Getting to Antarctica is tough. But just how difficult is it? AND how did folks get there in the past? Learn more from Karen Romano Young in our latest #AntarcticLog
Remember the Lite-Brite? If it, we suggest you google it b/c our #AntarcticLog this week explores Karen Romano Young creative process creating SciArthttps://fal.cn/3nrUj
[ID: The “they don’t know” meme, which shows simplistically drawn people dancing in a room as a neutral-faced man wearing a party hat stands apart from them in the corner. The man is labeled with a recycling icon and says: “They don’t know they’re killing the planet.” The dancers are labeled with the logos of Peabody, BP, Chevron, and Shell, and all four of them say “we totally do.” End ID]
Trump & Crew deny Climate Change exists while his own Pentagon & DOJ have been preparing for it and warning about it for years! Just Google: “Pentagon and ClimateChange” for proof!
i need y'all to get that headlines about climate change are supposed to spur people to action, and scientists sound the alarm because humanity still CAN do something, not because it’s inevitable and Literally Everyone Will Die
DoNOT let people let you forget that our world is still as habitable as it is today because of the work of scientists and activists of the past, that things would be MUCH WORSE now if people hadn’t acted.
Remember the ozone hole? Remember that? You haven’t heard about that in a little bit huh? THAT’S BECAUSE WE FIXED THE PROBLEM. If no one had done anything, there would be holes in the ozone layer all over the place and we would be slowly irradiated by the sun. THE EARTH WOULD HAVE BEEN UNINHABITABLE BY MIDCENTURY.
Every time you repeat the line that “Unless we end capitalism worldwide, there’s literally nothing we can do to help climate change!” the people that devoted their lives to saving species that would be gone now, preserving habitat that would be obliterated now, and fixing problems that would have been well along the way to making us extinct by now beam psychic rays of contempt in your direction
The competition’s winning images and finalists highlight Earth’s biodiversity and illustrate the many threats that our planet faces. Each photo, in its own way, inspires viewers to protect and conserve the remarkable diversity of life on Earth. Below, we present the winners and some of our personal favorites from this year’s competition.
“Hope in a Burned Plantation” (2020), Mallacoota, Australia / Jo-Anne McArthur Photography,
Iconic Australia is captured in this particular moment as a resilient kangaroo pauses in a burned eucalyptus plantation. Nearly three billion animals perished or were displaced in the cataclysmic Australian bushfires of 2019 and 2020. This eastern grey kangaroo and her joey represent the lucky survivors, escaping from an area that had been transformed by humans for farming and then devastated by fire.
“Treasure on Ice” (2020), Svalbard, Norway / Marek Jackowski Photography,
A polar bear lies forlornly on a tiny floating chunk of ice, in an image evoking global warming…
“Sign of the Tides” (2020), Monterey, California / Ralph Pace Photography,
In this perfectly composed photograph, a discarded face mask in the shape of a sea turtle attracts a notoriously curious California sea lion. Shot in November 2020, this was the first time the photographer saw a mask underwater, but unfortunately he has seen many since. The effects of the pandemic will likely linger on our oceans for years to come.
All photographs courtesy of BigPicture winners and finalists.
Professor Ed Hawkins’ data visualisation, Warming Stripes!
It started at Hay Literary Festival. Professor Ed Hawkins was trying to find a way to communicate climate change to an audience that might not be able to interpret scientific graphics or data.
Those stripes — shades of red and blue representing hot and cold temperatures — chart temperature changes from 1850 to 2018, running from left to right. They look like a bar code, albeit a vibrant one with a serious message. Hawkins, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading, says that the impact was immediately obvious.
That data visualisation was based on local temperatures for the festival’s location in rural Wales. Since the 2018 festival, Hawkins has worked on a graphic for global temperatures. Most recently, it took centre stage at a very different festival: as the backdrop for Enter Shikari’s set at Reading.
On 21 June 2019, the summer solstice, he launched a website where users can view and download climate stripes for the cities they live in, from Vienna to Verona. So far there have been more than a million downloads.
Warming Stripes from 1850-2020 for GLOBE / Europe / Asia / North America.
Around 263 million people globally have access to water sources that are considered safe, but need to spend at least 30 minutes walking or queuing to collect their water. And the task of providing water for households falls disproportionately to women and girls, especially in rural areas.
The ferries that once shuttled tourists to and from the little islets in Iran’s Lake Urmia sit rusty, unable to move, on what is rapidly becoming a salt plain.
Just two decades ago, Urmia was the Middle East’s biggest lake, its local economy a thriving tourist center of hotels and restaurants.
Lake Urmia’s demise has been fast. It has more than halved in size – from 5,400 square kilometers (2,085 square miles) in the 1990s to just 2,500 square kilometers (965 square miles) today – according to the Department of Environmental Protection of West Azerbaijan, one of the Iranian provinces where the lake is located.
There are now concerns it will disappear entirely. Such problems are familiar in many parts of the Middle East – where water is simply running out.
The region has witnessed persistent drought and temperatures so high that they are barely fit for human life. Add climate change to water mismanagement and overuse, and projections for the future of water here are grim. Some Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, Iraq and Jordan, are pumping huge amounts of water from the ground for irrigation as they seek to improve their food self-sufficiency.
By Frederik Pleitgen, Claudia Otto, Angela Dewan and Mohammed Tawfeeq, CNN
Okay, but, reducing our meat intake by 30% really would help. While that’s not a lot, it would make a huge impact, and unlike a lot of other advice that CNN gave, it’s something each of us can do andshoulddo.
But you know what the public response was, just as it always is when folks are told eating less meat would help the environment? They balk and hem and haw. “Pass up that steak to reduce pollution? How dare you tell me what to do! It’s my personal choice!”
Hate to tell ya, buddy, but choosing meat over plant-based foods isn’t a personal choice - it’s an ethical choice. A personal choice is choosing what shirt you want to wear today. It isn’t the choice between paying a company to slit a chicken’s throat or paying a company to grow soybeans and lentils. The two choices are not of equal moral value. Unless you believe animals don’t feel pain or emotions, in which case, just stop reading now because you probably don’t give a shit about climate change to begin with.
But I digress.
People are so attached to eating meat, dairy, and eggs that even if told it would help save our planet to go vegan (or at least eat more veggies and less meat), they will absolutely refuse. And they hide it behind the framing of “corporations are the polluters, individuals shouldn’t be held responsible for climate change, so why should I eat less meat, etc. etc.” I don’t find that reasoning compelling in the least. And to be told that eating less meat to help stop climate change is “journalistic malpractice”?
Here’s the problem with that statement. It doesn’t absolve us of moral responsibility for our choices. We are at least partially responsible for our purchases on an individual basis as well. Because our collective individual impacts add up, especially when it comes to animal products.
Plus,we wouldn’t apply this same nihilistic “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” rhetoric to other areas of individual purchasing. Here’s an example:
If I said I no longer wanted to purchase child slavery-sourced chocolate, you wouldn’t say “Corporations are responsible for child slavery, not you, so why are you bothering.” Of course we’re responsible for what we purchase, especially if there is another option that is less harmful. Slavery-sourced chocolate vs. ethically-sourced chocolate. There is a difference, and no one would dispute that there isn’t. So why when presented a choice between animal- and plant-based foods, we suddenly act as if there’s no ethical or moralistic difference? Or if there is a difference, it doesn’t matter because the world is shit and we’re all fucked anyway so why bother caring?
We make the choice 3+ times a day on what we are going to eat. We are making that decision, not a corporation. The corporations are simply filling the demand of meat/dairy/eggs that we are providing. If we take away that demand for animal products, and everyone goes as vegan as they can, guess what? Animal agriculture goes out of business. Which is exactly what we need to happen if we have a hope of stopping climate change.
We could all go paperless/carless/phoneless/plastic-free tomorrow, and it wouldn’t eliminate climate change. Because animal agriculture is the #1 driver of climate change. We have to dismantle these industries if we want to get serious about having a livable future on this planet.
Animal agriculture is antithetical to human and animal survival. It’s responsible for oceanic dead zones, antibiotic resistance in the human population, zoonotic diseases, methane pollution, pollution of our waterways, chronic illnesses in communities near farms and slaughterhouses, etc. The human population’s total combined impact when it comes to eating meat and other animal products is *so* devastating that it blows all other polluting industries out of the water.
If we want a world that’s equitable, fair, clean, and peaceful, we have to end animal agriculture. And that does fall on all of us as individuals, because our US government sure as hell won’t put a stop to it. The USDA is responsible for both giving us our dietary recommendations and ensuring that agriculture is a thriving economy. It’s a blatant conflict of interest and has been since at least the 50’s. So there’s no help there. What meager reforms are made for animal welfare does nothing to comfort the animals crammed in cages and warehouses, and trucked for hundreds of miles in heat and snow just to end up in a slaughterhouse.
The bottom line is: corporations will not stop breeding, torturing, capturing, and killing animals until we stop paying them to. Climate change will continue to get worse until we stop supporting these industries. We need to let animal agriculture die so that we can live.
And yet we still have meat eaters making excuses in the notes.
As governments discuss climate change in Paris, they’ll be referring to the dire predictions of climate scientists. Here are three visualizations of possible futures based on detailed climate models and summed up by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their 2013 report. The deeper the red - the hotter things are getting.
There is nothing quite so predictable as the climate change report cycle. First, an authoritative organisation publishes a comprehensive report warning how dire the current situation is and how much of a difference we as individuals could make with even relatively small lifestyle changes, such as giving up meat and dairy. The next day a few thousand social influencers come to the rescue to reassure the public that no, they don’t have to make any changes at all to help because it’s all the fault of corporations anyway, so why should any of us have to try? And since it’s exactly what everyone wants to hear, we agree with it, spread it, pat ourselves on the back for being so “woke” then promptly forget that the report ever happened.
I HATE THIS
This is the only response I’ve seen to the report. I agree with placing blame onto corporations, but really? So that gives us all an excuse to sit on our asses?? Yes we need to vote and change policies but /we/ need to change too!! And besides, corporations aren’t going to save us. That’s not a thing that’s going to happen. Ever. We’ve gotta save the planet ourselves, and that means taking responsibility for our actions. What we eat, what we buy, what we do, all of it.
I am so jaded at this point that when I saw that report, the fact that it had a date, 2030, when I turn 34… I just emotionally shut down. I told myself “so this is how it ends… and all because people couldn’t stop eating meat and cheese”, and even then it doesn’t feel real.
How do you cope when there’s officially no hope left?
So can y'all stop with the “nothing bad will happen in my lifetime so I don’t care” excuse now? Are you happy now?
Hell, I would love to say “please go vegan and help to fix this”, but what’s the point anymore? Humanity has clearly made its choice, and if you think that we’re going to somehow get our shit together in the next decade for the common good then you are out of your god damn mind.There is no hope left and now it’s been officially confirmed.
But it’s just soooo good to know that the reason that our entire planet is going to change as we know it within the extremely near future is because people would rather go down kicking and screaming eating their bacon cheeseburgers than be mildly inconvenienced in their daily lives ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There are a number of reasons why people choose to go vegan. Some are drawn to veganism because they love animals and want their actions to reflect their beliefs. Some choose a vegan lifestyle for the positive health benefits of eating a whole foods, plant based diet. Others gravitate towards veganism because of the positive impact that not eating meat has on the environment and the desire to reduce their carbon footprint on this planet, the only known planet to be inhabitable by human life.
When it comes to the latter, there are innumerable reasons why if you consider yourself to be an environmentalist, or at the very least someone who is mildly concerned with the way we treat the environment and worried about the future of our planet, you should examine the negative environmental effects of consuming and using animals.
“Most simply put, someone who regularly eats factory-farmed animal products cannot call himself an environmentalist without divorcing that word from it’s meaning.”
Animals like cows who are used in animal agriculture produce an incredible amount of the greenhouse gas methane and methane is approximately 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide, another destructive heat-trapping gas that causes negative effects to our environment.
Deforestation is a huge problem and rain forests around the globe are being depleted at an alarming rate to make room for things like cattle ranching. According to Scientific American, “we are losing upwards of 80,000 acres of tropical rain forest daily” and “losing some 135 plant, animal and insect species every day.”
If you believe in water conservation, then you definitely should not be ordering up a cheeseburger the next time you visit a restaurant. Tons of water is used when it comes to eating animals. The LA Times reported that just one 1/3 lb hamburger necessitates 660 gallons of water, and for comparisons’s sake, just one slice of bread necessitates 11 gallons of water.
Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations are part of the leading contributor (the agriculture sector) of pollutants to lakes, rivers, and reservoirs. According to the CDC, “It has been found that states with high concentrations of CAFOs experience on average 20 to 30 serious water quality problems per year as a result of manure management problems.”
Think emissions from cars, buses, trains, planes, etc. are bad for the environment? They are, but you should see how awful emissions are from farming animals for food. The UN & PEW Commission state that, “… greenhouse gas emissions from all livestock operations account for 18% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, exceeding those from the transportation sector.”
Climate change is real and when it comes to animal proteins vs. vegetable proteins, plant based proteins create less green house gas emissions. As voiced in a TIME story, “Many of the EWG’s findings are pretty eye-opening — like some revealing facts about beef, which produces twice the emissions of pork, four times as much as chicken, and 13 times that of vegetable protein such as beans, lentils, and tofu.”
Clean drinking water is a necessity to life, but runoff from factory farming infiltrates that water making it hazardous to humans, marine life and other animals. According to the EPA, “Animal agriculture manure is a primary source of nitrogen and phosphorus to surface and groundwater. Manure runoff from cropland and pastures or discharging animal feeding operations and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) often reaches surface and groundwater systems through surface runoff or infiltration.”
Marine habitat destruction is caused by natural occurrences like hurricanes and tsunamis, but it’s the destructive activity of humans that is more impactful and incessant on these ecosystems. As stated in National Geographic, “Destructive fishing techniques like bottom trawling, dynamiting, and poisoning destroy habitats near shore as well as in the deep sea.”
Due to overfishing, many fishing communities are collapsing. The Marine Conservation Institute figures that, “About 25% of US fish stocks are overfished and 90% of global fish stocks are fully or overfished…”
Fishing nets function indiscriminately and are affecting the biodiversity of our oceans. Nets cannot tell the difference between a school of tuna, a dolphin, or turtle. “It is estimated that over 300,000 small whales, dolphins, and porpoises die from entanglement in fishing nets each year, making this the single largest cause of mortality for small cetaceans.” The World Wildlife Fund also found that, “Hundreds of thousands of endangered loggerhead turtles and critically endangered leatherback turtles drown annually on longlines set for tuna, swordfish, and other fish. Incidental capture of turtles by longlines, trawls and gillnets is the single greatest threat to the survival of most populations.”
Photo courtesy of USDA NRCS. Use of this photo does not infer or imply NRCS endorsement of any product, company, or position.
