Author: Neville

To be alone in the dawn chorus reminds us how precious life is

Many of the birds that enchant us in our woodlands and gardens are under threat. We must cherish them
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Henry Porter

Henry Porter

The Observer, Saturday 4 May 2013 19.00 BST

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Nightingale singing
Star of the dawn chorus: the nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos). Photograph: blickwinkel/Alamy

International dawn chorus day is today. If that does not light you up, you should perhaps move to the latest coverage of Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and other human folly. For here we are going to “clear from the head the masses of impressive rubbish”, as Auden put it, and think about rising at dawn like our ancestors and hearing birdsong spread to the far horizons.

It seems odd to designate an entire day for the dawn chorus because most people only become aware of it after the main event has happened, early on the first Sunday of May. But this morning’s concert (around 4.30am), which you perhaps missed, was one of many in a season that will last until Glyndebourne and possibly even Glastonbury. If you manage to attend just once during the piercing glories of this spring, when the blossom and trees have never seemed more miraculous, you might change yourself for ever or, at the very minimum, experience half an hour that you’ll never forget. To walk alone in the dawn chorus in some woodland or in the park, or simply standing in your back garden, reminds you how precious it is to be alive.

If this is a little too Buddhist or new age for a newspaper column, I make no apologies. Some of the best moments of the past month for me have been to wake at 5am (easily achieved by drinking a lot of water the night before) and fling open the windows to hear – in roughly this order – blackbirds, robins, wrens, chaffinches, pheasants, owls, blackcaps, dunnocks and goldfinches, against the soft pulse of scores of cooing pigeons and, maybe in the distance, a cuckoo.

I am evangelical about this moment, partly because, as my colleague Catherine Bennett reminded me, this is what life was like before the Industrial Revolution and the incessant noise of our world. Dawn is the one time that there is almost no road traffic. Noise from aeroplanes and trains is minimal and the fool across the way, with his bass guitar, is asleep or pharmaceutically coshed. If you rise at dawn at this time of year, you snatch something of our forebears’ experience.

International dawn chorus day is, I discover without much surprise, a British invention. Whatever our self-denigration and decline, you cannot take away from the British a genius for the appreciation of nature, particularly birds, as expressed by writers such as WH Hudson and, more recently, Michael McCarthy, author of the wonderful Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo. Birds fill the imagination of artists from Chaucer to Vaughan Williams, though I don’t sense any great interest in Shakespeare, apart from mention of swans, for obvious reason, and crows making wing to rooky woods, which he uses to create atmosphere.

International dawn chorus day began in 1984 courtesy of the Urban Wildlife Trust, at Moseley Bog in Birmingham, which has since become a nature reserve. To be honest, there’s not a lot that is international about it. I found three events in the US and a handful in Europe. But in Britain, there were 43 scheduled for about 4.30am today, and the start tomorrow of David Attenborough’s short Radio 4 Tweet of the Day birdsong programme.

Creeping around the countryside with a guide and fellow birdsong enthusiast, trying to distinguish between the blackcap and willow warbler is not my thing. I’m for poetry and solitude, not science at dawn. But the pleasure that the dawn chorus gives to thousands in Britain is undeniable. My dream is to wake to a nightingale, which I have only ever heard sing in Britain once, on the Port Street roundabout in Evesham, about 35 years ago.

There is something enthralling about the millions of birds, often weighing no more than a few ounces and measuring between four and six inches (10-15cm), which travel thousands of miles to reach Britain every spring. The next few days will see garden warblers, willow warblers, blackcaps, whitethroats and some nightingales crossing the Channel to Britain to fill the dawn chorus in woodlands and gardens.

Most have flown from southern Africa, compelled by mysterious certainty and navigational skills that we still don’t properly understand. Some of the cuckoos that began arriving last month were tracked by satellite from west Africa and, if you followed their halting progress on the British Trust for Ornithology site (bto.org), there were a few heart-stopping moments as each crossed the Sahara, without hope of water or caterpillars to sustain them.

In every natural history programme, at which the British also excel, I have come to dread the moment when the kindly presenter, often Attenborough, turns from some marvellous creature, whether it be a bonobo, whale, beetle or bird of paradise, to warn that the habitat of the particular animal is disappearing, breeding sites are fewer, food is in short supply and insecticides, farming practices and pollution now threaten its very existence. It must be the most melancholic aspect of Attenborough’s long and wonderful career to end so many programmes with this message.

The inescapable fact is that the dawn chorus is less than it was, and we have to wonder what will be left of it by the end of the century. So many of the really common birds of my country boyhood are in crisis. In England, cuckoos are down by 65%, sparrows 71%, lapwing 80%, yellowhammers and linnets both down 50% and those huge murmurations of starlings, which I used to watch heading north to the night warmth of Birmingham, are nearly a thing of the past. The starling is estimated to have declined by 79%.

I see more buzzards, kites and goldfinches than I once did, but the overall trend is depressing and will almost certainly continue with human population growth, more “efficient” farming practices and climate change, although warmer weather may bring some news species – and song – to Britain. Garden birdfeeders do a little good (lately, to goldfinches and sparrows) but migrants hunting for insects and grubs aren’t interested in birdseed.

So enjoy the dawn chorus while you can and perhaps ponder the message of the environmentalist Crispin Tickell as you do. “We have to look at life with respect and wonder. We need an ethical system in which the natural world has value not just for human welfare but for and in itself. The universe is something internal as well as external.”

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Wildlife

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Endangered species ·
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As Climate Changes, Boreal Forests to Shift North and Relinquish More Carbon Than Expected

May 5, 2013 — It’s difficult to imagine how a degree or two of warming will affect a location. Will it rain less? What will happen to the area’s vegetation?

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New Berkeley Lab research offers a way to envision a warmer future. It maps how Earth’s myriad climates — and the ecosystems that depend on them — will move from one area to another as global temperatures rise.

The approach foresees big changes for one of the planet’s great carbon sponges. Boreal forests will likely shift north at a steady clip this century. Along the way, the vegetation will relinquish more trapped carbon than most current climate models predict.

The research is published online May 5 in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Boreal ecosystems encircle the planet’s high latitudes, covering swaths of Canada, Europe, and Russia in coniferous trees and wetlands. This vegetation stores vast amounts of carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere where it can contribute to climate change.

Scientists use incredibly complex computer simulations called Earth system models to predict the interactions between climate change and ecosystems such as boreal forests. These models show that boreal habitat will expand poleward in the coming decades as regions to their north become warmer and wetter. This means that boreal ecosystems are expected to store even more carbon than they do today.

But the Berkeley Lab research tells a different story. The planet’s boreal forests won’t expand poleward. Instead, they’ll shift poleward. The difference lies in the prediction that as boreal ecosystems follow the warming climate northward, their southern boundaries will be overtaken by even warmer and drier climates better suited for grassland.

And that’s a key difference. Grassland stores a lot of carbon in its soil, but it accumulates at a much slower rate than is lost from diminishing forests.

“I found that the boreal ecosystems ringing the globe will be pushed north and replaced in their current location by what’s currently to their south. In some places, that will be forest, but in other places it will be grassland,” says Charles Koven, a scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division who conducted the research.

“Most Earth system models don’t predict this, which means they overestimate the amount of carbon that high-latitude vegetation will store in the future,” he adds.

Koven’s results come from a new way of tracking global warming’s impact on Earth’s mosaic of climates. The method is based on the premise that as temperatures rise, a location’s climate will be replaced by a similar but slightly warmer climate from a nearby area. The displaced climate will in turn … [read more]

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No jab, no play campaign reveals vaccination refusals high as babies die

Jane Hansen
The Daily Telegraph
May 06, 2013 12:00AM

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Eleizabeth Cockroft and Nathan Taylor lost their baby Malakai to whooping cough. Picture: Brian Cassey Source: The Daily Telegraph

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Toni McCaffery cradles her baby Dana, who died of whooping cough in 2009. Source: Supplied

The Richmond-Tweed region, in northern NSW, and Cairns in Far North Queensland, can today be identified as the areas that have the highest number of conscientious objectors – or “vaccine refusers” – in Australia.

On day two of The Daily Telegraph’s joint campaign with The Sunday Telegraph, which calls for parents and officials to get tough on protecting children from preventable diseases, the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register has shown the proportion of youngsters with no vaccines recorded in Far North Queensland is between 5 and 8 per cent. In the Richmond-Tweed area, it is 8 per cent, way above the national figure.

They were also home to Dana McCaffery of Lennox Head, who died aged four weeks on March 9, 2009, and Kailis Smith from Tweed, who passed away on April 22, 2011 aged nine weeks.

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Across the state border, Malakai Taylor died on September 17, 2012 in Cairns, aged six weeks.

The national average of vaccine refusers is 1.5 per cent, but Far North Queensland has a rate of 3.3 per cent and in Richmond-Tweed it’s 9.9 per cent, or nearly one in 10.

Health Minister Tanya Plibersek, a firm supporter of immunisation, oversaw the change of federal government terminology from “conscientious objector” to “vaccine refuser” for this group.

A loophole still exists which allows families to continue receiving the 50 per cent childcare rebate – conditional on up-to-date vaccinations – if they register as “vaccine refusers”.

Far North Queensland and Richmond-Tweed areas also coincide with higher rates per head of whooping cough, according to Paul Corben, the Director of Public Health for the Far North Coast Area Health Service.

“During the epidemics of 2008-2009 we saw stark differences in adjacent communities,” Mr Corben said.

“Whooping cough raged through Byron at the height of the epidemic.

“It had twice the rate of adjacent Ballina which has a good vaccination rate.”

The north coast communities with the highest number of reported cases of whooping cough over the period 2008-2010 were those with lowest childhood vaccination rates: Bellingen, Lismore and Byron.

In contrast, the three local government areas with the highest vaccination rates had the lowest attack rates: Port Macquarie-Hastings, Clarence Valley and Coffs Harbour, he said.

Whooping cough, or pertussis, is a highly contagious disease.

Immunisation expert Professor Peter McIntyre said the vaccine was good at reducing the risk of a severe strain of the disease but it was not good at preventing infection altogether – the reason why it persisted.

“Clearly there are benefits to you as an individual to vaccinate, but there are benefits to others in the community, particularly babies,” he said.

In Queensland, the Cairns epidemic started in September 2011 with 723 cases recorded.

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Making water from air: a collaboration between engineers and marketeers

A university and advertising agency in Lima joined forces to design a billboard that provides drinking water to hundreds of families in the desert capital
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Flemmich Webb

Guardian Professional, Friday 3 May 2013 14.55 BST

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Billboard Lima
Lima is the world’s second largest desert capital and about one million people don’t have access to clean drinking water. A new billboard which generates water from humidity is attempting to change this. Photograph: Mayo DraftFCB

Advertising is everywhere. Some people enjoy it; others find it an insidious attempt by brands to brainwash us into consuming more. But, whatever your view, there’s no denying advertising has the power to shape the behaviour of individuals, groups or even society in general. And that power can be harnessed to positive effect.

The University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) is based in Lima, Peru. Last year, staff began thinking about designing an advertising billboard to encourage students to enroll for the 2013 academic year. They approached advertising agency Mayo DraftFCB with the brief.

Alejandro Aponte, Mayo DraftFCB’s creative director, takes up the story. “I started brainstorming with my co-creative director Juan Donalisio and we came up with the idea of showing these young students, through a real-life example, how engineering can offer a solution to real-life problems.”

The real-life problem he alludes to is the lack of potable water in the region. Lima is the world’s second-largest desert capital and about one million people don’t have access to clean drinking water. The area receives just 0.51 inches of rainfall a year and residents often have to rely on other sources for their water.

“Here in the Bujama district, most of us draw water from the well,” says Francisco Quilca, a Bujama resident, speaking in a UTEC video about the billboard. “It’s not nice and it’s polluted.”

The solution, devised and delivered by the two organisations, is a billboard that generates drinking water from moisture in the air around it – annual rainfall may be low but the atmospheric humidity is about 98%.

The billboard contains five generators that condense the moisture in the air to obtain bulk water. The air passes through a series of filters, including antistatic agents, activated carbon, minerals and reverse osmosis.

The condensed water then flows under UV lamps for further purification and is collected in a tank from where it is dispensed. Sensors monitor the collector tank to avoid water shortages or excesses.

The generators currently rely on traditional electricity to operate, but there are plans to install solar panels so the billboard can be self-sufficient in energy.

The advert, which is located on the Panamericana Highway on the way to the beach, said at the time: “A billboard that turns air into clean drinking water is ingenuity in action,” and underneath, “Admissions test March 3rd. UTEC. University of Engineering and Technology.”

According to Aponte, the billboard has been a success both in technical as well as advertising terms. “In three months we have produced 9,450 litres of drinking water – that’s the equivalent of the consumption of hundreds of families,” he says.

“And, as a result of the advert, UTEC’s applications increased by 38% compared with last year, which means more engineers will be changing lives in the near future.”

The idea also captured the imagination of individuals and organisations across the world as news of the billboard quickly spread in print and on TV, the internet and social media. The Discovery Channel and the Weather Channel carried a special report on the billboard; Time magazine published the article in its homepage; MythBusters posted the idea on its fan page.

The news was retweeted by such luminaries as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dave Evans (Cisco´s chief futurist and chief technologist) and Hollywood actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The UTEC video telling the story of the billboard has received almost 475,000 views.

Its popularity can be ascribed, in part, to being a good news story featuring two unlikely protagonists – engineers and marketeers – working together to solve a social problem and promote further education.

There’s also a growing global awareness that water and its management is fast becoming one of the key resource issues of the 21st century.

About the time the billboard went live, a study was published in The Cryosphere journal that showed the Andean glaciers, which supply fresh water for Peru (and other countries), have shrunk by between 20% and 50% since the 1970s.

“The ongoing recession of Andean glaciers will become increasingly problematic for regions depending on water resources supplied by glacierised mountain catchments, particularly in Peru and Bolivia,” the report says.

Of course UTEC’s innovative billboard, which recently won a prize at the Internationalist Awards for Innovation in Media, can’t solve the national water problem, but it does expand the range of thinking as to what the possible solutions might be.

And its positive local impact demonstrates the benefits of innovative thinking and collaboration between public and private bodies – a partnership approach that’s increasingly being used to tackle water management challenges across the world.

“It was great to work with UTEC because our idea required technological support,” says Aponte. “Since we had an engineering team as a client, we could employ them to build this billboard. We had originally planned to keep it up for just the three-month campaign [UTEC’s student applications season], but, because of its success and because it’s helping a lot of people, it’s probably going to stay up for long time.”

Advertising as a force for good. Now that’s a powerful marketing message.

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According to the Pangaea Ultima hypothesis, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans will continue to get wider until new subduction zones bring the continents back together, forming a future Pangaea. Most continents and microcontinents are predicted to collide with Eurasia, just as they did when most continents collided to Laurentia.[3]

Around 50 million years from now, North America is predicted to shift slightly west and Eurasia would shift to the east, and possibly even to the south, bringing Great Britain closer to the North Pole and Siberia southward towards warm, subtropical latitudes. Africa is predicted to collide with Europe and Arabia, closing the Mediterranean Sea (completely closing the Tethys Ocean (or Neotethys) and the Red Sea). A long mountain range would then extend from Iberia, across Southern Europe (the Mediterranean Mountain Range), through the Mideast and into Asia. Some are even predicted to have peaks higher than Mt. Everest. Similarly, Australia is predicted to beach itself on the doorstep of Southeast Asia and a new subduction zone is predicted to encircle Australia and extend westward across the Central Indian Ocean. Meanwhile, Southern California and Baja California are predicted to have already collided with Alaska with new mountain ranges formed between them.[4]

About 150 million years from now, the Atlantic ocean is predicted to stop widening and begin to shrink because some of the Atlantic Ocean mid-ridge will have been subducted. In this scenario, a mid-ocean ridge between South America and Africa will probably be subducted first, the Atlantic Ocean is predicted to have narrowed as a result of subduction beneath the Americas. The Indian Ocean is also predicted to be smaller due to northward subduction of oceanic crust into the Central Indian trench. North and South America may be pushed back southeast, and southern Africa would almost hit equator and have reached the Northern hemisphere. Australia may join back to Antarctica, meeting the South Pole.[5]

When the last bit of the Mid-Atlantic spreading ridge is subducted beneath the Americas, the Atlantic Ocean is predicted to rapidly close with a new Pangaea forming.[6]

At 250 million years in the future, the Atlantic and Indian oceans are predicted to have closed. North America is predicted to have already collided with Africa, but be in a more southerly position than where it rifted. South America is predicted to be wrapped around the southern tip of Africa, with Patagonia in contact with Indonesia, enclosing a remnant of the Indian Ocean (called the Indo-Atlantic Ocean). Antarctica would then once again be at the South Pole and the Pacific will have grown wider, encircling half the Earth.[6]

The biomass industry should come clean about its environmental impact

Burning wood from whole trees – the main source of UK biomass – results in higher greenhouse gas emissions than coal
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‘Using wood from whole UK conifers results in an increase in emissions of 49% compared with coal.’ Photograph: Jorma Jaemsen/Corbis

Last year, the RSPB, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace published a report, called Dirtier than coal?, that shone a light on some evidence that the biomass industry would prefer was kept hidden.

We revealed two important facts:

Firstly, government plans to support the conversion of coal plants would mean that by 2017 the UK will be burning 30m tonnes of biomass, most of which will be wood. To give you a sense of proportion, this is about six times the entire UK wood harvest. It will mostly be in coal power stations that are being switched over to biomass.

Secondly, burning wood from whole trees results in higher greenhouse gas emissions than coal. For example, the government’s own research has shown that using wood from whole UK conifers results in an increase in emissions of 49% compared with coal.

Since then, the evidence has continued to stack up. Last month, the European Commission’s science department published a major review that showed that while energy crops, residues, and wastes can be low carbon, wood from whole trees is worse than fossil fuels. What’s more, existing industries that depend on wood to make furniture, wood panels, houses, and suchlike, have also begun to get extremely concerned about the impact of this enormous new source of demand, warning against the “reckless” pursuit of bioenergy. Using wood in these industries is better for the climate as it keeps carbon locked up, while burning it puts it up in smoke and into the atmosphere.

We’ve worked hard to raise these issues with the industry, government and the public, so it was disappointing to be accused of “scaremongering” this week. The claim was inspired by a letter we received recently from the industry association that represents biomass electricity generators, the REA, which accuses us of “spreading misinformation”. By this, they presumably mean quoting government research and a large body of peer-reviewed literature.

It’s hardly surprising, however, that tensions are emerging. Getting an energy policy in place that delivers affordable, low carbon electricity is complex and extremely challenging, particularly against the context of continued economic hard times. So it’s understandable that many would prefer to ignore the fact that one of our major forms of renewable energy could actually increase our carbon emissions. Understandable, but not excusable, because the result will be wasting time and the public’s money supporting something that fuels climate change and puts further pressure on our precious forests.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a role for bioenergy; there is. We want to see a brave new world where every ounce of food waste and sewage goes into anaerobic digestors that produce green gas for our homes. Where local woodlands are brought back into management and the wood clearings are used to provide heating for schools and hospitals, and where steelworks are powered by combined heat and power stations using wood waste.

To get there, however, we need government and industry to take their fingers out of their ears and accept that the world’s forests are not limitless sources of “renewable” fuel for Britain. Then we need to get round a nice wooden table together to completely rethink biomass policy.

• Harry Huyton is the RSPB’s head of climate and energy policy