Feel free to add your silver/gold heroes. I've missed so many.
https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ban-jp-morgan-from-trading-gold-and-silver
Hi Reddit! We are Cristina and Jenna, tropical rainforest ecologists at Imperial College London working in Amazonian Brazil and Costa Rica. Ask us Anything!
We'll be answering your questions until 6 PM UK time / 1 PM Eastern time.
Proof - https://twitter.com/ImperialSpark/status/1386945780255182851
The planet is going through an unprecedented rate of species loss. Last year a United Nations report concluded as many as 1 million species are at risk of going extinct in the coming decades at a rate 1000 times higher because of human action.
The tropics are at the frontline of this crisis. They are home to 75 percent of all species and 40 percent of the human population, many of whom live in poverty and rely on working the land to make a living. We urgently need to find ways to combine biodiversity conservation with human welfare.
As tropical ecologists, we work with authorities such as the Brazilian government to advise on policy-change that seeks to avoid biodiversity extinction. To do this we need to understand what exactly is driving species to go extinct and what the impact their disappearance has on the environments they leave behind. With this information, we can identify critical thresholds for forest loss to further inform policy, and we plan ‘wildlife corridors’ to help species navigate around humans and our expanding tropical agriculture such as palm oil and teak plantations.
In Brazil, Cristina’s work led to the Brazilian government’s adoption of a 30 percent forest cover threshold across the country’s Atlantic Forest region. While in Costa Rica, Jenna has been part of a team setting up over 400 audio devices to record the sounds of the rainforest. We then used machine learning to pick out and track the calls of the forest’s endangered spider monkeys as well as getting a wider picture of local biodiversity loss.
During this AMA we’re happy to talk about the drivers of deforestation and how the resulting biodiversity loss plays out on the ground. We can discuss the limitations of reforestation solutions, and why you can’t ‘make up' for cutting down rainforest by planting trees elsewhere. Instead, we can discuss a more sustainable way forward which both preserves species and benefits local economies.
For more information
- Cristina talks about the forests of her homeland in São Paulo and how her work on it was adopted by the Brazilian government - [https://www.timeshi
The global scientific consensus is that we've reached/are reaching past the tipping point of preventable future suffering when it comes to the harms climate change and natural resources depletion will bring to the human society.
To summarize just a couple of the predictions most of them agree on:
- Water will become a disputed resource in multiple regions of the world (already is in some), which will lead to wars and authoritative regimes breakouts
- The scarcity of water and disrupted weather cycles will threaten food security, prompting lower standards of living, famines, etc... which will cause massive movements of population (we're talking 100 000 000s here). This also means wars for the foreseeable future
- Adverse "natural" events such as floods, lethal heatwaves, pandemics, etc... will multiply in consequence to the compounded effects of human activity on this planet. This will also contributes to the migrations described above
Let's suppose that we all agree with this consensus. Even if these events are bound to happen, we could still mitigate their harm by putting in place some of the measures scientists and/or ecologists advocate for, which would allow us to still avoid part of the human suffering that seems promised to us.
Unfortunately, scientific proof, argumentation, the standard political path (electoral process, lobbying...), peaceful protestation, nor art seem to move the needle remotely enough.
In this context of extreme urgency, the use of violence as a way to move that needle for ecological gains is justified morally and logically since it brings change faster than any other path.
Violence doesn't entail direct harm to people in my view. I'm thinking about destruction of private property owned by the most polluting companies, neutralizing of supply chains that don't respect international standards of pollution...
For example:
Drought-hit California moves to halt Nestlé from taking millions of gallons of water
In this instance, I believe violence is justified, for example by blocking access to water sources from the company or destroying its pumping equipment.
**Please note again that my view is not that any violence is justified in this context. I'm talking calculated, targeted violence that serves the sole purpose of acting as a dissuading factor against entities (mostly companies) that considerably con
... keep reading on reddit ➡I'm looking for a deck that is made by someone whose understanding of natural symbolism comes from a deep working understanding of an ecosystem/animals actual lifecycles/behaviour, etc. I work in ecosystem stuff, and can relate best to 'nature' based symbolism but find most naturey tarot seems to be made by people who don't spend 8 hours a day in the woods, and have a more symbolic rather then intimate/realistically informed understanding of the natural imagry they use.
Is there any natural scientist made decks out there? I've seen a few very specific herb/plant ones, but I'm hoping for something that uses a broader selection of natural referents.
I've recently hurt my back to the point where I am concerned about long-term ramifications to my ability to do fieldwork - it's been 2 months and I still have to ration my time being upright, and I'm considering surgical options. I've been doing research composing of invertebrate community ecology and a tiny of physiological ecology and I'm nearly done with my masters degree. Most of my experience is in organismal biology (primarily animals with some botany), ecology, a minor in geography, and recently dipped into physiology. What options could someone in my position transition into without pushing 2-4 years of education and experience aside? Any advice, recommendations, or relevant experiences (first or second-hand) is welcome.
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