Collapse

Executive Summary: https://www.stateofthebirds.org/2025/executive-summary/

5 Years After the 3 Billion Birds Lost Research, America Is Still Losing Birds

A 2019 study published in the journal Science sounded the alarm—showing a net loss of 3 billion birds in North America in the past 50 years. The 2025 State of the Birds report shows those losses are continuing, with declines among several bird trend indicators. Notably duck populations—a bright spot in past State of the Birds reports, with strong increases since 1970—have trended downward in recent years.

Population Trend Graphic

Abstract

Inland waters are an important resource, a highly diverse habitat, and a key component of global biogeochemical cycles. Oxygen plays a major role in inland-water ecosystem functioning, but long-term changes in its cycling remain unknown. Here, we quantify global inland-water oxygen production, consumption, and exchange with the atmosphere during 1900–2010 using a spatially explicit, mass-balanced, mechanistic model that takes into account changes in climate, hydrology, human activities, and the coupled biogeochemical (oxygen-nutrient-organic matter) dynamics. The model results show that global inland-water oxygen turnover increased during 1900–2010: production from 0.16 to 0.94 Pg year−1 and consumption from 0.44 to 1.47 Pg year−1. Inland waters overall remained heterotrophic and a sink of atmospheric oxygen. Direct human perturbations (changes in hydrology and nutrient supply) were more important in increasing oxygen turnover than indirect effects via warming.

 Six months ago staunch allies like Canada and Australia would have loved to help, although they couldn’t replace China overnight. But the same tariffs that led to China’s new licenses for critical minerals are hitting the former allies Trump is treating like enemies.

Can we hope for new technology to deliver a solution for climate change? " Actually, petroleum increased the demand for whale oil: top-of-the-range lubricants for gearboxes and machine tools used to contain whale oil."

In an internal FEMA memorandum obtained and first reported by Grist, the Trump administration announced its plans to dismantle that program — the biggest climate adaptation initiative the federal government has ever funded — even as disasters incur hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damages across the United States.

“BRIC was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program,” a FEMA spokesperson told Grist. “It was more concerned with climate change than helping Americans effected by natural disasters.”

BRIC generally shoulders 75 percent of the cost of a given resilience project, and up to 90 percent of the cost of projects in disadvantaged communities. The program’s emphasis on equity is what may have marked it for demolition — the Trump administration has been systematically dismantling Biden-era efforts to infuse equity into governmental programs and direct more climate spending toward underrepresented groups.

The decision comes as at least seven people were killed this week as tornadoes and catastrophic flooding descended on the central United States in what meteorologists called a once in a generation event.

so its come to this then..

We find that aerosol cooling, and thus climate sensitivity, are understated in the best estimate of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As a result, shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is likely within the next 20-30 years.

The world is fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for many climate risks, said Günther Thallinger, on the board of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies.

The argument set out by Thallinger in a LinkedIn post begins with the increasingly severe damage being caused by the climate crisis: “Heat and water destroy capital. Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Entire asset classes are degrading in real time.”

“We are fast approaching temperature levels – 1.5C, 2C, 3C – where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many of these risks,” he said. “The math breaks down: the premiums required exceed what people or companies can pay. This is already happening. Entire regions are becoming uninsurable.”

“This applies not only to housing, but to infrastructure, transportation, agriculture, and industry,” he said. “The economic value of entire regions – coastal, arid, wildfire-prone – will begin to vanish from financial ledgers. Markets will reprice, rapidly and brutally. This is what a climate-driven market failure looks like.”

https://archive.ph/gc27x

Abstract

Bitcoin mines—massive computing clusters generating cryptocurrency tokens—consume vast amounts of electricity. The amount of fine particle (PM2.5) air pollution created because of their electricity consumption and its effect on environmental health is pending. In this study, we located the 34 largest mines in the United States in 2022, identified the electricity-generating plants that responded to them, and pinpointed communities most harmed by Bitcoin mine-attributable air pollution. From mid-2022 to mid-2023, the 34 mines consumed 32.3 terawatt-hours of electricity—33% more than Los Angeles—85% of which came from fossil fuels. We estimated that 1.9 million Americans were exposed to ≥0.1 μg/m3 of additional PM2.5 pollution from Bitcoin mines, often hundreds of miles away from the communities they affected. Americans living in four regions—including New York City and near Houston—were exposed to the highest Bitcoin mine-attributable PM2.5 concentrations (≥0.5 μg/m3) with the greatest health risks.

Abstract

Homo sapiens has evolved to reproduce exponentially, expand geographically, and consume all available resources. For most of humanity’s evolutionary history, such expansionist tendencies have been countered by negative feedback. However, the scientific revolution and the use of fossil fuels reduced many forms of negative feedback, enabling us to realize our full potential for exponential growth. This natural capacity is being reinforced by growth-oriented neoliberal economics—nurture complements nature. Problem: the human enterprise is a ‘dissipative structure’ and sub-system of the ecosphere—it can grow and maintain itself only by consuming and dissipating available energy and resources extracted from its host system, the ecosphere, and discharging waste back into its host. The population increase from one to eight billion, and >100-fold expansion of real GWP in just two centuries on a finite planet, has thus propelled modern techno-industrial society into a state of advanced overshoot. We are consuming and polluting the biophysical basis of our own existence. Climate change is the best-known symptom of overshoot, but mainstream ‘solutions’ will actually accelerate climate disruption and worsen overshoot. Humanity is exhibiting the characteristic dynamics of a one-off population boom–bust cycle. The global economy will inevitably contract and humanity will suffer a major population ‘correction’ in this century.

Keywords: overshoot; exceptionalism; human nature; cognitive obsolescence; exponential growth; ‘K’ strategist; over population; over consumption; climate change; energy transition; dissipative structure; civilizational collapse; population correction

Significance

Pollinators are critical to maintaining terrestrial ecosystem function and the global food supply, but many are in decline. However, we have limited information identifying which species are at elevated extinction risk, limiting efforts to prioritize scarce conservation resources. We assessed the extinction risk of nearly 1,600 species of vertebrate and insect pollinators and found that more than one in five species is at risk of extinction. The major threats are climate change, agriculture, modifications to hydrological and fire regimes, and housing and urban development. These results can inform management actions to help prevent pollinator extinctions.

Abstract

Pollinators are critical for food production and ecosystem function. Although native pollinators are thought to be declining, the evidence is limited. This first, taxonomically diverse assessment for mainland North America north of Mexico reveals that 22.6% (20.6 to 29.6%) of the 1,579 species in the best-studied vertebrate and insect pollinator groups have elevated risk of extinction. All three pollinating bat species are at risk and bees are the insect group most at risk (best estimate, 34.7% of 472 species assessed, range 30.3 to 43.0%). Substantial numbers of butterflies (19.5% of 632 species, range 19.1 to 21.0%) and moths (16.1% of 142 species, range 15.5 to 19.0%) are also at risk, with flower flies (14.7% of 295 species, range 11.5 to 32.9%), beetles (12.5% of 18 species, range 11.1 to 22.2%), and hummingbirds (0% of 17 species) more secure. At-risk pollinators are concentrated where diversity is highest, in the southwestern United States. Threats to pollinators vary geographically: climate change in the West and North, agriculture in the Great Plains, and pollution, agriculture, and urban development in the East. Woodland, shrubland/chaparral, and grassland habitats support the greatest numbers of at-risk pollinators. Strategies for improving pollinator habitat are increasingly available, and this study identifies species, habitats, and threats most in need of conservation actions at state, provincial, territorial, national, and continental levels.

From chronic respiratory problems to cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and dementia, health damage caused by particulate matter air pollution is wide-ranging and serious. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over six million deaths a year are caused by increased exposure to particulate matter.

Measurements taken with the new method reveal that 60% to 99% of oxygen radicals disappear within minutes or hours. Previous analyses of particulate matter based on filter deposition therefore delivered a distorted image.

The older methods of measuring involed collecting particles on a filter, that.filter is then collected days or weeks later, this suggest many of the particles (60%-99%) will be gone by then

Maybe this ahoukd even be cross posted to /c/fuckcars.

FFS :(

The problem with the soft apocalypse is that it is still an apocalypse. It still ends in collapse. We tell ourselves we have time, that the worst is always just ahead, that we will act when we must