Lancet Study Warns of Global Health Crisis and 1 Billion Climate Refugees by 2050

CommonDreams

"We are only just beginning to feel the impacts of climate change." Story here.

Waves crash against the International Airport of Nauro, 
a small Pacific island country. Photo - Matt Robertson 

Global atmospheric CO2 levels hit record high

theguardian

UN warns that drastic action is needed to meet climate targets set in the Paris agreement. Story here.

HIghway construction in Canada. 

PinP photo.

Rooting Out Democracy

George Monbiot

The Sheffield tree massacre is one result of the monstrous, impenetrable officialdom that neoliberalism creates. Story here. 

H

Here in Canada, trees are also treated as a nuisance, to be gotten rid of. They rarely win the battle when "Big Ag" decides they have to go. Just watch the video, below, to see what we mean. PinP

"Just like eating yogurt" - scientists hope to end epidemic in bats

NATIONAL OBSERVER

Canadian scientists are racing to test a remedy that they hope will save bats from a deadly fungus that has already killed millions of the winged mammals across the continent. Story here.
Hibernating healthy Virginia big-eared bats in W.V. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service 

Monsanto Attacks Scientists After Studies Show Trouble For Weedkiller Dicamba

npr

In a normal year, Kevin Bradley, a professor of weed science at the University of Missouri, would have spent his summer testing new ways to control a troublesome little plant called water hemp. This has not been a normal year. Details here.



Photo by
Martina Nolte 

Human Exposure to Glyphosate Has Skyrocketed 500% Since Introduction of GMO Crops

EcoWatch

Glyphosate—the most widely applied herbicide worldwide and the controversial main ingredient in Monsanto's star product Roundup—is not just found on corn and soy fields. This pervasive chemical can be detected in everyday foods such as cookies, crackers, ice cream and even our own urine. Story here.

Image by Brian Robert Marshall

European Parliament Votes to Ban Glyphosate in 28 Countries

EcoWatch

The European Parliament, representing 28 countries and more than 500 million people, has voted to phase out the popular weedkiller, glyphosate over 5 years. It was also banned immediately in households. Story here.

A container of "Roundup," the most famous formulation containing glyphosate, in a collection depot in Manitoba. PinP photo.

'Immoral' salmon milking in Toronto rivers decried by anglers, park users

CBCnews

Some fishermen are killing migratory female salmon to harvest their eggs for bait. Story here.

Carleton University report Finds Alberta methane gas emissions are far higher than earlier thought.

Carlton Newsroom

A major new study by several co-authors in North America suggests methane emissions in the Canadian oil and gas sector are significantly higher than currently estimated and reveals critical gaps in current reporting requirements. Story here.

Snow Leopards Still Threatened by Consumer Demand for Skins and Body Parts

EcoWatch

Despite having their “threat level" lowered a bit recently, snow leopards are still faced with the same consumer demand which is driving the poaching and trafficking of tigers and leopards across Asia. Story here.

Snow Leopard taken at Marwell Wildlife Park, Hampshire, UK

Greg Townsend

'Makes it more extreme:' Prof says climate change added to historic fire season

CBC news

For every degree the temperature rises, there's a 12 per cent increase in lightning. Story here.

Ashcroft Reserve wildfire as seen across Loon Lake, BC. Shawn Cahill

Company Behind Gas Rig Explosion in Louisiana Was Sued for Degrading Coast

DESMOG

Clovelly Oil is not quite a household name, as far as oil and natural gas companies go, though it recently gained attention when its oil and natural gas storage rig exploded on October 15 in Louisiana. Story here.

Wind, warm water revved up melting Antarctic glaciers - NASA study.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labortory
An influx of warm water into the bay where they're located are likely behind a speedup in the movement of Antarctic glaciers. Details here.

Air Pollution Kills 9 Million, Costs $5 Trillion Per Year

EcoWatch

Wildfires like this can send harmful air particles continent-wide. Wikimedia Commons.

"For decades, pollution and its harmful effects on people's health, the environment, and the planet have been neglected both by Governments and the international development agenda. Yet, pollution is the largest environmental cause of disease and death in the world today, responsible for an estimated 9 million premature deaths." Story here.

RELATED: Please watch my TV newscast, below, which aired some months ago. A segment contained within it references the severe cost of pollution on the world's population.

How Big Water Projects Helped Trigger Africa’s Migrant Crisis

YaleEnvironment360

Major dam and irrigation projects are drying up the wetlands that sustain life in the arid Sahel region of Africa. The result has been a wave of environmental refugees, as thousands of people flee, many on boats to Europe.  Story here.
Egypt's Aswan High Dam. 
Photo by Hajor.

Warning of 'ecological Armageddon' after dramatic plunge in insect numbers

theguardian

Three-quarters of flying insects in nature reserves across Germany have vanished in 25 years, with serious implications for all life on Earth, scientists say. Story here.

A purple martin with a dragonfly. 
PinP photo.

Wildfire forces evacuation of southwestern Saskatchewan communities

CBCnews

Evacuation orders have been issued for towns of Leader, Burstall and Liebenthal. Story here.

It’s Time to Ban Bee-Killing Pesticides

EcoWatch - by David Suzuki
The Canadian government is banning plastic microbeads in toiletries. Although designed to clean us, they're polluting the environment, putting the health of fish, wildlife and people at risk. Manufacturers and consumers ushered plastic microbeads into the marketplace, but when we learned of their dangers, we moved to phase them out. Story here.

RELATED: Tainted honey spells more trouble for bees. Are we losing the battle to save them?

There are toxic secrets in Canada's Chemical Valley

|NATIONAL OBSERVER

Ron Plain will most likely be dead in 24 months. In November 2016, his doctors diagnosed him with a rare form of cancer…Story here.

The Labouratory

The Guardian - George Monbiot

We are still living in the long 20th Century. We are stuck with its redundant technologies: the internal combustion engine; thermal power plants; factory farms. We are stuck with its redundant politics: unfair electoral systems; their capture by funders and lobbyists; the failure to temper representation with real participation. Story here.

Worrying new research finds that the ocean is cutting through a key Antarctic ice shelf

The Washington Post

A new scientific study has found that warm ocean water is carving an enormous channel into the underside of one of the key floating ice shelves of West Antarctica, the most vulnerable sector of the enormous ice continent. Story here.

"Bill 24 Stinks!" Manitoba Green Party Leader - James Beddome.

Winnipeg Free Press

WINNIPEG - Green Party leader James Beddome wasn't the least bit subtle Wednesday about what he thinks of the Pallister government's red tape reduction bill.

"This bill stinks!" 


Beddome declared to a rally on the steps of the Manitoba legislature.

"It's part of a Conservative agenda that tells us all regulation is bad," Beddome said. "Government efficiency means don't do our homework; if there's no data, there's no problem." Environmental activists led by the Wilderness Committee and Hog Watch Manitoba protested Bill 24, an omnibus bill going to public hearings sometime later this month, warning that within its reductions to regulations were changes that would allow the expansion of industrial hog barns that would further jeopardize the health of Lake Winnipeg.

Speakers could not agree on how many sets of regulations are threatened by red tape reduction - 12, 14, and 15 were all cited

- but did agree that lifting the former NDP government's moratorium on hog barn expansion will produce more toxins that will eventually wash into Lake Winnipeg.

"We're not opposed to raising pigs in Manitoba," said Hog Watch head Vicki Burns, but it must be done humanely and without harming the environment.

"We haven't seen the improvements in Lake Winnipeg we need to see," said Eric Reder, campaign coordinator for Wilderness Manitoba.

NDP environment critic Rob Altemeyer accused Premier Brian Pallister of copying Stephen Harper's playbook, by packing so many issues into an omnibus bill in hopes some would slip by unnoticed.

Tainted honey spells more trouble for bees. Are we losing the battle to save them?

 by Larry Powell

Three out of every four samples of honey tested in a global survey released this week, were tainted with neonicotinoids, the world's most widely-used insecticide.

A five-member Swiss research team tested almost two hundred honey samples from every continent except Antarctica (including several remote islands), for the five main compounds in the "neonic family" of pesticides (acetamiprid, clothianidin, imidacloprid, thiacloprid, and thiamethoxam).

At least one of those compounds was found in 75% of all samples tested. (Fourty-five percent contained two or more, while ten percent showed traces of four or five.)

The levels detected were considered too low to pose a risk to people who actually eat honey. But, for adult bees, honey is their only food in winter and when flowers aren't blooming. While "neonics" may not always kill the pollinators outright, they've been shown to have "sub-lethal effects," which probably damage the way they grow,learn, fend off disease, navigate and reproduce.

The test results show that "neonics" are now used everywhere, and that bees, probably including thousands of wild varieties, as well, are exposed to the toxins in their food, worldwide. 

"Neonics are suspected of being a key factor for a global decline not just in honeybees," states the report, "but in pollinators, generally. And, despite some recent efforts to decrease their use - the contamination (documented in this latest research), confirms the inundation of bees and their environments with these pesticides." 

And while "neonic" levels in the honey are considered low for human consumption, the research paper also hints - that may not be the end of the story. 

"There are increasing concerns about the impact of these systemic pesticides, not only on...honey bees ....but also on...humans."

Other research has already documented harm "neonics" are also doing to insect-eating birds such as swallows, either by poisoning them directly or depriving them of the bugs they normally eat.

Another study demonstrates negative effects on the rare Japanese crested ibis. It was found to have better breeding success when "neonics" were removed from its environment.

In Canada,three kinds of "neonics" have been detected in our waterways at levels considered harmful to important food sources for fish, birds and other animals, such as midges and mayflies.

Researchers hope a total ban such as the one France will soon introduce, may reverse "neonic" readings there, over time. But, despite a partial moratorium imposed by the EU a few years ago, readings in Europe were still among the highest.  

The report warns that "pesticide cocktails," where more than one "neonic" compound may be used at once,  "may increase harm" even more.

The researchers, headed by Edward Mitchell of the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, call on authorities to tell the public more about how many pesticides are being used in their areas, and to make that information easier for scientists to interpret and understand.

Reaction to the research study from other experts in the field, has been swift and, in some cases, angry.

Dave Goulson, Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex (r.) laments, "Despite repeated warnings from scientists that they are impacting the bees, butterflies, aquatic insects and more...few governments have listened.                                                                     "We would expect to find them in honey. Entire landscapes all over the world are now permeated with highly potent neurotoxins, undoubtedly contributing to the global collapse of biodiversity.

"Some of us have been pointing this out for years. It is hard not to feel a sense of deja vu: Rachel Carson was saying the same things more than 50 years ago, but we seem not to have learned any lessons. It is high time that we developed a global regulatory system for pesticides, to prevent such catastrophes being repeated over and over again."

Meanwhile, Chris Connolly of the University of Dundee,  Scotland (l.), calls these latest findings “Alarming and sobering." He says "neonics" are being overused, unnecessarily and ought to be "heavily restricted." 

Dr. Connolly fears, while the chemical may not kill bees outright, it might "hinder their ability to forage on, and pollinate, our crops”

It's been said that one out of every three spoons full of food we put in our mouths are made possible by pollinators.

This latest research was published in the journal, "Science" on Thursday.

RELATED: "Glyphosate found in Canadian food."

Lessons learned from Manitoba's Flood of the Century

The Red River Valley Echo

MORRIS - They were at the forefront of one of Manitoba’s worst natural disasters, and 20 years later, municipal officials and provincial experts gathered in Morris to share their perspective of what became known as “The Flood of the Century”. Story here.

Crash in sea-turtle births stumps ecologists

Nature|News

Leading suspect — climate change — doesn’t fully explain what is happening to leatherback turtles in the US Virgin Islands. Story here.

Little leatherbacks leave their nest in Aruba.
Photo by Elise Peterson

Canada's federal government failing to put climate plan into action, environmental watchdog finds

CBCnews

Commissioner Julie Gelfand says stronger leadership needed to move beyond ‘endless planning mode.’ Story here.

PinP photo.

Concerned with the way hogs are produced in Manitoba? Then, this is for you!

Please check out this brand new website from Hog Watch Manitoba to find out about the provincial governments disturbing plans for hog industry expansion and why you should care!

Tropical forests may be carbon sources, not sinks

Nature

Combination of satellite images and on-the-ground data enables more complete tracking of forest carbon flows. Story here.

Peruvian rainforest.
Roosevelt Garcia at English Wikipedia

Methane emissions from cattle are 11% higher than estimated

the guardian

Bigger livestock in larger numbers in more regions has led to methane in the air climbing faster than predicted due to ‘out-of-date data.’ Details here.

Screams from the yard

NATIONAL OBSERVER

This investigation is the first chapter in an unprecedented series investigating the power and influence of the oil and gas industry, and its impacts on Canadian communities. Story here.



A Trans Canada Pipeline facility in Nebraska.
shannonpatrick17Nebraska, U.S.A.