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Showing posts from June, 2020

Climate change: Likelihood of UK temperatures exceeding 40°C increasing

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Nature Communications A public domain photo. Temperatures exceeding 40°C may be reached somewhere in the UK every 3.5 to 15 years by 2100 under continued greenhouse gas emissions, suggests a modelling study in Nature Communications. The paper reports that anthropogenic emissions are increasing the likelihood of extremely warm days in the UK (particularly in the southeast), with temperatures becoming more likely to exceed 30, 35 and 40°C by the end of the century in different parts of the country.

Rapidly warming oceans have left many northern marine mammals swimming in troubled waters. But perhaps none more so than that strange and mysterious "unicorn of the sea," the narwhal.

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by Larry Powell Narwhals are cetaceans, a family of marine mammals which includes whales and dolphins. Most are found in Canada's Baffin Bay and Davis Strait, in the high Arctic and Atlantic Arctic. Others live off Greenland, Norway and Russia. Many spend several months over winter, beneath the ice-pack, feeding on fish, squid and shrimp and their summers in more open water. It's believed they're capable of diving as deep as 15 hundred meters and holding their breath for an astonishing 25 minutes!  A pod "breaches" through an opening in the sea-ice.  A US Fish &  Wildlife Service photo.   They can weigh up to two thousand kilograms and reach a length of about five meters. They're much larger than some dolphin species, but tiny compared to the mighty blue whale. Many migrate along the ice's edge some 17 hundred kilometres from Canada to Russia. The males grow long, spiral tusks - actually overgrown teeth - that can protrude up t

The South Pole feels the heat

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Nature Climate Change Mt. Herschel, Antarctica. Photo by Andrew Mandemaker. The South Pole has warmed at over three times the global rate since 1989, according to a paper just published in Nature Climate Change. This warming period was mainly driven by natural tropical climate variability and was likely intensified by increases in greenhouse gas, the study suggests. The Antarctic climate exhibits some of the largest regional temperature trends on the planet. Most of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula experienced warming and ice-sheet thinning during the late twentieth century, and this has continued to the present day. By contrast, the South Pole — located in the remote and high-altitude continental interior — cooled until the 1980s and has since warmed substantially. These trends are affected by natural and anthropogenic climate change, but the individual contribution of each factor is not well understood. Kyle Clem and colleagues analysed weather station data,

Of Pandemics and Climate Calamity. An Opinion Letter.

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by Larry Powell I guess you could call this a “what if” letter. Wildfire smoke from hundreds of kilometres away, clouds this Manitoba landscape. A PinP photo.  What if  we humans would listen as intently to our specialists in the earth and climate sciences as we now seem to be doing to those in infectious disease? Except for a fringe few (like the wing-nut "Frontier Centre," which likens Covid-19 to a hoax),  many of us have accepted that this is serious and lives  will be saved  if we follow public health directives during this virus's heartless rampage.   Compare this to the attention given to the decades of warnings of climate collapse and eco-system breakdown from experts in the atmospheric sciences. The differences could not be more stark.   While our Medical Health Officers and other specialists in the field of infectious diseases are, rightly, being hailed as heroes, climatologists and others in similar fields, have been ignored, at best, or

Hog Watch Manitoba's Call to Action For A Just Green Recovery

Smaller is Smarter; Farms not Factories Hog Watch Manitoba is a non-profit organization, a coalition of environmentalists, farmers, friends of animals, social justice advocates, trade unions and scientists. We are promoting a hog industry in Manitoba that is ethically, environmentally and economically sustainable. There are many concerns about threats to the environment, inhumane conditions for the animals and unsustainable economics that have lead us to form Hog Watch Manitoba and to advocate for an alternative model for the hog industry. The Covid19 pandemic has highlighted the lack of resiliency in Canada’s food system with the closure of several large scale slaughter plants due to outbreaks of Covid19 in the plants. The centralization of slaughter plants 3 decades ago has led to a loss of ability to ensure food sovereignty in each province as well as leaving farmers with no options where to take their animals for processing. The closure of most of the smaller plants a

New research suggests, zoos and aquariums in Canada do little to protect endangered creatures in the wild.

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by Larry Powell A Bengal, the commonest tiger species (but still endangered) paces in its cage at Winnipeg's Assiniboine Park zoo.  A PinP photo. A study just published in the journal,   Facets ,   begins positively enough. It acknowledges that members of Canada's Accredited Zoos and Aquariums (CAZA - the private, non-profit charity representing thirty such institutions), do try to be leaders in researching this field and, that they do take part in programs aimed at species survival by breeding animals in captivity, then re-introducing them into the wild. And on its own  website,   CAZA claims, "We are behind some of the most remarkable conservation success stories. This includes, bringing species such as the Black Footed Ferret and the Vancouver Island Marmot back from the brink of extinction,” for example.  However, in some key areas, the researchers (a team of two biologists from Laurentian University in Sudbury) suggest, CAZA and its members are falli