Sunday, January 19, 2020

We need to modernize how we measure national wealth

I recently tried an experiment. I changed several light bulbs, and since one required a little rewiring, I sent my wife (also known as the majority shareholder) a bill for $110.50 (plus GST). In return, she sent me a bill of $457.98 for her preparation in late December of a sumptuous meal, plus her work managing all social connections associated with the holidays.

Our process of issuing (and paying) the invoices for "services to the household" means we boost our own personal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with every invoice. This is because GDP only recognizes market transactions and not donated services.

Feminists and other observers have long chided economists for failing to count household work as they assess national wealth. They have identified the "gendering of the holidays" as a major emotional and administrative burden borne largely by women in heterosexual relationships, and which common measures like the GDP fail to count. Some estimates contend that value of housework could be as high as US$40,000 annually.

Of course, defining the nature of housework is important. Household surveys on time use show that men are assuming increased (but not yet equal) participation in housework, essential when all adults work full-time. Identification of new categories of household tasks, such as the time spent managing social networks, have fuelled debate on the failings of our current measures of economic well-being.

But let's take a look back on how we first started measuring national wealth.

Housework left out

In response to the Great Depression, the United States Senate commissioned a report to measure the country's national income. That report, overseen by economist Simon Kuznets, spawned the system of national or macroeconomic accounts and the identification of the GDP as the core gauge of national wealth. For his efforts in developing economics as an empirical science, Kuznets received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1971.

Kuznets noted, however, that the system of national accounts he helped develop did not include the "services rendered by housewives and other members of the household toward the satisfaction of wants." He stated that "no reliable basis is available for estimating their value."

GDP was been a workhorse for measuring national well-being ever since. But cracks are appearing. Environmental degradation and growing income inequality are just two sources of discontent with the measurement of GDP.

What's known as green national accounting starts with the conventional measure of GDP and subtracts the financial impact of the byproducts of production and consumption, including carbon emissions, plastics in landfills and the costs of cleaning up polluted water. It also adds the value of positive byproducts that occur as result of investments made in the environment.

Sustainable future?

The core idea is to frame the national economic well-being in terms of whether our current production and consumption patterns create a sustainable future. Modifications to the standard measure of GDP involve corrections for resource depletion, pollution and biodiversity loss.

Two challenges for green accounting are how to accurately estimate the losses associated with these corrections, and to avoid the mistake of assuming technology remains static and finds no solutions to environmental losses.

Recent increases in income and wealth inequality in Canada and the United States have intensified the debate about whether all income classes have benefited from recent technology-led economic growth. Some households have shared disproportionately in the growing national wealth, but GDP fails to reflect the disparity in gains across economic groups.

The U.S. is preparing to update its economic accounts to reflect the distribution of national wealth across income groups. Australia has made great strides in revamping its national accounts. Not only can Australians track national wealth by income groups, but the country's national accounts show the shares by different household types, age groups and by wealth categories.

Change coming to Canada

Statistics Canada is also integrating its Survey on Financial Security with the system of national accounts to produce measures of GDP that reflect the changing distribution of wealth.

Rather than following the Australian practice of apportioning GDP among income categories, Statistics Canada is adjusting GDP to reflect a range of adjustments, only one of which is the change in household wealth.

So how has our little household experiment worked out? Well, it failed.

In just one month, I had billed my wife $3,567, she had billed me $4,512 and we had issued more that 500 invoices for household services mutually rendered. We realized we would need to quit our jobs just to maintain the household accounting system.

We had demonstrated the core wisdom of what's known as the nature of the firm first described by economist Ronald Coase. The market has costs. For a firm and for a household, it makes sense to bypass the daily contracting for the resources needed and establish long-term relationships that require only periodic negotiation.

Challenges remain

Kuznets was right —including the services of household members in the macroeconomic accounts is difficult, especially when it comes to efforts like valuing the contributions of truculent teenagers taking out the trash. But modern economics has the techniques to produce decent estimates of unpaid labour performed within the household. Nonetheless, challenges remain.

First, how expansive do we wish to define unpaid work? Is it just confined to the household or do we need to include contributions to community such as volunteering that maintain our social capital?

And second, since comparisons of GDP form a basic measure for measuring international competitiveness and guiding investments, all countries should adopt the same conventions in measuring unpaid labor or valuing the environment.

Income and wealth affect the mental health of Australians, study shows

Microplastics affect sand crabs' mortality and reproduction, study finds

by Portland State University JANUARY 17, 2020

Microplastics affect sand crabs' mortality and reproduction, PSU study finds — A Pacific mole crab, or a sandcrab, in an aquarium. You can see the feeding appendages are out feeling for food in the water. PSU researcher Dorothy Horn examined the effects of exposure to microfibers on adult mortality, reproductive output and embryonic development of the sand crab. Credit: Dorothy Horn

Sand crabs, a key species in beach ecosystems, were found to have increased adult mortality and decreased reproductive success when exposed to plastic microfibers, according to a new Portland State University study.

Dorothy Horn, a Ph.D. candidate in PSU's Earth, Environment and Society program, examined the effects of exposure to microfibers on adult mortality, reproductive output and embryonic development of the sand crab, a dominant organism on sandy beaches from British Columbia to Baja California, Mexico. Sand crabs, which eat by filtering small particles from the water, are considered indicator species because their health reflects the health of the ecosystem.

"When pollutants affect sand crabs, it's also affecting most organisms around it in that ecosystem," Horn said. "We don't eat them, but they're a bright blinking light for 'There's a problem in this area.'"

Horn found microplastics in all the sand samples analyzed from 19 beaches along the Oregon coast. She then conducted a lab experiment to mimic the concentrations of microfibers the crabs would be exposed to on the beach.

The study found that with an increasing number of microplastic fibers internalized, crab mortality increased while the number of days that a crab held live/viable eggs decreased. Exposure to microplastics also caused variability in a crab's embryonic development rates.

Horn said sand crabs are prey for shorebirds, nearshore fish and some marine mammals, and their increased mortality and decreased reproductive performance following exposure to microplastics could have potential effects on species higher up on the food chain.

"We've proved it's causing them harm, and it can have harmful effects on these other organisms," Horn said.

Half-million crabs killed by plastic debris on remote islands

More information: DorothyA. Horn et al, Effects of environmentally relevant concentrations of microplastic fibers on Pacific mole crab (Emerita analoga) mortality and reproduction, Limnology and Oceanography Letters (2019). DOI: 10.1002/lol2.10137

Hands off our grasslands

by Wits University JANUARY 17, 2020

The Veldt by Ray Bradbury - read by Leonard Nimoy

Hands off our grasslands — Credit: Unsplash

In the north eastern Free State, a 60 km green corridor is being created that will link the upper Wilge Protected Environment to the Sneeuwberg.

The plan is to create a place of refuge for the bird species that are threatened by climate change and the destruction of South Africa's grasslands.

It will be an add-on to the already 17 456 hectares that became part of the Sneeuwberg Protected Environment in 2016.

For Dr. Melissa Howes-Whitecross, who works for BirdLife South Africa and is a Visiting Researcher at Wits' School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences (APES), it is one answer to South Africa's dwindling unique grassland habitats.

As grasslands dwindle, so too does the biodiversity they sustain. Grassland mammals like Oribi and grey rhebok have experienced population declines, while grassland bird species have been particularly hard hit.

The bird that graces South Africa's coat of arms, the Secretary bird, has lost 50% of its population over the last three generations. To blame is habitat destruction, hunting and poisonings.

Other bird species are also being affected by climate change.

"Many of our grasslands are high altitude grasslands. We are finding that birds like the Yellow-breasted Pipit are extremely sensitive in terms of their breeding when it comes to average temperature increasing. So, there is a definite threshold where breeding fails," says Howes-Whitecross. "We are very concerned for these high-altitude grassland species."

The work towards creating green corridors is one of the first steps in protecting some of South Africa's most unique biodiversity, its grassland biome.

"One of the big problems about grasslands is that they are centered around places like Joburg, Bloemfontein and Pretoria, which means it is some of the most expensive land in the country," explains Professor Ed Witkowski, Head of the Restoration and Conservation Biology Research Group, and Professor of Plant Ecology at APES.

"There is a lot of mining activity in the area, it is valuable for agriculture and they have planted a lot of forests. So, declaring large areas of grasslands as nature reserves is expensive."

If the grasslands are wiped out, the loss will eventually impact the humans who were responsible for the destruction in the first place.

"It is a necessity for human well-being to have intact ecosystems. If you take a wetland, which usually falls within a grassland area, for example, they are vital for storing water, cleaning water and preventing floods," says Howes-Whitecross.

The Sneeuwberg Protected Environment happens to lie within a strategic water source area, which feeds rivers that provide water for many of South African cities. In a water-scarce country like South Africa, access to clean water is becoming a crisis, particularly for poorer communities.

As a recent study has shown, however, it is important that the right research is used in the fight against climate change and habitat destruction.

A paper by European scientists that appeared in Science, claimed that global tree planting could rid the planet of a third of the CO2 emitted since the industrial revolution. Africa's grasslands were suggested as a prime spot to plant large numbers of trees.

In a technical comment that was published as a response to this article and, also published in Science, 46 scientists—including Wits ecologist Professor Sally Archibald – warned that such large-scale afforestation could destroy ecological systems and do little to reduce CO2 levels.

"Firstly, their numbers are wrong," says Archibald. "It is irresponsible to give people false hope that our global change problems can be fixed in this way. Secondly, the impacts on our natural ecosystems in Africa would be devastating."

Famous veld flower

Near the town of Haenertsburg in Limpopo, Sylvie Kremer-Köhne, an MSc graduate from APES is trying to make a small rare plant species famous.

Aloe lettyae has been made a flagship species for grasslands, meaning it has—much like a rhino—been chosen to be an ambassador for a particular habitat.

The aloe was described in 1937 and, until recently, little was known about its biology.

"It is our flagship species because it only occurs in the critically endangered Woodbush Granite Grassland, of which very little is left," says Kremer-Köhne. "So the first job was to figure out just how many populations there are, and where exactly they are."

The count revealed 10,800 plants clustered in several population groups.

Over the last century, exotic timber plantations—exactly what Archibald warns against—are believed to have destroyed more than 90% of the original Woodbush Granite Grassland. What is left is now squeezed onto small fragmented pieces of land.

In 1917 botanist Illtyd Buller Pole-Evans took a photograph of the Magoebaskloof, which lies close to Haenertsburg. A century later, a photographer stood in the near same spot as Pole-Evans and took an image of the same mountain.

What it revealed was how the Woodland Granite Grassland had been wiped out over the course of a century. Back in 1917, when the photograph was taken, the mountain was blanketed in grassland. By 2017, Magoebaskloof was covered by heavily wooded vegetation.

To Witkowski, the two photographs show the devastating effect humans have had on the environment. "You see a combination of plantations and bush encroachment," he says, adding that the bush encroachment on the mountain was most likely fuelled by global climate change and altered fire regimes to protect the plantation trees.

The biggest remnant of this grassland type is now protected in a 126-hectare provincial reserve that has been established just outside Haenertsburg. However, Kremer-Köhne believes it is not enough. Other measures need to be taken to protect this crucial ecosystem, such as ongoing efforts to teach farmers to farm in a way that minimises their impact on natural grasslands.

But, ultimately, it comes down to changing the way humans think about themselves. "As humans we often forget that we are just another cog in a big natural wheel that is turning," says Howes-Whitecross.

How grass dances with fire

by Beth Amato, Wits University JANUARY 17, 2020

There's a long-held myth that Johannesburg is the globe's largest urban forest, resplendent with an annual purple Jacaranda show. But before the planting of these (alien) trees for timber during the Gold Rush in the 19th Century, Johannesburg was a rich and varied grassland—a biome [community of plants and animals] that is one of the least protected in South Africa. Fortunately, the Department of Environmental Affairs prohibits plantation forestry in our grasslands, because of the negative impact it has on water resources and biodiversity.

Sally Archibald, Associate Professor in the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences (APES) at Wits, explains that grass-dominated environments comprise 40% of Earth's land area and they are critical for the livelihoods of much of the developing world. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has made the preservation of such grasslands a priority.

First fires at Frankenwald

Grasslands are Darwinian gold medalists—they have adapted to almost all environmental stressors, including grazing animals and freezing temperatures. Some people might find it hard to understand, but protecting delicate grassy ecosystems requires fire. Controlled burning brings new life and enables grazing animals to benefit from the lush regrowth after fire.

Wits researchers were amongst the first to recognise the benefits of fire in grasslands, back in the 1920s. Professor John Phillips and his successor, Professor Edward Roux, demonstrated to farmers, land managers, and the global research community that the fires across the Highveld grasslands every winter were not unwanted destructive forces, but an essential ecological process. Their experiments took place at the Frankenwald Research Station, north of Alexandra township.

Although there is no longer active research at Frankenwald, grassland research at Wits continues.

Archibald and the APES team are working on projects to understand interactions between fire, drought and herbivory in grasslands across southern Africa. They are doing this with large regional sampling campaigns, as well as greenhouse and field experiments.

"In the Kruger National Park, we have shown that you can use fire to manipulate grass communities to benefit wildebeest grazers, and we are now investigating how this impacts insect, bird, and microbial diversity, as well as tree seedling establishment," says Archibald.

Fanning the flames

The researchers also want to assess how drought tolerance strategies in perennial C4 grasses [warm season grasses, four carbon atoms] affect flammability, and whether changes in grass communities associated with drought can feedback to affect fire regimes. Wits postgraduate student, Londiwe Mokoena, found vast differences in flammability across grass species exposed to drought.

"Each species has a different strategy. Identifying links between drought and fire will help us to manage natural grasslands and to pick appropriate species to grow in different rangeland environments. It will also allow us to understand how fire regimes in natural grasslands might change in the future, as rainfall patterns and grass communities change," says Mokoena.

What are native grasslands, and why do they matter?

by Mike Letnic, The Conversation JULY 2019

Coalition minister Angus Taylor is under scrutiny for possibly intervening in the clearing of grasslands in the southern highlands of New South Wales. Leaving aside the political dimensions, it's worth asking: why do these grasslands matter?

The grasslands in much of eastern Australia are the result of forests and woodlands cleared to "improve" the landscape (from a grazier's point of view) to make it suitable for grazing livestock.

The "improvment" typically entails cutting trees, burning the felled timber and uprooting tree stumps, followed by ploughing, fertilising and sowing introduced grasses that are more palatable to livestock than many native grasses.

However, largely treeless native grasslands once occurred at high elevations across much of the Monaro tableland, in the area stretching between Canberra and Bombala.

The Monaro grasslands (or in scientific speak, the natural temperate grassland of the Southern Tablelands) are in relatively dry and cold areas, particularly in upland valleys or frost hollows where cold air descends at night.

The combination of dry climate and cold restricts tree growth and instead has encouraged grasses and herbs. Native grasses such as kangaroo grass and poa tussock dominate the grasslands, but there are many other unique plants. A typical undisturbed grassland area will support 10-20 species of native grasses and 40 or more non-grass species.

The grassy plains are also home to unique cold-adapted reptiles such as the grass-land earless dragon, little whip snake, pink-tailed worm lizard and striped legless lizards. This combination of plants and animals create a unique ecological community.

A fraction remain

It is estimated only 0.5% of the area that would once have been natural temperate grasslands in the Southern Tablelands remains. The rest has been gradually "improved" since the mid-nineteenth century to make them more productive for livestock grazing.

Livestock dramatically change the composition of grasslands, as animals remove palatable plants and compact the soil under their weight. Disturbed soil and the livestock also help to spread non-native weeds.

However, most native grasslands have not just been modified by grazing but completely replaced by man-made pastures. That is, the land has been ploughed, fertilised and the seeds of introduced grasses have been planted.

These changes to the landscape mean much of the landscape is dominated by introduced plants and is now unsuitable for many of the native plants and animals that once lived and grew there.

Because the Natural Temperate Grassland of the Southern Tablelands is now so rare it is classified as critically endangered and federally protected. Furthermore, many of the distinct plants and animals that still live in these grasslands are classified as vulnerable or endangered.

Some of the best remaining examples of the Monaro grasslands can be found in old cemeteries and in areas set aside as public livestock grazing areas. These areas of public land have often been spared from pasture improvement or only lightly grazed, and thus now support relatively intact native grassland ecosystems.

While, to the untrained eye the Monaro grasslands may seem unremarkable and difficult to distinguish from grazing pastures, they are deeply important. They show us what Australia once looked like, and act as a haven for native biodiversity.

Indeed, what remains of the natural grasslands is now so disturbed by agriculture there is a real threat this distinctive ecological community and many of the species it contains may disappear altogether, if they are not protected from excessive grazing, fertilisers and the plough.

When tree planting actually damages ecosystems

Newly developed screening processes will accelerate carbon capture research

by Catherine Tays, University of Alberta JANUARY 17, 2020

THE REALITY IS THAT CCS IS NOT GREEN NOR CLEAN IT IS GOING TO BE USED TO FRACK OLD DRY WELLS SUCH AS IN THE BAKAN SHIELD IN SASKATCHEWAN
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-myth-of-carbon-capture-and-storage.html

ALSO SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CCS

Newly developed screening processes will accelerate carbon capture research — Workers at the Quest carbon capture and storage facility in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta. U of A researchers devised a process that dramatically reduces the time needed to develop carbon capture technologies, which could help bring down the costs of using those technologies and increase the likelihood that they will be adopted by industry. Credit: Shell Canada

University of Alberta researchers have developed techniques that save a significant amount of time in developing more efficient carbon capture technologies, which may help lower the costs to use the technologies and increase their adoption as a way to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions.

U of A engineering professor Arvind Rajendran and his team developed a two-step screening process that assesses carbon capture materials called zeolites in seconds rather than a day.

Zeolites work by adsorbing—basically sticking to—carbon dioxide molecules, similar to the way odours can be captured by charcoal filters in our refrigerators. In carbon capture systems, the "flue-gas" exhaust emitted from a power plant can be passed through the zeolites, trapping the CO2 before it enters the atmosphere. Theoretically, millions of different types of materials can adsorb CO2, but to be efficient as part of an industrial process, a molecule must stick to CO2 and also release it on command when the carbon dioxide needs to be trapped or used.

However, not all zeolites are equal, Rajendran's team explains, some are much better than others at sticking to and releasing CO2.

The team, including master's graduate Vishal Subramanian Balashankar, assessed 120,000 zeolites and was able to whittle them down to only 7,000, which could then be screened down to two dozen good targets using traditional methods. One of these materials appears to be a significant improvement on the current standard material, zeolite-13x, resulting in 17 per cent more efficient power use.

The second tool—created together with U of A engineering professors Vinay Prasad and Zukui Li, and graduate students Kasturi Nagesh Pai and Gokul Subraveti—used known information about the carbon capturing molecules to predict behaviour and performance in a real-world system.

Using a machine learning algorithm eliminates the need to simulate the performance of each molecule, decreasing the computational load by a factor of 10 without losing accuracy, Rajendran noted.

Carbon capture technologies can prevent coal and natural gas power plants from emitting carbon dioxide but they currently cost so much to install and operate that power companies are hesitant to use them, he added.

"Our role is to provide these tools to help chemists find better molecules, and our expertise is designing processes that use the molecules to capture carbon," Rajendran explained.

Finding the perfect materials that fit into this goldilocks zone has always been a challenge, but the group's new machine learning tools are pointing researchers to viable new carbon capture materials, saving months lost to dead ends or work on inefficient materials. They're also helping engineers understand what carbon capture design would be most efficient.

If adsorbents are like charcoal fridge filters, machine learning is helping the researchers understand which brands are most effective at trapping odours, and how their integration in the fridge can change the effect.

The traditional process of making these decisions was slow, relying on laborious work and extensive computer simulations. Every possible molecule and every potential system design had to be individually simulated, requiring extraordinary computing power.

"The point is to quickly find molecules and systems that will reduce the cost of capturing carbon, to bring it down well below the carbon tax so it actually gets adopted," Rajendran said.

The techniques, recently published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering and Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, can be adapted to speed up discoveries about other kinds of materials and processes related to climate change and industrial gas separations, including methane upgrading and oxygen purification—topics the research group is currently studying.

"We need renewable sources of energy, but we will have these hydrocarbon systems for years to come," he said. "This technology can stop emissions now, and buy us time to complete the transition."

A sustainable new material for carbon dioxide capture

More information: Vishal Subramanian Balashankar et al. Process Optimization-Based Screening of Zeolites for Post-Combustion CO2 Capture by Vacuum Swing Adsorption, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (2019). DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.9b04124

Sai Gokul Subraveti et al. Machine Learning-Based Multiobjective Optimization of Pressure Swing Adsorption, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research (2019). DOI: 10.1021/acs.iecr.9b04173

Journal information: Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research

Study shows human ancestors could have consumed hard plant tissues without damaging their teeth

by Washington University in St. Louis JANUARY 17, 2020

Go ahead, take a big bite.

Hard plant foods may have made up a larger part of early human ancestors' diet than currently presumed, according to a new experimental study of modern tooth enamel from Washington University in St. Louis.

Scientists often look at microscopic damage to teeth to infer what an animal was eating. This new research—using experiments looking at microscopic interactions between food particles and enamel—demonstrates that even the hardest plant tissues scarcely wear down primate teeth. The results have implications for reconstructing diet, and potentially for our interpretation of the fossil record of human evolution, researchers said.

"We found that hard plant tissues such as the shells of nuts and seeds barely influence microwear textures on teeth," said Adam van Casteren, lecturer in biological anthropology in Arts & Sciences, the first author of the new study in Scientific Reports. David S. Strait, professor of physical anthropology, is a co-author.

Traditionally, eating hard foods is thought to damage teeth by producing microscopic pits. "But if teeth don't demonstrate elaborate pits and scars, this doesn't necessarily rule out the consumption of hard food items," van Casteren said.

Humans diverged from non-human apes about seven million years ago in Africa. The new study addresses an ongoing debate surrounding what some early human ancestors, the australopiths, were eating. These hominin species had very large teeth and jaws, and likely huge chewing muscles.

"All these morphological attributes seem to indicate they had the ability to produce large bite forces, and therefore likely chomped down on a diet of hard or bulky food items such as nuts, seeds or underground resources like tubers," van Casteren said.

But most fossil australopith teeth don't show the kind of microscopic wear that would be expected in this scenario.

The researchers decided to test it out.

Previous mechanical experiments had shown how grit—literally, pieces of quartz rock—produces deep scratches on flat tooth surfaces, using a device that mimicked the microscopic interactions of particles on teeth. But there was little to no experimental data on what happens to tooth enamel when it comes in contact with actual woody plant material.

For this study, the researchers attached tiny pieces of seed shells to a probe that they dragged across enamel from a Bornean orangutan molar tooth.

They made 16 "slides" representing contacts between the enamel and three different seed shells from woody plants that are part of modern primate diets. The researchers dragged the seeds against enamel at forces comparable to any chewing action.

The seed fragments made no large pits, scratches or fractures in the enamel, the researchers found. There were a few shallow grooves, but the scientists saw nothing that indicated that hard plant tissues could contribute meaningfully to dental microwear. The seed fragments themselves, however, showed signs of degradation from being rubbed against the enamel.

This information is useful for anthropologists who are left with only fossils to try to reconstruct ancient diets.

"Our approach is not to look for correlations between the types of microscopic marks on teeth and foods being eaten—but instead to understand the underlying mechanics of how these scars on tooth surface are formed," van Casteren said. "If we can fathom these fundamental concepts, we can generate more accurate pictures of what fossil hominins were eating."

So those big australopith jaws could have been put to use chewing on large amounts of seeds—without scarring teeth.

"And that makes perfect sense in terms of the shape of their teeth" said Peter Lucas, a co-author at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, "because the blunt low-cusped form of their molars are ideal for that purpose."

"When consuming many very small hard seeds, large bite forces are likely to be required to mill all the grains," van Casteren said. "In the light of our new findings, it is plausible that small, hard objects like grass seeds or sedge nutlets were a dietary resource for early hominins."

No teeth cleaning needed: Crocodiles shed old teeth, grow new ones

Teens feel the heat of climate change

by Delia Du Toit, Wits University JANUARY 17, 2020

In 2017, when the drought in Cape Town was at its worst in over a century, aid organisation Gift of the Givers made an urgent call to South Africans to help farmers; suicide rates, amongst both small- and large-scale farmers, had surged in the few months prior. This and other evidence paints a bleak future picture in the context of climate change, and southern Africa is one of the areas that will suffer the most.

Adolescent moody blues

So say Professor Matthew Chersich and Dr. Fiona Scorgie in the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (Wits RHI), who have been studying the effects of climate change on adolescents.

"Today's youth will inherit a world made hazardous by greenhouse gases. The world's temperature has already risen by 1°C above pre-industrial levels and, without major intervention, will rise a further 0.5°C by 2040. Heat waves and other extreme weather events have become frequent and intense. In southern Africa, temperatures are expected to rise at twice the global rate, creating virtually intolerable conditions for people in settings where buildings are poorly insulated and ventilated," says Scorgie.

The effects are so severe, in fact, that Chersich predicts an increase in violence, mental health disorders, and suicide, as well as poorer matric pass rates, if nothing is done.

"Exposure to high temperatures alters one's physiology, raising anxiety, depressive symptoms, irritability and aggression. People feel powerless when they have no means of keeping cool, when they can neither fight nor flee the hot weather. The effects will be most pronounced amongst those who can't afford air conditioning and we have no idea how communities who are not acclimatised to high temperatures will cope with several days of 40 plus degrees in houses with tin walls and roofs, zero insulation, and no cold water."

Diminishing the bright sparks

And when learners must write matric in overcrowded and stuffy prefabricated or shipping container-classrooms in hot weather, even the smartest will struggle, he says.

In Climate change and adolescents in South Africa: The role of youth activism and the health sector in safeguarding adolescents' health and education, published in August 2019 in the South African Medical Journal, Chersich, lead author, says that while the Department of Basic Education mentions environmental factors such as ventilation and the hazards of non-brick structures in its school infrastructure standards, these have not yet been fully actualised.

"In many schools, classrooms are made of converted shipping containers or prefabricated sheeting with corrugated iron roofs. Most container classrooms have poor insulation, little natural ventilation and as many as 50 children in a class, who themselves generate a considerable heat load. In one study in Johannesburg, which has a relatively mild climate, temperatures reached as high as 47.5°C in the containers and the majority of students reported experiencing heat-health symptoms every day, including drowsiness, poor concentration and thirst."

And even at much lower temperatures, the effects are profound. A meta-analysis of 18 studies calculated that students in classrooms with an indoor temperature of 30°C scored 20 percent lower on tests than those in classes around 20°C. "The performance of adolescents appears to be more heat sensitive than the performance of adults in occupational settings. Nevertheless, teachers exposed to high temperatures may also become lethargic and irritable. In classes with poor ventilation, levels of CO² or stuffiness rise together with temperature, and children experience symptoms that further affect concentration and learning," writes Chersich.

A psychology of sustainability

Professor Andrew Thatcher, Chair in Industrial and Organisational Psychology at Wits, is currently researching the psychological factors around the adoption of sustainable technologies. So-called green buildings can increase productivity, he says.

"For our research, we looked at close to 20 buildings. Each of them was given an indoor environmental quality (IEQ) score out of 27 as determined by the Green Building Council of South Africa's green building rating tool [GreenStar SA], which considers air quality, ventilation and ventilation rates, ambient temperature, noise and lighting. It's incredibly difficult to get a perfect IEQ score, but those at the top end, with a score of 22-23 points, had productivity gains of 17 percent, which would translate to enormous improvements in large corporations, for example."

And the solutions offered by IEQ principles aren't restricted to corporate budgets. In container classrooms, simple adjustments could already make a difference, says Thatcher. "Orienting the container to avoid direct sunlight will help or placing it next to a tree for shade. A deciduous tree that offers shade in summer and loses its leaves in winter to let the sun in would also be a helpful solution in colder climates."

Fresh air and flip-flops

Adding windows, he says, could make a crucial difference, referencing a Californian study. "The researchers hypothesised that daylight is an important component in classrooms. They measured performance in two southern Californian classrooms—one with big windows, one with small windows—and found that the kids with the bigger windows fared better, confirming [the researchers'] beliefs. But when they repeated the experiment in northern California, where it's cooler, big windows made no difference. It turned out that daylight didn't play a role in performance, but fresh air did—the classes in warmer southern California had their windows open."

Scorgie and Chersich are awaiting funding to conduct a study measuring these and other impacts in South Africa, and to investigate how exposure to ambient heat impacts children's health, wellbeing and educational achievement. "We will test whether these impacts—such as dehydration, heat exhaustion, lethargy and poor concentration—can be reduced by using low-cost, low-electricity cooling methods, including natural ventilation, the installation of fans on classroom walls, painting the classroom roof white, placing plants and cold water dispensers in the classroom, and wearing sandals and loose, single-layered, cotton clothing," says Scorgie.

These measures could inform policy to mitigate climate change, says Chersich. "There is much that can be done using low-cost interventions and little electricity. We urgently need sensible public health initiatives and ground-up activism to start to undo the effects already occurring."

Are students getting enough air?

More information: M F Chersich et al. Climate change and adolescents in South Africa: The role of youth activism and the health sector in safeguarding adolescents' health and education, South African Medical Journal (2019). DOI: 10.7196/SAMJ.2019.v109i9.14327

Czechs detect bird flu as new Europe outbreak feared

chicken farm — Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A highly contagious bird flu has been confirmed at a Czech farm, officials said Saturday after a French farm union warned of the risk of a new outbreak in Europe.

Czech official Petr Vorlicek said "the highly pathogenic H5N8 subtype lethal for birds" was found at a small farm 150 kilometres (94 miles) southeast of the capital Prague.

Vorlicek, spokesman for the State Veterinary Administration (SVS), said the infection at the farm in Stepanov nad Svratkou was most likely imported by wild water birds.

The SVS, which says the H5N8 has never been reported to have spread to humans, said the farm bred three ducks and 12 hens, of which six infected with the virus died within two days.

The remaining animals at the farm were culled on Saturday morning, veterinarians said.

"We will create... a ten-kilometre (six-mile) protected area around the farm," SVS head Zbynek Semerad added.

The French farm union, Coordination rurale, said Friday that H5N8 has been detected in recent weeks in farms in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania as well as among wild birds in Poland.

It warned authorities to urgently stop shipments from the infected countries and alert customs agents to the risk.

It recalled how French poultry farms and the producers of foie gras were seriously affected by the 2017 epidemic when millions of birds were culled in Europe.

Over 65,000 hen to be culled in bird flu outbreak in Poland

Scientists seek rare species survivors amid Australia flames

by Christina Larson and Matthew Brown JANUARY 18, 2020

This December 2019 photo provided by Guy Ballard shows a male brush-tailed rock wallaby eating supplementary food researchers provided in the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park in New South Wales, Australia. Before this fire season, scientists estimated there were as few as 15,000 left in the wild. Now recent fires in a region already stricken by drought have burned through some of their last habitat, and the species is in jeopardy of disappearing, Ballard said. (Guy Ballard/NSW DPI - UNE via AP)

Australia's unprecedented wildfires season has so far charred 40,000 square miles (104,000 square kilometers) of brushland, rainforests, and national parks—killing by one estimate more than a billion wild animals. Scientists fear some of the island continent's unique and colorful species may not recover. For others, they are trying to throw lifelines.

Where flames have subsided, biologists are starting to look for survivors, hoping they may find enough left of some rare and endangered species to rebuild populations. It's a grim task for a nation that prides itself on its diverse wildlife, including creatures found nowhere else on the planet such as koalas, kangaroos and wallabies.

"I don't think we've seen a single event in Australia that has destroyed so much habitat and pushed so many creatures to the very brink of extinction," said Kingsley Dixon, an ecologist at Curtin University in Perth.

Not long after wildfires passed through Oxley Wild Rivers National Park in New South Wales, ecologist Guy Ballard set out looking for brush-tailed rock wallabies.

The small marsupials resemble miniature kangaroos with long floppy tails and often bound between large boulders, their preferred hiding spots.

Before this fire season, scientists estimated there were as few as 15,000 left in the wild. Now recent fires in a region already stricken by drought have burned through some of their last habitat, and the species is in jeopardy of disappearing, Ballard said.

In prior years, his team identified a handful of colonies within the national park. After the recent fires, they found smoking tree stumps and dead animals.

"It was just devastating," said Ballard from the University of New England in Armidale. "You could smell dead animals in the rocks."

But some wallabies, his team discovered, were still alive. "All you can do is focus on the survivors," he said.

Australia's forests and wildlife evolved alongside periodic wildfires. What's different this year is the vast extent of land burned—an area as big as Kentucky—against a backdrop of drought and searing temperatures attributed to climate change. Last year, among the driest in more than a century, saw temperatures that routinely topped 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius).

Not all animals will perish in the blazes. Some can shelter in rock crevices or hide deep in underground burrows. Yet when survivors emerge into a fire-scorched wasteland, they will face hunger, thirst and non-native predators, including introduced foxes and feral cats.

Since fires swept through parts of Oxley Wild Rivers National Park nearly two months ago, there's been little rain and no green shoots.

So Ballard's team has trekked through the ash-covered forest carrying water and sacks of sweet potatoes, carrots and food pellets.

This early January 2020 photo provided by Dana Mitchell from the Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park shows a rescued koala injured in a bushfire in Kangaroo Island, South Australia. Mathew Crowther, an ecologist at the University of Sydney, says, "Koalas won't go extinct in the next few years, but if their habitat is destroyed bit by bit, it could eventually be death by a thousand cuts. We have to look at long-term trends— what will the temperatures and wildfires be like in the future?" (Dana Mitchell/Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park via AP)

"There are so few left that, with a species this rare, every individual counts," he says.

Elsewhere in New South Wales, conservation workers are dropping vegetables from airplanes into scorched forests, hoping that wallabies and other species find a meal.

In the state of Victoria, authorities estimate that brush-tailed rock wallabies lost 40% of their habitat as did another rare marsupial, the long-footed potoroo, according to a preliminary damage assessment.

The full toll on Australia's wildlife includes at least 20 and possibly as many as 100 threatened species pushed closer to extinction, according to scientists from several Australian universities.

"The worry is that with so much lost, there won't be a pool of rare animals and plants to later repopulate burnt areas," said Jim Radford, an ecologist at La Trobe University in Melbourne.

The fires could knock out rainforest species dating back to the time of the Gondwana supercontinent, before the modern continents split apart, he said.

University of Sydney ecologist Christopher Dickman estimated that more than 1 billion animals have been killed so far. His calculations took previously-published animal density numbers for different vegetation types and multiplied that by acreage burned.

He says that number does not include bats, amphibians, insects or other invertebrates.

The wildlife toll includes tens of millions of possums and small marsupials known as gliders, which live in tree tops and can leap extraordinary distances by using a parachute-like membrane of skin between their ankles and wrists. State officials in Victoria predicted more than a 25% reduction in glider numbers from the fires.

"The implications for some species are pretty grim," Dickman said. "If we can't protect them here, they're gone. No one else has them."

The Australian government announced Monday that it was spending $50 million on emergency wildlife rescue efforts and habitat recovery.

Fires are still burning in the Blue Mountains, a UNESCO World Heritage site west of Sydney—one of the last strongholds of the regent honeyeater, an elegant black and yellow bird that has already lost 95% of its breeding habitat since European settlers arrived in Australia.

There are only 300 to 400 of the birds left in the wild, says Ross Crates, an ecologist at Australia National University. They are dependent on nectar from certain eucalyptus tree blossoms, but the dry weather has meant that many trees are producing no nectar.

This 2017 photo provided by David Stowe shows a female regent honeyeater in Capertee National Park, New South Wales, Australia. There are only 300 to 400 of the birds left in the wild, says Ross Crates, an ecologist at Australia National University. They are dependent on nectar from certain eucalyptus tree blossoms, but the dry weather has meant that many trees are producing no nectar. (David Stowe/davidstowe.com.au via AP)

After the wildfires subside, Crates plans to survey what's been newly scorched. "Even for birds that survive the fires, we are concerned about how they will feed and nest."

In recent months, areas that don't usually burn went up in flames. Some rainforests dried up in the drought and extreme heat, allowing fire to sweep through them.

Few images have tugged at heartstrings more than koalas clinging to burnt trees. Unlike birds or ground mammals, they cannot fly away or burrow underground.

While koalas are not classified as vulnerable to extinction, their populations in some fire-ravaged areas may have been snuffed out. "We know there's been a massive reduction of their overall habitat, and we're not even at the end of fire season," said Mathew Crowther, an ecologist at the University of Sydney.

"Koalas won't go extinct in the next few years, but if their habitat is destroyed bit by bit, it could eventually be death by a thousand cuts. We have to look at long-term trends—what will the temperatures and wildfires be like in the future?"

Australian animals face extinction threat as bushfire toll mounts

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