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Bumblebee nests are overheating to fatal levels, study finds

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Saturday, May 4, 2024

Bumblebee nests may be overheating, killing off broods and placing one of the Earth’s critical pollinators in decline as temperatures rise, new research has found.Around the world, many species of Bombus, or bumblebee, have suffered population declines due to global heating, the research said. Bumblebee colonies are known for their ability to thermoregulate: in hot conditions, worker bees gather to beat their wings and fan the hive, cooling it down. But as the climate crisis pushes average temperatures up and generates heatwaves, bumblebees will struggle to keep their homes habitable.Most bumblebee broods would not survive at temperatures above 36C, the paper, published in Frontiers in Bee Science, concluded. The research team reviewed 180 years of literature, and found that for all bumblebee species studied the optimum temperature range for incubating nests was between 28C and 32C.Peter Kevan, the lead author of the study, told the Guardian: “If [bumblebees] can’t keep temperatures below what is probably a lethal limit of about 35C, when the brood may die, that could explain why we are losing so many bumblebees around the world, especially in North America and Europe.”Bumblebees have suffered population declines around the world due to global heating. Photograph: Rebecca Cole/AlamyKevan, who is a professor emeritus at the University of Guelph’s School of Environmental Sciences in Canada, added that the research examined the often-overlooked role of the nest as a “superorganism”.“Researchers have been looking at foraging behaviour and fanning to keep the brood cool, but there are very few studies that look at the whole nest,” he said. The study argued that nests should be seen as a whole: while some individual bees may be able to cope with heat, if the nest becomes too hot to raise healthy larvae the whole colony will decline.Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, who was not involved in the research, said: “We have known for a long time that bumblebees are cool-climate specialists. Most insects are more abundant in the tropics, but bumblebees are weird in that they are at their most abundant in places like the Alps and Britain.”They are big and furry as an adaptation to living in cooler places, he said. “There are even some that live in the Arctic, the Bombus polaris. That means an obvious problem with climate change – they are vulnerable to warming.”When nests overheat, he added, bumblebees work to cool them by flapping their wings, “but if the air outside is too hot, that’s not going to help”.Goulson said there is already evidence that bumblebees have started to disappear from the warmer edges of their range. “There have been publications showing mountain bumblebees are moving higher as a way to combat warming, but obviously there is a limit to that.”The paper’s findings, said Goulson, who has spent 30 years studying bumblebees, are “really depressing”. “It is kind of heartbreaking to think that many may disappear.”Other studies, he said, suggest that the UK “might lose about half our bumblebee species in coming years, depending on the pace of climate change”. Their populations had been declining due to habitat loss, Goulson said. “Now, [with rising temperatures] we have a double whammy.”Bumblebees are important pollinators of wildflowers and crops. Photograph: Rebecca Cole/AlamyRichard Comont, the science manager at Britain’s Bumblebee Conservation Trust, also not part of the study, said he was glad to see the new research. “It’s something that there has been speculation about for a while,” he said.Bumblebees are important pollinators of wild flowers and crops including tomatoes, runner beans, apples, blueberries, blackcurrants and raspberries. For other pollinators, Goulson said, the outlook under a hotter climate is less clear. Some bee species can cope with warmer temperatures, and some species that now live farther south may move north as temperatures rise, making a new home in the UK. With other pollinators, he said, such as flies, wasps, butterflies, birds and bats, “it’s hard to generalise”.To stem declines, increasing habitats and decreasing pesticide use could help, Goulson said – but really, “we need to knuckle down” and make sure global temperatures “do not go past 2C” of heating.Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features

More frequent heatwaves mean bees are unable to thermoregulate their hives – further endangering a species already in declineBumblebee nests may be overheating, killing off broods and placing one of the Earth’s critical pollinators in decline as temperatures rise, new research has found.Around the world, many species of Bombus, or bumblebee, have suffered population declines due to global heating, the research said. Bumblebee colonies are known for their ability to thermoregulate: in hot conditions, worker bees gather to beat their wings and fan the hive, cooling it down. But as the climate crisis pushes average temperatures up and generates heatwaves, bumblebees will struggle to keep their homes habitable. Continue reading...

Bumblebee nests may be overheating, killing off broods and placing one of the Earth’s critical pollinators in decline as temperatures rise, new research has found.

Around the world, many species of Bombus, or bumblebee, have suffered population declines due to global heating, the research said. Bumblebee colonies are known for their ability to thermoregulate: in hot conditions, worker bees gather to beat their wings and fan the hive, cooling it down. But as the climate crisis pushes average temperatures up and generates heatwaves, bumblebees will struggle to keep their homes habitable.

Most bumblebee broods would not survive at temperatures above 36C, the paper, published in Frontiers in Bee Science, concluded. The research team reviewed 180 years of literature, and found that for all bumblebee species studied the optimum temperature range for incubating nests was between 28C and 32C.

Peter Kevan, the lead author of the study, told the Guardian: “If [bumblebees] can’t keep temperatures below what is probably a lethal limit of about 35C, when the brood may die, that could explain why we are losing so many bumblebees around the world, especially in North America and Europe.”

Bumblebees have suffered population declines around the world due to global heating. Photograph: Rebecca Cole/Alamy

Kevan, who is a professor emeritus at the University of Guelph’s School of Environmental Sciences in Canada, added that the research examined the often-overlooked role of the nest as a “superorganism”.

“Researchers have been looking at foraging behaviour and fanning to keep the brood cool, but there are very few studies that look at the whole nest,” he said. The study argued that nests should be seen as a whole: while some individual bees may be able to cope with heat, if the nest becomes too hot to raise healthy larvae the whole colony will decline.

Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, who was not involved in the research, said: “We have known for a long time that bumblebees are cool-climate specialists. Most insects are more abundant in the tropics, but bumblebees are weird in that they are at their most abundant in places like the Alps and Britain.”

They are big and furry as an adaptation to living in cooler places, he said. “There are even some that live in the Arctic, the Bombus polaris. That means an obvious problem with climate change – they are vulnerable to warming.”

When nests overheat, he added, bumblebees work to cool them by flapping their wings, “but if the air outside is too hot, that’s not going to help”.

Goulson said there is already evidence that bumblebees have started to disappear from the warmer edges of their range. “There have been publications showing mountain bumblebees are moving higher as a way to combat warming, but obviously there is a limit to that.”

The paper’s findings, said Goulson, who has spent 30 years studying bumblebees, are “really depressing”. “It is kind of heartbreaking to think that many may disappear.”

Other studies, he said, suggest that the UK “might lose about half our bumblebee species in coming years, depending on the pace of climate change”. Their populations had been declining due to habitat loss, Goulson said. “Now, [with rising temperatures] we have a double whammy.”

Bumblebees are important pollinators of wildflowers and crops. Photograph: Rebecca Cole/Alamy

Richard Comont, the science manager at Britain’s Bumblebee Conservation Trust, also not part of the study, said he was glad to see the new research. “It’s something that there has been speculation about for a while,” he said.

Bumblebees are important pollinators of wild flowers and crops including tomatoes, runner beans, apples, blueberries, blackcurrants and raspberries. For other pollinators, Goulson said, the outlook under a hotter climate is less clear. Some bee species can cope with warmer temperatures, and some species that now live farther south may move north as temperatures rise, making a new home in the UK. With other pollinators, he said, such as flies, wasps, butterflies, birds and bats, “it’s hard to generalise”.

To stem declines, increasing habitats and decreasing pesticide use could help, Goulson said – but really, “we need to knuckle down” and make sure global temperatures “do not go past 2C” of heating.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features

Read the full story here.
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Underwater Time Bomb: Meltwater Ponds Threaten Antarctic Stability

An expedition has found that increased temperatures from climate change are causing ponds that weaken ice. A team of scientists who installed instruments on an...

Recent field observations in Antarctica reveal that meltwater ponds are causing significant flexing and fracturing of ice shelves, suggesting that increased melting from climate change may accelerate the collapse of these critical structures, potentially raising global sea levels.An expedition has found that increased temperatures from climate change are causing ponds that weaken ice.A team of scientists who installed instruments on an Antarctic ice shelf discovered that meltwater ponds were causing the ice to flex and fracture.Though scientists had predicted the phenomenon, this was the first time it was observed in the field.The finding raises concerns that, as climate change progresses and more melting occurs, vulnerable ice shelves in Antarctica will collapse—contributing to global sea rise. “Ice shelves are extremely important for the Antarctic Ice Sheet’s overall health as they act to buttress, or hold back, the glacier ice on land,” said Alison Banwell, a scientist in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder and lead author of the study published May 4 in the Journal of Glaciology. “Scientists have predicted and modeled that surface meltwater loading could cause ice shelves to fracture, but no one had observed the process in the field, until now.”“It’s looking very likely that this process explains the collapse of the Larsen B Ice Shelf,” added Doug MacAyeal, University of Chicago Prof. Emeritus of Geophysical Sciences and co-author on the paper—referring to a notorious 2002 event in which more than 1,000 square miles of Antarctic ice collapsed into the ocean in a matter of weeks.Around the continent of Antarctica, thick sheets of floating glacier ice extend out over the ocean. Known as ice shelves, they are thought to help keep inland glaciers stable—but more and more seem to be collapsing.Field Research and Observational ChallengesIn 2019, a group of researchers led by Banwell traveled to the George IV Ice Shelf, thought to be one of the at-risk ice shelves in Antarctica. They placed time-lapse cameras and GPS sensors to monitor the ice over the course of a year, throughout the seasonal cycle of freezing and thawing.The outbreak of COVID-19, however, meant it was more than a year before they could return. When they returned in late 2021, several of the stations had been lost. Fortunately, some instruments survived—and they had documented a lot of evidence.According to the research, here’s how the process works. Warmer air temperatures cause the top layers of ice on the ice shelf to melt. The newly liquid water forms a pool, which concentrates the weight in one area. Then, as anyone who’s tried to cup water in their hands knows, the water will find its way down through even the tiniest crack.The water trickling down widens the cracks in the ice, like cracks spreading from a pothole in the road over time. Over the course of the summer, the pools fill and then drain, over and over; the GPS sensors placed atop the ice shelf recorded that the ice shelf was dropping and rising by about a foot each time. This further weakens the ice.Ice is structurally fragile, MacAyeal said; “It’s like a weak form of glass.”Eventually, the dam breaks. The GPS stations recorded a very sudden altitude change—meaning the ice had fractured.The researchers said it was likely this thawing and freezing cycle was a key factor in the collapse of the Larsen B Ice Shelf in 2002, the largest ice shelf breakup on record. Before the event, satellites had recorded many pools of meltwater atop the ice shelf.Global sea levels have risen by eight to nine inches since 1880, and the trend is accelerating over time. The melting of Antarctic ice is a major factor, and scientists worry that the loss of the ice shelves will further destabilize the situation.“These observations are important because they can be used to improve models to better predict which Antarctic ice shelves are more vulnerable and most susceptible to collapse in the future,” Banwell said.Reference: “Observed meltwater-induced flexure and fracture at a doline on George VI Ice Shelf, Antarctica” by Alison F. Banwell, Ian C. Willis, Laura A. Stevens, Rebecca L. Dell and Douglas R. MacAyeal, 3 May 2024, Journal of Glaciology.DOI: 10.1017/jog.2024.31

Climate
Water
Science

Honduran city’s air pollution is almost 50 times higher than WHO guidelines

San Pedro Sula is rated ‘dangerous’ as effects of forest fires, El Niño and the climate crisis cause a spike in respiratory illnessesThe air quality in San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city in Honduras, as been classified as the most polluted on the American continent due to forest fires and weather conditions aggravated by El Niño and the climate crisis.IQAir, a Swiss air-quality organisation that draws data from more than 30,000 monitoring stations around the world, said on Thursday that air quality in the city of about 1 million people has reached “dangerous” levels. Continue reading...

The air quality in San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city in Honduras, as been classified as the most polluted on the American continent due to forest fires and weather conditions aggravated by El Niño and the climate crisis.IQAir, a Swiss air-quality organisation that draws data from more than 30,000 monitoring stations around the world, said on Thursday that air quality in the city of about 1 million people has reached “dangerous” levels.IQAir found that levels of PM2.5 – dangerous air particulates of less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter – reached 249.1 mcg/m³ this week. World Health Organization guidelines state that annual mean concentrations should not exceed 5mcg/m³.Honduran authorities have raised the threat level to its highest in most of the country’s departments because of the public health risks, and advised people to close windows and stay indoors to avoid exposure to contaminated air.Education secretary Daniel Sponda said public and private schools were to be temporarily closed due to the “risk to the physical integrity of the educational community”. The health secretariat has registered an increase of 20% in patients with respiratory infections.“We have seen a steep increase in respiratory emergencies, especially within vulnerable populations, such as children and senior citizens,” said Dr Cristobal Bustamante, the national director of the emergency medical unit of the Honduran Permanent Contingency Commission, . “We have also recorded an increase in cardiac complications and exacerbated asthma.”Bustamante said high levels of air contamination can harm the airways, ranging from irritation and inflammation to cell damage and aggravation of existing respiratory diseases.The clouds of air pollution hanging over Honduran cities have been so thick that in the past two days, several planes due to land in San Pedro Sula were forced to divert to neighbouring countries because the pilots could not see the runways. A number of airports in Honduras have since had to close.“We have never had to shut down the airport due to the air quality, so it’s a first for us,” said Abraham Manun, the head of operations at the Ramón Villeda Morales international airport in San Pedro Sula. “It’s out of our hands and disrupts the entire flight commerce into and out of Honduras, which mainly flows through our airport. We had to cancel or reroute five international and 12 national flights. There is nothing we can do about it but wait.”The air contamination has been caused by aggressive temperature spikes during the El Niño phenomenon, which has affected “the dry corridor” that crosses through Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.El Niño increases temperatures and decreases rainfall, driving droughts, especially across the dry corridor. More than 3.4 million people in Central America depend on aid, and experts warn that El Niño will reach extreme levels this year, putting more people at risk than ever.Due to the dry climate and intense heat, Honduras is experiencing a sharp rise in wildfires. The Forest Conservation Institute of Honduras has documented 2,598 fires that have devastated 211,292 hectares (5.2m acres) across the country in 2024.At the end of March, La Tigra national park, known as “the lungs of Tegucigalpa”, was almost completely destroyed by fire, severely affecting the vulnerable ecosystem close to the city.“This contamination is linked to the gradual effects of climate change coupled with El Niño, which has caused the conditions for wildfires and droughts,” said Juan José Reyes, the head of Copeco’s early warning system. “The lack of wind allows the smog to hover over the cities, many of which are located in valleys.”Reyes added that if Honduras does not change its environmental policies, the phenomenon could become a regular occurrence and threaten millions across the Central American region.Nelson Aly, of the International Federation of the Red Cross, said climate-related disasters were happening across Central America. “Climate change has pushed us increasingly into these weather extremes,” he said. “We anticipate a sharp increase in climate-related catastrophes across Central America this year and in the future.“We are training our response units and bracing for floods like we have seen in Brazil this month.”

Climate
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Forests

Economic damage from climate change six times worse than thought – report

A 1C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world gross domestic product, researchers have foundThe economic damage wrought by climate change is six times worse than previously thought, with global heating set to shrink wealth at a rate consistent with the level of financial losses of a continuing permanent war, research has found.A 1C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world gross domestic product (GDP), the researchers found, a far higher estimate than that of previous analyses. The world has already warmed by more than 1C (1.8F) since pre-industrial times and many climate scientists predict a 3C (5.4F) rise will occur by the end of this century due to the ongoing burning of fossil fuels, a scenario that the new working paper, yet to be peer-reviewed, states will come with an enormous economic cost. Continue reading...

The economic damage wrought by climate change is six times worse than previously thought, with global heating set to shrink wealth at a rate consistent with the level of financial losses of a continuing permanent war, research has found.A 1C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world gross domestic product (GDP), the researchers found, a far higher estimate than that of previous analyses. The world has already warmed by more than 1C (1.8F) since pre-industrial times and many climate scientists predict a 3C (5.4F) rise will occur by the end of this century due to the ongoing burning of fossil fuels, a scenario that the new working paper, yet to be peer-reviewed, states will come with an enormous economic cost.A 3C temperature increase will cause “precipitous declines in output, capital and consumption that exceed 50% by 2100” the paper states. This economic loss is so severe that it is “comparable to the economic damage caused by fighting a war domestically and permanently”, it adds.“There will still be some economic growth happening but by the end of the century people may well be 50% poorer than they would’ve been if it wasn’t for climate change,” said Adrien Bilal, an economist at Harvard who wrote the paper with Diego Känzig, an economist at Northwestern University.“I think everyone could imagine what they would do with an income that is twice as large as it is now. It would change people’s lives.”Bilal said that purchasing power, which is how much people are able to buy with their money, would already be 37% higher than it is now without global heating seen over the past 50 years. This lost wealth will spiral if the climate crisis deepens, comparable to the sort of economic drain often seen during wartime.“Let’s be clear that the comparison to war is only in terms of consumption and GDP – all the suffering and death of war is the important thing and isn’t included in this analysis,” Bilal said. “The comparison may seem shocking, but in terms of pure GDP there is an analogy there. It’s a worrying thought.”The paper places a much higher estimate on economic losses than previous research, calculating a social cost of carbon, which is the cost in dollars of damage done per each additional ton of carbon emissions, to be $1,056 per ton. This compares to a range set out by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that estimates the cost to be around $190 per ton.Bilal said the new research takes a more “holistic” look at the economic cost of climate change by analyzing it on a global scale, rather than on an individual country basis. This approach, he said, captured the interconnected nature of the impact of heatwaves, storms, floods and other worsening climate impacts that damage crop yields, reduce worker productivity and reduce capital investment.“They have taken a step back and linking local impacts with global temperatures,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia University who wasn’t involved in the work and said it was significant. “If the results hold up, and I have no reason to believe they wouldn’t, they will make a massive difference in the overall climate damage estimates.”The paper found that the economic impact of the climate crisis will be surprisingly uniform around the world, albeit with lower-income countries starting at a lower point in wealth. This should spur wealthy countries such as the US, the paper points out, to take action on reducing planet-heating emissions in its own economic interest.Even with steep emissions cuts, however, climate change will bear a heavy economic cost, the paper finds. Even if global heating was restrained to little more than 1.5C (2.7F) by the end of the century, a globally agreed-upon goal that now appears to have slipped from reach, the GDP losses are still around 15%.“That is still substantial,” said Bilal. “The economy may keep growing but less than it would because of climate change. It will be a slow-moving phenomenon, although the impacts will be felt acutely when they hit.”The paper follows separate research released last month that found average incomes will fall by almost a fifth within the next 26 years compared to what they would’ve been without the climate crisis. Rising temperatures, heavier rainfall and more frequent and intense extreme weather are projected to cause $38tn of destruction each year by mid-century, according to the research.Both papers make clear that the cost of transitioning away from fossil fuels and curbing the impacts of climate change, while not trivial, pale in comparison to the cost of climate change itself. “Unmitigated climate change is a lot more costly than not doing anything about it, that is clear,” said Wagner.

Climate
Crisis
Nature

In a debut book, a love letter to eastern North Carolina — and an indictment of colonialism as a driver of climate change

Lumbee scientist Ryan Emanuel on seeking home, and climate justice, in "On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice."

As the planet grapples with the ever-starker consequences of climate change, a debut book by Lumbee citizen and Duke University scientist Ryan Emanuel makes a convincing argument that climate change isn’t the problem — it’s a symptom. The problem, Emanuel explains in On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice, is settler colonialism and its extractive mindset, which for centuries have threatened and reshaped landscapes including Emanuel’s ancestral homeland in what today is eastern North Carolina. Real environmental solutions, Emanuel writes, require consulting with the Indigenous peoples who have both millennia of experience caring for specific places, and the foresight to avoid long-term disasters that can result from short-term material gain.  Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1977, Emanuel was one of a handful of Native students at school. He spent summers visiting family in Robeson County, North Carolina, the cultural center of the Lumbee Tribe, or People of the Dark Water, where he played outside with other children, occasionally exploring a nearby swamp, one of the many lush waterways that slowly wind through the region, with a cousin. Today, Emanuel visits those swamps to conduct research. He describes them with an abiding, sometimes poetic affection, such as one spring day when he stands calf-deep in swamp water, admiring white dogwood flowers floating on the dark surface as tadpoles dart underneath.  But that affection lives with tension. Emanuel describes trying to collect “reeking” floodwater samples from a ditch after 2018’s Hurricane Florence. In Emanuel’s retelling, a nearby landowner — a white farmer who uses poultry waste as fertilizer — threatens to shoot Emanuel. The sampling, the man believes, would threaten his livelihood, which is wrapped up in North Carolina’s extractive animal farming industry — a system of giant, polluting “concentrated animal feed operations” overwhelmingly owned and operated by white people, and exposing mainly racial minorities to dirty air and water. They are a sharp contrast to the small backyard farms and truck crops grown by Emanuel’s aunties and uncles back in Robeson County a generation ago. As the man holds his gun and lectures about environmental monitoring, Emanuel reflects silently that they are standing on his ancestors’ land. Ever the researcher, he later finds deed books from around the Revolutionary War showing Emanuels once owned more than a hundred acres of land in the vicinity. Still, he holds a wry sympathy for the man, who, he notes, is worried that environmental data will jeopardize his way of life in a place his family has lived for generations.  Eastern North Carolina is a landscape of sandy fields interwoven with lush riverways and swamplands, shaded by knobby-kneed bald cypress trees and soaked with gently-moving waterways the deep brown of “richly steeped tea,” Emanuel writes. In addition to water, the region oozes history: It includes Warren County, known as the birthplace of the environmental justice movement, where local and national civil rights leaders, protesting North Carolina’s decision to dump toxic, PCB-laden soil in a new landfill in a predominantly-Black community, coined the term “environmental racism.” It’s also the mythological birthplace of English colonialism, Roanoke Island. On the Swamp draws a through line from early colonization of the continent to ongoing fights against environmental racism and for climate justice, with detailed stops along the way: Emanuel’s meticulous research illustrates how the white supremacism that settlers used to justify colonialism still harms marginalized communities — both directly, through polluting industries, and indirectly, through climate change — today.  With convoluted waterways accessible only by small boats, and hidden hillocks of high ground where people could camp and grow crops, the swamplands of eastern North Carolina protected Emanuel’s ancestors, along with many other Indigenous peoples, from genocide and enslavement by settlers. Today, with climate change alternately drying out swamplands or flooding them with polluted water from swine and poultry operations, it’s the swamps that need protection, both as a geographic place, and an idea of home. The Lumbee nation is the largest Indigenous nation in the eastern United States, but because the Lumbee Tribe gained only limited federal recognition during the 1950s Termination Era, its sovereignty is still challenged by the federal government and other Indigenous nations. Today, federal and state governments have no legal obligation to consult with the Lumbee Tribe when permitting industry or development, although the federal government does with Indigenous nations that have full federal recognition, and many industrial projects get built in Robeson County.  In writing that’s both affectionate and candid, On the Swamp is a warning about, and a celebration of, eastern North Carolina. Though the region seems besieged by environmental threats, Indigenous nations including the Lumbee are fighting for anticolonial climate justice.  Grist recently spoke with Emanuel about On the Swamp. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.  Q. What motivated you to write this book?  A. Many years ago, I thought that I wanted to write a feel-good book about celebrating the Lumbee River and the Lumbee Tribe’s connection with it, and talking about all the reasons why it’s beautiful, and amazing, and important to us. So I thought that I would write this essentially nature story, right? But as my work evolved, and as I started thinking more critically about what I actually should be writing, I realized that I couldn’t tell that love story about the river without talking about difficult issues around pollution, climate change, and sustainability, and broader themes of environmental justice and Indigenous rights.  Q. Could you tell me about your connection to place? A. I have a relationship to Robeson County that’s complicated by the fact that my family lived in Charlotte, and I went to school in Charlotte, and we went to church in Charlotte. But two weekends every month, and every major holiday, we were in Robeson County. And so I’m an insider, but I’m also not an insider. I’ve got a different lens through which I look at Robeson County because of my urban upbringing, but it doesn’t diminish the love that I have for that place, and it doesn’t keep me from calling it my home. I’ve always called it home. Charlotte was the place where we stayed. And Robeson County was home.  I can’t see the Lumbee River without thinking about the fact that it is physically integrating all of these different landscapes that I care about, [and] a truly beautiful place.  Q. In 2020, after years of protests and legal battles, Dominion Energy and Duke Energy canceled the Atlantic Coast pipeline, which would have carried natural gas 600 miles from West Virginia to Robeson County. In On the Swamp, you note that a quarter of Native Americans in North Carolina lived along the proposed route of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. What was the meaning of the Atlantic Coast pipeline project for Lumbee people? A. That was an issue very few Lumbee people paid attention to, until they saw the broader context to the project and realized that such an outsized portion of the people who would be affected by the construction and operation of that pipeline were not only Native American, but were specifically Lumbee. I think that’s what generated a lot of outrage, because for better or for worse, we’re used to being treated like a sacrifice zone.  The Atlantic Coast pipeline gave us an easy way to zoom out and ask questions like, “OK, who is going to be affected by this project? Who’s making money off of this project?” It was also a way to engage with larger questions about things like energy policy in the face of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. [It] brought up philosophical questions of how we feel about the continued use of fossil fuels and the investment in brand new fossil fuel infrastructure that’s going to last 30, 40, or 50 years, at a time when everybody knows we shouldn’t be doing that.  Q. At the end of the day, the Atlantic Coast pipeline didn’t happen. What do you think is the main reason? A. The collective resistance of all of these organizations — tribal nations, committed individuals, grassroots organizations — was enough to stall this project, until the developers realized that they had fallen into the Concorde fallacy. Basically, they got to the point where they realized that spending more money was not going to get them out of the hole they had dug in terms of opposition to this project.  But as long as [developers] hold on to those [property] easements, there’s certainly a threat of future development. Q. You write that people can physically stay on their ancestral land and still have the place taken away by climate change, or by development projects. Can you talk a little bit about still having the land but somehow losing the place? A. The place is not a set of geographic coordinates. It’s an integration of all the natural and built aspects of the environment. And so climate change, deforestation, these other types of industrialized activities, they have the potential to sweep that place out from under you, like having the rug pulled out. All of the things that make a set of geographic coordinates a beloved place can become unraveled, by these unsustainable processes of climate change and unsustainable development. I think that the case studies in [On the Swamp] show some of the specific ways that that can happen.  Q. Could you talk about your experiences as a researcher going out in the field, navigating modern land ownership systems, and how that connects to climate change? A. I don’t know if it’s fair to say that I have to bite my tongue a lot, but I kind of feel that way. When I hear people talk about their ownership of our ancestral lands — I’m a mix of an optimist and a realist, and I understand that we’re not going to turn back the clock. And frankly, I’m not sure I want to, because Lumbee people are ourselves a product of colonial conflict, and we wouldn’t exist as the distinct nation that we are today, if it were not for the colonial violence that we survived. We might exist as our ancestral nations and communities, but we definitely wouldn’t be Lumbee people. So this is a complicated issue for me.  When we think about the front lines of climate change, we don’t often think about Robeson County, North Carolina. But because our community is so attuned to that specific place, we’re not going to pick up and move if the summers get too hot, or if the droughts are too severe. That’s not an option for us. So I think that some of the urgency that I feel is not too different from the urgency that you hear from other [Indigenous] people who are similarly situated on the front lines of climate change. Q. Something else that you make a really strong point about in this book is that something can be a “solution” to climate change, but not sustainable, such as energy companies trying to capture methane at giant hog farms in Robeson County. How should people think about climate solutions, in order to also take into account their negatives? A. The reason why people latch onto this swine biogas capture scheme is if you simply run the numbers, based on the methane and the carbon dioxide budgets, it looks pretty good.  But a swine facility is a lot more than just a source of methane to the atmosphere, right? It’s all these other things in terms of water pollution, and aerosols, and even things like labor issues and animal rights. There are all these other things that are attached to that kind of facility. If you make a decision that means that facility will persist for decades into the future operating basically as-is, that has serious implications for specific people who live nearby, and for society more broadly. We don’t tend to think through all those contingencies when we make decisions about greenhouse gas budgets.  Q. What are some ways that the Lumbee tribe is proactively trying to adapt to climate change? A. Climate change is not an explicit motivation [for the Lumbee Tribe]. If you go and read on the Lumbee Tribe’s housing programs website, I don’t think you’re going to find any rationale that says, “We’re [building housing] to address climate change.” But they are. Getting people into higher-quality, well-insulated and energy-efficient houses is a big deal when it comes to addressing climate change, because we have a lot of people who live in mobile homes, and those are some of the most poorly insulated and least efficient places that you could be. And maybe 40 years ago, when our extreme summer heat wasn’t so bad, that wasn’t such a huge deal. But it’s a huge deal now.  Q. What is the connection between colonialism and climate change for eastern North Carolina, and why is drawing that line necessary?  A. The one sentence answer is, “You reap what you sow.”  The longer answer is, the beginning of making things right is telling the truth about how things became wrong in the first place. And so I really want this book to start conversations on solving these issues. We really can’t solve them in meaningful ways unless we not only acknowledge, but also fully understand, how we got to this point.  This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In a debut book, a love letter to eastern North Carolina — and an indictment of colonialism as a driver of climate change on May 17, 2024.

Climate
Indigenous
CO2

Egypt’s Famed Pyramids Overlooked a Long-Lost Branch of the Nile

A former stretch of the Nile River, now buried beneath the Sahara Desert, may help scientists understand how Egyptians built the pyramids and adapted to a drying landscape

Lost Branch of the Nile May Solve Long-Standing Mystery of Egypt’s Famed PyramidsA former stretch of the Nile River, now buried beneath the Sahara Desert, may help scientists understand how Egyptians built the pyramids and adapted to a drying landscapeBy Riis WilliamsThe Step Pyramid of Djoser, constructed during the third dynasty of Egypt. Atop a rocky, arid plateau in the Sahara’s Western Desert in Egypt stands the last of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: the Great Pyramid of Giza. The 455-foot-tall stone structure and several smaller pyramids in the area have long provided research material for scientists working to decipher ancient Egyptians’ inscriptions to figure out how they constructed such massive monuments—and to understand why they built them so far from the Nile River, the lifeblood of their great civilization.Geomorphologist Eman Ghoneim says she has pondered that last mystery for years. “I was born and lived most of my life in Egypt,” she says, “and one question that I remember asking myself since I was very young is: ‘Why did our ancestors build pyramids in this specific, odd place—and why so far from the water?’ I had this feeling like there was something more there.”The Bent Pyramid at the necropolis of Dahshur. The pyramid was constructed during Egypt’s fourth dynasty.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Ghoneim, a professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, recently showed that at the time they were built, the pyramids were in fact much closer to water. (They stand more than five miles from the Nile’s closest bank today.) By analyzing batches of satellite images and sediment samples collected from deep beneath the desert’s surface, she and her research team located a long-lost ancient branch of the Nile that once ran through the foothills just beside the Giza pyramid field. It’s likely that this channel, which the study team named the Ahramat (“pyramid” in Arabic), is how builders transported materials to the pyramid construction grounds, Ghoneim says. Knowing its course can help archeologists search for potential sites of ancient human settlements that may be buried beneath vast, dusty plain. The researchers detailed their discovery in a study published on Thursday in Communications Earth & Environment. Scientists have long suspected that the Nile—which runs northward for roughly 4,100 miles from Lake Victoria in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda to the Mediterranean Sea—once had several offshoots. Past research indicates that during the middle of the Holocene epoch, about 10,000 to 6,000 years ago, the Nile floodplain was a lush, marshy habitat that narrowed and became largely barren after a long period of scant rainfall and increased aridity in the Late Holocene.Eman Ghoneim’s research team organizes collected soil samples.Today’s scorched, unforgiving Sahara is a tricky place to conduct the kind of fieldwork involved in searching for former river channels. Before braving the environment for a dig, the research team used radar satellites to peer beneath the top layer of earth and produce images of the subsurface. These revealed subtle patterns and textures in the ground’s layers near the pyramids—features that differed from other areas of the desert and hinted at the long-ago presence of running water. “We were looking at these meandering natural features closer to the [pyramid] field, like long depressions and troughs, now covered up entirely by farmlands and sand,” Ghoneim says. “It can be very hard to see if you don’t know what to look for.”Ghoneim and her colleagues then traveled to Egypt, where they used large drills to excavate two “cores,” or cylinders of earth, extending dozens of miles below the surface. When the drill pulled up sand from deep below, Ghoneim knew the team had found remnants of a lost river. “There is, of course, sand on the surface,” she says. “But the presence of sand and other coarse sediments underneath the surface—instead of clay or silt—indicates that there was once running water in the area.”The water course of the ancient Ahramat Branch borders a large number of pyramids dating from Egypt’s Old Kingdom to its Second Intermediate Period and spanning between its third and 13th dynasties.The researchers tracked the Ahramat’s former course for nearly 40 miles. Ghoneim says it may have run even longer, and more research could determine the channel’s general depth and width. It’s unclear why the waterway ran dry, but the team speculates that a combination of tectonic plate movements, windblown sand and the severe drought in the Late Holocene spelled its demise.Dev Niyogi, a geology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who was not involved in the new study, says understanding how ancient societies were shaped by their ever changing landscapes and waterways can help guide modern efforts to develop infrastructure wisely in an era of climate change. The ancient Nile branch also serves as a reminder that “resilient human societies are never rigid,” says Adam Rabinowitz, an archeologist and classics professor also at U.T. Austin, who is currently working on a project designed to ready Texans for dramatic, climate-driven changes to the state’s water availability over the next 25 years. “We have to explore how past societies responded to similar climate-related challenges ... so that we can better understand the human experience of living through and adapting to a major environmental change.”Ghoneim says she hopes to continue piecing together a map of the Nile’s former life by further studying the Ahramat and other river channels that may be lost beneath the desert. “For most cities, we’re not talking about how water helped the building of pyramids but rather how human civilizations otherwise depended on it and adapted to its changes,” she says. “And when we learn from the past, we can prepare for the future.”

Climate
Science
Water

Suggested Viewing

Saving Jaguars and Ourselves

"Saving Jaguars and Ourselves" brings attention to the plight of jaguars, wildlife, the Pantanal in Brazil AND the Amazon Rainforest and Cerrado Savannah. The film combines intimate human conversations and portrayals of jaguars in the Pantanal with clear explanations of larger threats that expand to include the Amazon, Cerrado, and the U.S.—focusing on ways that individuals in the U.S. can act effectively to bring change. These three areas form a critical Triad for preventing global climate change. My film explains why this Triad is crucial--why OUR survival in the U.S. depends on its recovery--and what we must do to literally save it, jaguars/wildlife, and Earth. The Pantanal wetland is larger than Florida and stores at least 10 billion tons of carbon. The Cerrado stores at least 13 billion tons. The Amazon stores 200 billion tons. If ANY of these areas completely burns, the carbon releases would be catastrophic. The Amazon and Pantanal are paradises. The Pantanal is directly affected by destruction of the Amazon and Cerrado savannah. Scientists believe that 80% of the Amazon Rainforest must be protected by 2025 or it will not be able to regenerate itself. The Amazon creates its own weather but if deforestation continues, its ecosystem will die and dying trees will give off as much as 200 billion tons of carbon over the next 30-50 years, effectively destroying our ability to protect the climate--and the Earth will die. The Pantanal is one of the most unique and beautiful places in the world, home to over 5,000 animal species and is now also facing threats from upstream river projects.

Solutions
Animals
Climate

A Whale's Worth

The Canary Islands are a whale Paradise. Their waters hold more than a third of the world’s species, making it the most important enclave in the European Union, and one of the most relevant globally.Today, this paradise is being threatened by different human pressures, such as boat collisions, plastic consumption and climate change. This struggle aggravates their mortality each year and makes us face ourselves as the ones responsible for their survival, forcing us to rethink how much we value these animals currently.How much is a whale worth? Can you put a price on the life of such a majestic animal? How can we estimate that value? How has the value that human beings give to whales changed throughout history? What are whales used and needed for?To answer all these questions, Natacha Aguilar, an eminent Canarian scientist and whale expert, backed up by a group of scientists and non-profit organizations, will guide us in a spectacular journey through time and space to discover the never-told stories of the lives of these animals.

Animals
Culture
Climate

Resilience

In 1998, a vast power grid serving 5 million people in Canada was destroyed by an ice storm. Twenty years later researchers of that disaster are developing a new kind of resilient power grid. Based in part on the book The Grid and the Village, the film explores how to protect grids and the people they serve from war, terrorist attack, and extreme weather.

Energy
Climate
Crisis

Capturing The Fire

When Louise Coghill saw the first plume of smoke begin to rise behind her parents property, she could never have predicted that in less than four hours, it would become a wall of flames, swallowing everything in its path. A photographer by trade, Louise has travelled the world documenting everything from the nomadic wanderers of Mongolia, to base life at Mount Everest. Capturing the extraordinary comes naturally to Louise, so when her family home in the semi-rural Western Australian town of Gidgegannup became engulfed in flames, her first instinct wasn’t to take shelter, it was to pick up her camera.

Conservation
Climate
Nature

The Whale Guitar: Instrument of Change

Inspired by Herman Melville's epic tale, "Moby-Dick or The Whale", a late-blooming singer/songwriter and former toy designer, Jen Long, acts on a startling vision and commissions the design and build of a remarkable custom electric guitar. It's body is "The Whale" itself as it snags the mad Captain Ahab in the tangled ropes of his own obsession, and prepares to launch a boat of his whalers to their doom. The entire guitar reinterprets Melville's tale as an Anthropocene climate change warning, with the whale representing the seas and storms of climate change arising on this "third day" of late stage capitalism. Hundreds of guitarists, including J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr., and Marissa Paternoster of Screaming Females, have played and signed this "Instrument of Change" to amplify the alarm to turn our ship of over-production and over-consumption around while there is still time. As the embroidered strap featuring Starbuck's last words implores: "oh! Ahab, not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist."

Music
Activism
Climate

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