It is estimated that 15 million people live in areas which would be flooded, should glacial lakes collapse. As global warming increases the temperatures in these areas, these glacial lake collapses are only going to get more common.
In 1941, lake Palcacocha (which sits high in the Cordillera Blanca range of the Peruvian Andes) broke its banks. The city of Huaraz lies beneath it, and when it collapsed 10 million cubic meters of water was dropped on the city. Apart from changing the areas geography permanently, at least 1800 people died, and possibly as high as 4500.
We are making the collapse of these glacial lakes more likely as time goes by, by our increasing of carbon in the atmosphere – clearly it is not only low lying settlements which are in danger from climate related flooding.
There is a lot of wildlife that lives in rivers, as well as most species having to drink regularly
The Nyamwammba river, which runs through the Rwenzori mountains – in central western Uganda, having been flooding in an extreme way in recent years. This is enough of a problem, as there are many settlements among other things, that lie along the rivers course.
However, there is a bigger problem. Along the river course, are copper tailing pools from an old Canadian mining operation. However, these are being flooded and eroded with increasing frequency. Why is this a problem? Because these elements are bad for wildlife and human alike.
Having been washed into the river, they have found that they have infected most of the water supply and soil of the valley, with these deadly heavy metals. The cancer rates in populations living near these pools are far higher than normal, and there is a fear amongst scientists, that as flooding increases due to climate change, the heavy metal pollution will get worse, and therefore also the people affected.
Can the company be charged for the clean-up? Perhaps, at the time of the mines creation Uganda did not have strict enough environmental rules, though one would hope that a credible company would not have to be forced to clean up after themselves.
While these fuels power much of the creation of electricity around the world, as well as most transport and heating, they all need to either be left in the ground or 100% of their emissions. Below is a roundup of a group of articles of importance on these subjects.
Uk’s £22 billion carbon capture pledge follows surge in lobbying by fossil fuel industry, records show
Cattle in a newly deforested area on the edge of more Amazon rainforest – threatened in the future? photo credit Alice Mitchel
The problem with stopping deforestation, is that for the majority of the world we are far removed from rainforests (from where I sit in the UK, I would have to travel 3250km (over 2000 miles) to the nearest rainforest, which is an area on mainland India). Indeed, rainforest is generally something that only survives in developing countries.
This means that, for most people, they either live far removed from the rainforest, and so cant see it impacting them, or they live near a rainforest, but are struggling to provide for their family and those around them. It is quite true that many people in both the first and third world would like the rainforest to survive – indeed, should you talk to people in the west, many are very worried about the survival of the great apes, who are rapidly loosing land.
The problem is simple. Those living in the third world are living hand to mouth, so unless they work in tourism, the rainforest is often an inconvenience that makes life harder.
In 2023 a total of 6.4 hectares of forest were destroyed – more than 25,000 square miles. However, more concerning is the fact that 62.6 million hectares of forest (almost quarter of a million square miles) was degraded – for road building, logging, and forest fires. Degraded land is often less good for carbon storage, as well as conservation of the worlds wild species. It is often, then not long, before someone comes along a removes the rest of the plants so that the land can be used for something else.
And what was this deforestation for (other than logs)? Beef, soy, palm oil paper and nickel.
The Brazilian Amazon is one of the bright spots, where since the election of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, deforestation has fallen 62%. Unfortunately, in the same time period, Indonesia’s deforestation is up 57%
It seems hard to see how the world will meet its goal of cutting deforestation to zero by 2030 as most countries have pledged. Also, despite reductions in deforestation, the Amazon has had one of the hardest years in terms of forest fires – something that only gets more likely as rainforests are lost, and climate change increases the temperature in many parts of the world. It is a sad fact, that there is often not a great deal of temperature difference between a rainforest which is functioning, and one that dries out and becomes a fire hazard.
Having said all this… a study in Indonesia has found that controlled low-intensity logging doesn’t have to negatively impact a forest in terms of carbon storage or food availability – this in turn means that much wildlife can survive.
The problem often is that if the land is in private hands, then low- intensity logging is not going to happen. If the landowner has decided to deforest, they will raze the land. In national parks, in theory low intensive logging would be possible, but this would require people to control the logging, and this is the issue that we have in the first place. Unfortunately, despite the pledge by 140 countries, deforestation is coming back.
In a related subject, the Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto has stated that palm oil expansion won’t deforest because palm oil has leaves. There are many issues with this, but perhaps primarily amongst them, when forests are cut down, they are usually replaced with grass lands for grazing cattle – these are also covered in leaves. This is obviously stupid – it may well be a better thing, that the rainforest is going to be replaced with plantations, but it has been shown that palm oil plantations take up a tiny proportion of the carbon that rainforests take up.
In another article, there was a finding that macaques living in palm oil plantations have an alarming infant mortality. Unfortunately, these macaques are not unique in being threatened by palm oil, but others include orangutans, elephants, tigers, pangolins, bonobos, and Irrawaddy dolphins.
While palm oil may be a better vegetable oil than other crops, it still looks like it will lead to us loosing most of our rainforests, unless a grip on this is found.
I have spent a great deal of time, recently, working on a variety of areas of the website that I hope to become important in the near future (including members areas). During this time, I miss writing on these subjects, so I would open tabs on news articles that had caught my eye – when I turned my attention back, there were more than 1000 tabs. Several hundred are wildlife news, which I will deal with in the near future, but the rest have been grouped. There is a long video embeded in the bottom of the page, which gives similar information but in more detail, if you would prefer (produced by the electric viking)
This grouping is stories about Toyota, and its various moves which appear to clearly show their moves to make the climate worse not better.
Coastal Australia is having another flare-up where locals are suggesting that wind turbines are killing whales. If this were the case, it would mean that those who want to save the planet would need to choose between climate change and conservation of whales.
Pictures put up, include images of whales on fire, among others – paid for Newcastle adn Port Stephens Game Fish Club. They suggested that the posters highlighted risks that were known for the whales, but there is no credible evidence that wind turbines have any impact on whales (except during building, but as the picture shows this is short-lived). Indeed Quentin Hanich who is the editor of the academic journal Marine Policy recently had to spend a week debunking a fake article that purported to come from his publication, which claimed that 400 whales would die a year, if a proposed wind farm went ahead. While the facebook post where it originated was taken down, the fake articles can be written far faster than they can be taken down. This offshore wind farm in New south Wales, is opposed by everyone from locals to MPs from outside the region – usually because the are opposed to renewable energy development.
This seems short-sighted- while Australia does have a large coal industry, most is exported (only around 30% is used in the country, and coal in electricity generation is now so much more expensive than almost any renewable generation, that its days are numbered) and of Japan,South Korea, Taiwan,and India which takes the majority, only India does not have a 2050 pledge of zero carbon – so if those promises are to be kept, the market for most of the coal will disappear within the next 25 years.
Opposition has been fanned by the coalition, and people like Baraby Joyce (a renewable energy opponent and climate change denier) have been loudly stating that support for renewables was a cult and the people should fight back.
Amanda De Lore is also fighting against it, and suggest that the 3 month consultation period was rushed and hidden (it was not) and that offshore wind is “not clean, green energy”. She stated that the project was not taking her groups concerns into consideration. However, when concerns are raised which do not conform with reality (like suggesting that offshore wind turbines are not green) they should be ignored. Importantly, when you compare the death toll of offshore wind turbines to a coal power plant, the numbers are stark with thousands more species killed by coal power.
This is part of the issue with public consultation. When opponents lace the population with falsehoods, you find yourself having to engage in a years-long effort to correct, before you can even have an intelligent conversation.
Stable glaciers are very effective carbon sinks, though if they then melt, they tend to loose all their stored carbon
The problem with carbon offsets, entirely depends on how they are used. When carbon offset money is given to a local project, but many try to buy an area from locals entirely. Kenya currently hosts 11 glaciers within Mount Kenya national park.
The problem is that, many of these projects require a rainforest to be left standing or something similar. Without buying from locals, and an income from the carbon offset to support the people who will loose access to the resource, it is highly unlikely that the deforestation rate will fall at all.
Much of these offset programs are being set up in Africa, on a continent which has the least responsibility for climate change, and yet local people are loosing the rights to land that they have lived on for millennia.
The quiet bays in the Melanesian archipelago are perfect for the sea grass meadows, which in turn means that it is fantastic for dugongs – animals also known as sea cows. Just a few years ago, these animals were a regular sight. Growing up to 4m long and 400kg, just a few years ago, it would not be an unusual day when you would see one of these animals in both the morning and afternoon. Now they are rarely seen.
Officially, they are only classed as vulnerable (one of the lowest forms of endangered), but given how long it has been, it is unclear how the population is doing. However, unfortunately, given fishermen (and other people on the wate), are encountering them so rarely, it is likely to have got worse. Dogongs in this area behave differently to Australia where they have huge seagrass meadows, so this full survey is certainly required.
It would be another area, where a growth in the ecotourism industry (ethical – not damaging the animals or stressing them) could be fantastic. Many surveys done on sea mammals, take on tourists to reduce their cost. Personally, I will always look for a research boat, as they want to be there, and will not go out if there is no chance of sightings.
The next-door population of New Caledonia was recently downgraded to endagered, and the east African population is classed as critically endangered.
Globally, the threats to these animals include gill-net fishing, boat traffic, coastal development and even hunting. Unfortunately, climate change is also a threat – rainstorms are becoming far more common, and these are damaging the seagrass, alongside cyclones.
Currently, it is estimated that the world looses 7% of its seagrass meadows each year. This should be concerning, as sea grass has a roughly equal ability to draw down carbon dioxide to land rainforests – so the more we loose the harder it will become to halt global warming. It should also be noted, seagrasses grow more healthily with dugongs present – help keep seagrass beds healthy by grazing on them, which controls their growth and disperses their seeds. This process is called “cultivation grazing”. The benefits on seagrasses include growth control (rapid growth can be bad for the long-term survival of the seagrass), disperse seeds (often with some ‘fertilizer’, which can help the seeds grow particularly well- and like various plants and elephants, seeds that have gone through a dugongs digestive tract is more likely to grow than those that do not), Improve genetic diversity (dugongs move between areas of the meadow, and take seeds with them) and help recovery after cyclones (by connecting areas of the meadow, reseeding meadows in danger from elsewhere where they are doing alright).
Unfortunately, this makes the dugong a keystone species – therefore, its loss would have a very negative impact on the whole ecosystem. Other species that rely on seagrass including sea turtles, manatees, a wide array of fish, many sharks are born in the seagrass, including lemon sharks nurse sharks, and bull sharks. A wide array of birds are similarly reliant.
Rainforest is essential if we are to combat climate change. Therefore every fall in deforestation is fantastic news.
Of course, it should be noticed, that this is still a loss of 792 square km of forest from the year before – we need to reach zero forest lost per year, but every step towards this target is positive.
The former higher rate of deforestation has its roots in the chaos caused by the fall of the largest guerrilla group the Farc, which disbanded in 2017.
Columbia is considered the second most biodiverse, is fighting to be a leader in the fight against climate change. Of course, this needs to continue to fall, and indeed have large areas replanted, if we are to avoid much of the climate change, but one step at a time
A study, using detailed 3d surveys, found that road building, and other degradation is causing 5 times as much carbon to be released into the air, than deforestation of the Amazon.
From road building, to selective logging, fires and natural disasters, all these activities are combining to having a greater impact on carbon stocks in the Brazillian Amazon than deforestation. This huge discrepancy is not taken into account by the numbers.
This is also a problem to the world, as this carbon is being radically underestimated, which means that large quantities of our remaining carbon budget are being used up. This new survey used lidar, which gives a more accurate idea of what is left in terms of forest cover.
With the addition of lidar sensors on the ISS, it is possible to scan the worlds forests more often – and given the ISS regular passing over 90% of the earths surface (in each 24 period – as while it orbits on a set path, the earth turns below it) this can be a good tool to keep an eye on the forests of the earth.
Another confirmation (as if it was needed) has been supplied by this study, showing that Indigenous territories and conservation units are both more efficient ways to protect the forest. These cover only 47.5% of the land, but contain just 9.1% of the forest clearing 2.6% of the logging and 9.6% of the fires.
Talking of fires
Fires continue to burn in the Amazon, with over 13,400 having been recorded in 2024. President Lula has called for general mobilization and Brazil has pledged to end deforestation by 2030. This is higher than during Bolsonaro’s time in office, though current cause is a drought, not human mismanagement.
Climate change is causing an increasing change in weather patterns, and reduced rainfall is changing the forests behaviour ( it should be noted, that the forest produces a not -insignificant portion of its rainfallm
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