A flood of the century destroys Venice. The mayor of the lagoon city wants to declare a state of emergency and warns about climate change.
“Venice was brought to its knees,” tweets Mayor Luigi Brugnaro.
“Many of these cultural sites will slowly disappear with sea-level rise, even though they are important parts of human history”,say climate researchers.
St. Mark’s Basilica suffered severe damage, as did the whole city.
80 percent of the city would be under water, there would be “unimaginable damage”.
Venice has been threatened by rising sea levels for years.
It was only a year ago, when it was said from Italy, that a storm had already claimed twelve lives in Italy and damaged cultural assets in Venice.
But this is what happens to almost all historical sites near the Mediterranean coast, according to a recent study examining 49 World Heritage sites in the Mediterranean.
The flood is the sixth in the millennial history of the basilica, and it has never been as bad as it is now.
According to the current study, the most endangered areas include the city of Venice, the medieval city of Rhodes, the old town of Dubrovnik and the ruins of Carthage in Tunisia.
Climate researchers predict that flooding will continue to increase due to climate change, with surveys showing that sea levels around Venice are rising significantly faster than the global average, with average levels increasing by up to 6.6 millimeters per year between 1993 and 2015. “
“We will lose Venice, that is not controversial,” said Anders Levermann of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research a year ago. “What we definitely know: Events like now in Venice are being intensified by global warming,” said Levermann.
“When oceans warm up, more water evaporates into the atmosphere and it has to go out again. This creates more rainfall for the whole globe. At the same time, heavy rainfall events are piling up. “Due to CO2 emissions, Venice will in future be below sea level.“That’s why it’s crucial what we do about it now and in the future.”
Yes, I find it very interesting from time to time when we experience the consequences of climate destruction in our own country, in our own homes, in our own skin.
It hurts, yes!
I think it’s very fair.
As soon as we, human animals experience the consequences of the devastation and destruction of this planet in front of their own door, the state of emergency is called.
Until then, we have lived with the idiotic illusion, it only affects the Brazilians when the Amazon forests burn, and these Asians .. well! they should also stop burning the rainforest for profit … and so .. there are always those, the others down, who are ruining our climate. We up here are just the victims!
Compared to the daily devastation of life, the houses, the families of the orangutans in the rainforest for palm plantations, for which WE ARE ALL to blame, the devastation of the Venetian World Heritage is far more insignificant to me.
Finally, our indifference, the bankruptcy of our moral culture heritage is the cause of this catastrophe, which we humans, an extremely infantile and harmful species, displace and dramatize to their own needs.
In response to a court order prompted by a suit from the Center for Biological Diversity and allies, sage grouse won a reprieve in Nevada last week: The Bureau of Land Management was forced to pull more than 300,000 acres of their habitat from a Nevada oil and gas lease auction.
Despite minimal industry interest in drilling, Trump’s BLM has fueled a speculative frenzy by leasing out hundreds of thousands of acres of sensitive public land in the state, often at rock-bottom prices.
“Leasing Nevada’s public lands out for oil and gas threatens the survival of greater sage grouse,” said the Center’s Patrick Donnelly. “And also our chance at a livable climate.”
Earlier this year the Trump administration issued a new permit for TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline in an attempt to sidestep our latest court victory blocking the project. The fight isn’t over — federal agencies, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, are still reviewing the project’s environmental harms, and there are many.
Keystone XL would pump more than 35 million gallons of the planet’s dirtiest oil across the country every single day, threatening waterways with spills and leaks. It would exacerbate the climate crisis and threaten a wide range of imperiled species, from American burying beetles to whooping cranes.
Gentle pangolins are the world’s most trafficked mammals. Poachers kill thousands every week for their scales — erroneously thought to have curative properties in East Asian medicine — and meat.
This poaching puts pangolins in grave danger of extinction, so on Wednesday the Center and allies launched a lawsuit against Trump for failing to propose their protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
“If we don’t halt the massive trafficking of pangolin parts, they could vanish in decades,” said the Center’s Sarah Uhlemann.
Proposal to Protect Pacific Fishers Is Riddled With Loopholes
Following a petition and lawsuit by the Center and allies, Pacific fishers may finally get Endangered Species Act safeguards. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service just issued a protection proposal — but it’s riddled with loopholes letting logging decimate fishers’ forest habitat. Although these plush-furred mammals are tough enough to kill porcupines, they can’t survive the ongoing loss of their forest homes.
“The exemptions to their protection are fuzzier than fishers themselves,” said the Center’s Tierra Curry. Read more.
Victory: Sprawl Development Defeated Near Joshua Tree
For 15 years community groups and environmental organizations including the Center have fought a destructive development near Joshua Tree National Park named Paradise Valley. Last week we won the battle, when the Riverside County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to reject plans for the new city of 20,000 residents.
“Paradise Valley would have destroyed rare desert habitat and blocked critical wildlife corridors next to Joshua Tree,” said Center attorney Lisa Belenky. “And it would have undermined Coachella Valley’s carefully crafted conservation plan, which protects 27 endangered and threatened species and 375 square miles of conservation lands.”
Thank you to the more than 7,500 of you who just spoke out against Paradise Valley through a Center action alert. You made a difference.
Great News ! – we covered this campaign recently on this site – Mark
A federal judge has blocked the 2,000-acre expansion of a coal mine in the wildlands of Colorado’s Gunnison National Forest, responding to a suit by the Center and other groups. His ruling ordered the Trump administration to consider limiting methane emissions and address potential harm to water and fish.
“Methane pollution is a climate-killer, and we hope this decision will spell the end of unlimited emissions from this coal mine,” said Allison Melton, a Center attorney.
The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is an environmental nightmare that President Trump has been desperately attempting to revive since taking office.
This massive pipeline would threaten land, climate, and drinking water supplies, keep us rooted in the dirty fossil fuels of the past, and slow our path to a clean energy future.
But Trump’s State Department has issued a new draft environmental review of Keystone XL after a federal court rejected their last review on the basis that it was flawed, outdated, and required extensive revisions.
NRDC is fighting in court to stop Keystone XL once and for all.
But right now, the State Department is accepting public comments on their new and equally shoddy environmental review — so please make your voice heard in opposition to Keystone XL by submitting an official comment today!
Photo: DroneBase/AP
TAKE ACTION
Take action and send a message to stop this massive environmental damage to the United States.
For millions of years, whales have been busy regulating CO2 emissions in the most unlikely way, called a “whale pump”. The blue whale, for example, consumes tons of krill every day and excretes tons of droppings every day.
Like a pump, the whales dive up and down and excrete nutrients.
The walkot is rich in iron. These daily excretions are called “flaky fecal clouds”. These fecal clouds provide phytoplankton with hundreds of thousands of tons of nutrients each year to form plankton blooms.
These plankton blooms not only produce 80% of the oxygen for our planet but also degrade carbon.
Whales are also huge carbon stores and when they die they take the carbon to the bottom of the ocean.
Each species has a role in the ecosystem in which it lives, and even the smallest things can have a big impact.
One fifth of the coral is dead. Five huge plastic rugs swim on the oceans. The largest is bigger than Germany. The oceans are the source of all life on earth.
Around 70% of our planet is covered in seas and oceans: big, full of life and mysterious. They are food source, transport route, oxygen producer and much more.
But the sea is in danger: overfishing, plastic waste, overacidification, species extinction. We need to better understand life in the sea and deal with it more sustainably. Because our life is closely connected to the sea. When it’s sick, we can not stay healthy.
My comment: ” Each species has a role in the ecosystem in which it lives, and even the smallest things can have a big impact”.
All species play actually a role in the ecosystem, only the human species has no task.
We do not belong to nature, we disturb the lives of other non human species, and yet we are so profit-oriented and stupid that we do not realize we are sawing off the branch we are sitting on.
It also has a big impact, but a negative and destructive one for all species, natur, environment.
The more enjoyable and constructive is this video, which teaches us that we can save animals in everyday life, if we keep awake our eyes and our courage for the needy beings.
Even seals died painfully from plastic waste, but these seals were lucky, because there are people who save them ❤💙
Be active, watchful, in solidarity with the weaker ones!
In Alaska, there has been widespread mass extinction of seabirds and other marine animals for five years.
This year, the NOAA fishery detected an unusually high number of dead gray whales and sea lions. More than 120 gray whales have been washed ashore, about 300 dead seals have been registered, and thousands of dead seabirds have been washed ashore on Alaska’s beaches this year.
Although the autopsies are ongoing, their death is due to emaciation and hunger. The most obvious explanation, according to the scientists, for the mass extinction of marine animals since 2015 is the warmer sea temperatures. In Alaska, global warming is particularly fast and intense. The ice cover around Alaska usually lasts until the end of May. This year it disappeared in March. Alaska recorded a record high of 32.2 degrees this summer.It was the highest ever recorded in Alaska since the beginning of the registration of weather record.
The NOAA fishery has also reported “unusual deaths” this year among gray whales and sea lions after more than 120 gray whales washed ashore on the west coast of North America, including the Alaskan coast, and by September this year, 282 dead seals were registered, almost five times the average reported strandings. All showed signs of severe emaciation.
The consequences of climate change are already having an impact on the regions along the Alaskan coast. Many communities, as well as the indigenous people, are suffering the consequences of erosion. In addition, dissolves due to global warming of permafrost. As a result, buildings collapse and ecosystems are destroyed.
“It was as if we didn’t have March this year,” said Martin Stuefer, state climatologist and an associate research professor with the Alaska Climate Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “We had April instead.” The ice cover around Alaska usually lasts until the end of May.This year it disappeared in March!
Researchers don’t make climate conclusions based on a month’s data, but Alaska’s warm March reflects an upward warming climate trend in America’s largest state, Stuefer said.
“We see the last several years were way warm. There’s a clear climate-induced warming. There’s no doubt about it,” he said.
The picture went around the world.In Greenland, dogs pull a sled through ankle-high water.Since records began, it has never been so hot in Greenland and Alaska as this year.Photo: dpa / Steffen M. Olsen
Warmer water contains less dissolved oxygen, and the plankton and tiny crustaceans that grow there are less nutritious than those in colder water. This means that migratory species such for example, seabirds may arrive at locations where they normally seek food and find that their food is lacking.
There are immediate local and economic impacts along the western and northern shores of the state, with birds and marine life dead and sea temperatures promoting algal blooms that can poison water for wildlife.
This crisis is spreading to many of Alaska’s coastal cities, which depend on fisheries because their economies and local diets depend on them.
“Much of what people eat there during the year comes from foods they harvest themselves,” says climatologist Brian Brettschneider of the International Arctic Research Center. “If people can not get out on the ice to hunt seals or whales, it will affect their food security. It is a human crisis of survivability. “
Events such as these – if the weather patterns align themselves so that they have extreme consequences – are also evidence of the growing climate crisis, say scientists.
“What happens on Alaska’s shores basically affects each of us, “ Brettschneider told CNN. “Most people feel the effects of climate change, even if they do not know or want to downplay it. Dramatic changes happen and they increase. “
My comment: We lost a lot of time talking and thinking about climate rescue.
We urgently need committed professionals with a clear plan to solve the real problems on this planet, rather than any climate prophets, such as the media product of Greta Thunberg, for example, wich de recognized and acclaimed by politicians, rulers, mass media, industrialists, etc., as the deus ex macina of climate salvation.
Everyone is currently living from the maded panic, everyone claims we do not have time, but everyone takes the time to chatter and do nothing.
Abolition of factory farming, control over population growth, high taxation of meat, state subsidization of vegan products, punishment of plastic waste, fair trade promotion and so much more would probably do more than the media theater of schoolchildren’s panic making.
In order to save climate, animals and nature we need an effective and not an elitist activism.
I have had some great times in the Southwest USA in the past – and I love desert and mountains; and Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, California, Nevada and Utah are places which are environmentally very special places which must be preserved and not mined in any way – wild places especially for wild animals, the variations in wildlife and pure scenic beauty. The Joshua tree is part of that iconic set, and in no way must it be allowed to become extinct. I ask you please to support this petition. Thanks – Mark.
Target: Charlton H. Bonham, Director, California Department of Fish and Wildlife
Goal: Protect the famous Joshua tree from extinction.
The desert’s majestic Joshua trees may be extinct in as little as 50 years if they are not protected from climate change and development. Sign the petition to demand action by California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Droughts and wildfires spurred by climate change will be responsible for the destruction of roughly 80 percent of California’s Joshua trees. These iconic plants have had the strength to brave California’s scorching deserts for over two million years. Now, it is mankind that has sentenced them to their fate. Young trees, unable to store sufficient water, are extremely vulnerable. This means that as old trees die off due to wildfires and development, very few new trees will replace them.
Despite their significance, little action has been taken to protect the Joshua tree. Sign the petition to demand that the state of California intervene and enact regulations that will protect the Joshua tree and its habitat.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Mr. Bonham,
The Joshua tree is one of the most symbolic plants of California. For millions of years, it has survived your state’s deserts. However, climate change, drought, and wildfires are set to kill off the plant species by the year 2070. The situation facing the Joshua tree is dire. Only your organization can help.
I demand that you enact immediate protections that will prevent further destruction to the Joshua tree population. Help this plant thrive for another million years.
As we have covered many times; currently in England the government are undertaking Badger culling with the policy that it will reduce the spread of Bovine TB to cattle. This has been proven not to work in the past with the Krebs report, but the government are doing this now to pacify farmers who keep livestock. For years animal campaigners have been asking for vaccination to prevent the spread; but to date the government has only wanted to kill.
Here is a new article in a UK newspaper which shows pictures of dead (culled) badgers waiting to be incinerated.
It is now probable that the UK will be having a General Election before Christmas this year. The killing government have to think long and hard about this situation if they want support and votes to keep them in government.
WAV Comment – just because the target has been exceeded; it does not mean it is time to stop giving to this fantastic organisation. Orangutans are having their habitat wiped out due to the Palm Oil industry – and babies are being taken from their killed mothers to be sold on the black market. We need to do everything we can to stop this now. Please continue to give if you can – thanks Mark.
We were blown away by your generosity on #GivingDayforApes.
With your incredible support, we exceeded our goal and managed to raise $21,567!
This amount includes the matching donation from our generous partner, a private Swiss donor, for gifts up to $5,000, and a hard-earned prize for the «Most Dollars Raised in Asia in a Single Hour».
A huge THANK YOU to you, Mark, for supporting us. With your help, we can now give mother Jubaedah and baby Jubaedi, as well as Titon, the gift of freedom!
We are incredibly honoured to have you standing with us in the fight to help these remarkable creatures.
Best wishes, Dr. Jamartin Sihite
CEO of BOS Foundation
Many Dutch trawlers catch bottom-dwelling fish with bursts of low-voltage electricity, sparking fears from other fishing nations and some environmental groups.
Ton Koene/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
Electric fishing kills 57% of the seabed’s population, study reveals
The UK’s Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science is due to publish a study according to which pulse trawling, also known as electric fishing, kills off more than half of the seabed species, while traditional fishing methods only impact 21%. EURACTIV’s partner le Journal de l’Environnement reports.
The Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) compared two British fishing areas of similar size, ecosystem and sediment composition, and analysed the quantity and condition of the fish species.
The only difference between the two fishing areas is that only one of them has electric beam trawlers operating in it.
“This is the standard methodology for studying the impact of fishing gear on ecosystems. It is the same protocol that Cefas followed when it documented the impacts of the classic otter trawl,” noted Didier Gascuel, a professor of fisheries ecology at Agro Campus Ouest.
57% of benthic species have disappeared
The study showed that the area in which electric fishing had been practised had much less biodiversity, as the zone lost 57% of its species. Conversely, in the other fishing area, which did not have pulse trawlers operating, only 21% of the species had gone extinct.
“This study is important because it is the first of its kind to assess impacts in the field,” according to Didier Gascuel.
By sending electric shocks into sediments, beam trawlers caught flatfish more easily. But in the process, this destroyed half of the organisms which lived at the lowest level of the body of water, also known as ‘benthic species’.
Soles also disappeared
The researchers said that 17 benthic species observed in the reference area have vanished from the area where pulse trawlers had been active. And all the species present were strongly affected.
There were 2.6 times less common soles, while half the thornback rays had disappeared. This might be explained by the inability of electric trawlers to fill their sole fish quota last year.
An entire ecosystem at risk
On the other hand, this area is home to a growing number of fragile brittle stars, similar to starfish, as well as hermit crabs, a scavenger species.
“This shows that benthic species are highly impacted. The invasion of these [scavenger] species is a sign that the entire ecosystem, which is losing biodiversity and resilience, is more generally at risk,” Gascuel explained.
A total ban for July 2021
Banned in Europe by the Regulation of 30 March 1998, electric fishing still benefits from derogations granted “on an experimental basis” to 5% of every member state’s fleet of pulse trawlers.
This gap was mainly filled by the Netherlands (84 vessels in 2018), but also by Germany (which also has six Dutch-owned sole-fishing ships), the United Kingdom and Belgium.
And all their fleets operate in the southern parts of North Sea.
Last February, the EU took a stricter stance by finally banning this fishing practice in all European waters from 1 July 2021 onwards. This was in part thanks to the mobilisation of Bloom, an environmental NGO.
However, the Netherlands decided to challenge this ban before the European Court of Justice on 9 October.
Many Dutch trawlers catch bottom-dwelling fish with bursts of low-voltage electricity, sparking fears from other fishing nations and some environmental groups.
Ton Koene/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
Tensions flare over electric fishing in European waters
In a surprise outcome, the European Parliament voted today to ban a type of electric fishing that has demonstrated environmental benefits, as part of legislation to reform Europe’s fisheries.
The proposed end to “pulse trawling”—in which short bursts of electricity get flatfish out of the sediment and into nets—is a major disappointment to Dutch fishing companies, which have invested heavily in the technology; they claim it’s less damaging to marine ecosystems than traditional bottom trawling and saves energy. But some environmental groups applaud the parliament’s decision.
Many observers had predicted European Parliament would only recommend scaling back pulse trawling. “I’m baffled, to be honest,” says Marloes Kraan, an anthropologist at Wageningen Marine Research in IJmuiden, the Netherlands. “We had prepared ourselves for a bad outcome, but a ban was totally unexpected,” says Pim Visser, director of VisNed, a trawling trade group in Urk, the Netherlands.
group in Paris that has led a campaign to stop pulse trawling, declared the vote “a tremendous victory for the ocean, for artisanal fishers and Europe.” BLOOM worries that pulse trawling harms nontarget marine life; fishing groups in other EU countries, meanwhile, are increasingly angry about competition from the Dutch pulse trawlers. Other nongovernmental organizations, however, including Greenpeace Netherlands, say pulse trawling has promise to increase sustainability and that ending it now would penalize the fishing industry for innovating. “We call upon the fishermen not to be discouraged to embrace further innovation,” the North Sea Foundation said in a statement about the “unfortunate” outcome.
The vote is just the first step in negotiations with the European Commission and member states over the large package of fisheries reforms.
We call upon the fishermen not to be discouraged to embrace further innovation.
North Sea Foundation
Most bottom trawlers drag a net, held open by a wide metal beam, across the bottom to catch shrimp or fish. Trawlers targeting flatfish, such as sole or plaice, also use dangling iron chains to scare them out of the sediment. The beam and chains disturb or kill many bottom-dwelling organisms, the nets catch unwanted species, and all the tugging requires a lot of diesel.
Pulse trawlers, by contrast, barely touch the bottom because they use bursts of low-voltage electricity to catch flatfish, particularly Dover sole. After the current briefly cramps their muscles, they try to flee, and many end up in the net. Because sole are more susceptible to electricity than other species, pulse trawling reduces bycatch. And the gear is lighter and can be towed slower, so the boats burn half as much fuel and impact less area. “We catch with a lesser environmental impact and greater economic returns,” Visser says. He credits the gear with saving many fishing companies from bankruptcy.
Sea bed A charged approachMany Dutch fishing vessels have adopted electric pulse trawling, but competitors and some environmentalgroups object. In pulse trawling, a wingshaped beam glides above the sea bed trailing strings ofelectrodes that are located above the mouth of the net. Electricitycauses flatfishto leave thesediment. Net doesn’ttouch the seabed, causingless damage.
ALTOUNIAN/SCIENCE
Encouraged by initial studies, the Dutch government in 2006 successfully lobbied the European Commission to allow 5% of each country’s fleet to use pulse trawling, exempting them from the European Union’s 1988 general ban on electrical fishing. By 2009, Dutch companies had embraced the opportunity. As demand grew, they received additional licenses for reducing bycatch or research with the condition that they provide detailed data on their catches. Now, 75 vessels, about 28% of Dutch trawlers, use pulse gear. Fishing companies outside the Netherlands fish for sole, too, but don’t specialize in it; as a result, few have invested in the expensive technology.
BLOOM argues that the research and bycatch licenses are illegal and a guise for commercial fishing, and that pulse trawling puts small-scale fishing at an even bigger disadvantage than conventional trawling does. BLOOM advocates catching flatfish with gillnets, stationary curtains of netting that have a much lower bycatch rate than either kind of trawling and do less damage to the sea floor. “There shouldn’t be any use of electric current,” says Director Claire Nouvian. “We’ve got enough evidence to know this is nonsense.”
Scientists have so far found little evidence that the electrical currents cause serious harm. Last year, a working group with the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) highlighted harm to large cod and whiting as the only known irreversible effect. Although not many cod are accidentally caught by pulse trawlers, about 10% of them suffer vertebral fractures and hemorrhages when their muscles overcontract from the shocks. Initial laboratory research on other organisms has not shown lasting, serious effects, but the ICES group says questions remain, for instance about the effects on sharks and rays.
Nevertheless, “We know enough to continue with pulse trawling in the present context,” says Adriaan Rijnsdorp, a fisheries biologist at Wageningen Marine Research and a co-chair of the ICES working group. But he says a decision on the future of pulse trawling should wait until 2019, when a 4-year, EU-funded research program on ecological impacts, which he coordinates, is due to wrap up.
There shouldn’t be any use of electric current. We’ve got enough evidence to know this is nonsense.
Claire Nouvian, BLOOM Association
Any decision will have to be agreed on by the European Parliament, the commission, and member states, in this case represented by their fisheries ministers. The commission has proposed removing the cap on licenses in the southern North Sea, where pulse trawling now occurs; other areas could follow after further studies. The ministers, by contrast, would de facto remove licenses beyond the 5% limit of a country’s fleet, which would force most Dutch vessels to give up pulse trawling.
A compromise in which the technique is greatly curtailed is the most likely outcome, says Irene Kingma, director of the Dutch Elasmobranch Society in Amsterdam, which promotes the study and conservation of sharks and rays. “There might be carnage within the Dutch fishing sector,” Kingma says. “And if they change back to beam trawling, we have all the environmental problems from that.”
Global pizza chain Pizza Hut recently launched a full vegan menu in all locations across Australia.
The menu features four pizzas: Vegan Mediterranean, Vegan Deluxe, Vegan Cheese Lovers, and Vegan Margherita.
The restaurant also offers vegan cheesy garlic bread, which joins its existing vegan-friendly garlic bread and Spud Bites. A vegan ice cream cone has also been added to the dessert menu.
The new vegan options come a year after the company first tested vegan options in the country. In May 2018, Pizza Hut trialled vegan cheese—made by local vegan company Dairy Free Down Under—as an option for its pizzas at two locations in New South Wales, Australia.
Earlier this year, the chain debuted a dedicated vegan menu in 253 locations in the United Kingdom.
World Animals Voice 