Major discovery of Ice Age bones in a Norwegian cave opens a window into the past

Bournemouth University

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Cave contents

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Credit: Trond Klungseth Lødøen

Scientists have uncovered the remains of a vast animal community that lived in the European Arctic 75,000 years ago.  

The bones of 46 types of animals – including mammals, fish and birds – were discovered in a cave on the coast of Northern Norway, representing the oldest example of an animal community in the European Arctic during this warmer period of the ice age.  

The findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).  

The research team believe the bones will help scientists understand how wildlife once responded to dramatic climate shifts, insights that will be highly relevant for conservation work today.  

“These discoveries provide a rare snapshot of a vanished Arctic world,” said the study’s first author Dr Sam Walker of Bournemouth University and the University of Oslo. “They also underscore how vulnerable cold adapted species can be under changing climate conditions, which can help us to understand their resilience and extinction risk in the present,” he added. 

Amongst the animals they identified were polar bear, walrus, bowhead whale, Atlantic puffin, common eider, rock ptarmigan and Atlantic cod. They also found collared lemmings, a species that is now extinct in Europe and which had never been found in Scandinavia until now. 

DNA testing also found that the lineages of these animals did not survive when the colder conditions returned.   

“We have very little evidence of what Arctic life was like in this period because of the lack of preserved remains over 10,000 years old,” said senior author Professor Sanne Boessenkool of the University of Oslo. “The cave has now revealed a diverse mix of animals in a coastal ecosystem representing both the marine and the terrestrial environment,” she added.  

The Arne Qvamgrotta cave was discovered in the 1990’s when a local mining industry built a tunnel through the nearby mountain. It has remained largely unexplored for nearly 30 years when the research team carried out large excavations in 2021 and 2022 and unearthed the cave’s secrets.  

The variety of animals suggests the habitat at the time was largely ice free along the coast after glaciers had melted. This would have provided a suitable habitat for the migratory reindeer whose remains they discovered.  

The presence of freshwater fish means there would have been lakes and rivers within the tundra and there must have been sea ice off the coast for some of the mammals such as bowhead whales and walruses. The sea ice was likely to be seasonal because harbour porpoises, also found amongst the animal remains, are known to avoid ice. 

Although these animals colonised the region after the glaciers melted during this period, it appears that whole populations died as they could not migrate to alternative ecosystems when the ice returned and covered the landscape.  

“This highlights how cold adapted species struggle to adapt to major climatic events. This has a direct link to the challenges they are facing in the Arctic today as the climate warms at a rapid pace,” said Dr Walker. “The habitats these animals in the region live in today are much more fractured than 75,000 years ago, so it is even harder for animal populations to move and adapt,” he added.  

“It is also important to note that this was a shift to a colder, not a period of warming that we are facing today,” Professor Boessenkool said. “And these are cold adapted species – so if they struggled to cope with colder periods in the past, it will be even harder for these species to adapt to a warming climate,” she concluded.  

The study is a collaboration between the University of Oslo, Bournemouth University, University Museum of Bergen, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and other institutions. 

Polar Bear bone

Credit

Trond Klungseth Lødøen

Animal bone fragments

Credit

Sam Walker

Team excavators in cave

Credit

Trond Klungseth Lødøen

---

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2415008122 

Method of Research

Imaging analysis

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Major discovery of Ice Age bones in a Norwegian cave opens a window into the past

Article Publication Date

4-Aug-2025

Speaking to Career EPA Staffers Reveals What Will Be Lost if Trump Guts the Agency

Ohio EPA and EPA contractors collect soil and air samples from the derailment site on March 9, 2023 in East Palestine, Ohio. 

(Photo: Michael Swensen/Getty Images)

If Zeldin, Musk, or Trump knew a scintilla about actual Environmental Protection Agency employees, they would dare not froth at the mouth with their toxic stereotypes about federal civil servants.


Derrick Z. Jackson
Mar 25, 2025

Union of Concerned Scientists/Blog


Neither Lee Zeldin, nor Elon Musk, nor President Donald Trump could possibly look Brian Kelly in the eye to tell him to his face that he is lazy.

They cannot tell Kayla Butler she is crooked.

They dare not accuse Luis Antonio Flores or Colin Kramer of lollygagging on the golf course.

If Zeldin, Musk, or Trump knew a scintilla about them, they would dare not froth at the mouth with their toxic stereotypes about federal civil servants. All four work in Region 5 of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), responsible for pollution monitoring, cleanups, community engagement, and emergency hazardous waste response for Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

A decimated EPA means less scrutiny for another Flint water crisis, less eyeballs on Superfund sites, and limited ability to investigate toxic contamination after train derailments, such as the incident two years ago in East Palestine, Ohio.

The Midwest is historically so saturated with manufacturing that just those six states generated a quarter of the nation’s hazardous waste back in the 1970s, and it is still today home to a quarter of the nation’s facilities reporting to the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory Program. When I recently visited Region 5’s main office in Chicago, one enforcement officer, who did not give her name because of the sensitivity of her job, told me there are still toxic sites where “we show up [and] neither the state nor the EPA has ever been [there] to check.”

With irony, I visited the office the same week the Trump administration and Zeldin, President Trump’s new EPA administrator, announced they planned to cut 65% of the agency’s budget. Zeldin has since then dropped even more bombshells in a brazen attempt to gut the nation’s first line of defense against the poisoning of people, the polluting of the environment, and the proliferation of global warming gases.

Zeldin announced on March 12 more than 30 actions he plans to undertake to weaken or cripple air, water, wastewater, and chemical standards, including eliminating the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights and getting the EPA out of the business of curbing the carbon dioxide and methane gases fueling global warming. Despite record production that has the United States atop the world for oil, Zeldin said he was throttling down on regulations because they are “throttling the oil and gas industry.”

Last week, The New York Timesreported the EPA is considering firing half to three-quarters of its scientists (770 to 1,155 out of 1,540) and closing the Office of Research and Development, the agency’s scientific research office. Zeldin justifies this in part by deriding many EPA programs as “left-wing ideological projects.” He violently brags that he is “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.”
Impact of Cuts at EPA Felt Deeply, Broadly

Kelly, Butler, Flores, Kramer, and many others I talked with in Region 5 said all these plans are actually a bayonet ripping out the heart and soul of their mission. They all spoke to me on the condition that they were talking as members of their union, Local 704 of the American Federation of Government Employees. Nicole Cantello, union president and an EPA attorney, said the attacks on her members are unlike anything she’s seen in her more than 30 years with the agency. As much as prior conservative administrations may have criticized the agency, there’s never been one—until now—that tried to “fire everybody.”

Flores, a chemist who analyzes air, water, and soil samples for everything from lead to PCBs, said a decimated EPA means less scrutiny for another Flint water crisis, less eyeballs on Superfund sites, and limited ability to investigate toxic contamination after train derailments, such as the incident two years ago in East Palestine, Ohio. He added, “And we have a Great Lakes research vessel that tests the water across all the lakes. It’s important for drinking water, tourism, and fishing. If we get crippled, all that goes into question.”

“People will die,” he said. “There will be additional deaths if we roll back these protections.”

Butler is a community involvement coordinator who works through Superfund legislation to inform communities about remediation efforts. She was deeply concerned that urban neighborhoods and rural communities will be denied the scientific resources to tell the full story of environmental injustice. Superfund sites, the legacy of toxic chemicals used in manufacturing, military operations, mining, and landfills, are so poisonous, they can have cumulative, compound effects on affected communities, triggering many diseases. A 2023 EPA Inspector General report said the agency needed stronger policies, guidance, and performance measures to “assess and address cumulative impacts and disproportionate health effects on overburdened communities.”

Butler is deeply concerned cumulative impact assessments will not happen with cuts to the EPA, denying urban neighborhoods and rural communities the scientific resources to fully expose the horror of environmental injustice. “It’s a clear story that they’re trying to erase.” Butler said of the new administration.

For Kelly, an on-site emergency coordinator based out of Michigan, the rollbacks and the erasing of the story of environmental harms have an obvious conclusion. “People will die,” he said. “There will be additional deaths if we roll back these protections.”

What these workers also fear is the slow death of spirit amongst themselves to be civil servants.

Start with Kelly.

I actually talked to him from Chicago by telephone because he was out in Los Angeles County, deployed to assist with the cleanup of the devastating Eaton Fire that killed 17 people and destroyed more than 9,400 structures.

Between the Eaton Fire and the Palisades Fire, which took another 12 lives and destroyed another 6,800 buildings, the EPA conducted what it said was the largest wildfire hazardous materials cleanup in the history of the agency, and likely the most voluminous lithium battery removal in world history—primarily from the electric and hybrid vehicles and home battery storage people were forced to leave behind as they fled.

During a break, Kelly talked about how nimble he and his colleagues must be. He has worked cleanups of monster storms Katrina, Sandy, and Maria, and the East Palestine trail derailment. Based normally out of Michigan, he recalled a day he was working in the Upper Peninsula on a cleanup of an old abandoned mine processing site. He received a call from a state environmental emergency official asking him to drop what he was doing because 20 minutes away a gasoline tanker truck had flipped over, spilling about 6,000 gallons of gasoline onto the roads and down through the storm sewer into local waterways.

When he arrived, Kelly asked the fire chief how he could help. He was asked to set up air monitoring. But then he noticed anxious contractors who were wondering if they were going to get paid for their work. “They’re ordering supplies, they’re putting dirt down to contain this gasoline from getting any further,” Kelly said. “But they’re like, ‘Are we going to get paid for this?’”

“I found the truck driver who was talking to their insurance company. So I get on the phone with the insurance company and say, ‘Hey. This is who I am. This is what’s happening here. You need to come to terms and conditions with these contractors right now or EPA’s going to have to start taking this cleanup over!’”

The insurance was covered. Kelly said he could not have been so assertive with the insurance company without a robust EPA behind him.

“It’s one thing to be able go out and respond to these emergencies, but you have to have attorneys on your side,” Kelly said. “You’ve got to have enforcement specialists behind you. You’ve got to have people who are experts in drinking water and air. You can’t just have one person out there on an island by themselves.”
“Cruel for the Sake of Being Cruel”

Butler wonders if whole communities will become remote islands, surrounded by rising tides of pollution. The very morning of our interview, she was informed she was one of the thousands of federal workers across the nation who had their government purchase cards frozen by Elon Musk, the world’s richest human and President Trump’s destroyer of federal agencies. In launching the freeze, Musk claimed with no evidence, “A lot of shady expenditures happening.”

Butler threw shade on that, saying the purchase system is virtually foolproof with multiple layers of vetting and proof of purchase. She uses her purchase card to buy ads and place public notices in newspapers to keep communities informed about remediation of Superfund sites.

She has also used her card to piece together equipment to fit in a van for a mobile air monitor. The monitor assists with compliance, enforcement, and giving communities a read on possible toxic emissions and dust from nearby industrial operations.

Kramer wonders how many more scientists will follow in his footsteps to see that the work keeps getting done.

“I literally bought the nuts and bolts that feed into this van that allow the scientists to measure all the chemicals, all the air pollution,” Butler said. “I remember seeing the van for the first time after I bought so many things for years. And I was like ‘Wow this is real!’”

Not only was the van real, but air monitoring in general, along with soil monitoring—particularly in places like heavily polluted Southeast Chicago—has been a critical tool of environmental justice to get rid of mountains of petcoke dust and detect neurotoxic manganese dust in the air and lead in backyards.

“Air monitoring created so much momentum for the community and community members to say, ‘This is what we need,’” Butler said.

Kramer is a chemist in quality assurance, working with project planners to devise the most accurate ways of testing for toxic materials, such as for cleanups of sites covered in PFAS—aka “forever chemicals”—from fire retardants, or at old industrial sites saturated with PCBs from churning out electrical equipment, insulation, paints, plastics, or adhesives. His job is mostly behind the scenes, but he understood the meaning of his work from one visit to a site to audit the procedures of the Illinois EPA.

The site had a small local museum dedicated to the Native tribes that first occupied the land. “The curator or director told us how the sampling work was going to bring native insects back to the area and different wildlife back to the streams,” Kramer said. “It was kind of a quick offhand conversation, but it gave me a quick snapshot of the work that’s being done.”

Kramer wonders how many more scientists will follow in his footsteps to see that the work keeps getting done. He remembered a painful day recently when a directive came down that he could not talk to contractors, even those who happen to work in the same building as he does.

“I see them every day,” Kramer said. “They come say hi to me. They know my child’s name. Being told that I couldn’t respond if they came to my desk, looked me in the face, and said, ‘Good morning,’ is just such an unnecessary wrench into our system that just feels cruel for the sake of being cruel.”
Staff Stifled, Heartbroken

The culture of fear is particularly stifling for one staffer who did not want to give her name because she is a liaison to elected officials. Before Zeldin took over, she would get an email from an elected official asking if funding for a project was still on track and “30 seconds later,” as she said, the question would be answered.

Her job “is all about relationships,” keeping officials informed about projects. Now, she said just about everything she depends on to do her job has basically come to a halt. “Everyone’s afraid to say anything, answer emails, put anything in writing without getting approval. Just mass chaos all the way to the top.”

“I feel like I made a promise to them that I would be there for what they needed,” she said. “And I feel like I’ve been forced to go back on that promise.”

Relationships are being upset left and right according to other staffers. One set of my interviews was with three EPA community health workers who feel they are betraying the communities they serve because their contact with them has fluctuated in the first months of the Trump administration. They’ve had to shift from silence to delicately dancing around any conversation that mentions environmental justice or diversity, equity, and inclusion.

They did not want to be named because they did not want to jeopardize the opportunity to still find ways to serve communities historically dumped on with toxic pollution for decades because of racism and classism.

“Literally since January 20, my entire division has been on edge,” said one of the three. “We kind of feel like we’re in the hot seat. A lot of people working on climate are afraid. If you’re working with [people with] lower to moderate income or [places] more populated by people of color, you’re afraid because you don’t want to send off any flags to the administration.”

The tiptoeing is heartbreaking to them because they see firsthand the poisoning of families from chemicals the EPA has regulated. One of the health workers has painful memories of seeing the “devastated” look on mothers’ faces when giving them the results of child lead tests that were well above the hazardous limit. “I feel like I made a promise to them that I would be there for what they needed,” she said. “And I feel like I’ve been forced to go back on that promise.”
Remembering Their Mission Boosts Morale

Despite that, and despite President Trump’s baseless ranting, which included saying during the campaign that “crooked” and “dishonest” federal workers were “destroying this country,” these EPA staffers are far from caving in. Nationally, current and former EPA staff last week published an open letter to the nation that said, “We cannot stand by and allow” the assault on environmental justice programs.

Locally in Region 5, the workers’ union has been trying to keep morale from tanking with town halls, trivia nights, lunch learning sessions, and happy hours. In a day of quiet defiance, many of the 1,000 staffers wore stickers in support of the probationary employees that said, “Don’t Fire New Hires.” Several of the people I interviewed said that if Zeldin and the Trump administration really cared about waste and inefficiency, they would not try to fire tens of thousands of probationary workers across the federal system.

One of them noted how the onboarding process, just to begin her probationary year, took five months. “It wastes all this money onboarding them and then eliminating them,” she said. “That’s totally abusing taxpayer dollars if you ask me. It’s hard enough to get people to work here. We’re powered by smart people who went to school for a long time and could make a lot of money elsewhere.” Federal staffers with advanced degrees make 29% less, on average, than counterparts in the private sector, according to a report last year from the Congressional Budget Office.

“We’re supposed to be this nonpartisan force that’s working for the American people, and attacks to that is a direct attack on the American people.”

Individually, several said they maintained their morale by remembering why they came to the EPA in the first place. Flores, whose public service was embedded into him growing up in a military family, said, “I didn’t want to make the next shampoo,” with his chemistry degrees. “I didn’t want to make a better adhesive for a box… the tangible mission of human health and environmental health is very important me.”

The enforcement officer who wanted to remain anonymous talked about a case where she worked with the state to monitor lead in a fenceline community near a toxic industry. Several children were discovered to have elevated levels of lead in their blood.

“People’ lives are in my hands,” she said. “When we realized how dire the circumstance was, we were able to really speed up our process by working with the company, working with the state, and getting a settlement done quick. And now all those fixes are in place. The lead monitoring has returned back to safe levels, and we know that there aren’t going to be any more kids impacted by this facility.”

One of the community health workers I interviewed said her mission means so much to her because at nine years old she lost her mother to breast cancer after exposure to the solvent trichloroethylene (TCE). That carcinogen is used in home, furniture, and automotive cleaning products. The Biden administration banned TCE in its final weeks, but the Trump administration has delayed implementation.

“The loss of her rippled throughout our community,” the worker said of her mother. “She was active in our church, teaching immigrants in our city how to read. The loss of her had such a large impact.” She said if the EPA were gutted, so many people like her mother would be lost too soon. “We play critical roles beyond just laws and regulations,” she said. “We do serve vital functions for communities based on where the need is the most.”

The same worker worried that if an agency as critical to community health as the EPA can be slashed to a shell of itself, there is no telling what is in store next for the nation. “I know people don’t have a lot of sympathy for bureaucrats,” she said. “But I think what is happening to us is a precursor to what happens to the rest of the country. We’re supposed to be this nonpartisan force that’s working for the American people, and attacks to that is a direct attack on the American people.”

One of her co-workers seconded her by saying, “We’re fighting for the American people and we are the American people. We all began this job for a reason. We all have our ‘why.’ And that hasn’t changed just because the administration has changed, because there’s some backlash or people coming after us. Just grounding yourself with people whose ‘why’ is the same as yours helps a lot.”


© 2023 Union of Concerned Scientists


Derrick Z. Jackson is a 2018 winner from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, a 10-time winner from the National Association of Black Journalists and a Pulitzer Prize finalist and co-author of Project Puffin: The Improbable Quest to Bring a Beloved Seabird Back to Egg Rock (2015).
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EU challenges British ban on sandeel fishing aimed at protecting marine ecosystem
Europe

The EU and Britain go to court at the Hague on Tuesday over a UK ban on the fishing of sandeels, a tiny fish celebrated by conservationists, in what is seen as a bellwether for other potential litigation between London and Brussels.


 28/01/2025 - 
FRANCE24
By: NEWS WIRES

Sandeels are treasured by the atlantic puffin, a rare and threatened seabird.

 © Loïc Venance, AFP


A tiny silver fish which is an important food source in the North Sea will take centre stage Tuesday as the European Union and Britain square off over post-Brexit fishing rights.

The bitter arbitration case over sandeels is seen as a bellwether for other potential litigation between London and Brussels in a perennial hot-bed industry, experts said.

Tuesday's clash at the Hague-based Permanent Court for Arbitration also marks the first courtroom trade battle between the 27-member trading bloc and Britain since it left the EU in 2020.

Brussels has dragged London before the PCA following a decision last year to ban all commercial fishing of sandeels in British waters because of environmental concerns.


London in March ordered all fishing to stop, saying in court documents that "sandeels are integral to the marine ecosystem of the North Sea".

Because of climate change and commercial fishing, the tiny fish "risked further decline... as well as species that are dependent on sandeels for food including fish, marine mammals, and seabirds".

This included vulnerable species like the Atlantic puffin, seals, porpoises and other fish like cod and haddock, Britain's lawyers said.

But Brussels is accusing London of failing to keep to commitments made under the landmark Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which gave the EU access to British waters for several years during a transition period after London's exit.

Under the deal, the EU's fishing fleet retained access to British waters for a five-and-half-year transition period, ending mid-2026. After that, access to respective waters will be decided in annual negotiations.

"The EU does not call into question the right of the UK to adopt fisheries management measures in pursuit of legitimate conservation objectives," Brussels' lawyers said in court papers.

"Rather, this dispute is about the UK's failure to abide by its commitments under the agreement."

London failed to apply "evidence-based, proportionate and non-discriminatory measures when restricting the right to EU vessels to full access to UK waters to fish sandeel", the EU lawyers said.

Brussels is backing Denmark in the dispute, whose vessels take some 96 percent of the EU's quota for the species, with sandeel catches averaging some £41.2 million (49 million euros) annually.

"The loss of access to fisheries in English waters could affect relations with the EU, including Denmark, as they are likely to lead to employment losses and business losses overseas," the EU's lawyers warned.
'Important issue'

The case will now be fought out over three days at the PCA's stately headquarters at the Peace Palace in The Hague, which also houses the International Court of Justice.

Set up in 1899, the PCA is the world's oldest arbitral tribunal and resolves disputes between countries and private parties through referring to contracts, special agreements and various treaties, such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The EU's decision to open a case before the PCA "will not have been taken lightly and reflected the political importance it places on fishing rights", writes Joel Reland, a senior researcher at UK in a Changing Europe, a London-based think tank.

In a number of "influential member states -- including France, the Netherlands and Denmark -- fishing rights are an important issue, with many communities relying on access to British waters for their livelihoods".

"This dispute is an early warning that the renegotiation of access rights, before the TCA fisheries chapter expires in June 2026, will be critical for the EU," said Reland.

A ruling in the case is expected by the end of March.

(AFP)

 

Surveys show full scale of massive die-off of common murres following the ‘warm blob’ in the Pacific Ocean

University of Washington

 

image: 

Group of common murres on a breeding colony in Alaska. These seabirds dive and swim through the water to feed off small fish, then fly to islands or coastal cliffs to nest in large colonies.

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Credit: Sarah Schoen/U.S. Geological Survey

Murres, a common seabird, look a little like flying penguins. These stout, tuxedo-styled birds dive and swim in the ocean to eat small fish and then fly back to islands or coastal cliffs where they nest in large colonies. But their hardy physiques disguise how vulnerable these birds are to changing ocean conditions.

A University of Washington citizen science program — which trains coastal residents to search local beaches and document dead birds — has contributed to a new study, led by federal scientists, documenting the devastating effect of warming waters on common murres in Alaska.

In 2020, participants of the UW-led Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, or COASST, and other observers first identified the massive mortality event affecting common murres along the West Coast and Alaska. That study documented 62,000 carcasses, mostly in Alaska, in one year. In some places, beachings were more than 1,000 times normal rates. But the 2020 study did not estimate the total size of the die-off after the 2014-16 marine heat wave known as "the blob."

In this new paper, published Dec. 12 in Science, a team led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service analyzed years of colony-based surveys to estimate total mortality and later impacts. The analysis of 13 colonies surveyed between 2008 and 2022 finds that colony size in the Gulf of Alaska, east of the Alaska Peninsula, dropped by half after the marine heat wave. In colonies along the eastern Bering Sea, west of the peninsula, the decline was even steeper, at 75% loss.

The study led by Heather Renner, a wildlife biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, estimates that 4 million Alaska common murres died in total, about half the total population. No recovery has yet been seen, the authors write.

“This study shows clear and surprisingly long-lasting impacts of a marine heat wave on a top marine predator species,” said Julia Parrish, a UW professor of aquatic and fishery sciences and of biology, who was a co-author on both the 2020 paper and the new study. “Importantly, the effect of the heat wave wasn’t via thermal stress on the birds, but rather shifts in the food web leaving murres suddenly and fatally without enough food.”

The “warm blob” was an unusually warm and long-lasting patch of surface water in the northeast Pacific Ocean from late 2014 through 2016, affecting weather and coastal marine ecosystems from California to Alaska. As ocean productivity decreased, it affected food supply for top predators including seabirds, marine mammals and commercially important fish. Based on the condition of the murre carcasses, authors of the 2020 study concluded that the most likely cause of the mass mortality event was starvation.

Before this marine heat wave, about a quarter of the world’s population, or about 8 million common murres, lived in Alaska. Authors estimate the population is now about half that size. While common murre populations have fluctuated before, the authors note the Alaska population has not recovered from this event like it did after previous, smaller die-offs.

While the “warm blob” appears to have been the most intense marine heat wave yet, persistent, warm conditions are becoming more common under climate change. A 2023 study led by the UW, including many of the same authors, showed that a 1 degree Celsius increase in sea surface temperature for more than six months results in multiple seabird mass mortality events.

"Whether the warming comes from a heat wave, El Niño, Arctic sea ice loss or other forces, the message is clear: Warmer water means massive ecosystem change and widespread impacts on seabirds," Parrish said.

“The frequency and intensity of marine bird mortality events is ticking up in lockstep with ocean warming,” Parrish said.

The 2023 paper suggested seabird populations would take at least three years to recover after a marine heat wave. The fact that common murres in Alaska haven’t recovered even seven years after “the blob” is worrisome, Parrish said.

"We may now be at a tipping point of ecosystem rearrangement where recovery back to pre-die-off abundance is not possible."

Other co-authors are Brie Drummond and Jared Laufenberg at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offices in Alaska; John Piatt, a former federal scientist now with the World Puffin Congress in Port Townsend; and Martin Renner at Tern Again Consulting in Homer.

 

For more information, contact Parrish at jparrish@uw.edu and Renner at heather_renner@fws.gov.

  

Common murre colony on the South Island of Semidi Islands, in the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge south of the Alaska Peninsula, in 2014, before the marine heat wave.

Common murre colony on South Island of Semidi Islands, in the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge south of the Alaska Peninsula, in 2021, after the marine heat wave.

Dead murres are seen washed up on a beach near Whittier, Alaska, on Jan. 1, 2016, after unusually warm Pacific Ocean conditions of 2014-16.

Dead murres are seen washed up in Prince William Sound’s Pigot Bay in the Gulf of Alaska on Jan. 7, 2016, after unusually warm Pacific Ocean conditions of 2014-2016.

Credit

David B. Irons/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adq4330 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Catastrophic and persistent loss of common murres after a marine heatwave

Article Publication Date

13-Dec-2024

Puffins increase on Farne Islands despite bird flu

Fiona Trott
North of England correspondent, BBC News•@bbcfionatrott

Puffins are on the red list of Birds of Conservation Concern


A puffin population has been declared "stable" following fears that bird flu might have had a more devastating effect.

The first full count for five years on the Farne Islands off Northumberland has revealed the endangered species has in fact increased by 15% since 2019.

There are now thought to be 50,000 breeding pairs on the site, which is cared for by the National Trust.

Ranger Sophia Jackson said the birds' self-isolating behaviours meant they had "weathered this particular storm".



Sophia Jackson said she was extremely happy with the increase in numbers


Ms Jackson said: "Puffins nest in separate burrows and clean them out.

"In that way, the disease is less likely to spread as fast as it does through the other seabirds, which is why we saw a decline in them."

The National Trust said another interesting finding was that fewer pairs have been recorded on the outer islands.

It is thought puffins may have relocated, after stormy weather forced grey seals to move higher up into their territory, causing some burrows to collapse.


The Farnes, along with neighbouring Coquet Island, are home to the largest puffin colonies in England


All the results will form part of the national Seabird Monitoring Programme and follow six weeks of hard work by the rangers, who were on their hands and knees checking burrows for signs of fresh digging or hatched eggshells.

Earlier this week, five more species of seabird were added to the UK red list of birds at most need of conservation. Puffins were one of five types of bird already on the list.

During the avian flu outbreak in 2022 and 2023, about 10,000 birds on the Farne Islands perished.

More than 900 puffin carcasses were collected but a combination of the Covid pandemic and then bird flu meant conservationists could not get close enough to carry out their full census.


Tom Hendry says "initial figures on other species are concerning"


Ranger Tom Hendry said while puffin numbers are holding up, some cliff nesting birds appear to be struggling.

Initial figures suggest the shag population is down by 75% on the inner islands, but there is some hope.

"To us, it looks like they may have had a productive breeding season," he said.

"So with any luck, next year's count will show that like the puffins, they too have stabilised."


There were fears for the species which only lay one egg a year


Ben McCarthy, head of nature and restoration ecology at the National Trust said long-term monitoring was vital.

"The Farne Islands will be an important bellwether for how they're doing in the face of our changing climate," he said.

Meanwhile, the local rangers said they would make the habitat as welcoming as they can for the puffins next year.

Ms Jackson added: "It's hard work but you're their guardians and you do become attached to them, every single one."

4 Problems for the Degrowth Movement

Though increasingly influential in activist circles and policy discussions, the degrowth perspective on addressing climate change suffers from serious analytical and political flaws. We need a program of green growth to decarbonize the planet.

By Daniel Driscoll

February 24, 2024

Source: Jacobin

A barn and wind turbines in rural Illinois. (Wikimedia Commons)

Amid the French protests of May 1968, the idea of degrowth was born under the name décroissance. It quickly gained traction in Parisian Marxist circles with work from the likes of Austrian French philosopher André Gorz and others. When in 1972 the Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth, the term décroissance came to the mainstream.

Today décroissance is having another moment, this time under its English moniker, as degrowth enters both policy circles and popular discourse. It is, however, a distraction for left climate movements, one that we can ill afford when the world has such limited time to decarbonize.

Degrowth provides neither empirically grounded, actionable solutions nor a credible theory of social and political change. It suffers from four big problems.

1. Degrowth often confuses correlation for causation and overextrapolates from the past.

The strength of the degrowth movement comes from accurately recounting how wealthy countries developed through the use of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels and economies coevolved together: coal powered the earliest factories in the Industrial Revolution. Electricity then lit, connected, and expanded cities around the world. Oil and gas knit the post–World War II world economy together.

Economic growth, then, went hand in hand with the growth of emissions. The degrowth movement argues that while switching to green growth may be theoretically possible, sufficiently rapid decarbonization requires degrowth.

The focus on growth, however, may lead to confusing correlation for causation, and at worst distorting our policy priorities. Therefore, an elementary reminder is in order: carbon emissions come from burning carbon — they are CO2 emissions, not GDP emissions. To decarbonize, we need to replace carbon energy sources with clean energy, and repressing growth will not solve the problem of financing electrification and energy-input replacement.

This point may seem obvious, but many people seem to forget it and focus too narrowly on economic growth and GDP (which is of course a controversial indicator of well-being). Growth is contingent upon energy input, but that energy does not need to come from carbon. Those who argue that decoupling emissions from GDP cannot happen fast enough are extrapolating from the historic association of emissions and growth. If historical trends routinely and straightforwardly predicted our economic future, then much of the risk that we know to be endemic to the stock market and the financial sector would not exist, as the past would be a sure guide to what’s coming next.

2. Degrowth doesn’t acknowledge that redistribution can drive growth.

Degrowth requires political suppression of consumption and production. To offset the massive income reductions this would entail for poorer populations, many degrowth experts argue that this decrease in production and consumption should be accompanied by wealth redistribution.

At first glance, that proposal looks reasonable — we can decrease emissions and inequality at the same time. But simultaneously reducing growth and redistributing resources is not so simple. Redistribution to lower income groups or populations who have a higher propensity to spend can actually increase household consumption, which all other things equal may in turn increase emissions.

Redistribution is a worthy goal, but on its own it will not decarbonize the economy. Some nuanced degrowth writing focuses loss prescriptions on wealthier residents within rich countries and rich countries overall. This is sensible, but it ignores the emissions that are likely to come with emerging market economy (EME) development in countries like India. It also ignores the recoil of investment in EMEs that would result from reductions in consumption and growth in wealthy countries, which would tend to bring excess capital back home to the richer countries.

Degrowth advocates might argue that these problems could be addressed through national and global planning regimes, which could (e.g.) restrain households from increasing consumption too much and force capital to invest more in poorer countries. But the kind of state planning required to mitigate emissions and regulate behavior while reducing overall production and consumption would need to be a globally coercive regime, with otherworldly institutional capacities and knowledge. Imagine the surveillance and punishment apparatuses needed to constantly monitor people around the world to enforce production and consumption quotas. Few would voluntarily agree to this system; governments now are not even following through on relatively modest climate accords. Maybe a sacrifice of democratic governance would be worth it, as some have argued. But even if an authoritarian regime of global planning were justified, what social forces would have the capacity to institute one?

To be clear, this isn’t an objection to planning per se. To address the climate crisis, we clearly need a big dose of democratic economic planning that prioritizes ecological goals over profit. But large-scale planning becomes both more technically and morally fraught when it involves forcing most of the world’s population to accept lower living standards.

Historically, industrial transformations have required growth, and relatively lower growth in the context of such transformations has led to horrific casualties (e.g., the Soviet Union’s creation of famine in Ukraine during its industrialization drive in the early 1930s). Lower growth means more trade-offs and losses in a transition, meaning that new capital formation comes at the cost of greater suppression of consumption and thus of living standards.

This is because the new capital needed to transition has to come from somewhere. It can come from reallocating resources from traditional growth sectors (e.g., from agriculture to industry) or from a rising tide of growth that can improve the living standards of the majority. Therefore, a global investment boom is necessary to pay for decarbonization — not a decline in investment, as many degrowth advocates claim.

3. Degrowth adopts unjustified assumptions from orthodox economics.

Degrowth has a lot in common with carbon-tax advocacy. Carbon-tax supporters, like degrowthers, have advocated decreases in consumption as the way to decarbonization.

This approach has not gone well historically. The French government imposed carbon taxes without offering adequate substitutes for citizens (such as affordable electric vehicless or sufficient public transportation options); as a result, living costs increased for lower-income households who spent larger shares of their budgets on energy, and eventually widespread social unrest resulted.

The truth is that a narrow emphasis on reducing consumption is deeply rooted in orthodox economics. An orthodox economics perspective would claim that we must decrease consumption to decrease emissions. This outlook tries to predict the future by holding variables in the present constant. It assumes that resources and worker productivity are always being maximized and also that energy unit costs will not decrease.

Those are false assumptions: resource utilization, productivity, and energy costs change a great deal. Resource utilization can become more efficient over time; think about how small computers have become since the 1980s thanks to increasingly powerful microchips. Productivity and efficiency constantly vary. Why else would firms share information and techniques with each other in order to improve themselves on those measures? And energy costs can also decrease — look at the recent collapse in the price of solar.

This means that decarbonization through decreased consumption may not be necessary. In fact, carrots (economic gains) have had more political success historically than sticks (economic losses) when implementing climate policies.

Decarbonization will likely require massive investment. By the most sophisticated measures, global decarbonization will cost roughly $4 trillion per annum, and some version of state-led green growth is probably our best route. Such investment on a smaller scale is already increasing the availability of carbon-free substitutes in the United States and China. Degrowthers often focus too much on economic suppression when we need to acknowledge that electrification, energy replacement, and economic justice may require one last economic boom.

4. Degrowth doesn’t have an adequate theory of political transformation.

From the radical social reorganization of the Paris Commune to the policy outcomes that followed the civil rights movement, historians and social scientists have studied the conditions that lead to successful political transformation. To explain movement strengths or weaknesses and predict or evaluate movement successes and failures, many scholars will plug a movement into what they call a “political opportunity structure.” A political opportunity structure has three components: (1) public consciousness, (2) organizational or mobilizing strength, and (3) macro political opportunities.

What is the political opportunity structure of the degrowth movement? Despite academic chatter, the degrowth movement is irrelevant to most people in the world. To get a pulse of public opinion, I compared Google searches of “degrowth” versus “how to get rich.”Google searches for “degrowth” versus “how to get rich.” Note: On y-axis, the value of 100 indicates peak popularity. Explore more here. The recent peak in “how to get rich” searches represents the Netflix release of a show under that name.

Not only do most people prioritize growth and prosperity over addressing climate change (as discussed throughout), but most people also do not know or care about degrowth. The degrowth movement fails in the arena of public consciousness in both opinion and salience.

Things look even more dire when examining other aspects of the movement’s political opportunity structure. There is no major social movement organization or institution centering degrowth in its platform. If such organizations do exist, they have feeble resources and networks, which are key ingredients for movement success. The civil rights movement, for instance, boasted black colleges, churches, and activist organizations (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Congress of Racial Equality) tied together through strong networks and alliances. Degrowth has no natural constituency, and creating it would require a global-scale transformation of political consciousness.

Finally, the macro political conditions to support the movement are not present. There are no political regimes interested in advancing the movement. Not even the European Union, arguably the international bloc most committed to decarbonization right now, is interested in degrowth. At the “Beyond Growth” Conference, European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen stated, “A growth model centered on fossil fuels is simply obsolete” and called for “a different growth model that is sustainable far into the future.” She’s talking about green growth, not degrowth.

Furthermore, studies find again and again that democracies prioritize economic prosperity over real decarbonization. Economic growth can enhance people’s quality of life (barring wars, or the trend of wealth concentration outpacing growth that Thomas Piketty has documented). National governments are legitimized by growth, and when they fail to provide it, there are political consequences.

If economic stagnation often leads to explosions of anger at the status quo in wealthy countries, imagine how emerging market economies will deal with forced degrowth (those countries’ growth rates in the coming years are projected to dwarf those of advanced market economies). It is hard to believe that emerging economies will accept nondevelopment for the sake of climate goals. (No wonder social scientists in BRICS and non-OECD countries favor green growth over degrowth.)

Degrowthers might reasonably retort that proponents of green growth policies also lack the public consciousness, organizational or mobilizing strength, and macro political opportunities to win meaningful change. The difference is that the vast majority of society has an interest in an egalitarian green growth agenda along the lines of the Green New Deal, because they stand to benefit from a massive public investment in green jobs, infrastructure, and public transportation that would raise their standard of living. And organized workers in strategic sectors like electricity and auto have the structural leverage to win key climate demands.

In other words, the broader climate movement has a potential coalition with the interests and capacity to achieve its goals — but it still needs to be organized. That means a green growth program has a plausible potential “political opportunity structure,” unlike degrowth.

What’s at Stake?

Despite degrowth’s unclear prospects of achieving decarbonization and lack of a plausible popular constituency, many smart people have been distracted by it. Instead of trying to convince everyone that we need to fight economic growth, there are more immediate practical problems that those who want a green transition need to attend to. To name a few:Financing emerging market economies. EMEs cannot afford to abandon fossil fuels and fund the green transition with their own balance sheets.

Ending austerity in wealthy countries. Rich countries can afford decarbonization already. But they have been stymied by neoliberal ideologies and policy approaches that have prevented them from using the power of the state and public investment to transform their economies.

Compensating losers in the transition. Households with higher energy costs and workers and regions reliant on carbon-intensive industries will need support, in the form of welfare programs, job training, and so on as economies transition away from fossil fuels.
Critical mineral extraction. How can we harvest critical minerals to build green technologies without abusing labor and destroying ecosystems?

Using the power of “the big green state” to achieve a just transition. If private capital is in the driver’s seat for the green transition, there is the danger that public goods could be privatized, key goals could be sacrificed for quick profits, and inequality could worsen. And not all decarbonization is profitable. How do we do green planning to ensure a transition that serves the public rather than private interests?

Addressing geopolitical challenges. Some countries are either apathetic about climate change or have assets that are directly threatened by decarbonization (e.g., petrostates). How do we get them to decarbonize?

These are just a few of the critical problems we face moving forward with decarbonization. Limited time means we must place bets and prioritize solutions to them now. Degrowth may be an appealing idea for morally committed left academics and activists. But it is not a serious path forward for the climate.

This work has been made possible by the support of the Puffin Foundation.

Daniel Driscoll  is a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Starting fall 2024, he will be an assistant professor in the department of sociology at the University of Virginia.