Spotlight on green news & views: Doomed coal miners; perilous heatwaves; trillion tree solution
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This is the 607th edition of the Spotlight on Green News & Views (previously known as the Green Diary Rescue). Here is the July 6 edition. Inclusion of a story in the Spotlight does not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of it. OUTSpotlight on green news & views: Doomed coal miners; perilous heatwaves; trillion tree solution
This is the 607th edition of the Spotlight on Green News & Views (previously known as the Green Diary Rescue). Here is the July 6 edition. Inclusion of a story in the Spotlight does not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of it. OUTSTANDING GREEN STORIES Austin Bailey writes—Old Enemy Puts California Condors at Risk: “The California condor is the largest land bird in North America. These magnificent birds once ranged from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast. By the mid-20th century their range had been diminished by human activity to mountainous areas in Southern California. Condors feed on carrion acting as nature’s clean-up crew. This diet makes them susceptible to a variety of contaminants including lead fragments in carcasses, poison bait, and environmental pollutants. In 1987, faced with limited success after over two decades of efforts to preserve the species in the wild, the last 22 wild California condors were captured and a concerted effort was mounted to preserve condors in captivity with the goal of ultimately returning them to the wild. That effort is one of the great success stories in zoological intervention. Today, California condors are back in the wild, fulfilling the goal of establishing two distinct breeding populations – one in California – extending into Mexico (Baja peninsula), with the second along the Utah/Arizona border. A third breeding population is maintained in captivity as insurance for the species. 2018 statistics offer evidence of the success of the decades long project – from that low of 22 condors in 1987, there are now 312 California condors in the wild, with 176 individuals in captivity.” OceanDiver writes—The Daily Bucket - Big news! Friendly Seal has a new pup! “July 13, 2019. Salish Sea, Pacific Northwest. You never know what you might see out in nature, maybe nothing in particular on a given excursion, but it’s a 100% certainty you’ll see nothing if you don’t go out and look. A day like this was a vivid reminder for me of that truism. I went out. Stuck at home lately recovering from injury, I talked Mr O into driving me down to the beach where we’d park the car and he could head off on his half hour cardio walk and I could breathe the sea air (to be fair, it doesn’t take much persuasion, he just doesn’t want me to get all wild and crazy leaping around making things worse). I hadn’t planned on walking down the beach very far but Mr O turned around shortly, coming back to let me know there was a seal on the little island right offshore. I hobbled down there and what did I see? Friendly Seal lounging on a low rock! and a pup!! Nursing!!!” ClimateDenierRoundup writes—Cloudy With A Chance of Screwballs: Paper Purporting Clouds Control Climate Carried By Kooks: ”There’s a new paper out with a pretty bold claim, summed up by its title: ‘no experimental evidence for the significant anthropogenic climate change.’ (We’ll leave the questionable grammar aside, as it’s written by two Finnish scientists.) The paper has generated some sensational headlines at the usual places like WUWT, but also at some of the even-more-fringe sites like Infowars, NoTricksZone and ZeroHedge. As always, we must ask ourselves: is this paper credible? (Spoiler alert: no.) First off, is it peer-reviewed? No. [...] Secondly, who’s covering the paper? Are mainstream outlets vetting it with outside experts and deeming it worthy of discussion? Not hardly. For example, it’s up on Infowars, the online home of Alex Jones. (Remember the time Infowars claimed John Kerry shot an energy beam from Antarctica to Hawaii to destroy a hurricane?)” Read more