much. Whatever. But I have something to say about this one:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hyp.14442

In the backs of many minds is the idea that soil erosion is a big bad thing, and after it gets to the sea, no way it can be recovered. In fewer minds, the idea that phosphorus for agriculture may become very limiting later this century. Wetlands are the last bucket where such things can be passively but reclaim ably stored. In some sci fi future you might say, but there it is.

Every big brown river needs wetlands at 'the last stop', one might suggest. They won't all get it, and even 1 or 2 meters of sea-level rise complicates engineering on century or two timescales. Lastly, withdrawing those investments harms the beloved wetlands. Obviously.

There is no free lunch so they say. But I wonder if there are circumstances where this represents a well-priced, nutritious lunch.

 

We bounced Mo around in 2018 May for that. I don't know if a revision of 1.9 cubic miles of sediment per year has been published.

 

Second disease (after smallpox) nears global eradication:

Only 14 Cases of Guinea Worm Disease Were Reported in 2021

There used to be 3.5 million cases of guinea worm parasites per year, now it has fallen to 14. It is a 'clean water' thing, not vaccination. BTW most nematodes are microscopic. This one is not

 

Bringing to your attention maps of atmospheric chemistry:

Charts | Copernicus

With the example set to methane. Looks like rice and ruminants to me. We do wonder about high-latitude permafrost and methane hydrates, but hey, it's January. I have not learned yet how to look at August for example. I shall request assistance from site runners.

For interesting colors select nitrogen dioxide. Very daylight sensitive. Except in highest source areas.

 

Winter here has been long but not especially deep. I am indoors below 14 oC, and others surely have it worse. Such conditions make it hard to appreciate the value of ice persisting at earth's surface.

Yet there it is, and it teaches. Europe's iceman Otzi lived before 3000 BC, melted out, and teaches us. Other archaeology is emerging from European ice melting but all that is an aside.

Deeper ice elsewhere reveals other things. Our sun star episodically emits unusual amounts of energy, and that is stored as unusual isotopes in ice. I mention

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27891-4

while knowing it is no simple read. It claims that our sun star can send disruptive amounts of energy this way, even during lulls in sunspot cycles. When we had supposed that not to occur. A sunspot cycle lull is happening now, if you're interested.

It is a matter of interest how often our sun star goes way more energetic, because effects could much harm human technology. Deeper knowledge remains to be explored in Greenland and Antarctica ice corings, but their in situ is not now at risk. Were I the boss I'd call for many more ice cores with more spatial diversity. Later.

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Perspective

Some few-thousand-year ice records are melting in Europe (like Otzi's) and in S Amer (see Lonnie Thompson). Coring and storing those insures that knowledge will not be lost. Do it now.

Longer deeper ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica can illuminate earth history, possibly by technologies not yet developed. More of those are needed, but urgency to collect them has not been established.

 

Something to read about insects as feed:

https://www.science.org/content/article/insect-ranchers-pour-5-million-world-s-first-large-scale-genetic-breeding-facility

It may not need to be said that these Tenebrio larvae are smaller than they appear in the scary picture. Flat oat grains offer a sense of scale. They are also among the few insect species demonstrated to eat waste plastics. Which is a while 'nother story.

 

Easier to include this here

Judge awards millions to lawyers in Flint water settlement | AP News

than to refresh our Flint MI discussion
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In ice news, Thwaites thwarts:

Giant iceberg blocks scientists' study of 'Doomsday Glacier' | AP News

 

We also have an orbital re entry thread, but ... lazy to track it down.

Things fall when they dip their toes too deep in orbital drag. Have a look at one of the trackers:

https://aerospace.org/reentries

Of the 16 now listed on front page, 12 are starlinks. It may not be widely discussed that this new and growing constellation now dominates the falls as well. Not really sure why? Ran out of ion drive holder uppers?

It is widely discussed that starlinks interfere with ground-based astronomy. However a fall passing through your sky photo could spoil the image. And not limited to twilight hours.

 

For any who might have been planning to learn the names of 64 thousand tree species on Earth. I regret to inform you that there are probably about 9 thousand more unknown and unnamed.

Gatti et al (and al is a lot) in PNAS. The PitA here was gathering up all the knowns. It is a simple trick called 'Chao' to enumerateapproximately the unknowns.

Most of them it seems are in South America. So they may already have fallen to corn/soy/beef and you won't need to learn them anyway. Good News?

 

You are not wrong, having said "mostly". In Finland I was told tree taxonomy is easy there, for they have only three. I suppose that is wrong, but I chose not to dispute my hosts.

 

carnivorous trees? You have sparked my interest.

 

No list of Mass. trees is complete without White pine, Pinus strobus. Marked by the British Crown for (sailing) masts. Chopped to smaller (legal) sizes for floorboards. May have driven colonists to rebel more than taxed tea.