September 2024

1.  Farmer-led pilot project for badger vaccination in Cornwall

Rosie Woodroffe, et al., “Farmer-led badger vaccination in Cornwall: Epidemiological patterns and social perspectives,” People and Nature (5 August 2024).  bit.ly/3YyoHso

Plain Language Summary: Farmer-led badger vaccination in Cornwall. bit.ly/3Ae58eM :

Control of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is the UK’s greatest animal health challenge and also its greatest wildlife controversy. Each year, bTB causes misery to thousands of UK cattle farmers, but eradicating the disease from their cattle is difficult, in part because wild badgers can also become infected, and transmit the infection back to cattle. Over the past decade, the UK government took the drastic step of authorising badger culls across more than 30,000square kilometres, prompting public controversy and even protest from wildlife groups. In Cornwall, a dozen farmers decided to take a different approach, and asked local conservationists to help them deliver badger vaccination instead of culling.

Wildlife scientists took blood samples from many of the vaccinated badgers and showed that the proportion testing positive for bTB declined from 16% at the start of vaccination, to 0% in the fourth year, suggesting that vaccination was protecting badgers and might thus reduce transmission to local cattle. Social scientists then interviewed the farmers who had taken part in the vaccination program. The social scientists found that these farmers were very enthusiastic about the scheme, considering it a great success.

On its own, the project is too small-scale to judge the contribution that badger vaccination might make to bTB control nationally, but it does show that the approach is promising and should be evaluated at larger scales. We identified leadership by farmers, combined with scientific monitoring, as central to the success of this pilot project.

2.  ‘Integrated’ work to help biodiversity and tackle climate crisis can also benefit humanity

Trisha Gopalakrishna, “ Optimizing restoration: A holistic spatial approach to deliver Nature’s Contributions to People with minimal tradeoffs and maximal equity,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (12 August 2024).  bit.ly/3AvMbnM

“Delivery of ecosystem restoration plans can lead to gains and losses of environmental and societal benefits, disproportionately impacting different groups of society. The tradeoffs and inequity can potentially be large when considering plans focused on a single benefit. Such information is especially lacking in tropical countries, such as India, that must balance local societal needs while delivering actions for ambitious global climate change and biodiversity goals. Here, we show that forest restoration schemes aimed at multiple objectives deliver most of the available benefits, implying minimal tradeoffs. Such schemes deliver benefits evenly across potential restoration areas, implying multiple land options for implementation. Lastly, these schemes are equitable as they deliver benefits to a large proportion of Indians who are socioeconomically disadvantaged.”

See also, Helena Horton, “Successful environmental projects benefit nature and people, study finds,” The Guardian (12 August 2024).  bit.ly/3AkySH1

3.  Urban birds are teeming with antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Evangelos Mourkas, “Proximity to humans is associated with antimicrobial-resistant enteric pathogens in wild bird microbiomes,” Current Biology (13 August 2024).  bit.ly/4crrExY

See also, Nicola Davis, “Urban birds are teeming with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, study finds,” The Guardian (13 August 2024). bit.ly/3SPVQfw

“… scientists have found wild birds that live near humans are more likely to harbour bacteria resistant to important antibiotics.”

“Researchers say species of wild birds that tend to turn up in urban settings are reservoirs for bacteria with the hallmarks of resistance to a host of drugs.”

“… a key concern was that these birds could pass antimicrobial-resistant bacteria to captive birds destined to be eaten by humans – such as those kept in poultry farms.”

4.  Europe is warming at much faster rate than other parts of world, leading to fires, drought and health problems

 Elisa Gallo, et al., “Heat-related mortality in Europe during 2023 and the role of adaptation in protecting health,” Nature Medicine (12 August 2024). bit.ly/4dipkL9

See also, Ajit Niranjan, “Heat aggravated by carbon pollution killed 50,000 in Europe last year – study,” The Guardian (12 August 2024).  bit.ly/4cnT5ci via @guardian

“Hot weather inflamed by carbon pollution killed nearly 50,000 people in Europe last year, with the continent warming at a much faster rate than other parts of the world, research has found…

Doctors call heat a “silent killer” because it claims far more lives than most people realise. The devastating mortality rate in 2023 would have been 80% higher if people had not adapted to rising temperatures over the past two decades.”

5.  Feeding cattle red seedweed cut methane emissions from burping by 50%

Melissa M. George, et al., “Effect of SEAFEED, a canola oil infused with Asparagopsis armata, on methane emissions, animal health, performance, and carcass characteristics of Angus feedlot cattle,” Transnational Animal Science (3 August 2024).

See also, Aston Brown, “Feeding seaweed supplement to cattle halved methane emissions in Australian feedlot, study finds,” The Guardian (17 August 2024).  bit.ly/3YLduVv

Globally, methane released by burping livestock, namely cattle, accounts for an estimated 5.5%-5.7% of all human-induced global heating. It is also responsible for the majority of emissions in Australia’s livestock sector…

Cattle at a Queensland feedlot were fed red seaweed for 200 days in one of the longest trials of the additive… The results … found methane emissions in the cattle fed the supplement reduced by more than half (a 51.7% reduction in production and 50.5% reduction in yield) when taken on average over the length of the trial, with a peak in methane reduction at 91% on day 29.”

6.  Cooling building walls through a zigzag-based structural design

Qilong Cheng, et al., “Realizing optimal radiative cooling walls in building-energy nexus via asymmetric emissivity,” Nexus (9 August 2024). bit.ly/3YP76MR

“With the gradually warming climate, the global cooling demand for buildings is rapidly increasing. Radiative cooling (RC) has been an attractive electricity-free approach to reducing the energy consumption of buildings. Current RC strategies focus on roofs; however, limited attention has been paid to vertical walls. Here, we report a zigzag-based structural design with asymmetric emissivity to realize optimal RC walls. Such asymmetry leads to a daily average temperature drop of 2.3°C compared to conventional walls coated with RC materials.”

See also, Isabelle Rodney, “Zigzag patterns on walls could help cool overheated buildings, study finds,” The Guardian (16 August 2024). bit.ly/4fSmFta

7.  Levels of education and sanitation predicted to massively improve if creditors of poor countries reduced payments

Larry Elliott, “‘Huge benefits’ in greater debt relief for lower income countries, study finds,” The Guardian (25 August 2024).  bit.ly/4dA3kvf

“Reducing the debt payments made by poor countries to more sustainable levels could help 5 million more children attend school and provide access to clean drinking water to 17 million people, according to research.

A study by academics at the universities of St Andrews and Leicester said there would be “huge benefits” – including saving the lives of 60,000 children and mothers – from slashing the size of repayments…

The report looked at 39 countries where debt payments average more than 22% of government revenue and a wider group of 88 countries where debt payments average more than 15% of government income.

It found that, if debt relief reduced payments for the group of 39 countries to 14% of government revenue, 16 million people could gain access to basic sanitation, 7 million could access clean drinking water, 2 million children could attend school and more than 30,000 children and mothers could survive the threat to life of extreme poverty.”

8.  New studies suggest global warming boosts natural methane releases

Drew Shindell, et al., “The Methane Imperative,” Frontiers in Science (29 July 2024).  bit.ly/47agLj9

See also, Bob Berwyn, “Surging Methane Emissions Could Be a Sign of a Major Climate Shift: New studies suggest global warming boosts natural methane releases, which could undermine efforts to cut emissions of the greenhouse gas from fossil fuels and agriculture,” Inside Climate News (28 August 2024). bit.ly/4cGziVn

A 2021 pledge by more than 100 nations to cut methane emissions from anthropogenic sources 30 percent by 2030 might not slow global warming as much as projected, as new research shows that feedbacks in the climate system are boosting methane emissions from natural sources, especially tropical wetlands. 

A new trouble spot is in the Arctic, where scientists recently found unexpectedly large methane emissions in winter. And globally, the increase in water vapor caused by global warming is slowing the rate at which methane breaks down in the atmosphere. If those feedbacks intensify, scientists said, it could outpace efforts to cut methane from fossil fuel and other human sources.

9.  Future sea-level rise (SLR) could be much larger and occur sooner than previously thought

António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, Surging Seas in a warming world (26 August 2024).  bit.ly/4cMy4Iv

“In 2021, the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded with high confidence that global-mean sea level is rising at rates unprecedented in at least the last 3,000 years due to human-induced global warming.  Since then, emerging research on climate ‘tipping points’ and ice-sheet dynamics is raising alarm among scientists that future sea-level rise (SLR) could be much larger and occur sooner than previously thought.

This technical brief provides a summary of the latest science on SLR and its present-day and projected impacts — including coastal flooding — at a global and regional level, with a focus on major coastal cities in the Group of Twenty (G20) countries and on the Pacific Small Island Developing States (Pacific SIDS).

The findings demonstrate that SLR is affecting the lives and livelihoods of coastal communities and low-lying island nations around the world today, and it is accelerating. The climate actions and decisions taken by political leaders and policymakers in the coming months and years will determine how devastating these impacts become and how quickly they worsen.”

See also, Bob Berwyn, “ Pacific Islands Climate Risk Growing as Sea Level Rise Accelerates: U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns that the climate crisis will leave many people stranded “without a lifeboat,” Inside Climate News (26 August 2024). bit.ly/3AK0Lbw

10.  An authoritative annual summary of the global climate

State of the Climate in 2023, Special Supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (August 2024). bit.ly/3Xo8Tr2 

See also, Bob Berwyn, “New Federal Report Details More of 2023’s Extreme Climate Conditions: Some indicators, including “super-marine heatwaves,” may suggest a major shift in the global climate system,” Inside Climate News (22 August 2024).  bit.ly/4dFtLjr

“Last year was already one for the climate record books, but a new report from the American Meteorological Society is adding to that already substantial list.

In 2023, Earth’s layers of heat-reflecting clouds dwindled to the lowest extent ever measured. About 94 percent of all ocean surfaces experienced a marine heatwave during that year. And, last July, a record-high 7.9 percent of land areas experienced severe drought, the report shows.

The root cause of the feverish symptoms is the continued buildup of heat-trapping pollution from burning fossil fuels, the report states, detailing the record-high concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide last year.”