SLRPNK

Two environmental activists who glued themselves to a J.M.W. Turner painting at Manchester Art Gallery in July 2022 were acquitted today in a Manchester court. The pair affixed themselves to the frame of Tomson’s Aeolian Harp (1809) by Turner and sprayed “No New Oil” and the Just Stop Oil logo on the floor with chalk...

... “The district judge found that the action was proportionate in view of the climate crisis,” a Just Stop Oil statement says. "By contrast Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland received sentences of 24 months and 20 months respectively from Judge Hehir at Southwark Crown Court last week for throwing cans of soup on the glass cover of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in 2022.”

This is documentation on a research team's attempts to make DIY integrated circuits. It's still in the very early stages, but I'm putting this here just in case they make progress.

Lake Superior is known for its pristine waters, but a combination of nutrient additions from increasing human activity (including farming and development), warming temperatures and stormy conditions have resulted in more frequent blooms of potentially harmful algae...

"A warming world combined with deforestation has made for a dire drought situation in Brazil. Latin America's largest country is enduring its most intense and widespread drought in history.

What's happening?

Brazil's worst drought on record has helped fuel wildfires in the Amazon rainforest. The Pantanal, a region that encompasses the world's largest tropical wetland area, in August experienced a 3,901% increase in its fires compared to August 2023, Greenpeace noted, based on reporting by the country's National Institute for Space Research.

Smoke from wildfires made Sāo Paulo, one of the world's most populous cities with over 11 million residents and a metro area of 21 million, one of the top 10 most polluted major cities in the world in early September. According to Igarapé Institute authorities, over 50,000 wildfires were active in early September, per ABC News.

One of the factors behind Brazil's crisis is an overheating planet that just had its 15th straight month of record-breaking global temperatures. Deforestation in the Cerrado region, an expansive tropical and subtropical biome that covers over 20% of the country, is making matters worse. Trees help hold moisture in forest soil. A study published in Nature showed a direct link between deforestation and droughts.

Brazil relies on cascading moisture recycling for rainfall. CMR "describes moisture transport between two locations on the continent that involves re-evaporation cycles along the way," according to a paper published by the European Geosciences Union. This hydrological cycle is breaking down because of deforestation.

"You can put this in capital letters," said Luciana Gatti, a climate researcher at the space research facility, per The Washington Post. "It will get worse and worse. We are heading toward an apocalyptical situation, and unfortunately we only wake up at the last minute"...

Wildfires are burning through the carbon budget that humans have allocated themselves to limit global heating, a study shows.

The authors said this accelerating trend was approaching – and may have already breached – a “critical temperature threshold” after which fires cause significant shifts in tree cover and carbon storage.

“Alarmingly, the latest temperature at which, globally, these impacts become pronounced is 1.34C – close to current levels of warming [above preindustrial levels],” said the UK Met Office, which led the research...

... Climatologists say the already dire situation will deteriorate until humankind, particularly in the wealthy global north, stops burning fossil fuels.

Archived copies of the article:

• ghostarchive.org
• archive.today

• The first-ever field test of ocean alkalinity enhancement in the United States was pushed back to 2025 due to shipping issues. But the geoengineering experiment has also run into public opposition from local environmentalists, commercial fishers and others.

• The test would dump sodium hydroxide (commonly called lye) off the New England coast to study its dispersal as a potential tool for sequestering CO₂.

• Opponents allege this small-scale geoengineering test could harm local wildlife, but researchers say the material will disperse within minutes. The scientists say they will also continue to reach out to local communities to alleviate fears over the study.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/13859498

Related paper

I'll note that in the US, their urban area definition includes a lot of outlying and substantially unpopulated areas which fall within county boundaries; these areas tend to show up as having long travel times to services.

The International Seabed Authority has issued 29 15-years exploration contracts for developing resources from polymetallic nodule fields (17), seafloor massive sulphides (7), and cobalt-rich crusts (5). Seven contracts for polymetallic nodule fields have been extended for an additional 5 years.

Plenty of scholars have described nuts as a crucial food source for the Wabanaki people, and early colonial records indicate the same. In 1607, colonists from the Popham Colony described the Casco Bay islands as “overgrown with woods very thick as oaks, walnut, pine trees & many other things growing as sarsaparilla, hazle nuts & whorts in abundance.”

Ethnobotanist Nancy Asch Sidell documents that charred beechnut remains that are more than 5,000 years old have been discovered “preserved in a hearth feature” in central Maine. At the archaelogical site on the well-documented Norridgewock village on the Kennebec River – a Wabanaki town destroyed by the British in 1724 – researchers have recovered evidence of hazelnut and beechnut consumption, Sidell reports.

“The use and importance of nuts is as ancient as the people themselves,” Kavasch told me. “The trees they come from were so sacred and important. But many of our European ancestors couldn’t see the forest for the trees. They weren’t thinking of it as a nut forest.”

With Google's assault on Invidious leaving it inoperable, consider watching this video with FreeTube, a nifty open source program that lets you watch youtube videos privately!

Combined with Libredirect, which automatically opens youtube links in Freetube, it becomes really slick and effortless to use.

For Mobile, consider giving FluxTube a try.

Highlights

• 3500 BP Lactobacillus genomes shed light on the origin of kefir in inland East Asia

•Bacterial-fungal dynamics reinforce resistance to exogenous microbes in ancient dairy

•Human-microbial interactions contribute to the adaptation of domesticated lactobacilli

•Goat DNA from dairy suggests communication between Xiaohe and the steppe populations

Summary

Despite the long history of consumption of fermented dairy, little is known about how the fermented microbes were utilized and evolved over human history. Here, by retrieving ancient DNA of Bronze Age kefir cheese (∼3,500 years ago) from the Xiaohe cemetery, we explored past human-microbial interactions. Although it was previously suggested that kefir was spread from the Northern Caucasus to Europe and other regions, we found an additional spreading route of kefir from Xinjiang to inland East Asia. Over evolutionary history, the East Asian strains gained multiple gene clusters with defensive roles against environmental stressors, which can be a result of the adaptation of Lactobacillus strains to various environmental niches and human selection. Overall, our results highlight the role of past human activities in shaping the evolution of human-related microbes, and such insights can, in turn, provide a better understanding of past human behaviors.