What the Supreme Court's EPA ruling means for the fight against climate change

David Knowles
·Senior Editor
Thu, June 30, 2022 

When former President Richard Nixon proposed the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, one provision of his proposal was that it would work with the states to establish and enforce standards for air and water quality.

At the time, climate change was a term few scientists — and even fewer politicians — were aware of, even though global temperatures had already started to rise due to the pollution mankind was pumping into the atmosphere.

In a majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court conceded Thursday that the Obama-era EPA standard called the Clean Power Plan was intended to curb the greenhouse gas pollution that is causing climate change and which scientists have long warned threatens life on Earth as we know it.

“Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day,’” Roberts wrote.

The "but" clause to that statement, however, revealed the chasm that stands between acknowledging that climate change is a problem and actually doing something about it.

“But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme," Roberts concluded.

The court sided with the coal-producing state of West Virginia, which sued the EPA, saying the agency had overstepped its authority in trying to enforce the Clean Air Act by limiting power plant emissions.

As Justice Elena Kagan put it in her dissent, the court "appoints itself – instead of Congress or the expert agency – the decision-maker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening."

Climate activists, too, questioned this new restriction on the authority of federal agency charged with overseeing the nation's environmental health.

"This Court is deliberately handcuffing our ability to respond to the most serious crisis humankind has faced," Lisa Graves, executive director of True North Research and a former Department of Justice official, said in a written statement. "And it is doing so recklessly, during the most crucial decade we have to try to limit carbon’s impact on the heat of our planet, the sustainability of our oceans and agriculture, and our ability as a people to survive the climate changes that are underway."

After four years of former President Donald Trump, who has described climate change as a "hoax" perpetrated by the Chinese government in an attempt to ruin the United States' economy, President Biden announced in April 2021 that the U.S. would seek to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.

That ambitious goal seemed achievable, if only because Biden's Build Back Better agenda — which contained the bulk of the administration's proposals to advance the transition reducing the country's reliance on fossil fuels — had yet to be scuttled by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., and the EPA's authority to limit power plant emissions still stood.

To say that the U.S. emissions goal is now in doubt is an understatement. The burden of addressing the threat of climate change has now shifted to Congress, where no Republicans, let alone Manchin, voiced support for BBB.

Exhaust rises from the stacks of the Harrison Power Station in Haywood, W. Va., in 2018. (Reuters/Brian Snyder)

Still, Biden said in a statement Thursday that he would continue to use his executive authority to try to achieve his emissions goals.

"While this decision risks damaging our nation’s ability to keep our air clean and combat climate change, I will not relent in using my lawful authorities to protect public health and tackle the climate crisis," he said in his statement.

As the New York Times reported earlier this month, West Virginia v. EPA was part of a broader campaign by conservatives to wage war on environmental regulations nationwide. Part of that effort has been the selection of judges to the federal bench who are more sympathetic to the energy industry than government regulators. The legal challenges to regulating carbon emissions, in other words, will not stop.

Given the enormity of the climate change problem, activists say that voters, elected officials, the business community and the scientific community will all need to be on the same page in proceeding with the urgent business of curbing emissions. Such a consensus has yet to emerge, even among left-leaning voters.

In a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll that asked Democrats to name "the most important issue to you when thinking about this year's election," only 5% said climate change. In a 2021 Yahoo News/YouGov poll, 67% of Republicans said that climate change "is not an emergency."

How the world got to this juncture, and who is to blame, is almost beside the point. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reiterated in its April report, the window of opportunity to keep average global temperatures from exceeding the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold is quickly closing.

“The jury has reached a verdict. And it is damning,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement that accompanied the findings of thousands of scientists. “This report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a litany of broken climate promises. It is a file of shame, cataloging the empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unlivable world.”

The consequences of climate change can be seen everywhere. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide continues to set new records, and it won't take a pause until enough members of Congress are elected who are willing to reinstitute the regulatory regime just upended by the Supreme Court.

BattleField Band ~ We work the black seam

 

 

"We Work The Black Seam" This place has changed for good Your economic theory said it would It's hard for us to understand We can't give up our jobs the way we should Our blood has stained the coal We tunneled deep inside the nation's soul We matter more than pounds and pence Your economic theory makes no sense One day in a nuclear age They may understand our rage They build machines that they can't control And bury the waste in a great big hole Power was to become cheap and clean Grimy faces were never seen But deadly for twelve thousand years is carbon fourteen We work the black seam together The seam lies underground Three million years of pressure packed it down We walk through ancient forest lands And light a thousand cities with our hands Your dark satanic mills Have made redundant all our mining skills You can't exchange a six inch band For all the poisoned streams in Cumberland One day in a nuclear age They may understand our rage They build machines that they can't control And bury the waste in a great big hole Power was to become cheap and clean Grimy faces were never seen But deadly for twelve thousand years is carbon fourteen We work the black seam together Our conscious lives run deep You cling onto your mountain while we sleep This way of life is part of me The is no price so only let me be And should the children weep The turning world will sing their souls to sleep When you have sunk without a trace The universe will suck me into place One day in a nuclear age They may understand our rage They build machines that they can't control And bury the waste in a great big hole Power was to become cheap and clean Grimy faces were never seen But deadly for twelve thousand years is carbon fourteen We work the black seam together

New Colombian president pledges to protect rainforest






 Gustavo Petro, Colombia's first elected leftist president, will take office in August with ambitious proposals to halt the record-high rates of deforestation in the Amazon. 

(AP Photo/Fabiano Maisonnave)

by FABIANO MAISONNAVE
Sat, June 25, 2022 

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first elected leftist president, will take office in August with ambitious proposals to halt the record-high rates of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Petro has promised to limit agribusiness expansion into the forest, and create reserves where Indigenous communities and others are allowed to harvest rubber, acai and other non-timber forest products. He has also pledged income from carbon credits to finance replanting.

“From Colombia, we will give humanity a reward, a remedy, a solution: not to burn the Amazon rainforest anymore, to recover it to its natural frontier, to give humanity the possibility of life on this planet," Petro, wearing an Indigenous headdress, said to a crowd in the Amazon city of Leticia during his campaign.

But to do that he first needs to establish reign over large, lawless areas.

The task of stopping deforestation seems more challenging than ever. In 2021, the Colombian Amazon lost 98000 hectares (more than 240,000 acres) of pristine forest to deforestation and another 9,000 hectares (22,000 acres) to fire. Both were down from what they had been in 2020, but 2021 was still the fourth worst year on record according to Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), an initiative of the nonprofit Amazon Conservation Association.

More than 40% of Colombia is in the Amazon, an area roughly the size of Spain. The country has the world’s largest bird biodiversity, mainly because it includes transition zones between the Andes mountains and the Amazon lowlands. Fifteen percent of the Colombian Amazon has already been deforested, according to Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development, or FCDS.

Destruction of the forest has been on the rise since 2016, the year Colombia signed a peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, that ended decades of a bloody armed conflict.

“The peace process allowed people to return to formerly conflict-ridden rural areas. As the returning population increasingly used the natural resources, it contributed to deforestation and increases in forest fires, especially in the Amazon and the Andes-Amazon transition regions,” according to a new paper in the journal “Environmental Science and Policy.”

The presence of the State is barely felt in Colombia’s Amazon. “Once the armed groups were demobilized, they left the forest free for cattle ranching, illegal mining and drug trafficking,” said Ruth Consuelo Chaparro, director of the Roads to Identity Foundation, in a telephone interview. "The State has not filled the gaps.”

The main driver of deforestation has been the expansion of cattle ranching. Since 2016, the number of cattle in the Amazon has doubled to 2.2 million. In the same period, about 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) of forest were lost, according to FCDS, based on official data.

This cattle expansion goes hand in hand with illegally-seized land, said FCDS director Rodrigo Botero. “The big business deal is the land. The cows are just a way to get hold of these territories,” he told the AP in a phone interview.

Experts affirm that illegally-seized lands are often resold to ranchers, who then run their cattle free of land use restrictions, such as the propriety's size.

Most of the destruction occurs in an “arc of deforestation” in the northwestern Colombian Amazon, where even protected areas have not been spared. Chiribiquete, the world's largest national park protecting a tropical rainforest, has lost around 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres) since 2018, according to MAAP.

During the campaign, Botero took Petro and other presidential candidates on separate one-day trips to the Amazon. They flew over cattle ranching areas, national parks and Indigenous territories.

“A very interesting thing Petro and other candidates said was that they never imagined the magnitude of the destruction." The feeling of ungovernability made a deep impression on each of them, Botero said.

Almost 60% of Colombia’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, deforestation and other land use, according to the World Resources Institute. In 2020, under the Paris Agreement, Colombian President Ivan Duque’s government committed to a 51% reduction in emissions by 2030. To do that, it pledged to reach net-zero deforestation by 2030.

The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical rainforest and an enormous carbon sink. There is widespread concern that its destruction will not only release massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, further complicating hopes of arresting climate change, but also push it past a tipping point after which much of the forest will begin an irreversible process of degradation into tropical savannah.

Although it holds almost half of the nation's territory, the Amazon is the least populated part of Colombia, so historically it is neglected during presidential campaigns.

This year's campaign was not a complete departure from that. But this year, for the first time, there was a TV presidential debate dedicated solely to environmental issues before the first round in the election. Petro, who was leading the polls then, refused to participate.

In his government program, Petro further promises to prioritize collective land titles, such as Indigenous reservations and zones for landless farmers. He also promises to control migration into the Amazon, fight illegal activities, such as land seizures, drug trafficking and money laundering via land purchases.

Petro’s press manager did not respond to requests for comment.

“Petro has studied and understands deforestation,” said Consuelo Chaparro, whose organization works with Indigenous tribes in the Amazon. But the president alone can do nothing, she said. Her hope is that he will listen and move things forward. ”We don’t expect him to be a Messiah."

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

UN chief: National selfishness delaying global oceans deal





BARRY HATTON
Mon, June 27, 2022 


LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Some countries won't accept that the world's oceans belong to everyone and their “egoism” is holding up a global agreement on protecting these vast tracts of the planet, the United Nations chief charged Monday.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres didn’t say which countries he was referring to, but stressed the significance of the oceans to everyone on the planet. “International waters are ours,” he said.

The U.N. chief was with senior officials and scientists from more than 120 countries attending a five-day U.N. Ocean Conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Also present were activists frustrated by the failure to come up with international rules that might ensure ocean sustainability.

The U.N. is hoping the conference that got underway Monday will bring fresh momentum to protracted efforts for a global ocean agreement.

There's no comprehensive legal framework applying to the high seas. Oceans cover some 70% of the earth’s surface and provide food and livelihoods for billions of people. Some activists refer to them as the largest unregulated area on the planet.

The conference is set to adopt a declaration that, though not binding on its signatories, could help implement and facilitate the protection and conservation of oceans and their resources, according to the U.N.. The declaration is due to be endorsed on Friday.

But still beyond reach is a vital new international agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction, also known as the Treaty of the High Seas.

That treaty is being negotiated within the framework of the United Convention on the Law of the Sea, which is the main international agreement governing human maritime activities.

After 10 years of talks, however, including a fourth round of negotiations three months ago, a deal is still not within sight. A fifth round is scheduled for August in New York.

“The world’s largest ecosystem ... is still unprotected and is dying as we watch,” the activist group Ocean Rebellion said.

Guterres said “significant progress” has been made toward a deal on a high seas treaty and that the world stands at “a crucial moment” for the future of the oceans.

“We need to make people put pressure on those who decide,” Guterres said, appealing for people to make themselves heard.

Threats to the oceans include global warming, pollution, acidification and other problems, the U.N. says. Potentially harmful deep-sea mining also lacks rules.

Despite the frustrations, the conference is “an important opportunity to accelerate” steps toward a high seas treaty, the U.N. says, as delegates informally debate possible ways forward.

The conference is also expected to reaffirm and build upon the some 62 commitments made by governments at the previous summit in Nairobi, Kenya in 2018, from protecting small island states with ocean-based economies to sustainable fishing and combatting warming waters.

Financing models for ocean conservation are also on the agenda this year, as well as coming up with science-based, innovative solutions that might improve ocean health.

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and French President Emmanuel Macron are among those attending some days of the event.

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Follow all of AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

One in six UK adults doubt human link to climate change - report

Tue, June 28, 2022

Smoking chimney

One in six adults in the UK does not believe that climate change is mainly caused by human activities, according to a report released on Wednesday.

That's despite scientists and policymakers around the world almost unanimously believing this to be the case.

King's College London conducted the study as part of a project looking at public trust in expertise.

It was based on a survey of 12,000 adults across six European countries.

Professor Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute at King's, called the finding "a real concern as it may affect support for action."

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said last year: "It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land."

Climate change: How do we know it is happening and caused by humans?

COP26: Are nations on track to meet their climate goals?

What is net zero and how are the UK and other countries doing?

The study also says the UK public underestimates how much scientists agree on the link between human activity and climate change.

However, the majority of people in the UK (72%) do accept humans' role in climate change, with a quarter of the UK public claiming it is already harming them personally.

The number of people in the UK who believe climate change is not mainly caused by humans (17%) was similar to Germany (18%) and Poland (16%) but much lower than Norway, where nearly a quarter of adults surveyed held that opinion.

Across the six countries surveyed, older people were more hopeful about our ability to slow climate change, according to the survey. Of those aged 55 and over, 60% thought it was not too late to do something about climate change, compared with 34% of 18-34 year-olds.

Peru home build vexed by 'the neighbors' 

- Inca-era mummies


Archaeologists excavate ancient bones and vessels from a previous Inca culture that were discovered by city workers digging a natural gas line in the Brena neighborhood of Lima, Peru, Feb. 11, 2020. About 300 archaeological finds, some 2,000 years old, have been reported over the past decade during the building of thousands of kilometers (miles) of natural gas pipelines in the capital.

 (AP Photo/Martin Mejia, File)

FRANLIN BRICEÑO
Wed, June 29, 2022 

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Hipólito Tica had saved for decades to finally build himself a proper house in a working class neighborhood of Lima. His problem was what to do about “the neighbors” — as he called the centuries-old mummies buried below.

The mechanic had known they were there since the day in 1996 when he tried to dig a latrine on the lot, which is a few yards (meters) from the El Sauce archaeological site on the eastern edge of the Peruvian capital.

Taking a break from hefting bricks, Tica told The Associated Press that he had been working to loosen the earth with a metal rod when the ground suddenly began to collapse.

“I got out of there fast as a spider,” he said.

Tica found a flashlight and went to check out the hole that had opened at his feet, some 5 meters (16 feet) deep and 3 meters (10 feet) wide.

“I saw some bundles — the light was bright enough; they were funerary bundles,” he said.

He wasn't sure what to do, who to tell.

Like roughly a half million other people around the edges of Lima, he had just moved in, building a rudimentary adobe structure on the unoccupied lot without owning a title. So drawing the attention of authorities to an archaeological find could cost him a home.

In spite of that, he said he broached word of the discovery to some archaeologists who were excavating Incan ceramics from nearby streets where the city was installing water lines. He said they didn't pay much attention. He didn't press the issue.

So he decided to just coexist with “the neighbors.” He covered the hole with an old door, a carpet he pulled out of an old car and a layer of dirt.

“Nobody noticed the hole,” he said.

As the years passed, Tico and his neighbors gradually won rights to the property in their new neighborhood, He planned to build a house of brick and cement and along with neighbors applied for water and sewage service — which required approval from the Secretary of Culture and a local museum to ensure to ensure that they would not harm archaeological remains.

There Tica, who had little formal schooling, began to learn about the Incas and other early Peruvian civilizations.

Building the house correctly would mean laying a foundation and filling in the hole where the bodies were buried.

“I was worried,” he said. Friends advised him: "Just cover it, fill it with cement and you're ready.“

But “I had a nagging worry that people in the future wouldn't know anything about this area. Part of history is here,” he said.

So he looked up an archaeologist, Julio Abanto of the Ruricancho Cultural Institute, who was doing research in the area, and told him, “I have a burial and I want you to see it.”

Abanto and his team got government permission for an emergency dig.

The archaeologist lowered himself into the hole with ropes and found three bundles, each of which contained more than one individual — it's not yet clear how many —belonging to a culture within the Inca empire more than 500 years ago.

One of the skeletons has a sort of crown, bits of copper and a silver bracelet, as well as a spoon-like implement used for coca leaf with an image of a bird pecking at the head of a fish. There were also shells of a sort of mollusk prized in the region.

Archaeologists are still studying the finds, but Abanto said they likely belonged to members of a local elite who had been conquered by the Incas.

Now the bricklayers helping Tica build the house chew coca leaf as they work — a common practice in the region — and sometimes bury a few leaves at the now filled-in burial site.

“In our city, it's possible in these most casual ways to find surprising heritage that helps us reconstruct our local history," Abanto said.

In this case, it was “a 21st century family living above another from 500 years ago.”

Earliest evidence of wildfire found in Wales

Jonathan Amos - 

BBC Science Correspondent
Thu, June 30, 2022 

In the artwork, the Silurian landscape is dominated by an enigmatic organism called Prototaxites

The oldest evidence of wildfire has been identified in South Wales.

It takes the form of some truly ancient, charred remnants trapped in some truly ancient mudstone.

And by ancient we're talking 430 million years ago, during the Silurian Period of Earth history.

Back then, only a few pioneering plants had made it on to land, so what was it that caught fire and produced the charcoal? Most likely it was a forest of giant fungi.

"The Silurian vegetation was very different to what it is today," explained palaeobotanist Ian Glasspool.

"There were no woody plants at this time; most of the vegetation was very small. However, there was one giant that dwarfed the landscape. There's a very enigmatic fossil called Prototaxites.

"It grew anything up to 8m in height, and about a metre in diameter. A sort of funky, humongous fungus; erect, very phallic structures; pillars of fungus that could weigh up to 10 metric tonnes," he told the Science In Action programme on the BBC World Service.


The charcoal retains wonderful detail of the cellular structure of Prototaxites

It's these strange organisms that went up in flames and left the blackened traces, Dr Glasspool believes.

His Welsh mudstone was drilled from deep under Rumney on the outskirts of Cardiff. These sediments were laid down when what is now the British Isles would have been in the Southern Hemisphere.

The rock records a near-shore marine setting, meaning the tiny fragments (2-3mm in length) of charcoal were being washed out to sea. That in itself is instructive because to have left their mark, it suggests the Prototaxites fires on land were sufficiently large and widespread.

Dr Glasspool has similar evidence from Winnica, in the Kielce region of Poland.

Together, the observations push the earliest evidence for wildfire on Earth back by about 10 million years.

The woody plants that fuel today's fires began to emerge in the Devonian Period, 400 million years ago

And in doing so, this science reveals something else about Earth during the Silurian: the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere.

The concentration of O2 in the air today is about 21%, but early in Earth's history it was much less. It took photosynthetic algae in the oceans millions of years to terraform the planet.

Dr Glasspool said: "For fires to propagate, you really need three things: A source of fuel, which, surprisingly, we seem to have in sufficient amounts in the Silurian; you need a source of ignition, which is lightning strikes as the most likely source; and then you need at least 16% atmospheric oxygen.

"There are many geochemical proxy models that look at atmospheric oxygen, but there's quite a large discrepancy between many of them. So our charcoal data helps proof these models, and with enough data points, we can then get a better feel for how atmospheric oxygen was trending during this time interval."

Ian Glasspool reports the fire evidence with colleague Robert Gastaldo in the journal Geology.

Both scientists are affiliated to Colby College in Maine, US.

Nearly a quarter of Earth's seafloor now mapped

Jonathan Amos - BBC Science Correspondent
Thu, June 30, 2022 

The oceans cover 70% of the Earth's surface. Of that area, 23.4% is now mapped to modern standards

Slowly but surely the proportion of the global ocean floor that's been properly mapped is rising.

It's now up to just shy of a quarter of the total area under water - at 23.4%.

Better seafloor maps help us with navigation and conservation, among many other uses.

Some 10 million sq km (3.8 million sq miles) of new bathymetric (depth) data was added in the past year. This is an area broadly equivalent to the land surface of Europe.

The update was given at the second UN Ocean Conference, taking place this week in Lisbon, Portugal.


Seabed 2030 supported mapping of the underwater volcano that erupted near Tonga in January

Much of this additional data comes not from recent mapping efforts, however, but simply as a result of governments, institutions and companies agreeing to open up their archives.


It's thought a further 10-15% is still squirrelled away on servers, in part because the owners worry they might be giving away commercial or defence secrets if they release the information.

"But they really needn't worry," said Jamie McMichael-Phillips, director of Seabed 2030, the organisation that is trying to corral world efforts to obtain a complete picture of Earth's ocean bottom.

"One of the messages we're trying to get across is that we don't require high-resolution data. Hi-res is nice; we can work with it. But lower resolution is perfectly acceptable.

"One depth value in an area the size of a European football pitch, 100m by 100m or thereabouts, isn't going to give away national or commercial secrets." 

Saildrone Surveyor's cruise to Hawaii from San Francisco added 22,000 sq km of depth data

This knowledge is needed for a host of reasons.

Sea maps are essential for safe navigation, obviously, but also for fisheries management and conservation. Marine wildlife tends to congregate around the underwater mountains. Each seamount is a biodiversity hotspot.

In addition, the rugged seafloor influences the behaviour of ocean currents and the vertical mixing of water. This is information required to improve the models that forecast future climate change - because it is the oceans that play a pivotal role in moving heat around the planet.

At the moment, our knowledge of just over three-quarters of the planet's underwater terrain comes only from low-resolution satellite measurements that have inferred the presence of tall seamounts and deep valleys from the gravitational influence these features have on the sea surface. Water piles up over the mass of a large submarine mountain and dips slightly where there is a trench.

It's super smart but an underwater mountain that's hundreds of metres tall can still fail to show up in such observations.

RRS Sir David Attenborough ORIGINALLY CALLED BOATY MCBOATFACE

The UK's new polar ship, the RRS Sir David Attenborough, is equipped to map millions of sq km of ocean bottom over its career. The above image shows the ship's hull in dry dock. The yellow rectangle in the centre is a cover made of a synthetic material over the 8m-long array of transmitting transducers for the deep-water multibeam echosounding system.

Seabed 2030, which is funded by Japan's Nippon Foundation, is encouraging anyone who ventures away from the land to switch on their sonar equipment and take depth soundings. And this isn't just about measurements from big ships; small ocean-going yachts fitted with data loggers can also make a contribution.

One of Seabed 2030's stars is the American adventurer Victor Vescovo. The Texan financier is using a submersible to visit the deepest places in the world's oceans, but everywhere he goes his support ship switches on its echosounder.

"We have a 'map the gap' strategy," Mr Vescovo told BBC News.

"We're not a commercial outfit so we don't have to follow the most fuel-efficient routes. When we go on an expedition we ask [Seabed 2030], 'what are your priority areas?'; and we divert a little bit to cover those areas."

The former US Navy reservist has himself contributed over 3 million sq km.

Ocean Infinity is building enormous robot vessels

It's clear, however, that to come close to obtaining a full picture of the shape of Earth's ocean bottom, there will need to be a step change in approach and capability. Many parts of the world are so remote, few ships will visit them, let alone acquire depth data in those regions.

To map these places is going to require direct tasking of autonomous or semi-autonomous technologies.

There is a glimpse of how this will work in one line of data featured in the map at the top of this page. It was gathered by the Saildrone Surveyor on a cruise between San Francisco and Honolulu last year.

During this 28-day voyage, the robot boat mapped 22,000 sq km of seafloor.

Saildrone Surveyor is 22m in length. But truly huge autonomous vessels are coming.

The marine robotics company Ocean Infinity is currently building a fleet of 78m-long ships in Vietnam. Regulations will probably mean they have to be lean-crewed for the near future, but the goal eventually is to have them roving the ocean without anyone onboard. Their work would be overseen from satellite-linked control centres in the UK, the US and a third location somewhere in Asia.

Such ships could be sent out on long missions to map hard to reach areas at much lower cost than would be incurred by a conventional crewed vessel.

Progress to full mapping of the seafloor was discussed in a side meeting at this week's UN Ocean Conference. And while the participants recognised new technologies were essential to fulfilling the quest, Dr Lucy Woodall cautioned that the 2030 project would fail unless it engaged all communities with an interest in the data.

She cited examples of companies going into coastal areas to map the seafloor and then not sharing any of the information with the local people whose livelihoods depended on those waters.

"I would argue to those of you in the room who think technology has got to be the way - I would argue that, actually, people are the way because unless people are asking the questions, unless we have a dialogue with all the voices in the room, then we're not going to ask, and therefore we can't answer, those right questions," the chief scientist with Nekton, a UK-based oceans NGO, told the meeting.

POSTMODERN ALCHEMY
Making minerals: Crushed, zapped, boiled and baked

Jonathan Amos -

BBC Science Correspondent
Sat, July 2, 2022

The penguins of Elephant Island surround the monument to Chilean naval officer Luis Pardo

When the penguins poop on Antarctica's Elephant Island, a little bit of magic happens in the soil.

Chemical reactions produce a dull brown mineral called spheniscidite. It's unique and reflects the special conditions that exist only in that locality.

The name comes from Sphenisciformes - the label used to describe penguins' grouping in the avian tree of life.

The crystalline compound is just one of roughly 6,000 such minerals recognised today by the International Mineralogical Association.

But the IMA's classification system, which describes so much of the "hard stuff" all around us, has just undergone something of a reboot.


Dr Robert Hazen from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC has spent the past 15 years reclassifying the minerals to add information about their genesis.

"There's been a classification system in place for almost two centuries that's based on the chemistry and the crystal structure of minerals, and ours adds the dimensions of time and formation environment," he told the Science In Action programme on the BBC World Service.

Scientists estimate Earth's total carbon store

Humans help cook up mineral bounty

Cubes of pyrite (Fool's Gold). It has more ways to form than any other mineral - 21

Simply put, minerals are specific combinations of chemical elements arranged into an ordered, crystalline form. All of Earth's rocks are built from different aggregations.

You'll know some of the most common ones, such as feldspar, quartz and mica, which make up the granite in a kitchen worktop.

But with colleague Dr Shaunna Morrison, the Carnegie Institution researcher has tried to give the thousands of different mineral species some extra context.

The point the pair are making is that you can't truly appreciate the significance of a mineral unless you also understand how and when it formed. Their research shows nature has used 57 "recipes" to create 10,500 of what they like to call "mineral kinds" - by crushing, zapping, boiling, baking and more.

Water, they say, has helped more than 80% of mineral species to form.

Biology has had a direct or indirect role in the creation of about 50% of mineral species.

One-third of mineral species formed exclusively through biological processes.

"Life affects minerals in various ways," explained Dr Hazen.

"For example, photosynthesis produces oxygen. Oxygen is a very reactive gas, and it changes the surface of Earth by oxidising minerals. So more than 2,000 new minerals formed on Earth as a result of oxygen in the atmosphere. But of course, life also creates its own minerals, biominerals.

"These are shells, teeth, bones, and other structures in organisms that are purposefully deposited and sculpted in the most amazing nano-technology kinds of ways.

"Scientists and engineers would love to be able to reproduce what life is able to do."

Malachite only formed on Earth after life had created atmospheric oxygen about 2.5 billion years ago

Hazen's and Morrison's work is summarised in twin papers published by the international journal American Mineralogist.

The pair have built a database of every known process of formation for every known mineral species. That's 5,659 in the IMA catalogue.

For each mineral, the duo detail the recipe used; the particular physical, chemical or biological process involved - and combinations thereof.

40% originated in more than one way


3,349 (59%) occur through just one process


9 came into being via 15 or more ways


Pyrite (Fool's Gold) formed in 21 ways

Dr Hazen said: "The previous system of mineralogy said calcite is calcite; that's calcium carbonate in the calcite crystal structure, that's a species. But we say no, no, no - there are 10, 15 maybe 20 different kinds of calcite, because the calcite deposited by a shell is very different from the calcite that forms on the ocean floor through just chemical precipitation, or calcite formed deep within the Earth in a process of metamorphism - of high pressure and high temperature.

"So, we see many different kinds of calcite, and that's key to our new approach to mineralogy."

Biology and geology: Fossilisation replaced the carbonate in this ammonite's shell with opal

Some minerals are extraordinarily ancient; 296 are even thought to pre-date Earth itself. Of this number, 97 are known only from meteorites. These can include mineral grains with ages estimated at up to seven billion years. That's long before our Solar System existed.

At the other extreme are the mineral whippersnappers that totally owe their existence to just a few centuries of human industrialisation. For example, there are 500 or so minerals that are the direct result of mining activity; 234 of these are produced in coal mine fires.

Hazen's and Morrison's work not only puts the mineralogy of Earth into its proper historical context, it also becomes a tool to investigate other worlds.

"We're looking at the mineralogy of Mars," said Dr Hazen. "We're constantly looking for evidence in the minerals that might point to life.

"If we find it, it's not going to be that we find one particular species of mineral; it's going to be the trace of minor elements, the morphologies, the sizes and shapes of these minerals. It's their local associations that's going to be the smoking gun for life on Mars."

Earth's rarest minerals catalogued

The vast scale of life beneath our feet

Hazenite, named after the scientist, is excreted by bacteria in a phosphorus-rich California lake

UK
New map of ancient trees an opportunity for conservation


Claire Marshall - BBC Rural Affairs Correspondent
Thu, June 30, 2022 

Ancient trees can be cavernous, home to an array of wildlife

A new map shows there could be around two million trees with exceptional environmental and cultural value previously unrecorded in England.

That's ten times as many as currently on official records.

This tree-map is sounding a rare note of optimism in the conservation world.

But the Woodland Trust charity warns that these trees - known as ancient or veteran specimens - have "almost no" legal protection.

It comes after a centuries-old oak tree was felled in Peterborough on Wednesday by the council, who said it was the most likely cause of "structural damage" to nearby homes.

The BBC joined the hunt for one of these ancient giants.

On the Ashton Court Estate near Bristol, we follow Steve Marsh from the Woodland Trust, fighting our way through brambles and rhododendrons, in the hunt for the legendary Domesday Oak.

The ancient tree is large enough for us to sit inside

Instead we discover an ancient unnamed tree - one the Trust has no record of. We take turns sitting inside - the air is cool and still.

An ancient tree is considered remarkably old for its age - they are sometimes known as "living archaeology".

They're incredibly rich in wildlife - one ancient oak has more biodiversity than a thousand 100-year-old oaks.

And veteran trees have the features of an ancient specimen but are younger in age.

"It's that feeling you get when you see a really old cathedral or an old church and you think, imagine what the world was like back then," Steve says, patting the gnarled wood.

The updated, more detailed map on the right shows a much wider distribution of ancient trees

The tree is probably twice as old as St Paul's Cathedral, built in 1675, and as old as the Tower of London, he says.

Those buildings are protected, he explains, but the only reason this ancient tree has survived is because it's in a park where landowners have looked after it, he suggests

"All of our old and most amazing trees should have heritage status at least to protect them so that we can look after them and care for them in the future," he says.

It's exactly this type of hidden ancient that Dr Victoria Nolan, from the University of Nottingham, spent four years looking for.

After poring over existing records and tramping through the English countryside, it was "incredible" to establish there could be two million, she told me.

Her team used a computer model to predict where the trees were likely to be. It looked at the layout of the landscape, habitat, but also distance from cities and human populations.

Dr Victoria Nolan led the research into this new tree-map of England

"At first we couldn't believe the results. The surprising bit for me was how they can be everywhere, in places where you wouldn't think an ancient tree might be," she said.

Many are concentrated around London in the historic hunting parks and forests, as well as in the Lake District, Hereford and Northumberland.

Before their work, tree records usually showed the places where scientists had gone to look for trees, rather than where they might be.

"Now we show where they actually are in the environment," she explains.

But the results of her work are also "kind of scary".

"Our limited knowledge means those trees are not protected at all currently. Depending on where these trees are, anyone could go chop them down.

They're being damaged, especially in a lot of agricultural landscapes."

As biodiversity levels crash, these living beings are a safe haven for thousands of species.

And their respiration also helps to cool a heating climate. They also contain history and memory - they help us to dream and imagine.

Now, armed with this new map of old trees, scientists like Victoria and the rest of us could help to keep more of them alive.

The study is published in the scientific journal Ecological Applications.

Follow Claire on Twitter @BBCMarshall