Something very strange is happening to the Bees' tongues

If you think about iconic symbols of climate change, you’ll probably picture a polar bear, emaciated, and clinging to a precariously small chunk of ice. You’re probably not thinking of a bumblebee, flitting about an alpine meadow with a shorter-than-average tongue. And yet, according to new research from Nicole Miller-Struttmann from SUNY College at Old Westbury, these shrinking tongues speak volumes about how nature’s most intimate partnerships might change in a warming world.

In the central Rockies, there are many species of bumblebee, and some have unusually long tongues for their body size. These are adaptations to the deep tubes of certain flowers like Parry’s clover and alpine skypilot, allowing the bees to lap at nectar that smaller-tongued species can’t reach. The tubes, in turn, are adaptations to the long bee tongues, providing exclusive access to nectar in exchange for exclusive pollination services. Both partners are locked in a co-evolutionary dance, held together by beautifully fitting tongues and tubes.

Recently, all has not been right with this dance. Miller-Struttmann’s colleagues, who have been studying the local bees and flowers for decades, started to notice weird changes. Long-tongued bees, which have been declining in many parts of the world, had become relatively rarer in the Rockies, too. Meanwhile, foreign species from farther down the mountainsides were encroaching on their terrain.

To work out what was going on, the team measured the tongues of the two most common bumblebee species, caught at three Colorado mountains in recent years. They then compared these lengths to those of specimens collected from the same mountains between 1966 and 1980.

These archived bees (has-bee-ns?) revealed that the tongues of these species have become 0.61 percent shorter every year, and are now just three-quarters of their former glory. “We were really surprised at the strength of the result,” says Miller-Struttmann. “We obviously asked the question but we weren’t expecting such a large response, especially over just 40 to 50 years.”

Why have the long-tongued bees evolved into long-ish-tongued bees? The team ruled out several possibilities. The bees weren’t becoming smaller overall, at least not to a degree that explained their shrinking tongues. Shorter-tubed plants hadn’t taken over the mountainsides; herbarium collections revealed that they are no more common now than they were in the 1960s. And immigrant bees from elsewhere in the mountains weren’t ousting the locals from their usual long-tubed flowers.

The best remaining explanation is that the changing climate of the Rockies has shifted the balance of flowers than the bees depend upon. Jennifer Geib from Appalachian State University, who was involved in the study, says, “Our field sites are part of what ecologists describe as high-altitude desert.” That is: they’re really dry. And they’ve become drier in the last 60 years, as summers have become 2 degrees C warmer.

Water evaporated more quickly from the soil. Winter snowfalls started thawing out earlier, depriving plants of precious meltwater during the growing season. Many wildflowers that were already eking out a living on the brink of drought were pushed over the edge. On Pennsylvania Mountain alone, the team calculated that “millions of flowers were lost.” As such, today’s bees face about 60 percent less food than their predecessors from the 1970s.

The long-tubed flowers weren’t especially affected, but there were fewer of them — and not enough for long-tongued specialists to subsist on. So the long-tongued bees were forced to broaden their diets, drinking nectar from flowers of every length. Since they were now competing for resources that many other species could plunder, their long tongues no longer conferred any special advantages. So evolution, ever-thrifty and economical, selected for individuals with shorter tongues.

“That’s a really neat discovery,” says Jeremy Kerr from the University of Ottawa, who also studies pollinators. “I haven’t seen other research that suggests we’re likely to see rapid evolution in bumblebee [traits] because of climate change.” Kerr’s own research shows that North American and European bumblebees are being crushed out of their normal ranges by warming climates, seemingly unable to expand into more suitable pastures.

Miller-Struttmann’s study suggests that bees might be able to persist within these contracting habitats by changing their foraging habits and evolving accordingly. How they fare in the long term is anyone’s guess. Certainly, the widespread decline of long-tongued bees, and bumblebees more generally, is a poor portent.

This isn’t the only mutualism at risk in a warming world. In warmer oceans, corals eject the algae that they depend on for photosynthesis, depriving them of both the energy they need to construct their mighty reefs, and the source of their color. Starving and alone, they become weak and ghostly versions of themselves.

Meanwhile, carpenter ants, a hugely successful group with around 1,000 species, depend on bacteria inside their cells to supplement their diets with important nutrients. These microbes are also sensitive to temperature, and it’s possible that a warmer world would crush these ants — and the many other insects that depend on supplementary microbes — into ever narrower niches.

And what of the long-tubed flowers, now decoupled from their partners in pollination? “Alpine plants are very long-lived, so any effects of reduced pollination efficiency from the recent past would likely not be seen in their populations for some time,” says Geib. “But if climate-change models are accurate, these plants are likely to face a multitude of synergistic pressures in the future, including drought, and increased competition as the ranges of lowland species shift upward. The combination of these pressures, coupled with decreased pollination, could forecast a troubled future.”

Source: Atlantic

10 Animals That Might Go Bye-Bye In 2015

In the world of nearly extinct animals, there are a lot of unknowns — animals that live in the ocean are hard to count; birds and insects too. But it’s certain humanity is the root cause of extinction and the number of them is accelerating.

When you want to identify the species next on the chopping block, you have to look back a few steps. Before a species is “extinct,” it is “extinct in the wild,” only existing in captivity. Before that, the species is “critically endangered” — a technical distinction bestowed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Basically, next stop, goners-ville.

Here are some of the candidates most likely to be declared extinct next:

Soala

Scientific name: Pseudoryx nghetinhensis

Population: 70- 700

Range: in the Annamite Mountains along the border between Laos and Vietnam

Habitat: wet evergreen forests

Unknown until 1992 — the first new large mammal discovery in half a century! — Soala are a very rare relative of domestic cattle. Fewer than 100 have ever been observed! Soalas are often found dead in traps meant for other species and the solitary animals are fragmented along a border between two countries experiencing massive growth and unwillingness to pursue conservation. See ya soala!

Vaquita

Scientific name: Phocoena sinus

Population: unclear, possibly fewer than 100

Range: in the north of the Gulf of California, between Baja California and Sonora, Mexico

Habitat: shallow, murky waters

Unfortunately, one of the only ways to measure the population of the smallest porpoise species is to count their rising numbers drowned accidentally by (illegal) fisherman’s nets. With few mature individuals, vaquitas are especially vulnerable to inbreeding, which threatens the genetic diversity necessary for the species to survive. Mexico has taken some measures to protect vaquitas . The population may presently be falling as much as 15% each year. ¡Vamos vaquita!

Tooth-billed Pigeon

Scientific name: Didunculus strigirostris

Population: likely between 70 and 380

Range: the two main islands of Western Samoa

Habitat: island rainforest

Guess what? Humanity has not yet wiped away every trace of the dodo bird! In far-flung Samoa, in the South Pacific, there is a tooth-billed pigeon, or “little dodo.” They’re threatened by clear-cutting, which reduces the islands’ natural defenses against cyclones (also a problem) and Pacific rats, an invasive species spread by humans. While tooth-billed pigeons are legally protected against hunting, Samoans still hunt them during their annual harvesting of different, unprotected pigeons. Toodles tooth-billed pigeon!

South China Tiger

Scientific name: Panthera tigris ssp. amoyensis

Population: fewer than 72, possibly extinct in the wild

Range: Southeast China, possibly nowhere

Habitat: humid, subtropical forests

Not one South China tiger has been seen in the wild in a quarter-century, leaving the species on the precipice of extinction. All known South China tigers live in captivity, mostly in China, where government is trying to breed the species and reintroduce it to the wild. A group is being sent to South Africa where these non-native tigers will learn to hunt wild prey. So long South China tiger!

Golden-headed Langur

Scientific name: Trachypithecus poliocephalus

Population: less than 64 on Cat Ba island, less than 800 in China

Range: Cat Ba Island off Vietnam/ Southern China near Vietnam

Habitat: forests on limestone hills

There’s some debate about whether the two distinct subspecies of Golden-headed Langur — a small monkey from Southeast Asia — are actually different species. Both, although legally protected, face near-imminent extinction thanks to hunting. Langur tribes have only one male to attract female attention and defend them (hello poachers!) — and now with few mature individuals it’s difficult for them to self-propagate. Goodbye Golden-head Langur!

Javan Rhino

Scientific name: Rhinoceros sondaicus

Population: about 40–60

Range: Ujung Kulon National Park in Java, Indonesia

Habitat: lowland tropical forests

Javan rhinos are practically extinct except for a small park on the western tip of their Indonesian island home. The rhinos are legally protected and their park is isolated, but Rhino horns are crazy in demand for traditional medicine in China. Even if the rhinos survive disease and poachers, their park is not big enough to support more rhinos. Any new rhinos would have to be relocated, jeopardizing their safety. Jolly good show Javan rhino!

Northern Sportive Lemur

Scientific name: Lepilemur septentrionalis

Population: about 50

Range: northernmost Madagascar

Habitat: tropical forests

Northern sportive lemurs are named for the boxing-like stance they take when menaced. They’ve been collectively raising their fists at snakes, forest degradation and illegal hunters for years, yet in 2000 they were only listed as “vulnerable,” like polar bears. This lemur’s population has been reduced by 80% in only 20 years and depletion of their forest habitat shows no signs of slowing down. They are now the most endangered primate on the planet. Na na na na hey hey hey goodbye northern sportive lemurs!

Amur Leopard

Scientific name: Panthera pardus ssp. orientalis

Population: about 30

Range: Amur-Heilong region — Russia/China border

Habitat: mountainous forests

This cat has a 19-foot horizontal leap. One-on-one, human vs. leopard, there’s no contest. Except poachers, who treasure the beautiful patterned fur of leopards, have guns. Russia established the 1,000 square miles Land of the Leopard National Park in 2012, but big cats over the border in China face poachers and booming development. Aravoir Amur leopard!

Northern White Rhino

Scientific name: Ceratotherium simum ssp. cottoni

Population: five!

Range: mostly the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya

Habitat: captivity

Sometimes the survival of entire species comes down to a few individuals. There are only four female northern white rhinos and one male, called ‘Sudan’. Two other males died in 2014. There’s hope that female SOUTHERN white rhinos might be impregnated by sperm from the deceased males or from Sudan (less creepy). The two species are very closely related, but is there enough genetic diversity left to preserve the northern white rhinos’ unique traits? Namaste northern white rhino!

Ivory-billed Woodpecker

Scientific name: Campephilus principalis

Population: possibly extinct already

Range: Southeastern United States and Cuba

Habitat: swamp and bottomland hardwood forests

Thanks to logging and agriculture, there hasn’t been a confirmed sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker since 1987, but rumors in 2004 were enough to launch new surveys and studies. Through to 2010, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service spent $14 million searching for ivory-billed woodpeckers, protecting potential habitats and working with birdwatchers, who would clearly be the first ones to know if these birds came back. IDK if you still exist Ivory-billed woodpecker!

It’s not impossible for a nearly extinct species to make a comeback. Sometimes, like the giant stick insect on tiny islands off of Australia, a tiny population can survive, unnoticed. And with a little help from humans, thousands more individuals can be bred to repopulate the species. All I’m saying is: life finds a way.

Originally published in Medium https://medium.com/the-nib/10-animals-that-might-go-bye-bye-in-2015-3f4f70a4ac9e

Why Trees Are Even More Awesome Than You Think

I think that you don´t realise how cool the trees are. I honestly didn´t know all this details. So, when I read this article from True Activist I instantaneity wanted to share this with our readers.

In this fascinating video, UBC Professor Suzanne Simard explains how trees are much more complex than most of us ever imagined. Although Charles Darwin assumed trees are simply individual organisms competing for survival of the fittest, Simard demonstrates just how wrong he was. In fact, the opposite is true: trees survive through mutual co-operation and support, passing around essential nutrients “depending on who needs it” 

Nitrogen and carbon are shared through miles of underground fungi networks, ensuring that all trees in the forest eco-system give and receive just the right amount to keep them all healthy. This invisible web works in a very similar way to the networks of neurons in our brains, and when one tree is destroyed it has consequences for all.

Originally Published in True Activist 

Scientists using sunlight to make liquid fuel

Daniel Nocera became an instant celebrity in renewable energy circles in 2011 when he invented the artificial leaf.

More an idea than an actual leaf, the Harvard professor came up with a way to harness sunlight with silicon to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. From there, it was theorized, it was just a step further to create hydrogen fuel cells.

It seemed too good to be true. Finally, someone had found a way to use the power of the sun to produce a clean fuel source. But there was a slight problem. The infrastructure for a hydrogen-fueled economy didn't exist then and, to this day, still is nowhere close to becoming a reality.

So, Nocera went back to the drawing board.

Taking his artificial leaf idea, he teamed up with several other researchers at Harvard including Jeffery Way and Pamela Silver. They took the hydrogen from the photovoltaic cells of the artificial leaf and fed it to the soil bacterium Ralstonia eutropha. The microbe combined the hydrogen with carbon dioxide from another source and, for the first time, produced liquid fuel.

"This is sort of the next step moving beyond hydrogen to make a fuel that is integratable with our current infrastructure," Nocera, a co-author on a study that appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Monday, told CBS News.

"I can't convince an entire society to change over their infrastructure to use hydrogen," he said. "Instead of fighting it, this is sort of going with the flow to so speak."

But while thrilled with his team's discovery, Nocera admitted they still face a challenge of improving the efficiency of the process so that fuel could be produced commercially. Currently, they are only able to convert 1 percent of the sunlight into liquid fuel, which falls far short of the 10 percent efficiency needed to establish a viable, sustainable solar fuel industry.

Nocera is part of a band of scientists trying to crack the nut that is solar fuels.

If successful, they would produce a fuel that gives the United States energy independence, helps combat global warming by finding a replacement for fossil fuels and avoids the concerns of biofuels, which often compete with food for land.

Among those investing heavily in solar fuel technology is the Department of Energy, which is spending $1.22 million over five years on the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis. Since 2010, the center has been the nation's largest research program dedicated to the development of an artificial solar-fuel generation technology.

But it was another DOE program that helped inspire the latest breakthrough. Called the electrofuels program at the DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency, it is tasked with using microorganisms to create liquid fuel for transportation.

Out of the program came the microbe used in the latest research to produce liquid fuel.

"The idea was, could you take a bug like Ralstonia eutropha and mess around with its guts, do a bunch of genetic engineering so that bug will take hydrogen, carbon dioxide and make liquid fuel," said Eric J. Toone, who founded the electrofuels program but is now the director of the Duke Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative.

"When you really get this worked out and do this at scale you can do it more efficiently than plants do it and it doesn't compete with resources we use to make food," he said. "It doesn't use land and water, those scarce resources."

But not everyone is convinced that this approach makes much sense.

Stephen Mayfield, director of the California Center for Algae Biotechnology, said he saw this more like a "solution looking for a problem."

"I can't tell you how many studies start off by defining the problems as something like this paper has: We need to make liquid fuel from electricity from [photovoltaic] cells! So they solve the problem of turning electrons into biomass (already done many times, by the way, using that exact bug) and then exclaim, eureka, we have solved the problem!" he said. "Our problem is not that we have too much H2 and O2 sitting around generated by PV cells that we need to convert it to liquid fuels. Our problem is that fossil fuels were cheap so we burned a boat load of them and now we have problems with our climate."

Moreover, Mayfield questioned whether this process would ever truly be carbon neutral.

"It takes energy to make the PV cells, it takes energy to build the fermentor to grow the bacteria, it takes energy to grow the bacteria a lot, it takes energy to purify the fuel, it takes nutrients like nitrogen and phosphate to feed the bacteria, " he said. "It's not that I don't believe. It's that damn math thing. It just never works out."

But Nocera said that was a spurious argument considering everything requires a certain level of infrastructure.

"If we used his argument, we would stop working on renewables," he said. "You have to build things and that takes carbon. It takes carbon to build silicon but people have shown that the payback is a few years in terms of it becoming carbon neutral."

Originally Published in CBS

Almost 1000.000.000 butterflies have vanished

Data horrify us: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released last Monday that since 1990, about 970 million monarch butterflies have vanished.

Photo By: Kenneth Dwain Harrelson

The Washington Post has published an article showing the impact of this massacre.

It happened as farmers and homeowners sprayed herbicides on milkweed plants, which serve as the butterflies’ nursery, food source and home. In an attempt to counter two decades of destruction, the Fish and Wildlife Service launched a partnership with two private conservation groups, the National Wildlife Federation and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, to basically grow milkweed like crazy in the hopes of saving the monarchs.

The eastern North American monarch population is notable for its multigenerational southward late-summer/autumn migration from the United States and southern Canada to Mexico, covering thousands of miles. The western North American population of monarchs west of the Rocky Mountains most often migrate to sites in California but have been found in overwintering Mexico sites. Monarchs were transported to the international space station and were bred there.

The extinction of certain butterfly species is not unheard of. The blueberry-colored Xerces blue disappeared from San Francisco years ago, and recently Fish and Wildlife announced that two subspecies — the rockland skipper and Zestos in South Florida — haven’t been seen since 2004 and are probably extinct. On top of that, pesticide use has also caused a collapse of other pollinators — wasps, beetles and especially honeybees.
Fish and Wildlife is reviewing a petition filed by the Center for Biological Diversity to list monarch butterflies as an endangered species that requires special protection to survive. The agency is studying whether that’s necessary and also trying to do more to help restore the population.
The agency is providing $2 million for on the ground conservation projects. As part of an agreement, the federation will help raise awareness about the need for milkweed, provide seeds to anyone willing to plant it and to plant the seeds in open space — roadsides, parks, forests and patio flower boxes, to name a few places. Another $1.2 million will go to the foundation as seed money to generate a larger fundraising match from private organizations.

Millions Of Gallons Of Oil Settled At The Bottom Of The Gulf After BP Oil Spill

Big Oil is always telling us how safe they are. But we know the truth. They are evil companies.
They don´t care about the environment and they only pay attention to their earnings without any other concern.

So, we need to keep this news in the public agenda...

Here one new study about BP Oil spill published by ThinkProgress

Millions of gallons of oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill didn’t get cleaned up, and instead settled in the sediment of the Gulf of Mexico’s floor, a new study has found.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, found that 6 to 10 million gallons of oil from the spill are buried in the seafloor. The researchersmeasured the amount of carbon 14 — a radioactive carbon isotope that’s found in organic material but not found in oil — in an approximately 24,000 km² area of sediment near the spill site, a process which allowed them to see what parts of the sediment were low in carbon 14 and thus contained oil.

The study sought to determine two things: whether oil had, in fact, settled on the seafloor, and how much of it had settled. Jeff Chanton, Professor of Oceanography at Florida State University and lead author of the study, told ThinkProgress that he had thought the total amount of oil they would find at the ocean floor would be higher, because after the spill, so many people had observed the oil clumping at the water’s surface and sinking.

Regardless of the amount, however, Chanton said that sedimentation was a “new phenomenon” that hadn’t been heavily observed or studied after previous oil spills.

“Everyone thinks oil is very buoyant and that it just floats on the surface,” Chanton said. So in the past, sedimentation of oil hasn’t been a main concern for scientists and cleanup workers. The federal Oil Budget Calculator, which was developed to determine where the oil of the Deepwater Horizon spill ended up in the short term, didn’t include efforts to figure out how much of the oil ended up in the Gulf’s sediment.

The researchers found that the oil was buried in the top layers of the Gulf’s sediment, meaning that if the sediment is stirred up in the future, the oil could once again enter the water. Chanton said the oil’s position on the sediment’s surface also means that it’s a part of the food chain: the worms and other benthic organisms that live on the seafloor and feed on sediments will ingest the oil, and the contaminants associated with the oil will be passed on to the creatures that eat the worms. That could be a long-term problem for the health of these deepwater Gulf fish, Chanton said.

Chanton’s study isn’t the first to look at sedimentation after the Deepwater Horizon spill. Last fall, a study found the spill had left a 1,235-square-mile “bathtub ring” of oil on the ocean’s floor. And last May, after a group of researchers spent about a month in the Gulf, one of them — Andreas Teske, marine sciences professor at the University of North Carolina — told ThinkProgress that the oil on the bottom of the seafloor is becoming “part of the geological record.”

“Since one cannot take a gigantic vacuum cleaner and clean up this stuff, getting buried is the best alternative,” Teske said.

Oil’s been found to have gathered in sediment closer to shore too: last year, a 1,250-pound tar mat was discovered off the beach of Santa Rosa Island, Florida.

Chanton’s study comes amid the third and final stage of BP’s civil trial for the spill. Earlier this month, an expert witness for BP testified that the Gulf’s shoreline had shown “substantial recovery” since the spill, and that BP’s work to clean up the oil had been “comprehensive” and “effective.” A BP executive also claimed in Politico last year that his company “didn’t ruin the Gulf.” But Chanton’s study — and previous studies on the health of the Gulf post-spill — shows that though beaches might be cleaner than they were four years ago, the spill’s lasting impact on the Gulf has yet to be determined.

Al Gore is still kicking butt as a climate warrior

Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College wrote an article in Grist where he gives us their opinion about Al Gore. 

I found it very interesting and I´m reproducing it here for you

The news from Davos last week — that Al Gore is reviving his Live Earth music festival, and that Pharrell Williams will serve as creative director — should make everyone … happy.

Not just because it will reach millions with a crucial message, but because it comes as a good reminder of Gore’s ongoing, tireless, and creative work, in what must be the most successful second act of any political life in U.S. history. Though insular Americans tend not to know it, he’s a global rock star, the political equivalent of one of those slightly older but very much beloved musicians. (The Paul McCartney of climate change?) I heard him speak one evening in September to an international crowd gathered by the U.N. in New York, and he brought people to their feet again and again.

And what was interesting was how. Instead of just dutifully repeating the old hits, his message on warming has changed. It’s now defiant and optimistic: The old energy system is doomed, as he wrote in Rolling Stone last summer. The falling cost of solar panels will ultimately sabotage fossil fuels. “The forward journey for human civilization will be difficult and dangerous, but it is now clear that we will ultimately prevail.”

This message is poison to the Exxons of the world; it’s a clever undercutting of their argument that burning ever more coal and gas and oil is inevitable, that the world has no choice. It’s a message delivered at the highest levels (Gore is always there in places like Davos where the 1% have to listen) and at the broadest: Live Earth, set for June 18, will be more about harmony than dissonance, but it will reach wide swaths of the planet, reinforcing the message that change is coming and that it’s cool.

The one potential downside to this message is that it might also undercut the efforts of those of us in — to stretch a metaphor — the various garage bands out there fighting the fossil fuel industry more directly. The larger public might start to think that standing up to power isn’t necessary because power is going to do the right thing by itself. But it’s precisely here — in lending his credibility to the rest of us — that Gore has been so powerfully helpful, and often in unacknowledged ways.

I remember, for instance, in the fall of 2008, when 350.org was as fledgling as an organization could be. The world was meeting in Poznan, Poland, for its annual effort to do nothing about climate change, and Gore was, patiently, once again giving the keynote address to the assembled delegates, trying to exhort them to do more. We’d asked him if he would embrace the new 350 ppm carbon dioxide target outlined by Jim Hansen, but we didn’t dare hope he really would: The last thing the hapless negotiators wanted was a harder target. But toward the end of his speech, Gore said: “Even a goal of 450 parts per million, which seems so difficult today, is inadequate. We need to toughen that goal to 350 parts per million.”

All the young people in the room erupted in cheers that stopped the talk for a minute or more. I pounded May Boeve, now executive director of 350.org, so hard on the back that she may still have a bruise. He had said, in effect, listen to the outsiders; go beyond the process.

And not for the last time. I remember the first week of the sit-ins against the Keystone pipeline in August of 2011. Now they seem like the curtain-raiser on what’s become the enviro fight of a generation, but at the time it was almost impossible to get anyone to pay attention, despite the largest civil disobedience action about anything in many years. Official Washington knew the pipeline was a done deal, and that no motley collection of Native Americans, ranchers, scientists, and climate activists was going to derail it. But then Gore wrote a short note on his blog. In its entirety:

The leaders of the top environmental groups in the country, the Republican Governor of Nebraska, and millions of people around the country — including hundreds of people who have bravely participated in civil disobedience at the White House — all agree on one thing: President Obama should block a planned pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.

The tar sands are the dirtiest source of liquid fuel on the planet. This pipeline would be an enormous mistake.  The answer to our climate, energy and economic challenges does not lie in burning more dirty fossil fuels — instead, we must continue to press for much more rapid development of renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies and cuts in the pollution that causes global warming.

Short, but it spoke volumes. Here was the man who should actually have been in the White House, backing protesters who were pressing the president from the party where he’d spent his life. He didn’t need to do it — it would have been easy to excuse himself on the grounds that he needed to keep communication lines open with the White House, or some such — but do it he did, and it helped grant credibility to the fight.

Al Gore and PharrellAl and Pharrell, cooking up big plans.World Economic Forum
These examples could be multiplied all day. For someone who did his service to humanity with An Inconvenient Truth, clearly the most important moment of the effort to address global warming, Gore has proven remarkably willing to go on fighting, and at every level. I know where I’ll be on June 18: tuned in to Live Earth. Pharrell said it well: “Happiness is the truth.”

Excellent news for the Tigers: From 1,400 to 2,226 in 7 Years (India)

We started the day with a fantastic news.

The environment ministry of India said that the number of tigers in that country has seen a sharp rise to 2,226 tigers from 1,411 seven years ago.

"India is now home to 70 per cent of the world's tigers," Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar explained. Karnataka has the most number of tigers at 406. Uttarakhand has 340 tigers, Tamil Nadu has 229, Madhya Pradesh has 208, Maharashtra has 190 and the Sundarbans in Bengal has 76 tigers.

India has struggled to stop the rapid decline of its big cat population in the face of poachers, international smuggling networks and loss of habitat.

From an estimated 100,000 tigers at the beginning of the 20th century, India saw the numbers dropping to 1411 in 2008. Most of the animals were killed by poachers who sell the carcasses for use in traditional Chinese medicine.

In 2004, environmentalists were shocked when not a single tiger could be spotted at the Sariska wildlife reserve in Rajasthan, a top destination for big cat watchers. It was seen as the biggest crisis in India's conservation history and led to a massive drive that included arming forest guards at various reserves to fight poachers.

Source: NDTV