Posts

Corn-farming fouls the air to fatal effect

Image
Nature - Agriculture Harvesting corn in Canada. A PinP photo. The dominant US crop plant has a voracious appetite for fertilizer, which leads to air pollution and health problems. More here.

Climate change made the Arctic greener. Now parts of it are turning brown.

Image
ScienceNews A green Arctic meadow - Baffin Island, CA. Photo by Mike Beauregard. Warming trends bring more insects, extreme weather and wildfires that wipe out plants. More here.

Yukon temperatures are the highest in 13,600 years

Image
CLIMATE&CAPITALISM Photo by Diego Delso. Warming of over 2 degrees Celsius is above the global average and well above the average of the rest of the Arctic region. More here.

The Trump Administration Has Thrown Out Protections for Migratory Birds

Image
truthout A great egret . One of the many birds that migrate between Canada and the U.S. A PinP photo. Under Republican and Democratic presidents from Nixon through Obama, killing migratory birds, even inadvertently, was a crime, with fines for violations ranging from $250 to $100 million. The power to prosecute created a deterrent that protected birds and enabled government to hold companies to account for environmental disasters.  But in part due to President Donald Trump’s interior secretary nominee… more here. RELATED:   New Studies Show Farm Chemicals Are Affecting More Than Bees. Bird Populations are Declining, Too. Is modern agriculture's hold on nature becoming a death grip?

Rising global shipping traffic could lead to surge in invasive species

Image
Science Daily Ship traffic in the Suez Canal - 1957. Photo by  Buonasera Maritime trade is likely to far outweigh climate change as the driver of bio-invasions over the next 30 years,  study finds.

Even Canada's beloved grey jay is not immune from the ravages of manmade climate change.

Image
Decades of Canadian research, just released , finds "strong evidence" that increasing "freeze-thaw" cycles are destroying food the birds store away in the fall. This, in turn is damaging their ability to reproduce and likely playing a role in a severe population decline in at least one region. by Larry Powell   The grey jay,  AKA as Canada jay or "Whiskey-Jack." Photo by Steve Phillips, via  Canadian Geographic  magazine. It's been known for some time that our changing climate is leading to reductions, even entire removal of many species from certain areas (a process called "extirpation"). This new research by the University of Guelph, sheds more light on just how that happens.  Using 40 years of breeding data, scientists studied grey jays  (scientific name p erisoreus canadensis )   at the southern edge of their range in Algonquin Park, Ontario. (The birds can be found in all Canadian provinces and territorie