Tuesday, October 30, 2018

My Log 657 October 30 2018: Chronicles from the Tenth Decade: 93 Wildlife populations, failing schools, both argue the need for a wider overview, and longer term planning


 Two items of news that have come to my notice recently seem to bear striking similarities. One is the report of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Canada’s first ever thorough survey of living animal species and the threats they are under to their very survival. It is not as if we are setting out to exterminate other species deliberately, but the effect is the same because of things we are doing, such as three categories that are named in the WWF report, habitat loss (probably the most important), climate change, and pollution.
A related but separate issue with a similar effect was a report I heard in a discussion rising from the recent decision of the Ontario government that all teachers in training should pass a maths test.  One commentator I heard, talking in general about the problem of lack of student results but referring more particularly to American rather than Canadian experience, said that it was fruitless to blame teachers for the shortfall of public education when this could be addressed only by an all-out attack on poverty. It was poverty, he said, in which whole communities were trapped, that carried with it the inevitable concomitant disadvantages of a lack of parental attention, a lack of adequate places conducive for study away from the classroom, a lack of equipment needed for learning, and a general lack of stability among the student body because of the inadequacy of family life among hard-pressed impoverished people: the problems of public education, said this expert educator,  could be addressed only if poverty was attacked as a priority. Given that, he said, teachers would be able to do the jobs they were eager to do but were prevented from doing by the overweening influence of the poverty among their students.
In other words in both cases the education of under-funded and impoverished students, and the decline of animal populations whose habitat is being stripped ruthlessly, the problems could be addressed only if apparently unconnected problems, lack of economic opportunity poverty, poor education, or the clear-cutting of forests, the advance of global warming, the ubiquity of pollution, only if these factors could be brought under control first.
Both these examples seem to argue that our governance is suffering from not being planned either with a sufficiently compelling overview, or from a time scale that is inadequate to the provision of solutions that are coming more clearly into focus every day as essential to our future.
A lot of this stuff is really scary: I came across an item on TV yesterday which showed that in Alaska, the trees have begun to lean over. Why is this? Because the permanently frozen ground in which these trees are rooted has, because of global warming, begun to melt, destroying the stable footing of the ground cover.
When I say this is scary, consider these facts, from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre of the United States: “right now, the Earth's atmosphere contains about 850 gigatons of carbon. (A gigaton is one billion tons—about the weight of one hundred thousand school buses). We estimate that there are about 1,400 gigatons of carbon frozen in permafrost. So the carbon frozen in permafrost is greater than the amount of carbon that is already in the atmosphere today.”
Of course it is unlikely that all of that carbon permanently frozen into the northern ground will decay and end up in the atmosphere: but we do know that the Arctic is warming at a faster rate than the more moderate climates, and that this permafrost has already started to melt in many places. “The trick is to find out how much of the frozen carbon is going to decay, how fast, and where,” remarks the Data centre’s web site.
It’s not as if the figures of carbon concentration in the atmosphere are in any way reassuring, even if all of the permafrost carbon is not transformed into methane gas on melting. The latest figures show that global annual mean CO2concentration has increased by more than 45% since the start of the Industrial Revolution, from 280 ppm during the 10,000 years up to the mid-18th century to 410 ppm as of mid-2018.  The present concentration is the highest in the last 800,000 and possibly even the last 20 million years. The increase has been caused by human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. This increase of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere has produced the current episode of global warming. About 30–40% of the CO2 released by humans into the atmosphere dissolves into oceans, rivers and lakes, which has produced ocean acidification. (I am indebted to Wikipedia for these figures.)
In the 149 years between 1751 and 1900, about 12 gigabyte tonnes of  carbon  were released as CO2 to the atmosphere from burning of fossil fuels; in the 112 years between 1901 and 2013, the comparative figure has been 380 gigabyte tonnes. This is enough to scare anybody, since in spite of our minimal efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the rate appears to be ever-increasing. Imagine throwing the melting of the permafrost into his mix: it is enough to make one despair of any solution that can possibly stop global warming from having drastic effects on the lives of the increasingly crowded nations on this earth.
Put into this perspective the rapid decline of the numbers of wildlife species in Canada might seem like a more or less insignificant factor. But on closer inspection, the figures are alarming. The WWF study  monitored 903 wildlife species between 1970 and 2014, of which almost half are in decline,  their average being declines of 83 per cent during the study years.
MAMMALS: Canada is home to approximately 200 mammal species, including blue whales longer than two school buses and tiny pygmy shrews no heavier than a nickel. Monitored mammal populations shrank by 43 per cent, on average, between 1970 and 2014. Some terrestrial mammals, such as bats and woodland and barren-ground caribou, show an even more precipitous drop. Several Canadian whale species have seen populations bounce back since the baseline year of 1970, thanks in part to the 1972 global and federal ban on commercial whaling. Yet studies have shown that the already Endangered southern resident orcas (killer whales) in British Columbia have declined since 1995, and in the east North Atlantic right whales and the St. Lawrence beluga whales remain Endangered.
FISH: with nearly 1,050 species, Canada’s fish species are the most diverse of our vertebrate groups and exports of fish and seafood products were worth $6.6 billion in 2016. Study shows that fish populations have
dropped 20 per cent on average between 1970 and 2014, a figure mostly attributable to Atlantic marine. Less is known about Canada’s180 species of freshwater fishes because of  a lack of monitoring and
information about their populations.
BIRDS: Overall, bird populations in Canada increased on average by seven per cent between 1970 and 2014. But some separate bird groups show widely differing trends. For instance, populations of grassland birds in Canada plunged on average by 69 per cent since 1970. Populations of aerial insectivores, such as swifts and swallows, fell on average by more than 51 per cent since 1970.  Shorebird populations declined on average by 43 per cent since 1970.
REPTILES: Only a small number of reptile and amphibian species thrive in Canada’s cold climate. Amphibian and reptile populations declined by 34 per cent on average between 1970 and 2014. While there’s a comparatively high degree of variation in this trend over time (the range is 40 to minus 69 per cent), the decline in this group of species is well documented both in Canada, and around the world. In Canada, 42 per cent of amphibians and 77 per cent of reptile species were assessed as at risk as of 2014.
As for solutions, the study recommends collective action. “It is clear we need to do more to protect species at risk, and to halt the decline of other wildlife before they land on the at-risk list in the first place. From a preventative standpoint, we need to maintain sustainable populations, so we aren’t forced to resort to less effective, reactive and resource intensive recovery strategies. This is a challenge we must all embrace. We need actions from all corners of society – from communities, industry, government, all of us, collectively. As a nation, to increase our chances of solving this problem together, we need to: Collect and share data on ecosystem health and species habitat. Our analysis identified a shortfall in wildlife monitoring for certain ecosystems and regions. As a result, we lack sufficient data to answer key questions about the status of wildlife and to track and evaluate trends over time.”









My Log 657 October  30 2018

Chronicles from the Tenth Decade: 93
Wildlife populations, failing schools, both argue the need for a wider overview, and longer term planning

Two items of news that have come to my notice recently seem to bear striking similarities. One is the report of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Canada’s first ever thorough survey of living animal species and the threats they are under to their very survival. It is not as if we are setting out to exterminate other species deliberately, but the effect is the same because of things we are doing, such as three categories that are named in the WWF report, habitat loss (probably the most important), climate change, and pollution.
A related but separate issue with a similar effect was a report I heard in a discussion rising from the recent decision of the Ontario government that all teachers in training should pass a maths test.  One commentator I heard, talking in general about the problem of lack of student results but referring more particularly to American rather than Canadian experience, said that it was fruitless to blame teachers for the shortfall of public education when this could be addressed only by an all-out attack on poverty. It was poverty, he said, in which whole communities were trapped, that carried with it the inevitable concomitant disadvantages of a lack of parental attention, a lack of adequate places conducive for study away from the classroom, a lack of equipment needed for learning, and a general lack of stability among the student body because of the inadequacy of family life among hard-pressed impoverished people: the problems of public education, said this expert educator,  could be addressed only if poverty was attacked as a priority. Given that, he said, teachers would be able to do the jobs they were eager to do but were prevented from doing by the overweening influence of the poverty among their students.
In other words in both cases the education of under-funded and impoverished students, and the decline of animal populations whose habitat is being stripped ruthlessly, the problems could be addressed only if apparently unconnected problems, lack of economic opportunity poverty, poor education, or the clear-cutting of forests, the advance of global warming, the ubiquity of pollution, only if these factors could be brought under control first.
Both these examples seem to argue that our governance is suffering from not being planned either with a sufficiently compelling overview, or from a time scale that is inadequate to the provision of solutions that are coming more clearly into focus every day as essential to our future.
A lot of this stuff is really scary: I came across an item on TV yesterday which showed that in Alaska, the trees have begun to lean over. Why is this? Because the permanently frozen ground in which these trees are rooted has, because of global warming, begun to melt, destroying the stable footing of the ground cover.
When I say this is scary, consider these facts, from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre of the United States: “right now, the Earth's atmosphere contains about 850 gigatons of carbon. (A gigaton is one billion tons—about the weight of one hundred thousand school buses). We estimate that there are about 1,400 gigatons of carbon frozen in permafrost. So the carbon frozen in permafrost is greater than the amount of carbon that is already in the atmosphere today.”
Of course it is unlikely that all of that carbon permanently frozen into the northern ground will decay and end up in the atmosphere: but we do know that the Arctic is warming at a faster rate than the more moderate climates, and that this permafrost has already started to melt in many places. “The trick is to find out how much of the frozen carbon is going to decay, how fast, and where,” remarks the Data centre’s web site.
It’s not as if the figures of carbon concentration in the atmosphere are in any way reassuring, even if all of the permafrost carbon is not transformed into methane gas on melting. The latest figures show that global annual mean CO2concentration has increased by more than 45% since the start of the Industrial Revolution, from 280 ppm during the 10,000 years up to the mid-18th century to 410 ppm as of mid-2018.  The present concentration is the highest in the last 800,000 and possibly even the last 20 million years. The increase has been caused by human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. This increase of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere has produced the current episode of global warming. About 30–40% of the CO2 released by humans into the atmosphere dissolves into oceans, rivers and lakes, which has produced ocean acidification. (I am indebted to Wikipedia for these figures.)
In the 149 years between 1751 and 1900, about 12 gigabyte tonnes of  carbon  were released as CO2 to the atmosphere from burning of fossil fuels; in the 112 years between 1901 and 2013, the comparative figure has been 380 gigabyte tonnes. This is enough to scare anybody, since in spite of our minimal efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the rate appears to be ever-increasing. Imagine throwing the melting of the permafrost into his mix: it is enough to make one despair of any solution that can possibly stop global warming from having drastic effects on the lives of the increasingly crowded nations on this earth.
Put into this perspective the rapid decline of the numbers of wildlife species in Canada might seem like a more or less insignificant factor. But on closer inspection, the figures are alarming. The WWF study  monitored 903 wildlife species between 1970 and 2014, of which almost half are in decline,  their average being declines of 83 per cent during the study years.
MAMMALS: Canada is home to approximately 200 mammal species, including blue whales longer than two school buses and tiny pygmy shrews no heavier than a nickel. Monitored mammal populations shrank by 43 per cent, on average, between 1970 and 2014. Some terrestrial mammals, such as bats and woodland and barren-ground caribou, show an even more precipitous drop. Several Canadian whale species have seen populations bounce back since the baseline year of 1970, thanks in part to the 1972 global and federal ban on commercial whaling. Yet studies have shown that the already Endangered southern resident orcas (killer whales) in British Columbia have declined since 1995, and in the east North Atlantic right whales and the St. Lawrence beluga whales remain Endangered.
FISH: with nearly 1,050 species, Canada’s fish species are the most diverse of our vertebrate groups and exports of fish and seafood products were worth $6.6 billion in 2016. Study shows that fish populations have
dropped 20 per cent on average between 1970 and 2014, a figure mostly attributable to Atlantic marine. Less is known about Canada’s180 species of freshwater fishes because of  a lack of monitoring and
information about their populations.
BIRDS: Overall, bird populations in Canada increased on average by seven per cent between 1970 and 2014. But some separate bird groups show widely differing trends. For instance, populations of grassland birds in Canada plunged on average by 69 per cent since 1970. Populations of aerial insectivores, such as swifts and swallows, fell on average by more than 51 per cent since 1970.  Shorebird populations declined on average by 43 per cent since 1970.
REPTILES: Only a small number of reptile and amphibian species thrive in Canada’s cold climate. Amphibian and reptile populations declined by 34 per cent on average between 1970 and 2014. While there’s a comparatively high degree of variation in this trend over time (the range is 40 to minus 69 per cent), the decline in this group of species is well documented both in Canada, and around the world. In Canada, 42 per cent of amphibians and 77 per cent of reptile species were assessed as at risk as of 2014.
As for solutions, the study recommends collective action. “It is clear we need to do more to protect species at risk, and to halt the decline of other wildlife before they land on the at-risk list in the first place. From a preventative standpoint, we need to maintain sustainable populations, so we aren’t forced to resort to less effective, reactive and resource intensive recovery strategies. This is a challenge we must all embrace. We need actions from all corners of society – from communities, industry, government, all of us, collectively. As a nation, to increase our chances of solving this problem together, we need to: Collect and share data on ecosystem health and species habitat. Our analysis identified a shortfall in wildlife monitoring for certain ecosystems and regions. As a result, we lack sufficient data to answer key questions about the status of wildlife and to track and evaluate trends over time.”