Amazon emergency: two-thirds of species are under threat from deforestation – dispatch

hen Marco Aurelio Zapata first built his farm named La Flor Del Amazonas (The Amazon Flower) deep in the Colombian rainforest nearly half a century ago, the only sound from his surrounding 288 hectares was that of the wild: howler and capuchin monkeys, macaws, and immeasurable birds, insects and amphibians striking up a cacophony of noise.

The modern era has violently interrupted this natural chorus. During the country’s long civil war which ended with a ceasefire in 2017 low flying crop-dusting planes would roar overhead dousing the forest canopy with herbicide in a bid to stem the guerilla’s cocaine production, much of it centred in Guaviare province where Zapata lives and tends to his smallholding.
Now it is the distant buzz of chainsaws, growing nearer all the time. Machete in hand hacking a path through the rainforest, the 62-year-old Zapata leads us to a clearing the size of several football pitches recently levelled by a neighbour to sell as cattle pasture.
“I feel sad and also angry to see it,” Zapata says. “This is a beautiful place and we want to protect the land but here anybody can do what they want.” 

Concerned landowner and former coca grower Marco Aurelio Zapata is under constant pressure to sell his land to commercial cattle ranchers CREDIT: DAVID ROSE /THE TELEGRAPH
This swathe of jungle on the edge of Colombia’s Chiribiquete national park, declared a world heritage site in 2018 and championed by the Prince of Wales as a vital lung of the earth, is part of a rapidly unfolding environmental crisis stretching right across the Amazon basin.
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What do Alaska Wildfires Mean for Global Climate Change? - Union of Concerned Scientists

What do Alaska Wildfires Mean for Global Climate Change? - Union of Concerned Scientists

Arctic wildfires spew soot and smoke cloud bigger than EU | World news | The Guardian

Plume from unprecedented blazes forecast to reach Alaska as fires rage for third month
A cloud of smoke and soot bigger than the European Union is billowing across Siberia as wildfires in the Arctic Circle rage into an unprecedented third month.

An aerial view of a wildfire in Boguchar, Russia. Photograph: Donat Sorokin/Tass
The normally frozen region, which is a crucial part of the planet’s cooling system, is spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and worsening the manmade climate disruption that created the tinderbox conditions.
A spate of huge fires in northern Russia, Alaska, Greenland and Canada discharged 50 megatonnes of CO2 in June and 79 megatonnes in July, far exceeding the previous record for the Arctic.
The intensity of the blazes continues with 25 megatonnes in the first 11 days of August – extending the duration beyond even the most persistent fires in the 17-year dataset of Europe’s satellite monitoring system.
Mark Parrington, a scientist in the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, said the previous record was just a few weeks. “We haven’t seen this before,” he said. “The fire intensity is still well above average.”
Continue reading at: Arctic wildfires spew soot and smoke cloud bigger than EU | World news | The Guardian

Russia's devastating wildfires mapped - Unearthed

Groundbreaking analysis of satellite imagery reveals the human activity linked to vast majority of catastrophic Siberian forest fires
Wildfires that ravaged millions of hectares of land and forests in Russia last year may have been caused by so-called “prescribed burning” – a controversial practice intended to prevent the spread of forest fire.

The aftermath of a forest fire near Lake Baikal, Siberia, in September 2018. Photo: Greenpeace

That’s according to a new analysis of 2018’s Siberian wildfires carried out by GIS specialists at Greenpeace’s Global Mapping Hub, who found that the overwhelming majority of those fires started close to places where people travel, work or live, or to sites of deliberate ‘prescribed burnings’.
Across the four regions studied the proportion of fires fitting into this category ranged from 65% in Krasnoyarsk Krai to 99% in Amur Oblast.
Continue reading at: Russia's devastating wildfires mapped - Unearthed
Go to the map: https://maps.greenpeace.org/maps/research/en/

The Kids Are Alright: The Youngster Climate Crusade

Taking a cue from young folk on climate activism
There are many reasons for climate change despair, summarized by scary headlines like “The Devastation of Human Life is In View.” But let’s talk about kids these days. If you have one, two or five—or are grandfather, aunt, friend or mentor to someone under 20—climate change is our greatest legacy to them and their adulthood. One would think that’d wake anyone from the immobilization of complacency or of praying someone else does something first. (In perhaps a sign from the climate change gods, my spellcheck tried to replace ‘immobilization,’ with ‘immolation’— which about says it all.) Yet while adults across the globe dither and delay, a whole bunch of young people have mobilized. And they want you and me to mobilize. (Hey, aren’t you and I the adults in their room?)

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Consumers Energy settlement could lead to hundreds of megawatts of solar power

A proposed settlement between Consumers Energy and independent power producers could lead to hundreds of megawatts of solar power being built within the next four years.
On Thursday, the utility filed the proposed settlement with the Michigan Public Service Commission hoping to resolve a more than year-long dispute with solar developers looking to sell power to Consumers.
Multiple developers have challenged the amount Consumers is required to pay them under the federal Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act, or PURPA. Under the 1978 policy, utilities are required to purchase power from independent producers at the “avoided cost,” reflecting the amount it would cost the utility to build itself. Critics have claimed Consumers Energy proposed avoided costs rates that made their projects uneconomic to build.
The settlement is supported by the Solar Energy Industries Association as well as Cypress Creek Renewables, a national solar developer that has been an ongoing critic of Consumers Energy’s PURPA position. The groups had withheld support of Consumers’ proposed Clean Energy Plan calling for 6,000 megawatts of solar to be added to its system by 2040.

Thursday’s agreement says Consumers will use “commercially reasonable efforts” to interconnect 584 MW of solar by Sept. 1, 2023, which developers are ready to build. The utility aims to connect 150 MW of third-party power a year.
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Climate change could raise the risk of deadly fungal infections in humans

Outbreaks of Candida auris have recently erupted around the world

While fungal diseases have devastated many animal and plant species, humans and other mammals have mostly been spared. That’s probably because mammals have body temperatures too warm for most fungi to replicate as well as powerful immune systems. But climate change may be challenging those defenses, bringing new fungal threats to human health, a microbiologist warns.

From 2012 to 2015, pathogenic versions of the fungus Candida auris arose independently in Africa, Asia and South America. The versions are from the same species, yet they are genetically distinct, so the spread across continents couldn’t have been caused by infected travelers, says Arturo Casadevall of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

FUNGAL THREAT  An emerging fungus called Candida auris (illustrated) can cause deadly infections in people’s blood and organs. Dr_Microbe/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Continue reading at: Climate change could raise the risk of deadly fungal infections in humans