B.C. wildfire smoke triggers air quality statement for southwestern Manitoba

CBCnews

Smoke could cause issue for people living with asthma, irritate eyes. Story here.

Will God Save Us From The Wildfires?

by Larry Powell

Did you hear them interview Walt Cobb on CBC Radio this week about the BC wildfires? 

They asked him if he thought, as the world's leading climate scientists do, that wildfires have become "the new normal."

Here's his response.

“I don’t necessarily agree with that. There’s always been changes…Like my wife said the other morning…this is in somebody else’s hands… God has lined up what’s going to happen. And we’ll have to live with that."

So who is Walt Cobb, you ask? Some ordinary guy off the street? Not exactly. He is the Mayor of Williams Lake, B.C. (l.) That's a city of 10 thousand - now almost a ghost town. It was ordered evacuated due to unprecedented fires burning in the region.

Does he strike you as a guy who has a clue about the science? I can't really see him being on the front lines of efforts to wean ourselves off fossil fuels toward more sustainable, renewable energy sources. Can you?

If that is the most he has to offer, as an important elected representative, he needs to step aside and let someone who, instead of having their head in the heavens, has both feet on the ground.

I know plenty of people who believe in God yet still embrace the now well-proven science of manmade climate change, too. Obviously, Mayor Cobb is not one of them. His is an example of religiosity that is not harmless and a walking example of the need for a clear separation of church and state.

l.p.

Could Rudolph and friends help to slow down our warming climate?

Environmental Research Letters

Reindeer photo by Arild Vågen

Reindeer may be best known for pulling Santa’s sleigh, but a new study suggests they may have a part to play in slowing down climate change too. Story here.

Insecticide found in same B.C. hummingbirds that are in decline

CBCnews

A rufus hummingbird, one of the kinds in decline. Dean E. Biggins

'No one has ever measured pesticides in hummingbirds before. So we decided to try it,' says scientist. Story here.

RELATED: 

• "Will New Research Nudge Canada Toward a 'Neonic" Ban?"
• "Environmental groups back in court over pollinator-killing pesticides"

Most effective individual steps to tackle climate change aren't being discussed

ScienceDaily

Governments and schools are not communicating the most effective ways for individuals to reduce their carbon footprints, according to new research. Story here.

Insecticides damage bee socialization and learning skills, study reports

ScienceDaily

Wikimedia Commons

Researchers find that bees fed with thiacloprid (a neonic) significantly reduces their social interactions, suggesting that foraging bees that encounter high doses of insecticide in the field may be less likely to recruit others to nectar sources. Story here.

RELATED: 

• Will New Research From Europe Nudge Canada Toward a "Neonic" Ban?
• New research suggests “Neonics,” the world’s most widely-used family of insecticides, can decimate bee populations.

2.1 billion people lack safe drinking water at home, more than twice as many lack safe sanitation

World Health

Organization

Some 3 in 10 people worldwide, or 2.1 billion, lack access to safe, readily available water at home, and 6 in 10, or 4.5 billion, lack safely managed sanitation, according to a new report by WHO and UNICEF. Story here.

'When Rising Seas Hit Home': Hundreds of Towns Threatened by 2100

Common Dreams

Daunting new report shows coastal communities are at-risk and unprepared for flooding caused by climate change. Story here.

RELATED: "Angry Oceans - Pt. #1" and "Pt. #2."

The cycle of mercury pollution in the Arctic tundra

Nature
Human activity has been a major source of mercury pollution in 

the Arctic, and a new study has identified the form most often 

taken by the pollutant: gaseous elemental mercury (GEM). The 

present News & Views article discusses how the Arctic tundra 

acts as a major sink for mercury, as the local plants uptake GEM 

from the atmosphere; and what this means for the global mercury 

cycle as global temperatures warm. Isotopic data collected in the 

original study by Obrist et al. reveal that GEM accounts for 90% of 

the mercury in plants, and the uptake of GEM by plants is 

especially high in the summer. Since plant matter decomposes 

into the soil, the Arctic soil may soon become a substantial 

mercury sink.
========

Editor's summary

Anthropogenic activities have led to large-scale mercury pollution in the Arctic, but it remains uncertain whether wet deposition of oxidized mercury via precipitation and sea-salt-induced chemical cycling of mercury are responsible for the high Arctic mercury load. This paper presents a mass-balance study of mercury deposition and stable isotope data from the Arctic tundra, and finds that the main source of mercury is in fact derived from gaseous elemental mercury, with only minor contributions from the other two suggested sources. Consistently high soil mercury concentrations derived from gaseous elemental mercury along an inland-to-coastal transect suggest that the Arctic tundra might be a globally important mercury sink and might explain why Arctic rivers annually transport large amounts of mercury to the Arctic Ocean.

Iceberg almost the Size of Lake Winnipegosis breaks off Antarctic ice shelf

theguardian

Satellite data confirms ‘calving’ of trillion-tonne, 5,800 sq km iceberg from the Larsen C ice shelf, dramatically altering the landscape. Story here.

The Larsen ice shelf as it was in 2004. NASA photo.

Parisitic birds use oil and gas infrastructures to prey on prairie songbirds - Study.

Royal Society Open Science 

We're only beginning to find out all the ways in which industrial activity disrupts the ecosystem, and a new bird study gives yet another example of the unexpected ways in which human activity affects the local fauna. Researchers at the University of Manitoba have found that the presence of oil and natural gas infrastructure—such as fences, power lines, and transmitters around oil wells—in Canada's Northern Great Plains helped boost the number of brown-headed cowbirds by four times. Cowbirds are a parasitic species who lay their eggs in other birds' nests, forcing others to raise their brood. The parasitic species uses oil and gas infrastructures as perches, and the availability of perches makes it easier for these birds to find their brood hosts. 

Savannah sparrow. Photo by D. Gordon E. Robertson

Cowbirds' abundance in the area could hurt another grassland bird species, the Savannah sparrow, which often falls victim to the parasitic birds. Researchers have observed a four-fold increase in brood parasitism of sparrows by cowbirds near the oil and gas infrastructure sites.