Recovering Rivers: Yangtse shows the way

Photo by Lucia Barreiros Silva on Pexels.com

The greatest problem in conservation and pollution control is that as soon as someone introduces a new measure, however reasonable, someone else pushes back. Try to control traffic pollution(demonstrably toxic) and all the van drivers get up in arms. Try to restrict smoking, and there’s a huge uproar crying freedom, autonomy and the right to die in peace. Yes, progressive ideas may be rational and based on scientific evidence and of long term benefit. But all too often, they can give people something to lose here, now, in the short term. Everyone really, truly need conservation and pollution projects to succeed quickly, here, now as well. The answer suggests Jonathan Watts of the Guardian, is lying on the banks of the Yangtse river in China and its called Evolutionary Game Theory [1]

The Yangtse had got into a pretty sorry state over the 70 or so years up to 2020. Too much fishing, too many dams. too much pollution. An iconic species called the Baiji dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer) was even driven to extinction, a heart-breaking tragedy if ever there was one. Something had to be done. And instead of just imposing bans and top down heavy handedness, the authorities boxed clever Check this out form Jonathan:

[the policy}t was designed according to the principles of evolutionary game theory, to assess how the three main bodies affected – communities, local governments and central government – would behave depending on different applications of punishments and rewards……The government spent about $3bn on compensating and finding alternative employment for about 200,000 fishers, scrapping many of the 100,000 boats involved.

In other words ordinary people were not treated as reckless ignoramuses, but just strugglers like the rest of. They were both brought in and bought in. a lesson many governments and well meaning reformers could do well to learn from. Now the great river, one of the undoubted wonders of the world, is starting to recover. Albeit a little groggily in places. Combine that with China’s CO₂ emissions starting to flatten out, and their huge lurch towards renewable power, and you may get a glimmer of hope indeed.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/12/china-yangtze-river-recovery-after-fishing-ban

#evolutionary game theory #conservation #ecology #pollution #communities #fishing #angtse

Forget the Middle East:Here’s the real crisis to watch out for

With the current tensions in the Middle East flooding the channels, you could be forgiven for thinking that benighted region is the only part of the planet that counts. It isn’t. It soon won’t count for much at all. And once again we are indebted to that most erudite of writers, George Monbiot of the Guardian[1] for telling us why. George has got hold of a report called the UK National Security Assessment, written by some of the sharpest minds in the country- MI5, GCHQ, that lot. And when we say they’re bright, trust us -they are. We won’t deprive you of the pleasure of reading all of George’s article. But the essence is simple: rapidly accelerating climate change is completely upending the normal relationships between nations, and taking us all to a dark and dangerous place

Let’s take one example. The glaciers of the mighty Himalaya-Karakoram system supply the water to some of the largest and most economically important rivers in the world. Among them are the Yangtse, the Mekong, the Brahmaputra and Ganges. All in all, they are the lifeblood of about 2 billion people in some of the world’s most progressive economic areas. And now those glaciers are melting-fast.[2] Leading to both short term floods and long term water shortages. At the moment this region is divided among three major powers_ Pakistan, India and China. All are nuclear-armed. All, being nations will attempt to defend their own local interest and local potentials, for that is what nations do. Each will reach for the water it must have to survive. And sooner or later these interests will clash. Mightily.

Now there will be a temptation among some of our readers, particularly those who hang out in the Dog and Duck, to say “let them get on with it- we can just sit it out” (That is a very polite way of conveying what they will say). But you can’t, gentle readers. As you may have noticed from your History, world wars are like beach parties, they tend to draw everyone in. Powers like Russia the USA and the EU will be forced to choose sides if only to protect their supply chains. Add to that the effects on migration numbers from all those refugees, world prices, supply chains and collapsing currencies and you have a mess to make the financial crash of 2008 look like, like-well one of those beach parties we alluded to above, really. Here then at last will come the consequences of doing nothing serious or substantail about global warming. And it will be well deserved by us all.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/27/uk-government-report-ecosystem-collapse-foi-national-security?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[2]https://iccinet.org/landmark-report-himalayan-glaciers-disappearing-two-thirds-faster-than-before/

#global warming #himalaya #glacier #ganges #flood #yangtse #drought #China #India #Pakistan #world war three

We offer a massive and unconditional apology for Nitrogen

We think we owe you a truly massive overwhelming apology, gentle reader. And this is why.

“Will the world end with a bang or a whimper?” is a question we’ve covered before here. We’ve even mentioned a few possibilities such as magnetic flips ,exploding volcanoes and more insidious effects like pollution and pandemics. (LSS passim)Yet it was while researching another topic entirely that we came across a wholly unexpected and entirely man-made problem that we thought you should know about: Nitrogen, [1] [2]and its derivative compounds which has been unleashed on an unprepared world in uncontrolled quantities for over a century. The reason it’s rising so fast is simple: we are manufacturing and releasing unprecedented quantities of reactive nitrogen—fertilisers, manure emissions, industrial by‑products—far beyond anything the planet’s natural nitrogen cycle ever evolved to handle.

Why so much? Because the Haber–Bosch process unlocked a torrent of synthetic nitrogen, and agriculture embraced it as a miracle. Global production of reactive nitrogen has soared to many times its pre‑industrial level. Locally, this can boost yields, but it comes with a hidden price: soils become chemically dependent, losing the microbial communities that once fixed nitrogen naturally. Excess nitrogen washes into rivers, fuelling algal blooms and dead zones; it volatilises into nitrous oxide, damaging the ozone layer; it accumulates in ecosystems, favouring a few aggressive species while starving others. And things are never so bad that they don’t get worse. Nitrous oxide is the quiet heavyweight of greenhouse gases. molecule for molecule, it traps far more heat than carbon dioxide and lingers in the atmosphere for over a century. It’s also the single largest ozone‑depleting emission humanity still produces. And yet most people barely register it. So what looks like abundance at the farm gate is, at planetary scale, a metabolic overload.

And this is the deeper tragedy: millions of farmers, each trying to solve a local problem—how to feed crops, how to secure a harvest—collectively drive a global destabilisation of the nitrogen cycle. We’ve built a civilisation addicted to excess nitrogen, and the system now expects those inputs just to function. The long‑term risk is that we push soils, waterways, and atmospheric chemistry past thresholds that cannot easily be reversed. What began as a triumph of human ingenuity has become a planetary dependence, and the bill for that dependence is only just beginning to arrive. A silent catastrophe of soil degradation, desertification, wetland collapse (LSS 28 5 24),biodiversity loss from nutrient overload, and fisheries collapse.

And now for our apology, gentle readers. For several years now we have been repeatedly warning you of the dangers posed by antibiotic resistant bacteria and climate change. We had not a single idea about this nitrogen crisis building up all around us. None whatsoever, We profoundly and unreservedly apologise to all of you-readers, contributors researchers and hard working staff, even the ones in HR. And we say this-never will such an oversight happen again in this mighty organisation. But do not be alarmed. From now on we will search the world ceaselessly to bring you news of fresh perils, unexpected lethal dangers which may be lurking ready to wipe us all out Or if not that, at least reduce the handful of survivors to subsistence-level barbarism in a lawless, violent post-apocalyptic world. We think we may even have uncovered a few already. Follow us if you want to know more about what they are.

[1] Anthropogenic-driven perturbations on nitrogen cycles and interactions with climate change (2024)Gong, Kou‑Giesbrecht & Zaehle (2024)
Published in Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry. click:Anthropogenic-driven perturbations on nitrogen cycles and interactions with climate changes – ScienceDirect

[2] Alteration in nitrogen cycle and its contribution to climate change: a review (2025)Anand et al. (2025) click:2Alteration in nitrogen cycle and its contribution to climate change: a review | Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy

#nitogen #agriculture #nitrous oxide #pollution #climate change #disaster

Does this whale hold the secret of eternal youth?

I have lived long enough, my way of life is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf…..Macbeth Act V scene 3)

Most of us would pretty much agree with the Thane of Glamis. But up to now, achieving that Pan-like state of eternal youth has been no more than a dream, whatever the cosmetics companies say. Until today, when recent discoveries of a protein in the Bowhead whale suggests that this same eternal dream may actually come true. We’ve two takes on the story: a popular one from Ashleigh McCaul of the Mail: and a more in-depth view from Nature Briefings Secrets of a 200 year old whale which carries, as ever, links to deeper coverage (no whale pun intended)

A cold-activated protein that helps to repair broken DNA could be the bowhead whale’s secret to living sometimes for more than 200 years. Researchers travelled to northern Alaska to collect samples of tissue from the whales (Balaena mysticetus) from Iñupiaq Inuit communities. The team found that the whale’s cells produce a protein called CIRPB, which helps to mend potentially cancerous DNA mutations. The results show that an efficient DNA repair system is “a very effective strategy to confer this extreme longevity”, says molecular biologist Zhiyong Mao.Nature | 4 min read
Reference: Nature paper

And our opinion? it’s interesting how science is fine when its discoveries coincide with the deepest wishes of the population. Yet science is not so convenient when it reminds of certain uncomfortable truths, such as the imminence of catastrophic climate change, The response of some is to launch culture wars, wherein the conclusions and recommendations of the educated must not only be resisted, they must be actively torn down if at all possible. This article by Alex Heffron and Tom Carter-Brooks for the Conversation chronicles how this is currently playing out in the English countryside., where some persons are trying to foment opposition to the installation of solar panels on private land. Of course, motives will be mixed: and not all of us think an array of panels is quite as pretty as a meadow of waving wheat. But we must have clean power: or we will surely die, young and old alike.

We are certain you will find a comparable example near to where you live, gentle reader Yet it’s the psychology of all this that gives us this thought, for what it may be worth. Now, It was said of Peter Pan than he never grew up. The best definition of growing up is to realise not all your wishes can come true at once. It seems some people must do more to recognise that, however many decades they have accumulated.

[1]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-15247935/How-whales-hold-secret-humans-living-FAR-longer-scientists-discover-longest-living-mammal-repairs-DNA.html

[2]https://theconversation.com/you-cant-eat-electricity-how-rural-solar-farms-became-the-latest-battlefront-in-britains-culture-war-268128?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%

[3]https://theconversation.com/you-cant-eat-electricity-how-rural-solar-farms-became-the-latest-battlefront-in-britains-culture-war-268128?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%

#climate change #global warming #renewable energy #peter pan #ageing #whale

Could a humble fungus cure cancer?

We have a of a confession here. We’ve always neglected fungi, that third mighty kingdom of life in favour of their more photogenic relatives, the animals and the plants. It’s a stupid oversight, as anyone who has enjoyed a glass of beer along with a bite of cheese can tell you. Not to mention Penicillium which was, after al the raison d’etre, the very fons et origio of these blogs which we so selflessly pen every day for your common benefit, gentle readers. Well now that’s all going to change. Fungi are on their way in from the cold starting with this intriguing piece from Emily Stern of the Daily Mail. Intriguing because it turns a bit of a baddie into a very Good Thing indeed.[1]

For many years researchers into old things like dead Pharaohs and dead Kings of Poland had a problem. A number of them kept dropping dead, due to the activities of a fungus called Aspergillus flavus[2] that lived in the shrouds and wrappings on the bodies of the extinguished rulers. Normally it performs a useful role in places like gardens and allotments by breaking down plant matter of all kinds. But get too close, breathe it in-and you could be a goner. So it has always been treated with a a wary circumspection. However, the ingenious Dr Sherry Gao and her co workers have discovered something else. Hidden inside the tissues of the meek mould are chemicals called asperigimycins. They seem to have anti leukaemia potentialities on their own: but, if combined with certain classes of lipid, they can get very good at it indeed. Read this from Emily’s matchless prose

They then added a lipid that’s also found in royal honey to another variant of asperigimycins and found the method killed just as many cancer cells as the drugs cytarabine and daunorubicin.

There’s a few lessons here for those who like a good moral tale. Firstly that Nature is full of hidden goodies about which we have no clue. Secondly even dangerous things can be turned to our advantage if you handle them with due care and caution(remember our old blog on Komodo dragons and antibiotics?) And thirdly, as in nature as in people: you never know which one is the one who saves your life. Treat them all with respect.And stop chopping down all the forests.

[1]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14839831/deadly-ancient-fungus-turns-cancer-fighting-powerhouse.html

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspergillus

#cancer #leukaemia #fungus #medicine #health

Panzootic Disease: When The Guardian and Daily Mail agree, be very afraid indeed

They’re new and they spread fast. They mutate, jumping species barries with ease. Many of them are new, meaning there are no vaccines and no established treatments. They seem to come in many forms- prions, viruses, bacteria, whatever. What are they? Panzootic diseases. They may turn out to be the most significant health risk of this decade, making it time we all thought more about them. So here are two articles which we hope will give you, gentle reader, a sort of jump-off point from which can can know more.

Let’s start with the eloquent Luke Andrews of the Mail, who concentrates specifically Chronic Wasting Disease, or CWD for short.[1] It is caused by our old friends Prions (remember CJD?) and seems to be fatal to every animal it infects. Infection is by simple contact with any body fluid; and as deer are widely hunted from Wyoming to Pennsylvania, Luke identifies a growing problem, at least in the United States. More worrying for us is Luke’s report that it has jumped to wild pigs (that’s it displaying panzootic behaviour); it causes us to worry what may come next,

Pulling back for a broader view, we come to the erudite Phoebe Weston of the Guardian.[2] Unsurprisingly to well-informed LSS readers, her classic example of a Panzootic is H₅N₁, the avian flu which is currently ripping through hecatombs of our most iconic species of mammals and birds. If you think in terms of hard cash, how good is that for the tourist trade? Intriguingly, she sees COVID-19 as a classic Panzootic disease as well, as it seems to have spread to 48 species (no, we didn’t know that either). Best of all, Phoebe praises a book by a man called Mark Honigsbaum called The Pandemic Century; we link to a quick review here.[3] Because the causes of this are actually quite simple: uncontrolled development. destructive short-term farming and an insatiable hunger for things which bring instant, short-term gratification. That is the real sickness.

[1]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14280007/researchers-warn-chronic-wasting-disease-zombie-deer.html

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/15/age-of-the-panzootic-scientists-warn-of-more-devastating-diseases-jumping-between-species-aoe?CMP=

[3]https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/23/the-pandemic-century-one-hundred-years-panic-hysteria-mark-honigsbaum-review-riveting

#panzootic disease #prion #pandemic #CWD #habitat loss #global warming #virus

CSAR Carbon Capture technology: small hope in difficult times?

Photo by Carlo Ju00fcnemann on Pexels.com

If US President Elect Donald Trump does what he says-pulling his country out of international climate agreements and encouraging oil drilling wherever possible-then the world will enter a catastrophic downward spiral. Urgent measures will be desperately needed. Could Continuous Swing Adsorption Reactor Technology be the answer? According to Darren Orf of Popular Mechanics, yes it could. [1]

A Norwegian Institute called SINTEFF [2] has not only researched this intriguing double capture process to achieve new levels of efficiency, but is actually testing it on industrial plant. As every schoolchild knows it’s not enough to come up with new sources of clean power, like wind farms. It’s going to be vital to seize the carbon from all those dirty industries like cement, metal production and waste incineration. Well, the results look good. Get this:

Although CSAR performed well in laboratory settings, the technology needed to be tested in the wild. Over the summer, SINTEF worked with the BIR AS waste combustion plant outside Bergen, Norway………In a 100-hour-long test operation, the CSAR pilot demonstration captured the same amount of CO₂ gas as it had in a laboratory setting. In total, this represents roughly 100 kilograms of CO₂ per day…………..

How ironic that a small country like Norway should be right at the cutting edge of such vital design! Or is it really surprising? Back in the 1980s both Britain and Norway enjoyed a bonanza of money from North Sea Oil. Norway sensibly invested theirs in a state owned sovereign wealth fund. It led their tiny population to acritical economic mass, allowing them to develop projects like this. And Britain? They spent it all on tax cuts for City Brokers and Landowning Grandees. Not surprising at all, when you think about it.

_{with thanks to P Seymour}

[1]https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a62855594/csar-cabon-capture-climate-change/

[2] https://www.sintef.no/en/sintef-research-areas/ccs_ccus/

#carbon capture #carbon storage #global warming #donald trump #runaway greenhouse effect

Could despised carrion feeders save us all?

A few years ago we published a blog (LSS 27 10 20;6 9 21) wherein we hymned the praises of the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis). Specifically, because these scary monitors could be a source of new antibiotics. Why might that be? Because they spend their lives feeding on filthy, rotting carrion and should therefore be all dead by now.

So why do carrion eaters (wolves flies, vultures are but some of the many types of animals that come to mind) not only survive, but thrive in their chosen niche? One which to us seems a little unpleasant and down market. According to Tim Cushnie, Darren Sexton and Vijitra Luang-In of the Conversation, these intrepid beasts have each developed a range of techniques to avoid bacterial infections which must be thriving on their dinners. What interests us most on this blog their chemical defences. They seemed to have evolved pathogen recognition and destruction systems which are far in advance of their carnivorous and herbivorous relatives. The authors cite several classes of compound which seem to ripe for exploration. And indeed are being explored by researchers in Germany, China and the US.[2]

And the moral of the story? Firstly, do not despise carrion feeders. They are Nature’s clean-up squad. Secondly, there must be hundreds of other plants and animals in nature which may have equally useful contents. So, if you tear down nature to build a car park you will probably have lost something. Finally, if used our Universities to train up a few more Biologists and a few less accountants, we are all going to be much, much richer.

[1]https://theconversation.com/antibacterial-discovery-how-scavengers-avoid-infection-and-what-we-can-learn-from-them-229828?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=

[2]https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07388551.2024.2389175

scavenger #carrion #komodo dragon #immunology #bacteria #antibiotic

Will Wetlands save the World?

Every so often we receive a well-meaning, but slightly plaintive communication from people who yearn for improved methods of carbon capture, by which they mean huge industrial undertakings not unlike the filthy power stations which they are meant to replace. “Good point!” we cry “but it’s going to take years to perfect the technology. Then scale it up. By which time it will all be much too late.” What if there are far more efficient carbon capture stations already out there, cheap to develop, quickly scalable, which might in addition act as huge natural flood defences. Before you reply “too good to be true” have a look at these two stories about wetlands which have recently crossed our screens.

Mangroves in Brazil Brazil has had more than its fair share of bad ecological news recently, what with chopping down massive swathes of the Amazon and so on. But now Mr Bolsonaro has gone, we are able to report a more hopeful story, by Maurice Saverese via Apple News.[1] A new project in the Guanabara Bay, near Rio De Janeiro has planted up to 30 000 mango trees. Not only will these act as a massive flood defence, stabilising the coastline against erosion, but will provide a valuable new source of income to local fisherman as crabs and other economically valuable species return to the healthy waters.

Wetlands in Washington Since the 1780s the USA has lost about half of its wetlands. Which is a shame because although wetlands comprise just 10% of the world’s surface, they contain perhaps 25% of its soil carbon. That at least is the estimate of a team from Washington University, who are investigating the potential of vast carbon-capturing wetlands beneath the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest [2] You’ll have to get past the paywall for this one from Natalia Mesa of the Atlantic, again via Apple News. but it’s well worth it. Because the rainy north west also includes parts of California, Oregon and much of western Canada. If the Americans can only keep out Trump and his supporters, then once again they might have saved the planet, this time on a massive scale.

Sometimes the answer lies not in doing new things, but adapting old ones to new uses.

thanks to P Seymour

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/rio-de-janeiro-bay-reforestation-shows-mangroves-power-to-mitigate-climate-disasters

[2]https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/05/wetlands-forest-unmapped-carbon-washington/678513/?utm_source=apple_news

#wetlands #carbon capture #mangroves #washington state #donald trump

Volcanoes and Viruses-two deadly warnings of trouble to come

The slew of tv documentaries and news stories about the recent discoveries in the Roman town of Pompeii, destroyed by a cataclysmic eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, certainly afford material for reflection. [1] Here was a thriving town, blotted out in a single day. Yet this was a small eruption. Far greater damage was done to the Roman Empire by the titanic eruptions in the age of the Emperor Justinian in 536 AD. [2] The resulting world-wide winter produced cataclysmic hunger, which in turn weakened the resistance to the bubonic plague epidemic which ravaged the Empire in the following decade. It is easy to think that we moderns, with all our advanced technologies are far superior to those old Romans, and thereby conclude “it won’t happen to us”. Don’t be so sure, at least until you have looked at this piece from Nature Briefings The Next Big Eruption will come. And, like the inhabitants of Ancient Rome, it looks as if we are woefully unprepared:

Tamsin Mather’s book Adventures in Volcanoland takes readers on a journey to some of the world’s most notorious and active volcanoes — and reminds us that the next volcanic catastrophe is inevitable. Yet global preparedness for volcanic eruptions is severely lacking, says fellow volcanologist and reviewer Heather Handley. There is no international treaty organization for volcanic hazards and no global coordination on issuing comprehensive warnings of risks of eruptions, she says. Mather’s book “reminds us that we should all keep careful watch on the world’s volcanoes”.Nature | 7 min read

And where will it happen? We’ve linked to this handy guide to the top five or so candidates, which, if they blew, could easily plunge us all into an economy-collapsing winter.[3] They include Popocatapetl, Mount Fuji and Mount Ranier. But don’t forget the highly active caldera of magma which sits under Naples, and includes Vesuvius itself. Are you sure it won’t happen?

As Justinian and his subjects found, deadly plagues soon follow the societal collapse produced by a giant volcanic event. Of course, these plagues can happen anyway without help from under the ground. Proof of how close this might be comes with alarming news that bird flu viruses have now jumped the species barrier into mammals. Which means they could spread rapidly among humans any time soon. The potential consequences will be far, far graver than the recent Covid-19 outbreak, which is already passing into memory. Nature Briefings takes up the story

“In my flu career, we have not seen a virus that expands its host range quite like this,” says virologist Troy Sutton about H5N1, an avian influenza virus that has rapidly infiltrated species well beyond birds. While most mammal infections were probably caused by contact with an infected bird, there’s evidence that the virus has now evolved to spread directly between some species, such as sea lions. Spreading in more species gives H5N1 opportunities to further adapt to mammals, including humans. So far, the virus doesn’t show signs of being able to cause a pandemic, Sutton says. “If we don’t give it the panic but we give it the respect and due diligence, I believe we can manage it,” adds Rick Bright, chief executive of a public health consultancy.The New York Times | 10 min read

One thing you won’t get at LSS is frivolous celebrity gossip nor trivial items about the doings of footballers, actors and minor royals. Instead, we offer timely and thoughtful warnings about the real issues which confront us. How you respond to them, gentle readers, is up to you.

[1]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68777741

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536

[3]https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-most-dangerous-volcanoes-in-the-world.html

[4]https://nhess.copernicus.org/preprints/nhess-2020-51/nhess-2020-51.pdf#:~:text=The%20Naples%20%28Southern%20Italy%29%20area%20has%20the%20highest,within%20twenty%20kilometres%20from%20a%20possible%20eruptive%20vent.

#volcano #caldera #volcanic winter #ad536 #pandemic #plague