The Elephant
The climate change and environmental emergency: a comprehensive resource for journalists, politicians, policy makers, activists and citizens
The ElephantThe climate change and environmental emergency: a comprehensive resource for journalists, politicians, policy makers, activists and citizens
Visit: frontiersin.org
Frontiers | The methane imperative
2024-08-29 (or before) in FrontiersAnthropogenic methane (CH4) emissions increases from the period 1850–1900 until 2019 are responsible for around 65% as much warming as carbon dioxide (CO2) h...
Tagged under: Methane | Global Warming
Frontiers | From Publications to Public Actions: The Role of Universities in Facilitating Academic Advocacy and Activism in the Climate and Ecological Emergency
2024-08-02 (or before) in FrontiersThousands of universities have made climate emergency declarations; however the higher education sector is not rising to the collective challenge with the ur...
Tagged under: Climate Emergency Declarations | Science | Education | Activism
From Publications to Public Actions: The Role of Universities in Facilitating Academic Advocacy and Activism in the Climate and Ecological Emergency
2024-03-09 (or before) in FrontiersThousands of universities have made climate emergency declarations; however the higher education sector is not rising to the collective challenge with the urgency commensurate with scientific warnings. Universities are promoting an increased focus on sustainability through their research, teaching and their own institutional footprints. However, we suggest that such initiatives will be insufficient to catalyse the required transformations in our societies and economies because of i) the time lags inherent in education and research pathways to impact, and ii) their failure to address either real-world political processes or the f...
Tagged under: Climate Justice | Science | Activism | Sustainability
CERESMIP: a climate modeling protocol to investigate recent trends in the Earth's Energy Imbalance
2024-02-19 (or before) in FrontiersThe Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) project has now produced over two decades of observed data on the Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI) and has revealed substantive trends in both the reflected shortwave and outgoing longwave top-of-atmosphere radiation components. Available climate model simulations suggest that these trends are incompatible with purely internal variability, but that the full magnitude and breakdown of the trends are outside of the model ranges. Unfortunately, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (Phase 6) (CMIP6) protocol only uses observed forcings to 2014 (and Shared Socioeconomi...
Tagged under: Earth Energy Imbalance
Biological responses to change in Antarctic sea ice habitats
2023-12-31 (or before) in FrontiersSea ice is a key habitat in the high latitude Southern Ocean and is predicted to change in its extent and duration in coming decades. The sea-ice cover is instrumental in mediating ocean-atmosphere exchanges and provides an important substrate for organisms from microbes to predators. Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba, are reliant on sea ice during key phases of its life cycle, particularly during the larval stages, as feeding grounds and refuge from their predators, while other small grazers, including copepods and amphipods, either live in the brine channel system or find food and shelter at the ice-water interface and in raf...
Tagged under: Fish | Antarctic | Oceans
“No research on a dead planet”: preserving the socio-ecological conditions for academia
2023-10-06 (or before) in FrontiersEmergency declarations, most academics continue to operate according to 'businessas-usual'. However, such passivity increases the risk of climate impacts so severe as to threaten the persistence of organised society, and thus HEIs themselves. This paper explores why a maladaptive cognitive-practice gap persists and asks what steps could be taken by members of HEIs to activate the academy. Drawing on insights from climate psychology and sociology, we argue that a process of 'socially organised denial' currently exists within universities, leading academics to experience a state of 'double reality' that inhibits feelings of accoun...
Tagged under: Climate Change Impacts | Sustainability
“Heading for Extinction”: the representation of scientific knowledge in Extinction Rebellion's recruitment talks
2023-09-11 (or before) in FrontiersThis study examines how the climate action group Extinction Rebellion represents scientific knowledge in the public presentations used to recruit new members. Using a combination of semi-structured interviews and recordings of the talks and comparing across four versions, we examine how the talk developed and four distinct modes of science communication were identified. This analysis also highlights that many factors shape the mode of science communication employed, with the outcome particularly influenced by the editors' concept of how to best motivate action, as well as changes in the wider communication environment and evolut...
Tagged under: Climate Change | Activism | Extinction Rebellion | Extinction
Emergence of Large-Scale Hydrodynamic Structures Due to Atmospheric Offshore Wind Farm Wakes
2023-08-21 (or before) in FrontiersThe potential impact of offshore wind farms through decreasing sea surface wind speed on the shear forcing and its consequences for the ocean dynamics are investigated. Based on the unstructured-grid model SCHISM, we present a new cross-scale hydrodynamic model setup for the southern North Sea, which enables high-resolution analysis of offshore wind farms in the marine environment. We introduce an observational-based empirical approach to parameterize the atmospheric wakes in a hydrodynamic model and simulate the seasonal cycle of the summer stratification in consideration of the recent state of wind farm development in the sout...
Tagged under: Oceans | Electricity Grid | Wind Power
Effects of agroforestry on grain yield of maize (Zea mays L.)—A global meta-analysis
2023-05-17 (or before) in FrontiersDiscovery of plastic-degrading microbial strains isolated from the alpine and Arctic terrestrial plastisphere
2023-05-10 (or before) in FrontiersIncreasing plastic production and the release of some plastic in to the environment highlight the need for circular plastic economy. Microorganisms have a great potential to enable a more sustainable plastic economy by biodegradation and enzymatic recycling of polymers. Temperature is a crucial parameter affecting biodegradation rates, but so far microbial plastic degradation has mostly been studied at temperatures above 20°C. Here, we isolated 34 cold-adapted microbial strains from the plastisphere using plastics buried in alpine and Arctic soils during laboratory incubations as well as plastics collected directly from Arct...
Tagged under: Arctic
Scientists warning on the ecological effects of radioactive leaks on ecosystems
2023-03-09 (or before) in FrontiersA nuclear leakage or tactical nuclear weapon in a limited war could cause immense and long-lasting ecological consequences beyond the direct site of exposure. We call on all scientists to communicate the importance of the environmental impact of such an event to all life forms on Earth, including humankind. Changes to ecosystem structure and functioning and species extinctions would affect the biosphere for an unknown time frame. Radiation could trigger cascade effects in marine, atmospheric and terrestrial ecosystems of a magnitude far beyond human capabilities to mitigate or adapt. Even a "tactical nuclear war" could alter pla...
Tagged under: Nuclear Power | Extinction | Biodiversity Loss
Toward a Taxonomy of Climate Emotions
2022-01-19 (or before) in FrontiersThere is a growing evidence that emotions shape people’s reactions to the climate crisis in profound but complex ways. Climate emotions are related to resilience, climate action, and psychological well-being and health. However, there is currently a lack of research about the array of various climate emotions. There is also a need for more integration with general research about emotions. This article conducts a preliminary exploration of the taxonomy of climate emotions, based on literature reviews and philosophical discussion. The term emotion is used here in a broad sense, as is common in climate emotion research. Becau...
Tagged under: Climate Change | Health | Climate Anxiety and Grief
Commentary: Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
2021-07-11 (or before) in FrontiersCommentary: Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
Tagged under: Climate Change | Sustainability
Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
2021-01-13 (or before) in FrontiersWe report three major and confronting environmental issues that have received little attention and require urgent action. First, we review the evidence that future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than currently believed. The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms — including humanity — is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts. Second, we ask what political or economic system, or leadership, is prepared to handle the predicted disasters, or even capable of such action. Third, this dire situation places an extraordinary responsibility on s...
Tagged under: Economics | Predictions | Climate Change | Health | Sustainability | Extinction
An Overview of Seabed Mining Including the Current State of Development, Environmental Impacts, and Knowledge Gaps
2020-11-15 (or before) in FrontiersRising demand for minerals and metals, including for use in the technology sector, has led to a resurgence of interest in exploration of mineral resources located on the seabed. Such resources, whether seafloor massive (polymetallic) sulfides around hydrothermal vents, cobalt-rich crusts on the flanks of seamounts or fields of manganese (polymetallic) nodules on the abyssal plains, cannot be considered in isolation of the distinctive, in some cases unique, assemblages of marine species associated with the same habitats and structures. In addition to mineral deposits, there is interest in extracting methane from gas hydrates on c...
Tagged under: Cobalt | Minerals | Methane | Papua New Guinea | Water Resources | Biodiversity Loss
Beyond “Net-Zero”: A Case for Separate Targets for Emissions Reduction and Negative Emissions
2020-03-05 (or before) in Frontiers• Targets and accounting for negative emissions should be explicitly set and managed separately from existing and future targets for emissions reduction. • Failure to make such a separation has already hampered climate policy, exaggerating the expected future contribution of negative emissions in climate models, while also obscuring the extent and pace of the investment needed to deliver negative emissions. • Separation would help minimise the negative impacts that promises and deployments of negative emissions could have on emissions reduction, arising from effects such as temporal trade-offs, excessive offsettin...
Tagged under: Net Zero | Carbon Offsetting
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