The Environmental Journal of Southern Appalachia

Displaying items by tag: climate change

Tuesday, 04 February 2025 12:47

2025 Keep Knoxville Beautiful Annual Summit

Keep Knoxville Peautiful Summit 2025 zuebecymmxmik4kunmmi

6th Annual Summit on February 7, 2025!

Is it hot in here or is it just the infrastructure? How we develop a city can either keep it cool or create intense heat pockets. Join us as we learn from experts about the necessity of building a heat resilient city where we can continue to live, work and play. We hope to see you for a day of learning! 

Lunch will be included for all attendees from Brown Bag. 

There is a limited number of tickets available. We anticipate this event selling out, so get your ticket while you can!

Published in Events

hybrid fire antA hybrid fire ant typical of those now seen in Lee County, Va. Virginia Tech scientists have teamed with the commonwealth’s agricultural extension service to find ways to combat the exotic insect.  Cole Shoemaker/iNaturalist

Virginia Tech entomologists partner to help track and prevent the spread of hybrid fire ants

Case Keatley is communications coordinator at Virginia Cooperative Extension.

JONESVILLE, Va. — In Lee County, Virginia Cooperative Extension Agent Amy Byington is working to stop a tiny invader posing a big problem. 

Hybrid fire ants, which are well-established across East Tennessee and parts of Kentucky and North Carolina, are now infiltrating far Southwest Virginia. 

“It’s just one more nuisance,” said Byington, who leads efforts in her county to report and treat the growing issue. “I get calls every week from landowners who are discovering new ant mounds on their property.” 

Byington partners with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) to locate and treat the mounds with insecticide bait. 

“One of my producers recently reached out and reported they had found six fire ant mounds on their farm,” she said. “The VDACS inspector later ended up counting 58. It’s a management issue and a human issue.” 

As of 2024, Lee County is the only county in Virginia with a presence of hybrid fire ants, although this is expected to change in coming years as ants gradually expand their territory north and east. 

Published in News
Friday, 13 September 2024 13:40

Join the Rally for the Valley 2.0

TVA protest

NASHVILLE — Join the rescheduled Rally for the Valley on Sept. 21 2024 at Centennial Park for a day filled with fun, music, learning and community spirit.

The rally, organized by the Clean Up TVA Coalition, which includes Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and other allies, calls on the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to stop its gas buildout and lead the way to a fossil-free future.

The decisions in front of TVA are significant. They will impact the health and safety of our communities, how much we pay to keep the lights on, and whether we meet our climate targets and achieve energy justice. We are mobilizing with communities from across Tennessee to urge TVA leaders to change course before its too late. 

Are you in? Register today!

Published in Event Archive

Excerpt from 1966 Mining Congress JournalThis is an excerpt from a 1966 article in Mining Congress Journal indicating mining interests were already aware of the potential for climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions.

Circuit Court ruling: Private emails on public servers don’t always equal public records

KNOXVILLE — A Knox County judge ruled in a lawsuit that spun off from the “Coal Knew, Too” scandal that emails sent or received by a University of Tennessee professor aren’t public records.

Circuit Court Judge William T. Ailor turned aside a bid made by Knoxville-based writer Kathleen Marquardt to review the emails of Chris Cherry, a professor with UT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, according to court records. 

Marquardt filed the Public Records lawsuit four years ago, but the case didn’t actually make it into a courtroom until a pair of hearings held earlier this year. 

According to Judge Ailor’s opinion, the bare fact that Cherry and freelance reporter Élan Young (who was also employed by UT at the time and currently writes for Hellbender Press) exchanged emails using their UT accounts “does not raise the emails themselves to the level of being public records.” 

The origins of the lawsuit date back to 2019, when Cherry rescued some old coal industry trade journals that a colleague was about to toss in a dumpster after cleaning out an office.

In one of the discarded issues of the Mining Congress Journal was an article from 1966 that contained a statement from the then-president of a coal mining organization explaining that fossil fuel use was causing an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide that would cause vast changes in the Earth’s climate through global warming. 

Published in News

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KNOXVILLE John Nolt, a member of the Sierra Club’s Harvey Broome Group executive committee and professor emeritus in philosophy at the University of Tennessee, will present a program about cryptocurrencies and their detrimental long-term effects on the environment. Cryptocurrency “mines” (data centers, really) pull enormous quantities of power from the electrical grid.

Thus they are attracted to states like Tennessee where electric power is relatively cheap.

The event is set for 7-8:30 p.m. June 11 at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, 2931 Kingston Pike, Knoxville.

Published in Event Archive

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Coal industry acknowledged its contribution to climate change in 1966

KNOXVILLE — It began innocently enough.

A little over four years ago, an old trade journal was rescued en route to a dumpster by a professor from the University of Tennessee’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Professor Chris Cherry had no reason to suspect the journal contained a powerhouse revelation — the coal industry had been aware since 1966 that burning fossil fuels would eventually trigger cataclysmic global warming and had subsequently engaged in a decades-long coverup to protect corporate profits.

Cherry’s surprise discovery soon became international news thanks to a story written by a fellow UT employee, Élan Young, that was picked up by Huffpost. (Young is a regular contributor to Hellbender Press).

Published in News

Arctic 3Polar bears on Wrangel Island, Russia. As the sea ice melts each summer, more than 1,000 bears come to Wrangel to wait for the return of the sea ice. It's the largest concentration of polar bears on Earth. BBC Studios via Tennessee Aquarium

Learn how the Arctic still thrives in the face of existential climate threats in new IMAX film

Doug Strickland is a writer for the Tennessee Aquarium.

CHATTANOOGA — At first glance, the Arctic seems an impossibly inhospitable place, a frigid wasteland of extremes in which nothing can survive.

Only one-quarter of this vast polar region at the top of the world is made up of land. The rest is comprised of a glacially cold ocean capped by vast stretches of ice. 

Despite its harsh conditions, life has found a way to endure — and even thrive — in the Arctic. Audiences will meet just a few of the Arctic’s charismatic residents on Jan. 11, 2024 when the Tennessee Aquarium IMAX 3D Theater debuts a new giant-screen film, Arctic 3D: Our Frozen Planet

Published in News
Sunday, 10 December 2023 08:30

EarthSolidarity! quest announced

Dec. 10, 2023 — Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ 75th anniversary

EarthSolidarity!™ is a grassroots appeal by the Foundation for Global Sustainability. It challenges everyone to become active, or even more engaged, in humanity’s exigency to stem the demise of our planet’s life-support systems. The gist of it is summarized in two sentences:

Ask not what Mother Earth can do for you.

Ask what you and those next to you can do to keep our planet inhabitable.

 

That meme addresses the global polycrisis — with a hat tip to President John F. Kennedy for borrowing the notion from his 1961 inauguration speech. (Then the Cold War was approaching the boiling point of the Cuban missile crisis. And incidentally, human rights had improved little yet for the majority of the world’s population.)

The global polycrisis is brought about by the pernicious entanglement of many systems that keep civilization ticking. Relatively small disturbances in one system may reverberate through other systems. When necessary corrections trigger a self re-enforcing feed-back loop, previously unimagined break downs that affect multiple systems can happen. Recent examples are the disruptions of world supply chains by the COVID-19 pandemic; then again by a single ship stranded in the Suez Canal.

Cascade polycrisis systems v2Inter-system categories.  From: ‘What is a Global Polycrisis?’ by the Cascade Institute

Increases in the frequency and severity of calamities, such as catastrophic floods, hurricanes and tornados, extensive droughts, debilitating heat waves, widespread forest fires, or episodes of abominable air quality often result in disruptions of supply chains, diminished availability of critical services, reduced job security and hikes in cost of living expenses. In less developed areas of the world, water or food shortages may lead to armed conflicts and waves of refugees.

CostOfLivingReport Paul BehrensAn example of how climate impacts combine with other shocks to increase cost of living. The baseline shows an average cost without the impact of climate change against two scenarios going forward — current policies and adaptation & mitigation — to indicate the increase in cost of living over time as climate impacts accumulate. As the cost of living increases, the colored dashed lines show the potential for societal tipping points or volatile transitions, from strikes to political instability. (Behrens, P., 2023)

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ELOlogoELO is a student-run organization at the University of Tennessee College of Law. It is not directly affiliated with the University of Tennesse or any particular non-profit organization. It is dedicated to providing students and attorneys with learning opportunities and leadership experiences.

Networking environmental leaders across Appalachia and the State of Tennessee

Knoxville — APIEL is a relative newcomer to the small circle of inclusive U.S. public interest environmental law conferences. Because it is organized by law school student volunteers, APIEL is affordable to attend for citizens from all walks of life. Students are free!

APIEL is much loved and considered essential by regional nonprofit leaders and activists. It is also highly acclaimed by seasoned environmental lawyers. With just 13 conferences under its belt, APIEL has risen to rank among leading peer conferences with a much longer track record, such as the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (PIELC) at the University of Oregon School of Law (41 events), the Red Clay Conference at the University of Georgia School of Law (35) and the Public Interest Environmental Conference (PIEC) at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law (29).

Published in Event Archive

2023’s weather has been extreme in many ways.  AP Photo/Michael Probst

This story was originally published by The Conversation.  Michael Wysession is Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Between the record-breaking global heat and extreme downpours, it’s hard to ignore that something unusual is going on with the weather in 2023.

People have been quick to blame climate change – and they’re right: human-caused global warming plays the biggest role. The weekslong heat wave that started in June 2023 in Texas, the U.S. Southwest and Mexico would have been virtually impossible without it, one study found.

However, the extremes this year are sharper than anthropogenic global warming alone would be expected to cause. September temperatures were far above any previous September, and around 3.1 degrees Fahrenheit (1.75 degrees Celsius) above the preindustrial average, according to the European Union’s earth observation program.

July was Earth’s hottest month on record, also by a large margin, with average global temperatures more than half a degree Fahrenheit (a third of a degree Celsius) above the previous record, set just a few years earlier in 2019.

Published in News

trout_bradley.jpg.webpMichael Bradley, a fly-fishing guide, on Raven Fork in the Oconaluftee area of the Great Smoky Mountains.  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Climate change could steal your fish

Dan Chapman is a public affairs specialist for the Southeast Region of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

CHEROKEE — The mountains of the Southern Appalachians were scraped clean a century ago. Headwater ecology changed as the canopy of trees disappeared that was shading the streams from all but the noonday sun. Rainstorms pushed dirt and rocks into the water muddying the feeding and breeding grounds of fish, amphibians and insects. 

Lower down the mountain, newly cut pastures edged right up to the creeks while cows mucked up the once-pristine waters. Invasive bugs killed hemlocks, ash and other shade-giving trees. Pipes, culverts and dams blockaded streams and kept animals from cooler water. 

The trout never had a chance.

Now they face an even more insidious foe — climate change. 

Published in News
Saturday, 19 August 2023 13:42

Bees are the bees knees!

image0.jpegCynthia Maples, the head beekeeper at Zoo Knoxville, checks out her buzzing charges.  JJ Stambaugh

With no clear cause, after two decades beekeepers across North America report losing up to 90 percent of their hives.

Although the alarming losses of the 2006-7 season have not repeated, since then, experts consistently track higher than normal winter losses among honeybee colonies, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

A survey by the University of Maryland University of Maryland found 40% of US honeybee colonies died between April 2018 and April 2019.

While most Americans associate the insects with one of humankind’s oldest sweet treats - honey - they might not realize honeybees are actually an invasive species that can end up competing for resources with indigenous “pollinators” such as bumblebees. 

“Worldwide, there are over 20,000 species of bees,” said Cynthia Maples, the lead beekeeper and apiarist at Zoo Knoxville. “About 265 of those are bumble bees. In North America, there are 46 bumblebee species. In the southeast, we have about 15 bumble species with at least six of those in decline.”

Maples explained all bees are part of the order Hymenoptera, which also includes ants and wasps.

“Native pollinators would classify as those species naturally occurring in a particular area, not introduced. Honeybees are technically an invasive species to North America. They were brought over from Europe by humans,” she said.

“In the past few years the narrative has made a switch from keeping honeybees to help native pollinators to the realization that honeybees may be stealing resources from native pollinators,” she continued. “Honeybees are still very important as agricultural pollinators, but protecting native pollinators is also very important.”

While Maples doesn’t know if local bee populations are on the ropes, she said the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation (an international nonprofit group) has formed regional “community science groups” as part of a widespread effort to track bumblebee species. 

“It’s really hard to say specifically if there has been a decline in local insect populations since insects are very difficult to track,” she said. “I took part in the training for the southeast bumble bee atlas earlier this year. The hope is that this atlas will give scientists a better idea of population numbers.”

It’s important that scientists understand any threats to the health of the world’s bee populations as the insects are vital to humankind’s ability to survive.

Bees — both domesticated and wild — are responsible for pollinating 71 of the 100 crop species that provide 90 percent of the global food supply, according to experts from greentumble.

Without bees, for instance, there would be no apples, avocados, onions, cucumbers, oranges or almonds. 

“Pollination is defined as the act of transferring pollen grains from the male anther of a flower to the female stigma,” Maples explained. “When bees go from flower to flower collecting pollen, they are also depositing pollen grains onto the flowers, thus pollinating them. Not all plants rely on insects to reproduce; for example, some are wind pollinated.”

“The bees benefit because nectar and pollen are their food source. Nectar is an energy source and pollen is a protein source for them. Many agricultural plants are pollinated by bees, hence their importance for us. Roughly one in three bites of food are pollinated by bees, plus another 25 percent of animal feed stuffs. Almonds are 100 percent honeybee pollinated.”

It’s not entirely clear why bee populations appear to be shrinking, but Maples said there’s no shortage of possible explanations.

“As with many species in decline, there are a number of reasons behind it,” she said. “Habitat loss is a big one. Our culture has taught us that we should have pristine lawns without ‘weeds,’ but letting your yard — even in part — grow wild would be a huge step in creating more resources for pollinators. Dandelions and clover can be a haven for pollinators.”

Poisons used to control unwanted animals and insects are another factor. 

“Pesticides have a huge impact as well, especially though containing neonicotinoids,” she said. “Pesticides rarely distinguish between beneficial invertebrates and those that cause harm.”

This summer’s historic heatwaves in the Northern Hemisphere may also be playing a role, but Maples cautioned that it’s too early to know for certain what the impact is. 

“Climate change may also be playing a role,” she explained. “It isn’t clear if bumblebees are adapting to changing temperatures within their normal ranges.” 

Those interested in helping researchers to track bee populations can go to Xerces and learn about taking part in one of the organization’s community science groups.

Do bees really have knees? And more on the idiom.

 

Published in News

Green floater mussel Ryan Hagerty USFW A green floater mussel (Lasmigona subviridis).  Ryan Hagerty/USFWS

WASHINGTON — The green floater, a freshwater mussel native to the waters of Southern Appalachia, is now formally considered at risk of extinction due to the loss and fragmentation of its aquatic habitat. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined the green floater, historically found in 10 eastern U.S. states, is likely to become endangered due to existing and emerging threats. The service is proposing to list the mussel as threatened under the Endangered Species Act

The green floater is still found in its native range in North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. It is considered locally extinct in Alabama and Georgia. 

While the species has strongholds in places, green floaters are rare in nearly 80 percent of the watersheds where they naturally occur. More than 75 percent of the nation’s native freshwater mussel species are endangered or threatened, considered to be of special conservation concern, or presumed extinct, according to USWFS.

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halloween sun 2014 2kThe Earth’s sun is seen in this NASA image. Scientists said July might be the hottest month in 100,000 years.  

The global heat wave of July 2023 has spared Southern Appalachia. So far.

KNOXVILLE July 2023 has so far offered a scary look at global climate change around the world, and the month is already one for the record books.

This month will likely end up being the hottest July on record, globally speaking. That comes after quantitative conclusions from multiple scientists that the past week was, globally, the warmest in 100,000 years.

The Southern Appalachians have generally been spared from the heat settling on vast portions of the country and world, but that will soon change. The National Weather Service predicts higher than average temperatures flirting with 100 degrees in the Tennessee Valley next week. Record-breaking temperatures are possible. The average high temperature for July in Knoxville is 87 degrees.

Published in News

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Citizens call on TVA to stop passing gas

KNOXVILLE — The Tennessee Valley Authority in coming years plans to add both natural gas and solar plants to its portfolio to meet what it says are rising energy demands.

TVA’s Board of Directors laid out the federal utility’s plan in a meeting at Norris Middle School in May. Environmentalists at a previous hearing criticized the utility’s focus on natural gas rather than renewables or other measures. Other people, largely tied to local power providers, argued that a switch to renewable energy would be unreliable.

TVA showed a map in a press release following the meeting, showing four proposed natural gas plants and two proposed solar plants. Two of those natural gas plants would be in Tennessee while the other two are planned for Alabama and Kentucky. It stated these new plants will total 3,800 megawatts. It also spoke of its System Operations Center, set to open in fall 2024 in Georgetown to manage the utility’s grid. TVA also stated a desire to research nuclear technologies.

“Our region is experiencing growth at six times the national average, which means we must invest in our current power system and build new generation so we can continue meeting our region’s demand,” said TVA president and CEO Jeff Lyash.

Several citizens criticized TVA’s focus on natural gas plants and new pipelines at the listening session May 9. Among them was Clinton resident and activist John Todd Waterman.

Published in News

Third Act ROCKING CHAIRSPhoto courtesy of Third Act via The Revelator

As their twilight approaches, elders supercharge climate action on behalf of future generations 

This story was originally published by The Revelator. Eduardo Garcia is a New York-based climate journalist. A native of Spain, he has written about climate solutions for Thomson Reuters, The New York Times, Treehugger and Slate. He is the author of Things You Can Do: How to Fight Climate Change and Reduce Waste, an illustrated book about reducing personal carbon footprints.

Thousands of senior Americans took to the streets in March in 30 states to demand that the country’s major banks divest from fossil fuels.

This “rocking chair rebellion” — organized by Third Act, a fast-growing climate action group focused on older Americans — shows that Baby Boomers are becoming a new force in the climate movement.

Third Act cofounder Bill McKibben, who joined a Washington, D.C., protest, says it’s unfair to put all the weight of climate activism on the shoulders of young people. It’s time for older Americans to take a central role.

“Young people don’t have the structural power necessary to make changes,” McKibben tells The Revelator. “But old people do. There are 70 million Americans over the age of 60. Many of us vote, we’re politically engaged, and have a lot of financial resources. So if you want to press either the political system or the financial system, older people are a useful group to have.”

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Canopy Nexus Hotel after floodingFlooding is seen outside a popular hotel in Pakistan following historic and devastating flooding linked largely to the melting of highland glaciers.  Wikipedia Commons

Global population growth promises a drastic spike in public health emergencies

This story was originally published by The Conversation. Maureen Lichtveld is dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh. 

There are questions that worry me profoundly as an environmental health and population scientist.

Will we have enough food for a growing global population? How will we take care of more people in the next pandemic? What will heat do to millions with hypertension? Will countries wage water wars because of increasing droughts?

These risks all have three things in common: health, climate change and a growing population that the United Nations determined passed 8 billion people in November 2022, which is double the population of just 48 years ago.

Published in News
 

Research from Kimberly Sheldon at the University of Tennessee suggests insect behavior is adjusting for climate change

The ConversationIf the TV series “Dirty Jobs” covered animals as well as humans, it would probably start with dung beetles. These hardworking critters are among the insect world’s most important recyclers. They eat and bury manure from many other species, recycling nutrients and improving soil as they go.

Dung beetles are found on every continent except Antarctica, in forests, grasslands, prairies and deserts. And now, like many other species, they are coping with the effects of climate change.

I am an ecologist who has spent nearly 20 years studying dung beetles. My research spans tropical and temperate ecosystems, and focuses on how these beneficial animals respond to temperature changes.

Published in News
Friday, 14 October 2022 13:40

5 big threats to the world’s rivers

fresh water Conservation FisheriesA biologist with Conservation Fisheries surveys a stretch of Little River near Walland, Tennessee to determine fish viability and identify rare species for transplantation. Thomas Fraser/Hellbender Press

Human activities have imperiled our waterways — along with a third of freshwater fish and other aquatic species

This story was originally published by The Revelator.

If we needed more motivation to save our ailing rivers, it could come with the findings of a recent study that determined the biodiversity crisis is most acute in freshwater ecosystems, which thread the Southern landscape like crucial veins and arteries.

Rivers, lakes and inland wetlands cover 1 percent of the Earth but provide homes for 10 percent of all its species, including one-third of all vertebrates. And many of those species are imperiled — some 27 percent of the nearly 30,000 freshwater species so far assessed by the IUCN Red List. This includes nearly one-third of all freshwater fish.

How did things get so bad? For some species it’s a single action — like building a dam. But for most, it’s a confluence of factors — an accumulation of harm — that builds for years or decades.

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