3 local solutions to replace coal jobs and ensure a just transition for mining communities

As the world shifts to renewable energy, helping the communities that have depended on fossil fuels for jobs is becoming ever more pressing.

The 2015 Paris Agreement notes the imperative of a “just transition” for affected workforces, with “the creation of decent work and quality jobs” to replace those lost.

Trade unionists have been arguing this point for at least several decades. The first use of the phrase “just transition” attributed to the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, which called for a “Just Transition Program” for workers in the logging industry in 1996.

Yet for all the talk since, action remains scarce.

Three clear priorities for policy makers, however, have emerged from Australia’s Hunter Valley region, where coal mines employ about 14,000 workers directly and thousands more indirectly. These are:

• the need for a local coordinating authority
• funding for a “flagship” job-creation project, and
• more resources for technical and vocational education.

These priorities were identified through consultations undertaken in late 2021 by two community organisations, Hunter Renewal and Hunter Jobs Alliance. They did so in response to the NSW government announcing A$25 million a year to a Royalties for Rejuvenation Fund.

The fund is meant to “ensure coal mining communities have the support they need to develop other industries in the long-term”.

But how to spend the money wisely?

The consultations involved 314 people from across the region ranking 22 ideas from from previous work on this issue. About one-third of participants were involved in workshop discussions. The balance contributed through a survey.

Key to the top three priorities is the need for self-determination, allowing local communities to decide on which solutions are best and how to implement them, not a “cookie-cutter” approach imposed from the top.

As one workshop participant put it:

The most important thing is involving the local community in designing the transition. Unless you take the locals with you on the journey, so that they own the changes, it will not be successful.

1. Have A Local Coordinating Authority

Local coordination is important to ensure solutions reflect a community’s needs, skills and opportunities.

In Victoria, the state government set up the Latrobe Valley Authority in 2016, following the unexpected announcement of the closure of the Hazelwood power station in 2017.

Beginning with $270 million in funding, the authority is headquartered in Morwell, in the heart of the Latrobe Valley’s coal-mining industry.

This means those who work for the authority know the region and are in touch with the stakeholders from industry, government, education and community organisations who inform its “Smart Specialisation” approach to identify local strengths and competitive advantages.

A local authority can also coordinate with other authorities to ensure fossil fuel communities aren’t competing against each other by pursuing to create jobs in the same new industries.

2. Fund Flagship Job-Creation Projects

Flagship projects give tangible direction to the transition and create hope for the future.

An example comes from the coal-mining community of Collie in Western Australia. It involves industry, government and university researchers working together on a project to make “Colliecrete”, a more sustainable form of concrete made from fly-ash, a waste product from the burning of coal by the local coal-fired power stations.

Emulating this plan using waste fly-ash from Hunter Valley power stations could potentially create 3,000 permanent full-time jobs in NSW, according to a report commissioned by Hunter Community Environment Centre.

3. Expand Vocational Training

Retraining is crucial to new industries to flourish, and for workers to find new jobs.

A 2020 report from the Clean Energy Council found shortages of skilled and experienced staff are hampering development in renewable energy industries. The report recommended the entire vocational educational system needs reviewing, because “existing training systems are not meeting industry needs”.

Indeed in the Hunter region, TAFE closures are occurring at a time when they should be expanding.

As a workshop participant put it (with great understatment):

It is problematic when funding keeps getting cut.

Think Local, Act Local

Local communities understand the transition away from economic reliance on fossil-fuel industries can’t happen overnight. They are keen to get moving. These priorities identified by the coal-mining communities of NSW Hunter Valley hold lessons for the rest of Australia, and the world.

What’s important is that local communities take the leading role in defining their challenges, and then addressing them.

The people who know a community best, and what is possible, are those who live in them. You just have to ask them.

Liam Phelan, Senior Lecturer, School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle and Kimberley Crofts, Doctoral student, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Net zero: UK government sued for weak strategy – so here’s what makes a good climate change plan

Two-thirds of countries have now committed to reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions at some point this century. During 2021, the share of large companies with net zero commitments jumped from one in five to one in three.

Sadly, few of these net zero targets were accompanied by measures necessary to achieve them. This discrepancy is increasingly the subject of legal challenges. The governments of the Netherlands and Germany, as well as oil major Shell, are among defendants who have been ordered by courts to cut emissions faster.

Judges found that tepid climate strategies violated human rights laws by infringing on the rights of young people. Globally, the number of climate-related court cases has doubled since 2015.

The UK is the latest country whose government environmental groups have sued for failing to take sufficient action on climate change. While the country’s net zero strategy deserves praise for some aspects – like setting a deadline to phase out new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 – even the government’s climate change advisor thinks it won’t be enough to meet statutory carbon targets.

So what does a good net zero strategy look like? In a new perspective paper we set out how to get net zero right. We argue that net zero strategies can be measured against three principles: the urgent pursuit of emission cuts, the cautious use of carbon offsets and carbon removal, and alignment with broader objectives for sustainable development.

Urgency

Because global temperature change is determined by cumulative emissions, the pace at which we reduce emissions is important. The longer we wait, the sooner the remaining carbon space in the atmosphere is used up.

Net zero strategies must contain measures to start cutting emissions immediately. These are often lacking or vague. The UK strategy, for example, proposes replacing gas boilers with heat pumps, but the support programme it offers is available to only a small proportion of buildings and households.

Emissions cuts must also be comprehensive and include the most difficult sectors to decarbonise, such as heavy industry, aviation and agriculture. Tackling them will require consumers to make difficult choices, for example, on how much they travel and what they eat. Most net zero strategies shy away from spelling these out.

Integrity

The net zero strategies of many companies and governments rely heavily on carbon offsets. That is, rather than reducing their own emissions, they pay third parties to reduce theirs, for example, by funding renewable energy projects or planting trees.

This raises a number of problems. It is difficult to prove whether offsets actually reduce emissions. Many projects funded via offsets would have happened anyway. The offset market needs much more rigorous regulation.

More importantly, net zero requires all emissions to come down. Offsets shouldn’t be used to allow pollution to continue unabated. They are a last resort.

If a strategy does include using offsets, those offsets should remove carbon from the atmosphere, rather than reduce emissions elsewhere. This is the meaning of net zero – a balance between emissions and removal.

Most options for removing carbon are biological, such as tree planting. Technological solutions, such as capturing carbon directly from the air and storing it underground, are still at the pilot stage, and there are concerns about their cost and ability to safely store CO₂.

Most modelled pathways for meeting the Paris Agreement’s goal of averting dangerous climate change involve scaling up carbon removal. The world needs more investment in these techniques, but also stronger legal frameworks to ensure their risks are managed properly, and an honest public debate to make sure people are on board with it.

Sustainability

Net zero strategies don’t work in isolation. They must be aligned with broader environmental, social and economic objectives.

Net zero strategies will fail unless they proactively manage the impact of decarbonisation policies on workers, communities and households. Thankfully, labour market interventions like re-skilling programmes can help workers transition into low-carbon employment and social welfare payments can shield households in poverty from energy price rises. Both must form an integral part of net zero strategies.

Climate action can have multiple additional benefits, for biodiversity, public health, and food security. But this is not guaranteed. Interventions can have unintended consequences. For example, commercial plantations of exotic tree species in naturally treeless habitats may claim to store carbon, but they could crowd out native species, rob local people of traditional livelihoods or succumb to pests and diseases.

There are economic opportunities which net zero strategies should aim to capture. Low-carbon technologies like electric vehicles may unleash a virtuous cycle of innovation, investment and growth as information technology did two decades ago. More immediately, investment in, for example, home energy efficiency and renewable energy could help the economy recover from the pandemic in a sustainable way. Unfortunately, only a fraction of economic recovery packages offered by governments have been genuinely green.

The necessity of reaching net zero emissions is a scientific reality. The growth in net zero targets suggests that political and business leaders know this to be true. They are still struggling to make social, economic and political sense of net zero, as the emergence of court challenges shows.

But we are starting to understand how to get net zero right. If interpreted and governed well, net zero could be the best hope we have for climate action.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 10,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

Sam Fankhauser, Professor of Climate Economics and Policy, University of Oxford and Kaya Axelsson, Net Zero Policy Engagement Fellow, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Methane in the atmosphere is at an all-time high – here’s what it means for climate change

Methane recently reached 1,900 parts per billion (ppb) of Earth’s atmosphere according to measurements taken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US. This compares with about 700 ppb before the industrial revolution.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, but lasts around nine years in the air. Including the knock-on effects it has on other gases, its total global warming impact since 1750 is roughly half that of CO₂.

After rising sharply in the 1980s and 1990s, atmospheric methane then stabilised. Growth resumed in 2007 and has accelerated in recent years – the sharpest rise on record happened in 2020. This was not expected when world leaders signed the 2015 Paris Agreement. Methane is becoming the largest discrepancy from emissions trajectories necessary for meeting the agreement’s target.

So what’s behind the recent surge – and is there a way to reverse it?

Where Methane Comes From

About 600 million tonnes of methane are released into the atmosphere each year. Estimates suggest two-fifths of these emissions come from natural sources, mainly rotting vegetation in swamps. The remaining three-fifths of emissions come from sources tied to human activity.

Emissions from the fossil fuel industry are well over 100 million tonnes a year and grew rapidly in the 1980s. Natural gas, which in the UK heats homes and generates roughly half of electricity, is mainly methane. Gas industry leaks are widespread at wells and pipelines and from distribution pipes under streets and home boilers. The coal industry was reponsible for up to one-third of fossil fuel emissions between 2000 and 2017 via ventilation shafts in mines and during the transportation and crushing of coal for power stations.

Agriculture, producing about 150 million tonnes a year, is the largest overall source. As are urban landfills and sewage systems, contributing about 70 million tonnes annually.

Scientists can identify sources of methane by studying the proportion of carbon-12 to carbon-13 in the atmosphere. These different forms of carbon – chemically similar but with different masses – are known as isotopes. Biogenic methane, made by microbes in rotting vegetation or in cow stomachs, is relatively rich in carbon-12, while methane from fossil fuels and fires has comparatively more carbon-13.

For two centuries, rapidly expanding gas, coal and oil industries steadily drove atmospheric methane richer in carbon-13. Since 2007, that trend has reversed, and the proportion of carbon-13 in atmospheric methane has decreased. Although fossil fuel emissions may still be growing, soaring methane emissions are now primarily the result of faster-growing biogenic sources.

Why Are Biogenic Emissions Growing?

Global monitoring shows that in many years since 2007, methane’s growth in the atmosphere has been led from sources in the tropics and sub-tropics. In some years, the high northern latitudes have also been important contributors.

From tropical swamps in the Amazon, Nile and Congo basins to tundra in Russia and muskeg bogs in Canada, wetlands emit roughly 200 million tonnes of methane a year. As global temperatures increase, the rate at which wetlands generate and decompose biomass grows and these environments release more methane. Methane emissions accelerate climate change and climate change causes the release of more methane – a positive feedback of warming feeding more warming.

The microbes in the stomachs of ruminant animals like cattle, sheep, goats and camels are similar to wetland microbes. In effect, cows are walking wetlands. Ruminants produce nearly as much methane as fossil fuel emissions, roughly 115 million tonnes of annually. Globally, about two-thirds of farmland is animal pasture.

While emissions from landfills have been reduced in many countries in Europe, western Europe emits a lot of methane from biodigesters which convert urban food and garden waste to fertiliser. In Africa and India, expanding cities are creating new landfills while rural areas burn vast quantities of crop waste and grass, causing widespread air pollution, but there is little research on their emissions.

Mopping Up Methane

Methane’s short lifetime means that cutting emissions quickly reduces the greenhouse impact. Gas leaks are obvious targets, both at wells and in leaky street pipes. Ending the coal industry is an urgent global priority, not just to cut methane but also CO₂ and air pollution.

In the short-term, removing methane from coal mine air ventilation and cattle barns can be done as easily as certain pollutants are removed from car exhausts. Emissions from biodigesters will need stricter government regulation.

Reducing emissions in tropical nations means ending crop waste burning. Landfills are likely to be fast-growing sources of both methane and pollution too, yet emissions can be cut by covering landfills with soil.

Growing agricultural emissions are linked to rapid human population growth and the increasing global demand for a meat-rich diet. Population growth is slowed by improving access to education among women and girls.

Methane hitting 1,900 ppb is a fire alarm. We cannot stop natural wetland emissions. But human-caused emissions can be reduced, quickly. At COP26 in Glasgow – the most recent UN climate change summit in November 2021 – more than 100 nations signed the Global Methane Pledge, promising to cut methane emissions 30% by 2030.

Getting started is simple: plug gas leaks, cover landfills, halt crop waste burning and remove methane from coal mine ventilation. All these actions will have wider benefits such as reducing air pollution, but large emitters, including China, India, Russia, Qatar and Australia, did not join. Absentee nations ultimately harm themselves and should sign the pledge.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 10,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

Euan Nisbet, Professor of Earth Sciences, Royal Holloway University of London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Some endangered species can no longer survive in the wild. So should we alter their genes?

Around the world, populations of many beloved species are declining at increasing rates. According to one grim projection, as many as 40% of the world’s species may be extinct by 2050. Alarmingly, many of these declines are caused by threats for which few solutions exist.

Numerous species now depend on conservation breeding programs for their survival. But these programs typically do not encourage species to adapt and survive in the wild alongside intractable threats such as climate change and disease.

This means some species can no longer exist in the wild, which causes major downstream effects on the ecosystem. Consider, for example, how a coral reef would struggle to function without corals.

What if there was another way? My colleagues and I have developed an intervention method that aims to give endangered species the genetic features they need to survive in the wild.

Bringing Theory Into Practice

Over generations, natural selection enables species to adapt to threats. But in many instances today, the speed at which threats are developing is outpacing species’ ability to adapt.

This problem is especially apparent in wildlife threatened by newly emerging infectious diseases such as chytridiomycosis in amphibians, and in climate-affected species such as corals.

The toolkit my colleagues and I developed is called “targeted genetic intervention” or TGI. It works by increasing the occurrence or frequency of genetic features that impact an organism’s fitness in the presence of the threat. We outline the method in a recent research paper.

The toolkit involves artificial selection and synthetic biology. These tools are well established in agriculture and medicine but relatively untested as conservation tools. We explain them in more detail below.

Many tools in our TGI toolkit have been discussed in theory in conservation literature in recent decades. But rapid developments in genome sequencing and synthetic biology mean some are now possible in practice.

The developments have made it easier to understand the genetic basis of features which enable a species to adapt, and to manipulate them.

What Is Artificial Selection?

Humans have long used artificial (or phenotypic) selection to promote desirable characteristics in animals and plants raised for companionship or food. This genetic alteration has led to organisms, such as domestic dogs and maize, that are dramatically different from their wild progenitors.

Traditional artificial selection can lead to outcomes, such as high inbreeding rates, that affect the health and resilience of the organism and are undesirable for conservation. If you’ve ever owned a purebred dog, you might be aware of some of these genetic disorders.

And when it comes to conservation, determining which individuals from a species are resistant to, say, a deadly pathogen would involve exposing the animal to the threat – clearly not in the interests of species preservation.

Scientists in the livestock industry have developed a new approach to circumvent these problems. Called genomic selection, it combines data from laboratory work (such as a disease trial) with the genetic information of the animals to predict which individuals bear genetic features conducive to adaptation.

These individuals are then chosen for breeding. Over subsequent generations, a population’s ability to survive alongside pervasive threats increases.

Genomic selection has led to disease-resistant salmon and livestock that produce more milk and better tolerate heat. But it is yet to be tested in conservation.

What Is Synthetic Biology?

Synthetic biology is a toolkit for promoting change in organisms. It includes methods such as transgenesis and gene editing, which can be used to introduce lost or novel genes or tweak specific genetic features.

Recent synthetic biology tools such as CRISPR-Cas9 have created a buzz in the medical world, and are also starting to gain the attention of conservation biologists.

Such tools can accurately tweak targeted genetic features in an individual organism – making it more able to adapt – while leaving the rest of the genome untouched. The genetic modifications are then passed on to subsequent generations.

The method reduces the likelihood of unintended genetic changes that can occur with artificial selection.

Synthetic biology methods are currently being trialled for conservation in multiple species around the world. These include the chestnut tree and black-footed ferrets in the United States, and corals in Australia.

I am working with researchers at the University of Melbourne to develop TGI approaches in Australian frogs. We are trialling these approaches in the iconic southern corroboree frog, and plan to extend them to other species if they prove effective.

Worldwide, the disease chytridiomycosis is devastating frog populations. Caused by the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, it has led to the extinction of about 90 frog species and declines in as many as 500 others.

Many frog species now rely on conservation breeding for their continued survival. No effective solution for restoring chytrid-susceptible frogs to the wild exists, because the fungus cannot be eradicated.

Looking Ahead

As with many conservation approaches, targeted genetic intervention is likely to involve trade-offs. For example, genetic features that make a species resistant to one disease may make it more susceptible to another.

But the rapid rate of species declines means we should trial such potential solutions before it’s too late. The longer species are absent from an ecosystem, the greater the chance of irreversible environmental changes.

Any genetic intervention of this type should involve all stakeholders, including Indigenous peoples and local communities. And caution should be taken to ensure species are fit for release and pose no risk to the environment.

By bringing the concept of TGI to the attention of the public, government, and other scientists, we hope we will spur discussion and encourage research on its risks and benefits.

Tiffany Kosch, Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

‘Life finds a way’: here’s how rainbowfish survive in Australia’s scorching desert

A trip into central Australia involves packing your 4WD to the brim with survival gear, water and food. Yet fish have managed to persist in that parched landscape for thousands of years – how do they do it?

We at the Flinders Molecular Ecology Lab went about finding out. Our recent research examined rainbowfish in Australia, to discover how they hold onto life in isolated pockets of water in the desert.

Pockets of water in the desert can only hold small fish populations. A small population means a small gene pool – which can lead to inbreeding and poor health, as we sometimes see in endangered species.

But we found even small populations can adapt to the harsh environments of water holes and small creeks. Life finds a way – even in one of the most extreme and unpredictable environments on Earth.

Prospering In Central Australia

Native desert rainbowfish (Melanotaenia splendida tatei) live in the deserts of central Australia. They grow to about 9cm and are usually silver and iridescent, with a yellow and green chequered pattern on the fins.

Desert rainbowfish populations live in slow-flowing and still habitats, including impermanent rivers, waterholes, lakes, flowing bores and stock dams.

Their populations fluctuate during boom-bust cycles. During rare flooding events in the desert, rainbowfish breed in large numbers and spread along temporary streams and floodwaters.

Our Findings

Our research sought to determine how rainbowfish populations persist in desert regions of central Australia, and whether their genomes show evidence of adaptation to the local harsh conditions.

We collected 344 desert rainbowfish from 18 rivers and waterholes from across the vast and arid Lake Eyre Basin, and from semi-arid regions of the Murray-Darling Basin.

We then compared the variation in the genomes of these fish with data from satellite images about the presence of surface water in central Australia.

We found that natural selection in rainbowfish is stronger in regions of the desert that have drier conditions. Fish from the very arid western region of central Australia adapt differently to dry conditions than those from the semi-arid eastern region.

We also found these gene variations are carried by the fish as they disperse during the floods. The fish that were pre-adapted to very harsh conditions retreated with the floodwaters to wait out the often extended drought periods in small, isolated waterholes.

This suggests genes adapted to the most arid conditions may help small populations to persist in harsh environments. These adaptations might also help the species persist in future climates, which are expected to become drier and with more extreme events.

The most intriguing adaptive difference involved a mutation in a gene coding which leads to some fish producing a slightly different guanine nucleotide-binding protein. Fish use these proteins for taste and smell, to detect salinity and water flow, and to control light sensitivity for vision.

Rainbowfish in Central Australia may survive the harsh conditions because of this difference in the protein and other adaptations. This would improve their ability to sense the environment and how it varies across seasons.

The variation can be compared to the recent Omicron COVID-19 variant. Research has found mutations in the spike protein in some variants may aid its spread among humans.

Looking Ahead

Our research found the genetic variation can be maintained in small rainbowfish populations to allow the species to survive in the desert.

The findings suggest that the population size of desert rainbowfish, at least during very dry periods of the year, is less than that commonly thought necessary in nature for species conservation and for adaptation to future climate changes. This turns on its head traditional thinking that small populations are evolutionary dead ends.

As climate change worsens, our findings highlight the importance of conserving natural river flows to enable freshwater species to respond and adapt.

Catherine R. M. Attard, Lecturer in Molecular Ecology, Flinders University; Chris Brauer, Postdoctoral Fellow Molecular Ecology Lab, Flinders University; Jonathan Sandoval Castillo, Postdoctoral Fellow Molecular Ecology, Flinders University; Louis Bernatchez, Professeur en biologie, Université Laval; Luciano Beheregaray, Professor of Biodiversity Genomics, Flinders University, and Peter Unmack, Research Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Leaf oysters: the unsung heroes of estuaries are disappearing, and we know almost nothing about them

Am I not pretty enough? This article is part of The Conversation’s series introducing you to Australia’s unloved animals that need our help.

Camouflaged by a layer of silty mud, most people probably wouldn’t notice the large flat oysters lurking beneath shallow water in Australia’s coastal estuaries. These are remarkable “leaf oysters”, and they can form reefs, produce mauve pearls, and reach the size of a dinner plate.

Of the 14 species of reef-forming oysters and mussels in Australia, leaf oysters (Isognomon ephippium) are the least well known. Our review, published last year, found only 30 publications globally that mention leaf oysters. Half of those were only incidental recordings.

This is a huge problem because there is widespread evidence of significant declines in the number and condition of shellfish reefs. In Australia, 99% of shellfish reefs have been described as “functionally extinct”, meaning the habitat these reefs previously provided has now been lost.

This has led to serious efforts in shellfish reef restoration. Leaf oysters are crucial members of these ecosystems, and we need substantially more information about them to ensure they’re not left out of these programs. Let’s delve into what we do know.

Meet The Leaf Oyster

Oysters are often associated with summer feasts and intensive aquaculture. While leaf oysters are edible, they have a large shell to meat ratio and so aren’t particularly attractive as a source of food for humans.

But like the iconic pearl oysters, leaf oysters are members of the Pteridine family of bivalve molluscs and have an inner nacre layer. This means they can produce pearls mainly mauve in colour, or sometimes purple, bronze, cream or silver.

Although not much is known about the life history of leaf oysters, we do know they reproduce by spawning. Thousands of eggs and sperm are released into the water and develop into swimming larvae after fertilisation. Only a fraction of these survive and settle onto the substrate, where they develop into juvenile oysters.

Like other reef-forming oysters such as the Sydney rock oyster and the Pacific oyster, leaf oyster larvae appear to be attracted to the shells of the adult oysters. They attach to the surface via “byssus” – a matt of strong hair-like threads. This enables shell clusters to form, which can develop into leaf oyster reefs.

Leaf oysters are ecosystem engineers. When they live in dense clumps, they support an entire ecosystem of fish and other invertebrates.

The flat, plate-like shape of the leaf oysters provides a complex three-dimensional habitat, with many nooks and crannies for species to seek shelter from drying out at low tide, and to hide from predators at high tide. Their shells provide a hard surface for other invertebrates to attach to, and form biofilms grazed by snails and fish.

Our preliminary studies on leaf oyster beds have detected a high diversity of fish species. Using underwater videos, we recorded a number of important fishing species, including yellowfin bream, dusky flathead, sand whiting, sand mullet, leatherjacket and black spotted snapper.

Keeping Estuaries Clean

Leaf oyster reefs are found on soft sediment in estuaries, on sand, mud and among mangroves, in tropical and subtropical regions around the world. In Australia, they’re found from Exmouth in Western Australia to the Macleay River on the mid-north coast of New South Wales.

We’ve also seen leaf oysters on artificial rock walls and in shallow water along the edge of small boat harbours. Some of these are likely to be remnant populations of larger clusters or reefs, but given they’re often partially buried, there’s little information available about their past distribution.

Like other oyster reefs, we expect leaf oysters play a significant role in maintaining water quality and nutrient cycling in estuaries.

Coastal lakes and estuaries are a major repository of run-off from agriculture and urban development, leading to poor water quality. Shellfish reefs in healthy estuaries can buffer this effect by removing particles and bacteria from the water, and reducing dissolved nutrients and algal blooms.

As animals that eat food suspended in water, leaf oysters can filter vast volumes of water each day. With their large gills and extremely flat shape, their filtration abilities are highly effective in slow-moving tidal waters.

Oyster reefs more generally also trap and stabilise sediment, which can provide an important buffer against coastal erosion.

Threats To Leaf Oyster Reefs

The current condition of shellfish reefs in Australia is dire. Declining water quality is recognised as one of the most serious threats to estuaries, with excessive nutrients leading to algal blooms, which can be harmful.

High amounts of sediment can clog up the gills of filter-feeding oysters and can lead to the complete burial of historical oyster reefs. In the past, dredging for oysters, boat harbours and breakwaters has also directly damaged oyster reefs.

Our recent surveys (which aren’t yet published) of leaf oyster beds across four estuaries in northern NSW suggest leaf oysters have disappeared from some locations where they were previously known to live. In the remaining beds, we found 30-67% of the shells to be dead.

Their deaths have terrible knock-on effects and are correlated with poor water quality after rain, high acidity, low dissolved oxygen, high nutrients and higher rates of sedimentation.

But one of biggest threats to leaf oyster populations is the lack of knowledge on the species. In particular, the lack of historical information on where they live and how many there are makes it difficult to document how they’ve declined. And this is necessary for listing them as threatened species.

Our concern extends beyond the survival and protection of the single species, to the entire ecosystem the leaf oysters underpin.

Improving our understanding of leaf oyster reefs requires more comprehensive mapping of the remaining populations and gaining a better understanding of their life cycle. This includes when they breed, how the larvae develop and where they settle, their age at sexual maturity and how long they live.

This will help us include them in reef restoration and estuarine management plans, protecting Australia’s precious, fragile wildlife in the face of a difficult future.

Kirsten Benkendorff, Associate Professor in Marine Biology, Southern Cross University; Chamara Benthotage, PhD candidate, Southern Cross University, and Victoria Cole, Adjuct, Southern Cross University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

5 ways climate change increases the threat of tsunamis, from collapsing ice shelves to sea level rise

The enormous eruption of the underwater volcano in Tonga, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai, triggered a tsunami that reached countries all around the Pacific rim, even causing a disastrous oil spill along 21 beaches in Peru.

In Tonga, waves about 2 metres high were recorded before the sea level gauge failed, and waves of up to 15m hit the west coasts of Tongatapu Islands, ‘Eua, and Ha’apai Islands. Volcanic activity could continue for weeks or months, but it’s hard to predict if or when there’ll be another such powerful eruption.

Most tsunamis are caused by earthquakes, but a significant percentage (about 15%) are caused by landslides or volcanoes. Some of these may be interlinked – for example, landslide tsunamis are often triggered by earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.

But does climate change also play a role? As the planet warms, we’re seeing more frequent and intense storms and cyclones, the melting of glaciers and ice caps, and sea levels rising. Climate change, however, doesn’t just affect the atmosphere and oceans, it affects the Earth’s crust as well.

Climate-linked geological changes can increase the incidence of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions which, in turn, can exacerbate the threat of tsunamis. Here are five ways this can happen.

1. Sea Level Rise

If greenhouse gas emissions remain at high rates, the average global sea level is projected to rise between 60 centimetres and 1.1m. Almost two thirds of the world’s cities with populations over five million are at risk.

Rising sea levels not only make coastal communities more vulnerable to flooding from storms, but also tsunamis. Even modest rises in sea level will dramatically increase the frequency and intensity of flooding when a tsunami occurs, as the tsunami can travel further inland.

For example, a 2018 study showed only a 50 centimetre rise would double the frequency of tsunami-induced flooding in Macau, China. This means in future, smaller tsunamis could have the same impact as larger tsunamis would today.

2. Landslides

A warming climate can increase the risk of both submarine (underwater) and aerial (above ground) landslides, thereby increasing the risk of local tsunamis.

The melting of permafrost (frozen soil) at high latitudes decreases soil stability, making it more susceptible to erosion and landslides. More intense rainfall can trigger landslides, too, as storms become more frequent under climate change.

Tsunamis can be generated on impact as a landslide enters the water, or as water is moved by a rapid underwater landslide.

In general, tsunami waves generated from landslides or rock falls dissipate quickly and don’t travel as far as tsunamis generated from earthquakes, but they can still lead to huge waves locally.

In Alaska, US, glacial retreat and melting permafrost has exposed unstable slopes. In 2015, this melting caused a landslide that sent 180 million tonnes of rock into a narrow fjord, generating a tsunami reaching 193m high – one of the highest ever recorded worldwide.

Other areas at risk include northwest British Columbia in Canada, and the Barry Arm in Alaska, where an unstable mountain slope at the toe of the Barry Glacier has the potential to fail and generate a severe tsunami in the next 20 years.

3. Iceberg Calving And Collapsing Ice Shelves

Global warming is accelerating the rate of iceberg calving – when chunks of ice fall into the ocean.

Studies predict large ice shelves, such as the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, will likely collapse in the next five to ten years. Likewise, the Greenland ice sheet is thinning and retreating at an alarming rate.

While much of the current research focus is on the sea level risk associated with melting and collapse of glaciers and ice sheets, there’s also a tsunami risk from the calving and breakup process.

Wandering icebergs can trigger submarine landslides and tsunamis thousands of kilometres from the iceberg’s original source, as they hit unstable sediments on the seafloor.

4. Volcanic Activity From Ice Melting

About 12,000 years ago, the last glacial period (“ice age”) ended and the melting ice triggered a dramatic increase in volcanic activity.

The correlation between climate warming and more volcanic eruptions isn’t yet well constrained or understood. But it may be related to changes in stress to the Earth’s crust as the weight of ice is removed, and a phenomenon called “isostatic rebound” – the long-term uplift of land in response to the removal of ice sheets.

If this correlation holds for the current period of climate warming and melting of ice in high latitudes, there’ll be an increased risk of volcanic eruptions and associated hazards, including tsunamis.

5. Increased Earthquakes

There are a number ways climate change can increase the frequency of earthquakes, and so increase tsunami risk.

First, the weight of ice sheets may be suppressing fault movement and earthquakes. When the ice melts, the isostatic rebound (land uplift) is accompanied by an increase in earthquakes and fault movement as the crust adjusts to the loss of weight.

We may have seen this already in Alaska, where melting glaciers reduced the stability of faults, inducing many small earthquakes and possibly the magnitude 7.2 St Elias earthquake in 1979.

Another factor is low air pressure associated with storms and typhoons, which studies have also shown can trigger earthquakes in areas where the Earth’s crust is already under stress. Even relatively small changes in air pressure can trigger fault movements, as an analysis of earthquakes between 2002 and 2007 in eastern Taiwan identified.

So How Can We Prepare?

Many mitigation strategies for climate change should also include elements to improve tsunami preparedness.

This could include incorporating projected sea level rise into tsunami prediction models, and in building codes for infrastructure along vulnerable coastlines.

Researchers can also ensure scientific models of climate impacts include the projected increase in earthquakes, landslides and volcanic activity, and the increased tsunami risk this will bring.

Jane Cunneen, Adjunct Research Fellow, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How this little marsupial’s poo nurtures urban gardens and bushland (and how you can help protect them)

Wildlife encounters can be few and far between in cities but, if you’re lucky, you might catch sight of a small Aussie marsupial in Perth that’s helping keep urban bushland healthy.

Quenda, a rabbit-sized digging mammal native to southwestern Australia, are found in patches of bushland, parkland and even backyard gardens. And our latest research shows just how important these unassuming marsupials are to Australian ecosystems.

We found quenda eat a huge variety of specialised fungi called mycorrhiza, which play a key role in helping native vegetation, including eucalyptus trees, absorb water and nutrients. The fungal spores survive in quenda droppings, which can then colonise eucalypt roots. In fact, we found one little scat with over 100 types of fungi in it – that’s some very efficient fungal dispersal!

Quenda are considered rare or near threatened due to habitat clearing and predation by introduced predators – cats, dogs and foxes. It’s crucial we manage and maintain their population in and around cities to ensure they have a positive influence on urban ecosystems.

Nature’s Gardeners

Many different Australian mammals dig in the soil for food or shelter, including bettongs, potoroos, bandicoots and echidnas.

Sadly, most of Australia’s digging mammals are threatened with extinction, and many now have very restricted distributions as their habitat is cleared for urban development and they are preyed on by cats and foxes.

Once thought to be a subspecies of the southern brown bandicoot, the quenda was recognised as its own distinct species (Isoodon fusciventer) in 2018, and is found only in the southwestern corner of Australia.

Quenda are prolific diggers in their search for dinner – a single quenda can dig up to 45 small pits per night. Although each pit is small, one quenda can dig over four tonnes of soil each year in total, almost 30 wheelbarrow loads.

Quenda and other digging mammals are like nature’s gardeners. Their digging helps break the water repellent layer on the soil surface, allowing more water to infiltrate the soil, and decreases soil compaction and erosion.

Quenda digs also incorporate leaf litter and seeds into the soil, and this improves conditions for native plants to grow and thrive.

45 Species In Each Scat

But perhaps the biggest way they help Australian ecosystems is by dispersing fungal spores in their droppings.

We examined quenda scats from urban bushland south of Perth, and found they contained a large variety of fungi. Quenda scats are only 3-5cm long, but had an average of 45 different fungi species in each that the quenda would have deliberately sought out and eaten.

These include fungi that produce underground truffle-like fruitbodies, much like the famous black truffles we eat. Because the truffle-like fruitbodies are found underground, they cannot easily disperse their spores. This means they rely almost entirely on quenda and other animals to dig them up and disperse the spores in their poo.

This is a wonderful example of a mutually beneficial – or “symbiotic” – relationship: the quenda gets a delicious meal and the fungus has their spores dispersed far and wide.

We found more than half of the fungi species in quenda scats are “mycorrhizas”. These fungi form a mutually beneficial relationship with the roots of over 90% of the world’s plants including most native Australian species.

In this mycorrhizal relationship, the plant gives the fungus carbohydrates – a product of photosynthesis. In return, the fungus takes nutrients and water from the soil and passes them to the plant.

The mycorrhizal fungi are essential to healthy forests and bushland. When plants such as eucalypts team up with mycorrhizal fungi, the plants grow taller and faster and are better protected from stresses such as drought and pathogens.

Given very few other species of digging mammals survive in urban bushland, it’s clear quenda play a vital role to disperse mycorrhizal fungi.

How You Can Keep Quenda Safe

Quenda are extremely important ecosystem engineers in our urban bushland, so it’s crucial we help them thrive by making quenda friendly gardens.

Quenda feel safest in dense vegetation, so if you have a garden and want quenda to visit, plant a dense native understory. This provides both food and habitat for the quenda.

It’s also important to keep your cats indoors (especially at night) and to teach your dogs not to attack quenda. Make sure any water sources – think ponds, fountains, swimming pools – have an escape route or ramp for quenda, in case they fall in.

Finally, at dawn and dusk, when quenda are most active, drive slowly and keep your eyes peeled to avoid collisions.

They are one few remaining digging mammals in Australian urban bushlands, so the next time you spot a quenda, remember all the wonderful ways it’s making our corner of the world a better place.

Anna Hopkins, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Ecology, Edith Cowan University and Natasha Tay, PhD Candidate, Murdoch University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ancient knowledge is lost when a species disappears. It’s time to let Indigenous people care for their country, their way

Indigenous people across Australia place tremendous cultural and customary value on many species and ecological communities. The very presence of a plant or animal species can trigger an Indigenous person to recall and share knowledge. This is crucial to maintaining culture and managing Country.

But as species disappear, ancient knowledge built up over thousands of years also fades away – and fragments of our culture are lost forever.

For years, Indigenous groups have pushed for the right to partner with government authorities to “co-manage” culturally significant species and communities. Such recognition of Indigenous rights would require amendments to environment and land management laws.

Unfortunately, changes to Australia’s federal environment laws currently underway fall short of what’s needed. To protect Australia’s imperilled species, the law must chart a new course that allows Indigenous groups to manage their Country, their way.

Managing The Indigenous Estate

Australia’s Indigenous estate takes in about 51% of the range of the nation’s threatened vertebrate species.

The Indigenous estate refers to the assets held, or reasonably likely to be held, by or for the benefit of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people. It includes land and sea held through such means as traditional ownership, native title and land rights organisations. It also includes intangible values such as cultural rights, practice and expression, as well as Indigenous knowledge and traditional management.

A range of state and federal programs involve Indigenous participation in land and sea management, offering invaluable protection to the Indigenous estate. These include Indigenous Protected Areas and the successful Indigenous Ranger program.

And many governments and other groups recognise that species and ecological communities can have significant cultural, spiritual and customary value to Indigenous Australians. But often, no legal mechanism exists to protect these entities.

Some species and other entities of significance to Indigenous Australians are listed as threatened under Australia’s federal environment law, known as the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. But authorities are not required to engage Indigenous Australians in the listing, management or recovery of these species.

Indigenous Australians have successfully managed this continent’s landscapes and seascapes for tens of thousands of years. Their approach is holistic and integrated – considering the whole cultural landscape with a deep understanding of the interconnected relationships between species and Country.

In contrast, management actions under federal environment law focus on the outcomes of the listed species instead of the overall health of Country.

All this has left Indigenous groups underfunded and at the mercy of national-level management decisions, as opposed to place-based Indigenous-led action.

‘Surprising And Disappointing’

The EPBC Act was recently reviewed by Professor Graeme Samuel, who was commissioned by the federal government. His final report in 2020 found the law was failing in many ways.

Samuel recommended a suite of reforms. Among other goals, they aimed to “respect and harness the knowledge of Indigenous Australians”. One year on and progress on implementing the 38 recommendations is slow.

Among the recommendations were that the EPBC Act adopt a set of legally enforceable “national environmental standards” – clear rules that protect the environment and enable sustainable development. The standards would cover matters such as threatened species, compliance, environmental data and Indigenous engagement and participation in decision-making.

It was both surprising and disappointing that Indigenous knowledge was not embedded across all proposed environmental standards. The omission means Indigenous perspectives will continue to be relegated to a stand-alone standard of “participation”.

In particular, the national standard pertaining to threatened species made no reference to Indigenous knowledge or the Indigenous estate. And proposed interim standards completely omit Indigenous engagement, participation and values.

Without a mandate to include Indigenous people in threatened species planning and recovery, biodiversity will remain at risk. What’s more, significant gaps in the application of Indigenous Knowledge and protection of the Indigenous estate will continue.

A New Kind Of Recognition

During the submission process of the review, many Indigenous and non-Indigenous organisations lobbied for the recognition of “culturally significant entities”. These groups include the government’s own Indigenous Advisory Committee and Threatened Species Scientific Committee.

“Culturally significant entities” are species and sites of great or exceptional cultural importance to Indigenous Australians. They might be a source of identity, a medicine, lore, an important traditional food or required for cultural practices. They usually feature prominently in Indigenous knowledge, language and ceremonies.

Submissions to the review called for these entities to be formally recognised under the EPBC Act and afforded a far higher level of protection. They also called for the mandatory participation of Indigenous Australians in threatened species nominations, listings, policy and management.

Many Indigenous Australians were disappointed this measure was not mentioned in Samuel’s final report. Without proper legal protection, culturally significant entities will not be assessed and can be damaged by threats such as climate change, inappropriate land management and poorly conceived development proposals.

From Engagement To Empowerment

It’s time for governments and conservation groups to recognise the enduring value of the Indigenous estate and knowledge in curbing Australia’s parlous record of biodiversity loss.

While many of Samuel’s recommendations attempted to address issues raised by Indigenous Australians, they fall short of true empowerment and global best practice.

As the size and scale of the Indigenous estate continues to grow, so to does the opportunity to arrest biodiversity decline. Rather than sitting in the back seat, Indigenous Australians must be up front in managing the recovery of Australia’s unique and precious environment.

The authors acknowledge and thank the following people for their contributions to this work and article: Oliver Costello, a Bundjalung man; and Cissy Gore-Birch, a Jaru, Nyikina and Balanggarra woman, and Executive Manager Aboriginal Engagement at Bush Heritage Australia.

Teagan Goolmeer, PhD Candidate, The University of Melbourne; Assoc Prof Bradley J. Moggridge, Associate Professor in Indigenous Water Science, University of Canberra, and Professor Stephen van Leeuwen, BHP / Curtin Indigenous Chair of Biodiversity & Environmental Science, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What drove Perth’s record-smashing heatwave – and why it’s a taste of things to come

Perth smashed its previous heatwave records last week, after sweltering through six days in a row over 40℃ – and 11 days over 40℃ this summer so far. On top of that, Perth has suffered widespread power outages and a bushfire in the city’s north.

While the heatwave was unprecedented and extreme, for climate scientists like myself, it’s not surprising. Southwest Australia is considered a hotspot for climate change, as the long-term warming and drying trend is extremely pronounced.

Over the last century, the average global temperature has risen by more than 1℃. This has seen the number of days over 40℃ more than double in Perth.

To definitively state whether last week’s heatwave is a direct result of climate change, we’d need to carry out a formal attribution study. But we do know from climate models that these sorts of extreme events will only become more frequent.

What’s Driving This Heatwave?

Easterly winds travelling over the hot, dry desert bring very hot, dry weather conditions to Perth.

These winds are brought about by “anti-cyclones” (or high pressure systems), which are a prominent feature of Perth weather, and we see these almost every day in our weather charts. Their impact depends on where they’re located and how they move.

This heatwave was caused by a strong and stationary anti-cyclone sitting in the Great Australian Bight. But that’s not the whole story, as the so-called “west coast trough” – another key feature of Perth summers – also plays a key role in determining how hot it gets.

Troughs are elongated regions of relatively low atmospheric pressure. When located offshore, the west coast trough will essentially block and weaken the afternoon sea breeze.

When it’s stationary at the coast, it tends to bring warm north-easterly winds, which was the case during the heatwave. As the trough moves inland, we get cooler conditions, as we’ve been feeling this week.

According to climate change models, these anti-cyclones are becoming more frequent and intense. Indeed, a 2018 study confirmed the frequency of anti-cyclones is increasing between 30-40⁰ south of the equator, which includes southern Australia.

The hot, dry winds from the east are also projected to get more intense, bringing still more heat to WA.

The Outlook From Here

Australia has already warmed by about 1.4℃ since 1910. Under a high emissions scenario, where global emissions continue to rise unabated, the hottest day of the year will be as much as 4 to 6℃ warmer by 2080–2099, compared to 1995–2014.

For WA, both regional and global climate projections suggest it will not only become even warmer in summer, but also drier in winter.

While climate models typically have large uncertainties when it comes to predicting rainfall, southwest WA is one of few regions worldwide where the vast majority of climate models agree we’ll see a marked decline in winter and spring rainfall – by up to 30% under a high emissions scenario.

All this implies we’re further increasing the chances of more consecutive days above 40℃, as we in Perth have just experienced.

Extreme heatwaves and dry spells can take a heavy toll on wildlife. For example, the region endured an exceptionally dry winter in 2010, followed by a hot summer in 2011, and then a marine heatwave in March, 2011.

Their combined impact led to mass tree deaths and coral bleaching occurring simultaneously. Plants on land, seagrass and kelp also died en masse, along with a population crash of an endangered terrestrial bird species, plummeting breeding success in marine penguins, and outbreaks of terrestrial wood-boring insects.

What does this drying, heating trend mean for bushfires? Research published late last year has shown, for the first time, that climate change has markedly increased the frequency of forest megafires in Australia since 2000. A forest megafire is a bushfire that burns over 1 million hectares (or 10,000 square kilometres).

The study found that over the past 90 years, Australia has experienced four megafire years. Three of these occurred after 2000.

Given most of WA is prone to bushfires, further warming and drying not only exacerbates bushfire risk, but will also bring longer fire seasons.

What Can We Do About This?

The science could not be any clearer. We need to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible to avoid catastrophic climate change, otherwise extreme heat events, like we in Perth experienced, will simply become more normal.

But there is hope, as our models show we can avoid the worst of these impacts under a low emissions scenario, which could see global warming limited to 1.5℃ this century. This requires bold and urgent action now.

Under the inevitability of future heatwaves, Australia must urgently implement a national policy on housing and urban greening that takes into consideration more frequent and intense extremes so we can better manage the heat.

And with a month of summer still left, finding ways to keep cool is crucial, such as improving home insulation and air conditioning, if affordable. Simple steps can go a long way, too, such as keeping blinds closed and shutting doors in rooms you’re not using. 

Jatin Kala, Senior Lecturer and ARC DECRA felllow, Murdoch University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Codecracking, community and competition: why the word puzzle Wordle has become a new online obsession

Wordle is a quick English-language word game developed by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a unique gift for his partner, released in October 2021. It’s easily accessible online.

The game, in which players guess a five letter word through linguistic inferences, became an unlikely success, suggesting a change in how we communicate – both in terms of how we socialise, and in our relationship with language.

The Popularity Of Wordle

Wordle has nearly 3 million players across the world and versions of it are appearing in other languages.

People love talking about it – the number of Wordle tweets increases 26% a day on average – even when they hate playing it (a significant number of Wordle tweets are complaints, usually about the volume or smugness of Wordle tweets).

Because the game allows you to share your result without spoilers, it has inspired fierce competition, with social media being flooded with results, especially high scores.

In fact, recently, NBC assured us that being “bad” at Wordle doesn’t make you “dumb”.

This is a perplexing idea from a linguistic point of view: solving the puzzle in fewer guesses involves more luck – not more skill.

How To Play Wordle

Wordle is often compared to crosswords but the mental process of solving is closer to code-cracking.

Players are able to narrow down possibilities by calculating the probability of different letter combinations. If your first guess produced, say, two letters both yellow, you can make an educated guess about the most likely positions for those letters in English words.

Since the game is based around five letter words, the words almost always involve consonant clusters. These are typically fairly specific to individual languages. In English, “spl” and “spr” are common, for example, but “slr” or “prl” are impossible.

But players also need to be flexible enough not to exclude less likely combinations entirely – and to keep them in mind as you play.

The difficulty of each puzzle depends on the relationship between the solution and the player’s first guess. A lot of this is luck but you can improve your chances statistically by using frequency analysis, a cryptolinguistic technique based on which letters are commonest.

I use “share” as my first guess because it includes the two most common vowels, “s” which is the third most common letter and most common final letter in English words, while “h” and “r” are common individually and even more common in consonant clusters, so their presence or absence instantly knocks out a range of possibilities.

But I admire people who play with less strategy. Lots of people guess on whim.

Once you’ve got past your first guess, players use their knowledge of spelling conventions and sound patterns in English to solve the word - another linguistic technique used in code-breaking. After all, some of the most successful code breakers of the pre-computer age were linguists, precisely because of this skill.

John Chadwick, who is famous among academics for his role in deciphering the ancient script known as Linear B, was also involved in cracking the most famous WWII code, Enigma.

Language And Linguistics

Puzzles are always popular. What is, perhaps, surprising is that a game which relies on such specific linguistic knowledge has become so popular.

Although there is an anxiety about the decline of reading for pleasure, this generation of adults actually consumes more written text than any generation in history. The internet means many previously spoken interactions, both social and business, now happen in writing. It also means mass communication, which means a much greater awareness of writing conventions.

The more people reading a text, the more important conventions become.

That doesn’t mean a greater number of people are using formal English correctly - that would only happen if they were reading more examples of formal English - but it does mean a greater awareness of conventions. You can see this in the way people write differently in text message, to Instagram, to Twitter, according to the conventions developing around each platform. In some online contexts, alternative spellings or misspellings can be used deliberately for specific semantic purposes – a technique which has the paradoxical effect of highlighting the spelling conventions and sound patterns Wordle depends on.

You can see this reliance on conventions develop over the history of written English. In early medieval manuscripts, often intended for only a few readers, there aren’t many rules. No standardised dialect or spelling, no one even cares if you split a word in two. You don’t need standardised rules because the specialised audience understands.

With the invention of printing which allows more books to be produced more cheaply, there is a corresponding development of widely-understood conventions, such as standardised spelling. By sticking to these, publishers make their books readable to a wider audience.

The global audience created by the internet is the next step in this process, increasing our use of conventions like those you need to understand in order to solve Wordle.

Community

The game’s popularity ultimately has to do with community. The fact everyone is solving the same puzzle means people discuss strategies and individual puzzles in friend groups and share their results online on social media.

For many people who aren’t able to see friends and family in person, it gives a focus for socialising. For people isolated by the pandemic, it creates an online community.

The pandemic has meant everyone in the world is facing the same problem, COVID, even if the resources for dealing with it are vastly different, so it’s nice to have a small, fun thing in common as well.

Erin Sebo, Lecturer in Medieval Literature, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We asked hundreds of Aussies whether they’d eat insects, and most said yes – so what’s holding people back?

Insects are sustainable, nutritious and delicious. They’re eaten by more than two billion people worldwide, mostly in the tropics, and have been a staple in Indigenous Australians’ diets for tens of thousands of years.

Yet eating insects isn’t mainstream in Australia. Why?

We surveyed 601 Australians on their experience with, and attitude towards, edible insects. Our findings offer insight into which factors might convince people to add edible insects to their diet.

Importantly, we found Australians are not deterred by the “ick” factor of eating insects, and would be willing to try them as a protein alternative if not for a “lack of opportunity”.

Of the adults we surveyed, 56.2% reported they would be “likely” to eat insects in the future (a much more promising result than that from a recent European Union survey) – and this figure increased to 82.2% among those who had already tried them.

Missed Opportunities

Although insects don’t commonly feature on Aussie menus, there are 60 insect species which have been recorded as a traditional food source for Indigenous Australians, including witjuti grubs, bogong moths and honey pot ants.

The ancient Romans and Greeks ate insects, too. It’s thought Westernised countries may have lost their taste for edible insects during the shift from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture and urbanisation.

Insects went from fulfilling the role of a staple food to being pests that destroy crops, and this may have prompted a shift in our attitudes towards eating them.

Research conducted with older Australians has revealed a tendency to view the practise as disgusting and incompatible with their personal beliefs, raising concern there may be reluctance for edible insects to return to being a normalised and viable protein alternative.

As It Turns Out, Most People Aren’t That Squeamish

But our research (mainly with participants aged 25 to 44 years) shows Aussies have begun to adopt a more positive outlook towards insect-based foods.

Of those surveyed, 35% had previously tried insects, most commonly crickets and grasshoppers. And people who had already tried them were also more open to eating them again, which suggests a “taste” for bugs can be developed. Of those who hadn’t tried insects, only 16% reported “disgust” was holding them back.

This paradigm shift may be linked to people expressing more concern for the environmental cost of their food, and a greater interest in adopting healthy dietary habits.

Participants also reported they would be willing to eat insect-based products if it was easier to find out how such foods are beneficial, both from a nutrition and sustainability standpoint.

They said endorsements from governing bodies, as well as more prominence of edible insects in mainstream media, would boost their interest in eating insects – as well as “try before you buy” promotions.

For those willing to give insects a go, insect-based flours (such as bread and biscuits), chocolate-coated ants and crickets were the top choices. Not all species were received the same way, however, with moths and fly larvae not generating such a buzz.

Still, the shift towards a willingness to try insects is promising for Australia’s growing edible insect market.

Embracing Future Foods

With the global population still growing, we will need alternative sources of protein to sustainably meet future food production requirements.

The demand for protein is on the rise and, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, will have to increase by 76% by 2050. But production is restricted due to Earth’s finite resources.

Edible insects have potential as an important future food, offering a nutritious protein source that’s more sustainable to produce – using less land, energy and water.

Jessica Danaher, Lecturer in Nutrition, RMIT University and Lisa Newman, Lecturer in Nutrition, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From rock carvings to rock music – the prevalence of bees in art throughout human history

With a looming biodiversity crisis and concerns over food security and sustainability, bees are frequently making news headlines.

The importance of bees in our society as pollinators and honey producers appears to have led to their increased popularity in many artistic endeavours, such as film, social media, gaming and contemporary art.

Is this new fascination with bees a recent phenomenon? In our new study, we explored how bees are represented throughout different cultures, time periods and art mediums.

Their representation in art would tell us how people at different times perceived bees, which we also found has led to bees being a source of inspiration for different art forms.

Bee Art Throughout Time And Cultures

Bees have been depicted in carvings, jewellery, coins, songs, tools and sculptures for thousands of years. One of the first known depictions of bees is in the form of rock art from 8000 BCE in the Spider Caves (Cuevas de la araña) in Spain. It shows a person climbing a ladder to collect honey from a hive.

We examined the history of bees in culture and art from China, Central America, South America, and Australia. Centuries before the introduction of European honeybees, human societies in Central and South America had a close relationship with native stingless bees (Meliponini).

Advanced agricultural societies like the Mayans developed apicultural techniques (The raising and care of bees for commercial or agricultural purposes) and kept native bees in their homes. Some gods in their pantheon were consecrated as protectors of the hives, while others were often represented in postures resembling landing bees in sculptures adorning temples.

While Chinese art has a long history of representing plants, it was during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) that honeybees started to be represented in poetry and painting, when formal beekeeping and the use of bee products in traditional medicine increased.

Prior to the Tang Dynasty bees were regarded with suspicion due to the capacity of some bees to sting, revealing how a positive aesthetic representation of bees developed with an improved understanding of the value of bees to our environment and well-being.

Bee Sounds In Art Culture And Music

The buzzing sounds and signals bees make have intrigued humans for centuries. Indeed, the “drone” music style popularised by the Beatles Tomorrow Never Knows in name originates from Old English words representing male bees.

To the ear, ancient instruments like Australia’s First Nations Didgeridoo, Scottish Bagpipes, and India’s Tanpura resemble the rich and mesmerising drone sound of bees, and the ethnic communities of Southwestern China made special bee drums to celebrate cultural links to bees.

Bee-inspired music and song vary to accommodate the wide variety of experiences and emotions humans attempt to convey. In Britain during the 17th Century, Charles Butler scored the angelic Melissomelos from his keen observations of bee “voices” and their societal structure.

In popular music, bees have been called upon to express human emotions, and explore musical dynamics and mastery.

Today, co-species collaborations like “Into” by the music group Be directly employ honeybee sounds to present new ways of making music, while also promoting the plight of the precious providers.

Bees And Architecture

Bees are some of nature’s best architects. The hexagonal structures in honeybee hives have inspired building design and architecture throughout the world, as well as futuristic designs for Mars. These bee-inspired buildings are evidenced across time and cultures, and represent different design goals. In some cases, bee inspired architecture forms the most stable and efficient structures.

Other buildings aim to highlight the importance of bees to humans. For example the New Zealand parliament’s “beehive” building pays homage to the efficiency and cooperation of bees, and the experimental architecture of The Hive, which is a 14 metre aluminium lattice cuboid built to bring attention to honeybee decline. Modern designs such as these reflect the perceived value of living or working like honeybees.

Bees In Film And Video Games

Bees are increasingly represented in screen culture for both entertainment and environmental messaging like in the Bee Movie (2007). In the worldwide gaming phenomenon, Pokémon, the designs of a number of the imaginary creatures are based on bees, like female Combees that collect resources for their colony.

Our work reveals bees have long played an important role in human society as pollinators, sources of nutrition as well as artistic inspirations and muses.

However, as many bee species are not as common as they once were in the environment, there has never been a more important time to understand and communicate about bees.

Adrian Dyer, Associate Professor, RMIT University; Jair Garcia, Research fellow, RMIT University; Kit Prendergast, Native bee ecologist, Curtin University; Scarlett Howard, Postdoctoral research fellow, Deakin University, and Stuart McFarlane, Researcher, Auditory Perception and Cognition, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has reached its destination, 1.5 million km from Earth. Here’s what happens next

Since its launch on Christmas day, astronomers have eagerly followed the complex deployment and unfurling of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope – the largest to ever take to the skies.

Right around the time this article is published, it’s expected Webb will have reached a place called the Earth-Sun “second Lagrange point”, or “L2”. This is a point in space about 1.5 million kilometres away from Earth (in the opposite direction from the Sun) where the gravity from both the Sun and Earth help to keep an orbiting satellite balanced in motion.

Now the astronomical community – including my team of Swinburne University astronomers – is preparing for a new epoch of major discoveries.

30 Years And US$10 Billion

In 2012, I wrote an article for The Conversation looking forward to the launch of Webb, and reminiscing about the amazing early days of its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.

Back then, Webb’s planned launch date was in 2018. And when the project was originally conceived in the 1990s, the goal was to launch before 2010. Why did it take nearly 30 years, and more than US$10 billion (roughly A$14 billion), to get Webb off the ground?

First, it’s the largest telescope ever put into space, with a gold-coated mirror 6.5m in diameter (compared with Hubble’s 2.4m mirror). With size comes complexity, as the entire structure needed to be folded to fit inside the nose cone of an Ariane rocket.

Second, there were two major engineering marvels to accomplish with Webb. For a large telescope to produce the sharpest images possible, the mirror’s surface needs to be aligned along a curve with extreme precision. For Webb this means unfolding and positioning the 18 hexagonal segments of the primary mirror, plus a secondary mirror, to a precision of 25 billionths of a metre.

Also, Webb will be observing infrared light, so it must be kept incredibly cold (roughly -233℃) to maximise its sensitivity. This means it must be kept far away from Earth, which is a source of heat and light. It must also be completely protected from the Sun – achieved by a 20m multilayered reflective sunshield.

All of Webb’s major spacecraft deployments, including the unfurling of the primary mirror and sunshield, were completed on January 8. The entire process involved more than 300 single points of failure (mechanisms that had only once chance to work). The remaining tiny motions will take place over the next few months.

The Main Mission

Webb’s primary mission will be to witness the birth of the first stars and galaxies in the early Universe. As the light from these very faint galaxies travels across the vast gulf of space, and 13.8 billion years of time, it gets stretched by the overall expansion of the Universe in a process we call “cosmological redshift”.

This stretching means what started out as extremely energetic ultraviolet radiation from young, hot and massive stars will be received by Webb as infrared light. This is why its mirrors are coated in gold: compared with silver or aluminium, gold is a better reflector of infrared light and red light.

Webb will see much farther into the infrared than Hubble could. It’s also up to a million times more sensitive than ground-based telescopes, where the light from distant galaxies is drowned out by the infrared emission of Earth’s own hot atmosphere.

Because of these previous technological limitations, the first billion years of cosmic history has barely been explored. We don’t know when or how the first stars formed. This is a complex question as stars produce heavy elements when they die. These elements pollute the interstellar gas in galaxies and change how this gas behaves and collapses to form later generations of stars.

All current star formation we can observe, such as in the Milky Way, is from enriched interstellar gas. We haven’t yet seen how stars form in pristine gas, which is without any heavy elements – as such a state hasn’t existed for more than 13 billion years.

But we think formation from pristine gas likely had a large effect on the properties of the first stellar populations.

A Deep Space Observatory

In addition to studying the early Universe, Webb will be a NASA “Great Observatory” and will support a diversity of other projects.

It will allow scientists to peer into regions obscured by dust, such as the centres of galaxies where supermassive black holes lurk, or regions of intense star formation in our galaxy and others. Webb will also be sensitive to the coldest objects, including very low mass stars, and planets orbiting other stars within the Milky Way.

One big improvement on Hubble is that Webb will be well-equipped for spectroscopy, dissecting light into its component wavelengths. This will let us measure the cosmic redshift of galaxies precisely, and figure out what elements they’re made of.

Closer to home, Webb will help us find molecules such as water, ammonia, carbon dioxide (and many others) within the solar system, the Milky Way and nearby galaxies. It will be able to see these in the atmospheres of planets around nearby stars, which is particularly exciting for the search for extraterrestrial life.

Astronomers await with anticipation for the first data to be collected in the next few months. While the most dramatic and risky mechanical motions have been completed, the telescope continues to move, and the mirror segments are making tiny nanometre-sized motions to bring it into a focus. This will take many weeks as the telescope cools to its operating temperature.

For myself, perhaps the most exciting aspect to look forward to is the completely unknown. With Webb, we’ll be observing a previously murky cosmic era, when physical conditions were very different to those in the modern Universe.

The history of astronomy suggests we can expect paradigm-shifting discoveries.

Karl Glazebrook, Director & Distinguished Professor, Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This object in space flashed brilliantly for 3 months, then disappeared. Astronomers are intrigued

“Holy sharks, Batman, it’s periodic!”

I exclaimed on Slack.

It was the first lockdown of 2021 in Perth, and we were all working from home. And when astronomers look for something to distract themselves from looming existential dread, there’s nothing better than a new cosmic mystery.

In 2020 I gave an undergraduate student, Tyrone O'Doherty, a fun project: look for radio sources that are changing in a large radio survey I’m leading.

By the end of the year he’d found a particularly unusual source that was visible in data from early 2018, but had disappeared within a few months. The source was named GLEAM-X J162759.5-523504, after the survey it was found in and its position.

Sources that appear and disappear are called “radio transients” and are usually a sign of extreme physics at play.

The Mystery Begins

Earlier this year I started investigating the source, expecting it to be something we knew about – something that would change slowly over months and perhaps point to an exploded star, or a big collision in space.

To understand the physics, I wanted to measure how the source’s brightness relates to its frequency (in the electromagnetic spectrum). So I looked at observations of the same location, taken at different frequencies, before and after the detection, and it wasn’t there.

I was disappointed, as spurious signals do crop up occasionally due to telescope calibration errors, Earth’s ionosphere reflecting TV signals, or aircraft and satellites streaking overhead.

So I looked at more data. And in an observation taken 18 minutes later, there the source was again, in exactly the same place and at exactly the same frequency – like nothing astronomers had ever seen before.

At this point I broke out in a cold sweat. There is a worldwide research effort searching for repeating cosmic radio signals transmitted at a single frequency. It’s called the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Was this the moment we finally found that the truth is … out there?

The Plot Thickens

I rapidly downloaded more data and posted updates on Slack. This source was incredibly bright. It was outshining everything else in the observation, which is nothing to sniff at.

The brightest radio sources are supermassive black holes flaring huge jets of matter into space at nearly the speed of light. What had we found that could possibly be brighter than that?

Colleagues were beginning to take notice, posting:

It’s repeating too slowly to be a pulsar. But it’s too bright for a flare star. What is this? (alien emoji icon)???

Within a few hours, I breathed a sigh of relief: I had detected the source across a wide range of frequencies, so the power it would take to generate it could only come from a natural source; not artificial (and not aliens)!

Just like pulsars – highly magnetised rotating neutron stars that beam out radio waves from their poles – the radio waves repeated like clockwork about three times per hour. In fact, I could predict when they would appear to an accuracy of one ten-thousandth of a second.

So I turned to our enormous data archive: 40 petabytes of radio astronomy data recorded by the Murchison Widefield Array in Western Australia, during its eight years of operation. Using powerful supercomputers, I searched hundreds of observations and picked up 70 more detections spanning three months in 2018, but none before or after.

The amazing thing about radio transients is that if you have enough frequency coverage, you can work out how far away they are. This is because lower radio frequencies arrive slightly later than higher ones depending on how much space they’ve traveled through.

Our new discovery lies about 4,000 light years away – very distant, but still in our galactic backyard.

We also found the radio pulses were almost completely polarised. In astrophysics this usually means their source is a strong magnetic field. The pulses were also changing shape in just half a second, so the source has to be less than half a light second across, much smaller than our Sun.

Sharing the result with colleagues across the world, everyone was excited, but no one knew for sure what it was.

The Jury Is Still Out

There were two leading explanations for this compact, rotating, and highly magnetic astrophysical object: a white dwarf, or a neutron star. These remain after stars run out of fuel and collapse, generating magnetic fields billions to quintillions times stronger than our Sun’s.

And while we’ve never found a neutron star that behaves quite this way, theorists have predicted such objects, called an “ultra-long period magnetars”, could exist. Even so, no one expected one could be so bright.

This is the first time we’ve ever seen a radio source that repeats every 20 minutes. But maybe the reason we never saw one before is that we weren’t looking.

When I first started trying to understand this source, I was biased by my expectations: transient radio sources either change quickly like pulsars, or slowly like the fading remnants of a supernova.

I wasn’t looking for sources repeating at 18-minute intervals – an unusual period for any known class of object. Nor was I searching for something that would appear for a few months and then disappear forever. No one was.

As astronomers build new telescopes that will collect vast quantities of data, it’s vital we keep our minds, and our search techniques, open to unexpected possibilities. The universe is full of wonders, should we only choose to look.

Natasha Hurley-Walker, Radio Astronomer, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.