THE PLANET ' IS BEING KILLED ' - GRETA THUNBERG

The planet is “not dying, it is being killed and we know by who”, said Greta Thunberg. She excoriated world governments for their failure to prevent environmental breakdown in her first appearance at the annual UN climate talks in five years.

Thunberg, 23, the Swedish activist who became famous for heading the school climate strike movement, delivered her stark message to those gathered at the Cop31 summit in Antalya, Turkey, amid the ongoing failure by countries to adequately address the climate crisis.

“It [Earth] is being killed by the very same people thought to come to our rescue,” Thunberg said.

“No one is coming to our rescue. When our human rights are being threatened by states and other institutions, it’s our duty to stand up and be the adult in the room and fight for everyone’s human rights.”

Thunberg, who in recent years has shifted her focus towards other areas such as the conflict in Gaza, linked worsening global heating to other calamities such as war in an appearance alongside activists from Nepal, Canada and Australia.

“We are heading towards a future of more genocides and more ecocides and the complete compromise of our basic rights and where basic necessities become luxuries,” she said.

“It’s more clear than ever in spaces like these that the situation could not be any less under control. The planet is not dying, it is being killed.”

- Author: Oliver Milman, The Guardian

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DELHI* POLLUTION DREARY : PRECIS

BENGALURU : Delhi world's most polluted major city on eve of Diwali. :

DELHI was the world's most polluted major city on last Saturday morning, according to Swiss Group IQAir's live ranking, as the Indian capital faced severe pollution forecasts a day before Diwali, - the Hindu festival of lights.

India has ordered schools in and around Delhi to offer online classes, and encouraged people to work from home ahead of Diwali on last Sunday, which is usually marked by the widespread use of firecrackers that further worsen air quality.

IQAir ranked Delhi first among the world's major cities at 10:35 am, with a US air quality index reading of 581, double that of Lahore in neighbouring Pakistan, at 285.

IQAir's reading, based on the concentrations of air pollutants, is not directly comparable to India's official index, which uses a different scale and methodology.

India's Central Pollution Control Board put Delhi's air quality index at 363 at 10am, in the '' very poor '' category.

!WOW! thanks Reuters / Dawn.

ECOSYSTEMS CRITICAL ECHO-BELLS : STUDENTS WORLD ESSAY.

NEARLY all of the world's shallow-water coral reefs, famous for their riot of color and life,  have now been classified as critically endangered by experts who assess ecosystem collapse.

Heat stress because of climate change is the overwhelming reason for the finding, it was announced recently by the  International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Ecosystems.

It was the group's first global assessment of shallow-water reef ecosystems. The scientists grouped reefs into 127 regions based on the location and the unique species present.

They found that 96 percent were critically endangered, including those in Australia's  Great Barrier Reef, the Coral Triangle in the western Pacific, the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System in the Caribbean and Florida reefs.

The classification means that they face an extremely high risk of collapse within 50 years.

Shallow-water reefs support around a quarter of ocean species at some point in their life cycle, scientists estimate. Hundreds of millions of people rely on those ecosystems for fish and coastal protection.

Scientists emphasized that the reefs are not yet lost. The finding is based on the current estimated trajectory of climate change. If countries do more to slow warming, the outcome for reefs could improve.

'' There's a small and narrowing window of opportunity here to prevent the worst outcomes if we act quickly,'' said Mishal Gudka, the assessment's scientific lead and a research fellow at the University of Melbourne.

Shallow-water reefs are sometimes called the rainforests of the sea because of their astounding biodiversity.

Recent years have brought a growing chorus of  alarm bells from scientists about the ability of coral reefs to withstand climate change.

Reef-building corals are tiny animals that create limestone structures, and host  photosynthesizing algae in their tissue.

The algae provide the coral reef with most of its nourishment. But under certain stressful  conditions, including too much heat, corals expel the algae in a process known as bleaching.

If the adverse conditions persist for too long, coral will starve and die.

!WOW! thanks The NYTs and Catrin Einhorn.

SCIENCE LAB SERVERS : AI - HURRICANE FORECASTS

A.I. - fueled hurricane forecasts may be speeding up predictions. Last fall, three days before Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica, forecasters in the National Hurricane Center in Miami warned that the storm would strengthen rapidly from the least dangerous category to the deadliest.

After the judgment turned out correct - among many accurate predictions that center was able to make, during the unusually volatile storm - the forecasters attributed their success to artificial intelligence, which they incorporated earlier that year into their methodology.

Now, DeepMind, a Google unit that built the A.I. model, argues that the Melissa achievement was no fluke.

For a recent paper in Nature, Google's DeepMind's researchers analyzed hundreds of hurricane forecasts between 2023-2025. Their analysis demonstrates, they say, that their A.I. model can outdo other widely used prediction models by significant margins, effectively peering a day or more ahead of those other models.

'' It's a big deal,'' said Amy McGovern, a professor of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma who directs an A.I. weather institute and played no role in the research.

'' If you can tell people a day in advance aboout a major hurricane, they'll have more time to evacuate and prepare in theory saving lives and property.''

Kerry Emanuel, an emeritus professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, welcomed the A.I. advance but cautioned that knowledgeable individuals still had to make sense of what the smart machine conjures up.

!WOW! thanks William J Broad.

OZONE RISK FROM WILDFIRES

Small particulates sent up by wildfires are a well-documented health hazard. But recent research finds that ground-level ozone is now on the rise, too.

In July, as smoke drifted down from Canadian wildfires, New York City officials initiated an emergency response to what was expected to be historically poor air quality.

Outreach workers fanned across the city. Police officers handed out masks. For a period on July 16, New York City had the third-worst air quality in the world.

Then the skies began to clear, and the response was concluded. But in a way, the emergency wasn’t really over. A series of studies have found that even after the orange-gray smoke has disappeared, wildfires worsen air pollution in subtle and unexpected ways.

Researchers have quantified the risks over time, and over wide geographic areas, posed by small particulates called PM2.5, a constituent element of wildfire smoke. But scientists are now pointing to another, invisible hazard on the rise: ground-level ozone.

Ozone gas occurs naturally, and in the upper atmosphere it is protective, shielding the planet from solar radiation. But at ground level, ozone is toxic to the lining of human airways and has been linked to increased rates of asthma in children as well as heart disease and lung problems in adults.

“There’s very little doubt that ozone exposure can cause premature mortality,” said Dr. John Balmes, a physician and epidemiologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied ozone.

Ground-level ozone is monitored at about 1,200 locations. But these measurements cover only about 2 percent of the country, and most of the sensors are concentrated in cities.

Jun Wang, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Iowa, set out with his colleagues to make a better map. It was an ambitious undertaking.

Dr. Wang worked with a team that used machine learning, a kind of artificial intelligence, to crunch enormous amounts of data from satellites, surface measurements and atmospheric models to calculate ozone levels down to the square kilometer, across the entire country.

The results, published in June in Science, were sobering.

Like PM2.5 levels, ozone levels steadily declined through the early 2000s. But in 2015, they started climbing again, a shift that had “gone undetected by the sparse monitoring network,” the authors wrote.

No one had noticed that fires had been steadily erasing progress made on ozone for over a decade. “The trend actually reversed solely due to wildfire,” said Meng Zhou, a researcher at NASA and an author of the study. “We did not expect that the impact would be that big.”

- Author: Clayton Dalton, The New York Times

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CLIMATE THRILLER THE RAPTURE ISN'T SO FAR-FETCHED

Amid an unending heatwave in contemporary Wales – and increasingly violent weather around the world – a psychological thriller unfolds.

Two years after an accident that killed her husband and paralysed her from the waist down, Gabrielle Fox returns to work as a psychologist at an adolescent internment unit. One patient, 16-year-old Bethany, is accused of murdering her mother by stabbing her several times with a screwdriver.

This is the premise of the BBC TV adaptation of Liz Jensen’s 2009 novel, The Rapture. While slightly predictable, its narrative highlights the motivations that drive people towards climate action, including a sense of responsibility and desire for justice.

Bethany (played by India Amarteifio) denies any involvement in the murder, although she was found at the crime scene covered in blood. A week before the death, she had drawn a gruesome vision of her mother’s face with a screwdriver stabbing her eye. Fox (Ruth Madeley) is given the task of helping her patient accept responsibility for allegedly murdering her mother.

Bethany’s parents are the founders of a successful spiritual movement, the Faith Way. Its “Choose Hope” slogan is widely used on social media to undermine the denunciation of climate catastrophe by activists from the Climate Front – an eco-activist organisation that protests about the extraction of fossil fuel extraction, both on the streets and in the courts.

Views of former industrial sites, long beaches at low tide, giant electricity pylons next to neat, detached houses, solar panels over rooftops and scattered wind turbines are integral to the story. Regular temperature stamps show conditions exceeding 40°C as a direct threat to life.

When it comes to climate change, we are not wired to deal with overwhelming complexity – but we can tune into relatable stories that emphasise common experiences and values. Parts of The Rapture might seem crazy and far-fetched, but some aspects are entirely plausible.

For example, the climate activists tarnished by the Faith Way claim that the local windfarm project is greenwash, because the energy company behind it is seeking permission to open new oil drills in the North Sea.

Local MP Caroline Wren (Lisa Palfrey) justifies prolonging the life of fossil economies based on energy security, and approves building a data centre close to a protected natural area. The MP, whose family suffered the consequences of deindustrialisation with the loss of coal mines, argues that her aim is job creation and regeneration.

Furthermore, there is to be a parliamentary ballot on proscribing the Climate Front as a terrorist organisation – but the activists deny any violent means, and suspect they have been infiltrated so as to be delegitimised in the eyes of the public.

The power play between organised religion, social media influencers, energy corporations and politicians is woven into the narrative from the start. Fox does a few internet searches that return news headlines and people’s profiles. She attends the MP’s public speech and, shortly after, sees the activists’ response in a video post.

Even if some of this interconnected information feels a little forced, it’s easier to relate to it because it feels more like current affairs than science fiction.

When Fox finds evidence that Bethany might have some visionary power, some viewers could be sceptical of a supernatural ingredient being thrown into the eco-thriller mix. But they may still stay tuned to unravel the exact motivations of characters representing the government, media, corporates and eco-activist players – because “the personal is always political”, as Fox says.

It is Fox’s weaknesses that make the story more nuanced and intriguing. I empathised with her rising vulnerabilities in adapting to her new, paraplegic life. She is a woman of science, alert to evidence and cunning, but her actions can be impulsive and wrongly calculated.

While searching for the missing links in Bethany’s story, she crosses various professional boundaries. Fox admits her guilt over the accident that took her husband’s life may be playing out in her involvement with Bethany. In revealing her self-doubt, she makes it easier for others to manipulate her good intentions.

Tension and truth

The series’ tension thrives on the uncertainty of knowledge and a gradual revelation of motivations. The narrative also draws attention to the manipulation of beliefs and erosion of truth.

The Faith Way is a post-Christian enterprise, devised to unite people based on their anxieties and need for connection – while demonising climate activists and channelling people’s energies towards de-political action. The series makes clear how conformity can be orchestrated by flooding social media feeds with clickbait headlines and manufactured evidence.

If Bethany must take any form of responsibility, it is measured through a fair assessment of her knowledge and motivations. She represents the future, as a member of the younger generation and victim of injustice. Not only is she accused of matricide, she will suffer the consequences of a climate catastrophe she has not provoked.

Just as Fox has to accept the grief and loss provoked by the accident, Bethany is forced to accept the anguish of the assassination of her mother, whom we can metaphorically identify with mother Earth.

Towards the end of the five-part series, I felt I could partly accept that climate anxiety and parental repression have led to Bethany’s visions and hallucinations. When the truth is revealed, she emerges not as a cynic or doomsayer, but as someone who stands for a desire for truth and justice, and can take responsibility.

In this sense, the series moves past the predictable and the cartoonish to speak about common values and the responsibility of human actions. And this may inspire worried viewers to strengthen their sense of agency and personal power when it comes to climate action.

- Author: Gracia Ramirez (Senior Lecturer, BA (Hons) Film and Screen Studies, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London), The Conversation

PAPUA'S 'ETERNAL SNOW' IS ABOUT TO DISAPPEAR

The mountains of Papua are not far from the equator, but they've been topped with "eternal snow" for centuries.

The peaks in this Indonesian region on the world's second-largest island, just north of Australia, have offered scientists countless insights into the Earth's climate history.

They're also the epicentre of the spiritual universe for many Papuans - a Mecca or a Vatican, as one activist puts it.

But now, nearly all the snow is gone.

A century ago, the 300km (190-mile) stretch of the Sudirman Range had snow and permanent ice on all four of its major peaks.

But now there are only small areas around Puncak Jaya, also known as Carstensz Pyramid, with any snow at all. These are expected to entirely disappear in a year or two.

Glacier cover around the peak has shrunk from nearly 1,900 hectares (4,700 acres) in the 19th Century to about 16 hectares (40 acres) today. Almost entire glaciers have vanished within a human lifetime.

- Author: Abraham Utama, BBC

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LET'S TALK CLIMATE

The New York Times is holding its Climate Forward conference. My colleague David Gelles, who writes the Climate Forward newsletter, is hosting. I talked to David about what to expect.

David, Why are world leaders so quiet on climate change when it’s been producing a steady stream of headline news this year?

I think there are three reasons. The first is that there’s a lot going on, right? Whether it’s war or A.I. or tariffs, the world is just consumed by a host of other crises.

The second reason is President Trump. His administration has dismissed the threat of climate change and is working to promote fossil fuels, reduce environmental regulations and stymie America’s adoption of renewable technologies. The rest of the world may be moving in a different direction, but they’re, at some level, captive to the American narrative, just by virtue of America’s power in the world.

The final reason is I think many leaders still have a hard time talking about climate. It’s still really hard to address. The actual solutions that are necessary to meaningfully slow down global warming require whole-cloth changes to our economies and energy systems that no one country alone can accomplish.

How are we doing fighting climate change? What’s the state of play?

It’s not great. Just a couple of years ago, people involved in climate policy were using the phrase “keep 1.5 alive.” That number referred to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is the threshold above preindustrial temperatures that scientists warned would be very risky to cross. Well, we’re already at 1.5 today, and every indication suggests that the planet is on track to warm somewhere between two and three degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. A lot of that warming is going to happen in the coming decades and century.

Now, there is real positive momentum happening on the ground, if you know where to look. Major economies like China are turbocharging their adoption of renewables. It’s happening in less developed countries like Pakistan too, which is adopting things like e-scooters. So there’s progress. But even when that progress is happening on a large scale, it’s still a drop in the bucket. We’ve got a long way to go.

You’re based in America, where, as you noted, the administration dismisses climate change and has made a strategic decision to double down on fossil fuels. Can the world combat climate change without the United States?

I think the world can’t do this without the U.S., but not just because the U.S. is a major emitter. It’s because U.S. policy and precedent and industry all matter for the rest of the world’s ability to scale these technologies.

Take natural gas. The Trump administration is using natural gas exports as a diplomatic tool. They’re actively encouraging countries around the world to hasten their adoption of natural gas, which is a major pollutant and is warming the planet. So what’s happening now in the United States isn’t just about domestic policy. It’s also making it much harder for the rest of the world to move quickly to address this issue.

- Author: Katrin Bennhold, The New York Times

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SWISS SWELL SWIRL : CLIMATE PROTEST ESSAY

LAUSANNE : Several thousand people marched in the Swiss cities of Geneva and Lausanne last Saturday to protest government inaction in the face of global warming.

They were answering a call by a coalition of more than hundreds of associations and political parties under the common banner : 

'' NO 50-DEGREE SUMMERS !''

People of all ages took part in the marches, carrying placards with slogans such as : '' No Planet B ''  and '' We're cooked!''

The largest demonstration was at Lausanne, where 8,000 people took part.

One marcher, 31-year-old union activist Guillaume Matthey, said he hoped this was the start of a '' new cycle of widespread popular mobilisation '' to put pressure on the country's political and financial leaders for their lack of response to the climate crisis.

'' We can't just finance weapons and then not care about the rest of it - that's not on,'' said Yves Froidevaux, who is in his 60s.

'' There's been a real lack of water this summer,'' said Vincent Fontannaz, a 47-year-old actor dressed up as a giant drop of water.

'' It's not just about swimming pools. It's most of all about agriculture - and for our survival in fact,'' he added. 

One marcher, 55-year-old architect Laurent Guidetti, wore a gas mask made out of plastic models. He was one of the lucky ones to have a well-insulated apartment '' that stays cool at night,'' he said.

This summer however, he had thought about people who were not so lucky.

'' It's going to be very tough for them,'' he added.

And even if they get through this summer's heatwaves, he did not know how they would manage against the highest temperatures expected in future summers.

After Saturday's demonstrations, other protests have been called in several Swiss cities in the coming weeks until Oct 2.

Switzerland's summer heatwaves forced the closure of a nuclear power station and caused record low water levels in Lake Zurich.

!WOW! thanks AFP.

Mont Blanc Ultramarathon Trail Kicks Off Amid Growing Environmental Concern

The annual UTMB, the flagship race of the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc week, kicked off on Friday with 2,500 participants. As the race continues to attract more runners each year, local residents are increasingly concerned about its environmental impact.

Massive Flash Flood Hits Nepal

Nepal flood death toll climbs to 359 as around 1,000 remain missing including tourists.

Massive flash floods and mudslides engulfed a remote region on the Nepal-Tibet border. Hundreds more people, including travellers from many countries, are missing following the catastrophe. 

The missing tourists include more than 100 from India, 54 from the US, and 33 from the UK, as well as more than 100 from Nepal itself, according to Nepal's tourist board. The area is popular with pilgrims and trekkers.

Authorities initially thought an earthquake may have triggered a landslide - the US Geological Survey now says the "seismic energy was instead generated by a landslide”.

The area hit by the flood is home to two different high-altitude lakes that are also pilgrim sites revered by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains - Lake Mansarovar near Mount Kailash in Tibet, and the Gosaikunda lake in Nepal's Rasuwa district.

Tens of thousands of tourists make their way through Nepal to Lake Mansarovar annually.  The disaster struck at the time of the year when people, especially Indian tourists,  visit the area.  Travellers from 28 countries including India, China, Australia, the US and the UK are known to be among those missing.

World's Oceans Hit Highest Temperature on Record

The world's oceans are hotter than ever recorded, new data suggests, as they suffer from human-caused climate change and the growing El Niño weather phenomenon.

The average surface temperature of the planet's seas outside the polar regions hit 21.1C (70F) on Saturday, according to figures from the European Copernicus climate change service.

That edges past the 21.09C recorded on three separate days in March 2024, and is far above average for the time of year.

Warmer oceans can have wide-reaching consequences, including supercharging extreme weather, raising sea levels and harming marine life.

"This record is another clear signal of an ocean under growing stress," said Dr Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus.

"El Niño is adding heat to the system, but it is doing so on top of decades of human-driven warming," she added.

The data is based on sea temperatures 10m (32ft 10in) below the surface, using measurements from buoys, ships and satellites, which are combined to produce a global estimate.

While the margin of record is currently very small and any global estimate comes with uncertainties, scientists say its timing is particularly notable.

Average worldwide sea temperatures tend to reach their yearly peak in March or April, which corresponds to the end of summer in the southern hemisphere - and not in August.

The southern hemisphere contains more of the planet's ocean surface than the northern hemisphere and so exerts a bigger influence on average sea temperatures.

What is especially concerning to scientists is that the oceans are already so hot when the natural El Niño weather phenomenon is still some way off its expected peak.

- Author: Mark Poynting, BBC

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Thousands Rally in Sweden to Protest Climate Policies

Around 10,000 people marched in Stockholm on Sunday for a protest against human-made climate change, just weeks ahead of a general election where the issue is among Swedish voters' top concerns.

"We are so many people who are concerned about this problem," said 21-year-old student Kliff Lindberg, who added that he was "relieved" to see such a strong turnout.

"That gives me a lot of strength and it's beautiful to see, I think."

Experts in Sweden and abroad have warned that the government's climate policy jeopardises the country's emissions-cutting goals – to reduce CO2 emissions from transport by 70 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, and to achieve net-zero emissions by 2045.

Since taking power in 2022, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's right-wing government has cut petrol taxes and reduced requirements for petrol suppliers to add low-carbon alternatives to their mix.

The government has notably rejected a commission's recommendations on ways to meet the 2030 target, which included phasing out fossil fuels by hiking taxes on petrol and diesel.

Swedes will elect a new parliament on September 13, with the right-wing bloc trailing in opinion polls.

The rally in the capital, organised by youth and sporting groups, unions, rural associations and rights groups, included Sweden's most famous climate campaigner Greta Thunberg.

"There is absolutely no party in Sweden who are even proposing politics in line with anything close to what science says will take for us to avoid a climate disaster," Thunberg told AFP.

"If we continue like now we will see collapse, we are already seeing collapse," she said.

According to a Verian opinion poll published by public broadcaster SVT on Thursday, 37 percent of respondents said the climate was a top priority in the election.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Tech Giants’ Profits Reveal Potential Vulnerability in the Stock Market

Investment gains at Alphabet and Amazon reveal a new way in which technology companies’ fortunes are increasingly linked.

Tech giants like Amazon and Alphabet have powered the stock market to record highs in recent years, fueled by the growth of their artificial intelligence and cloud computing businesses.

But in recent months, a big driver of those two companies’ profits came from an unusual source: The increasing value of their investment stakes in artificial intelligence companies.

Over 70 percent of Alphabet’s net quarterly income came from investments in other companies, and in particular, in Elon Musk’s SpaceX, according to a recent regulatory filing and analysis from Satori Insights, a financial markets research firm. SpaceX went public in June in the biggest initial public offering ever.

Investment gains also accounted for roughly 65 percent of Amazon’s net income, largely stemming from its stake in Anthropic, a leading A.I. start-up that is also planning to go public.

Those gains underscore a growing vulnerability in the broader stock market: The companies that keep pushing the market higher are increasingly dependent on each other’s success.

“It’s circular,” said Matt King, founder of Satori Insights. “What’s funding A.I. is now increasingly more A.I.”

Worries about the circular nature of the A.I. boom have persisted for some time, as investors have watched the dominant tech giants, chipmakers and A.I. labs invest in or loan each other money. That money is often then used to buy products or cloud services from the same companies funding them.

A.I. executives have defended these circular financing models. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, has described the deals as a creative way to free up the capital needed to supercharge innovation at a time of rapid change.

But the investment gains at Alphabet and Amazon show how these companies’ fortunes are increasingly linked. They also point to the increasing interconnectedness of the stock market and the broader economy: A.I. is powering growth in both, making the threat of a stock market tumble an even greater concern for policymakers.

“The stock market was never just a reflection of the economy, but it’s now become one of the economy’s main engines,” said Mr. King.

- Author: Joe Rennison, The New York Times

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What Makes Some Animals Resilient to City Life?

An animal's ability to change its behaviour in response to a changing environment can make all the difference, Sih has found in his research. In some animals, this ability to alter their behaviour is the first step to more profound change.

"Step one is that they need to respond well behaviorally," Sih says. "If they do that well enough, they survive well enough to have a chance to later evolve [genetically] to adjust even better." 

In Illinois, armadillos have been spotted more frequently near major roads, which researchers concluded may be because the roads help the animals thermoregulate. Asphalt absorbs heat from sunlight and traps thermal energy, and in the region's winters – which can reach -30F (-34C) armadillos may benefit from the warmth the roads emit.

This is the type of behavioural change that could eventually buy an animal like the armadillo time to evolve in response to the roads that now crisscross its environment – though not all behavioural changes will end up influencing a species' evolution.

Urban birdlife

If you're lucky enough to hear birdsong in a city, it could well be a song shaped by the street you're strolling down. Many birds have altered their songs to be heard above traffic. Numerous studies have shown that birds actively shift their frequency, volume and timing of their songs in response to noise levels.

Take a closer look at urban bird life and you might see other changes. Consider the dark-eyed junco, for instance. Noise, human presence, food scarcity and nesting competition make cities a difficult environment for the junco. In the early 1980s, a group of juncos settled year-round on the campus of University of California, San Diego – giving researchers a chance to document the rapid changes in the birds.

They found the juncos became less aggressive – and even developed fewer white feathers on their tails (a trait used in aggressive displays) as a result. The birds also began breeding earlier, reared twice as many young, and altered their migration pattern.

Scientists studied another urban population that settled at University of California, Los Angeles, and found breeding pairs nested in trees and on buildings instead of their usual nests on the ground.

It's not just the juncos' behaviour that's changed. Researchers found urban juncos have smaller wings, an adaptation believed to come from the demands of flying through dense, built-up cities, rather than long-distance flight over open land.

North America has lost 168 million of the birds in the past 50 years. The juncos' ability to rapidly adapt may be the key to securing its future.

Beyond city limits

Animals aren't just adapting in urban environments, though. They're physiologically changing to survive living with humans. For example, in some places, there has been a rise in the number of elephants born without tusks. That's because poachers are more likely to kill those with tusks – while tuskless ones survive and pass on their genes, including the "tusklessness" trait. In other words, being tuskless has become an evolutionary advantage in places where poachers are a major threat.

Some fish are getting smaller as humans catch the big ones and thereby select them out of the gene pool, leaving the smaller ones free to survive and reproduce. Again, smallness – which may have been an evolutionary disadvantage when faced with non-human predators – can be an evolutionary advantage when faced with humans.

Other changes involve protective qualities. Atlantic killifish are rapidly evolving to become resistant to toxins and industrial chemicals. Through genetic alterations in the biochemical pathways that specifically respond to these chemicals, the fish are becoming less sensitive to them. 

The animal kingdom is changing rapidly to keep up with a rapidly changing planet.

But what happens to the animals who can't adapt quickly enough?

"Other animals – often in the same species – simply 'don't get it', and do not respond well behaviourally to these new challenges," says Sih. "If anything, I note that for many animals, they don't really have time to evolve, as things have changed too much too quickly."

Those animals who do adapt to survive amid humans, buildings, climate change and pollution, may still have a long road ahead, says Sih. "In the next decades, they may have time to evolve to adjust even better."

- Author: Lucy Sherriff, BBC

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BEST -TERRIFYING AUTHOR- BEST : ANNIE JACOBSEN

THE investigative journalist Anne Jacobsen has specialised in military affairs and the shadowy corners of government, with books on espionage and assassination and Area 51.

Her latest book, '' Biological War : A scenario, '' might be called speculative nonfiction : As she did it the similarly chilling '' Nuclear War : A Scenario '' [2024], Jacobsen dives deep into existing military technologies and asks what it would look like if they were fully unleashed on the world.

Jacobson appeared on the '' Book Review '' podcast last year to discuss ''Nuclear War.'' This excerpt has been condensed and edited.

.-  How many people, roughly, have told you that this is one of the more terrifying books that they've ever read?

I think almost everyone. I wanted to write a book that showed in absolutely appalling detail how horrific nuclear war would be.

And so when people say to me, '' I was terrified, I was horrified,'' I believe I did my job.

.-  You structure the book in an ingenious way, with three parts of  24 minutes each. 

And in each of those parts you have little pieces that are short or long, labeled '' 14 minutes '' or '' 27 minutes '' or '' 40 minutes and 30 seconds '' - meaning it's been, say, 14 minutes since the first nuclear missile was launched, and this is what's happening.

.- When did you realize that was the way this book had to be written? 

It was in an interview with Bob Kehler, the former commander of Stratcom - that stands for U.S. Strategic Command, the steward of all nuclear weapons and all nuclear weapon systems.

During this interview with General Kehler, I cut right to the point in one of our discussions and said, '' What would happen in a full-scale nuclear exchange with Russia?

And without hesitation, he said to me. Annie, Annie the world could end in the next couple of hours.

I knew right there that was the way to tell the story. 

You realize, my God, nuclear war, if it happens, will unfold in seconds and minutes, not in days and weeks.

This terrifying publishing continues to Part [2].

!WOW! thanks The New York Times.

Fire Clouds and Fire Tornadoes: The New World of Fire

Huge wildfires have been sweeping across Southern Europe and North America. Is climate change increasing the risk? And what can we do?

Weather experts say the world is starting to see new types of wildfire – including enormous Pyrocumulonimbus fire clouds that spit lightning and black hail.

These infernos can burn for more than a year. They can also spawn fire tornadoes, which move at more than 200 kilometres an hour destroying everything in their path.

Climate Question hosts Graihagh Jackson and Jordan Dunbar talk to John Vaillant, the author of “Fire Weather”, about how wildfires are increasing in intensity and frequency, and how they are burning in places they have never burned before.

From Warming Seas to Invasive Species: What's Happening?

Unprecedented high temperatures are being measured in oceans across the planet. Scientists warn that warmer seas are not only fueling more extreme weather, but also allowing invasive species to expand into new habitats, threatening local ecosystems. We speak with Callum Roberts, Professor of Marine Conservation at the University of Exeter's Centre for Ecology and Conservation, about how rising ocean temperatures are reshaping life beneath the waves. And we talk to Matthew Cappucci, Senior Meteorologist at MyRadar, about the bigger picture: how increasingly warm oceans are influencing weather patterns and accelerating changes in our climate.

Suspected Heatstroke Kills Three Lions at Zoo in Japan

TOKYO: Three lions at a Tokyo zoo have died from suspected heatstroke and others are under treatment, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday, with the big cats struggling with high humidity.

Japan sweltered through its hottest summer on record last year and parts of the country have hit 40C in recent weeks, qualifying for the new designation “cruelly hot day”, with thousands of people hospitalised.

Ten of the 16 lions in Tama Zoological Park have suffered symptoms such as “loss of appetite and decreased activity” since mid-July, and three lionesses died, the zoo said in a statement.

- AFP

Poisoning Alert!: 15 Elephants Dead in Kenya's National Park

Potential toxic substance detected in several of 15 elephants found dead in Kenya’s Amboseli national park.

Officials are investigating the deaths of 15 elephants over the past month in Kenya’s Amboseli national park.

The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said 10 of the elephants showed signs of partial paralysis before dying within two days.

The remaining five carcasses were too decomposed or had been scavenged, making it impossible to establish the cause of death, the wildlife authority said.

Most of those affected were female elephants and their calves, with only one male among the dead. The deaths happened in the Kimana sanctuary and Kuku ranch areas surrounding the park, officials said.

Kenya has previously recorded incidents of elephants being poisoned as a result of poaching and human-wildlife conflict.

Preliminary tests on samples collected from the elephants by a laboratory at the University of Nairobi detected a “potential toxic substance,” while separate analyses by a government laboratory were negative for the toxins tested. KWS said further tests are under way.

“Environmental investigations are also being undertaken, including the analysis of water sources and other potential environmental contaminants within the affected areas, to establish whether the elephants were exposed to a common source,” the authority said in a statement.

The authorities sought to reassure the public, saying there was no evidence the condition could be transmitted to humans.

Amboseli is world-renowned for its herds of elephants and its savannah landscapes, with Kilimanjaro visible across the border in Tanzania.

It is estimated there are about 2,000 elephants in the park.

- The Guardian staff With Associated Press and Agence France-Presse