Veille 2.1

As space travel and lunar exploration becomes a near-future reality, we should consider the impact of human activities on the lunar environment.

First complete ‘scientific health check’ shows most global systems beyond stable range in which modern civilisation emerged

Extreme weather is ‘smacking us in the face’ with worse to come, but a ‘tiny window’ of hope remains, say leading climate scientists

Population ecologist William Rees, with the University of British Columbia's School of Community and Regional Planning, is reminding denizens of Earth that the planet can only support so many people. In his paper published in the journal World, he points out that many models have been developed over the years that show that only a certain number of animals (such as rats) can live in a given environment—they all show that at some point, a population correction occurs.

Antarctica’s sea ice levels are plummeting as extreme weather events happen faster than scientists predicted

Although humans have long been predators with enduring nutritive and cultural relationships with their prey, seldom have conservation ecologists considered the divergent predatory behavior of contemporary, industrialized humans. Recognizing that the number, strength and diversity of predator-prey relationships can profoundly influence biodiversity, here we analyze humanity’s modern day predatory interactions with vertebrates and estimate their ecological consequences. Analysing IUCN ‘use and trade’ data for ~47,000 species, we show that fishers, hunters and other animal collectors prey on more than a third (~15,000 species) of Earth’s vertebrates. Assessed over equivalent ranges, humans exploit up to 300 times more species than comparable non-human predators. Exploitation for the pet trade, medicine, and other uses now affects almost as many species as those targeted for food consumption, and almost 40% of exploited species are threatened by human use. Trait space analyses show that birds and mammals threaten

Recent news articles about a breakthrough in nuclear fusion research heralded the potential for “limitless” energy. Whenever I read that word limitless I wince, because I’ve learned to view it as a subtle instruction to readers to “please stop thinking now.” After decades of false promises to delive

Earth For All is both an antidote to despair and a road map to a better future. Using powerful state-of-the-art computer modeling to explore policies likely to deliver the most good for the majority of people, a leading group of scientists and economists from around the world present five extraordinary turnarounds to achieve prosperity for all within planetary limits in a single generation.

Experts call for a new ‘Climate Endgame’ research agenda, and say far too little work has gone into understanding the mechanisms by which rising temperatures might pose a catastrophic risk to society and humanity.

Global heating could become "catastrophic" for humanity if temperature rises are worse than many predict or cause cascades of events we have yet to consider, or indeed both. The world needs to start preparing for the possibility of a "climate endgame."

The EPA ruling means it may now be mathematically impossible through available avenues for the US to achieve its greenhouse gas emissions goal

António Guterres compares climate inaction to tobacco firms dismissing links between smoking and cancer

In the face of environmental collapse, humanity may need to turn to artificial replacements for nature – how might we avoid the most dystopian of these futures? Researcher Lauren Holt makes the case for a broader form of "offsetting" to help balance technology with natural systems.

Humankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth by a groundbreaking new assessment of all life on the planet. The world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things, according to the study. Yet since the dawn of civilisation, humanity has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants, while livestock kept by humans abounds.

Humanity has triggered the sixth mass extinction episode since the beginning of the Phanerozoic. The complexity of this extinction crisis is centred on the intersection of two complex adaptive systems: human culture and ecosystem functioning, although the significance of this intersection is not properly appreciated. Human beings are part of biodiversity and elements in a global ecosystem.

Inflation is a disease that disproportionately afflicts the poor. Even before Vladimir Putin unleashed his brutal war on Ukraine, whose byproducts include soaring energy and food prices, inflation was already over 7.5% in the US and above 5% in Europe and the UK. Calls for its taming are, therefore, fully justified – and the interest rate rise in the US, with the same expected in the UK, comes as no surprise. That said, we know from history that the cure for inflation tends to devastate the poor even more. The new wrinkle we face today is that the supposed solutions threaten not only to deal another cruel blow to the disadvantaged but, ominously, to snuff out the desperately needed green transition.

Rapidly rising levels of atmospheric methane are "very bad news for humanity and the planet," warned one observer.

"We have to move quickly. What we do, I believe, in the next three to four years will determine the future of humanity". Sir David King. Former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government.

Last month, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its latest report, sounding a “code red for humanity.” The IPCC stressed the need for drastic emissions cuts immediately if we want to maintain a habitable planet and warned that we are running out of time to act to avoid climate catastrophe.

The climate crisis is accelerating at unprecedented pace, according to a new United Nations state-of-the-science report. It is "a code red for humanity," said UN Secretary-General António Guterres — and given that the report concludes the entirety of the warming is due to human greenhouse gas emissions, avoiding the worst of its consequences is up to us.

Human activity is changing the climate in unprecedented and sometimes irreversible ways, a major UN scientific report has said. The landmark study warns of increasingly extreme heatwaves, droughts and flooding, and a key temperature limit being broken in just over a decade. The report "is a code red for humanity", says the UN chief.

A Pandora’s box of environmental disasters has been opened, threatening the ability of the natural world to recover and humanity to survive. From devastating fires and storms to the emergence of deadly new viruses, it’s hard to deny the terrifying reality of climate change.

Plants should be flourishing in these ocean waters with plenty of nutrients and inorganic carbon in the form carbonic acid. It could be possible the phytoplankton are missing key nutrients such as ferric, but why should this be happening now?

Climate change and deforestation have flipped a large swathe of the Amazon basin from absorbing to emitting planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO2), a transformation that could turn humanity's greatest natural ally in the fight against global warming into a foe, researchers reported on Wednesday.

Fossil fuel companies lied for decades about climate change, and humanity is paying the price. Shouldn’t those lies be central to the public narrative? Every person on Earth today is living in a crime scene. This crime has been going on for decades. We see its effects in the horrific heat and wildfires unfolding this summer in the American west; in the mega-storms that were so numerous in 2020 that scientists ran out of names for them...

A new report, published on 14 March, 2021 in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ journal Ambio, points out that humanity is hurtling towards destruction unless we have the collective wisdom to change course quickly.

Far worse things than Covid are on the horizon, last week, a think tank called the Centre for Long-Term Resilience released a report into the most likely extreme risks that humanity faces, and what Britain in particular can do to prepare for them. Covid-19 has cost millions of lives and tens of trillions of dollars so far — but it could have been a lot worse. The extreme risks that the report is talking about range from those that kill 10% or more of the total human population, to those that kill every last one of us. And it suggests that the two most likely causes of a disaster of this magnitude are bioengineered pathogens, and artificial intelligence.

Traceable evidence of the impacts of climate change on humanity, the data sheet with scientific references

If you weigh up the long-term impact of catastrophes on future generations, it is hard not to see their prevention as one of our greatest priorities, argues Seth Baum.

While the element phosphorus is not scarce in the earth’s upper crust, the amount that can be accessed for productive use in food production is orders of magnitude smaller due to a wide range of bottlenecks including physical, economic, technical, geopolitical, legal, ecological and environmental constraints. From a food security and sustainability perspective, the most important quantity is not the total amount of phosphate rock in the ground but the fraction that is available to be accessed by farmers and applied to agricultural fields for food production.