Global financial giants swear off funding an especially dirty fuel.

The New York Times

The Alberta tar sands. Source: "Beautiful Destruction."

Some of the world's biggest financial institutions have stopped putting money behind oil production in the Canadian province of Alberta, home to one of the world's most extensive and dirtiest, oil reserves.  Story here. 

Why bumble bees are going extinct in time of 'climate chaos'

PHYS ORG

Tricoloured Bumble bees - Bombus ternarius - forage on chives
in an organic garden in Manitoba. Circa 2000. A PinP photo.

When you were young, were you the type of child who would scour open fields looking for bumble bees? Today, it is much harder for kids to spot them, since bumble bees are drastically declining in North America and in Europe.  More here.

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• Plight of the Humble Bee - Canadian regulators refuse to protect a priceless pollinator from a known toxin.
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This is the age of the megafire – and it’s being fuelled by our leaders

Tim Flannery for the Guardian

Bushfires spire from Yuraygir National Park,
Australia. Photo by European Space Agency.
In the face of the climate disaster it helped create, the Australian government has given us only lies and denial. Story here.

Our warming world turns vast areas of the Arctic green.

PHYS ORG

High Alpine Tundra in Noatak National Preserve, Alaska. 
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

New research techniques are being adopted by scientists tackling the most visible impact of climate change—the so-called greening of Arctic regions. STORY HERE. 

Farming as nature intended. A “dynamic duo” from south of the border, brings a message of hope and radical change to producers on the Canadian prairies.

by Larry Powell

A conventional farm in Manitoba. A PinP photo.

"You're tilling too much!"

That was Ray Archuleta's blunt message to about 50 people at a meeting this week in the small, farming community of Shoal Lake, Manitoba. The brilliant, affable Archuleta operates a small ranch in Missouri. His partner. Gabe Brown, whose "down home" personality has apparently earned him the monicker, "Farmer Brown," runs a big, mixed operation in North Dakota.

Both men are on the same mission - convince as many farmers as they can to move away from conventional production. That's how countless producers in Canada, the U.S. and developed countries around the world, have, for decades, practised this predominant style of agriculture. They rely on heavy and expensive "inputs" of fertilizers, pesticides, machinery and "mono-crops," all designed to produce the highest yields possible.

Ray Archuleta conducts a "slake test."

Archuleta, a soil and water scientist, worked for the U.S. government for many years. He says too much tillage makes the land more vulnerable, not only to the kind of erosion that blows farmers' soils away in massive dust storms, but to devastating floods and droughts, as well. He adds, neglect of soil biology has gone on for so long, it has resulted in farm soils becoming "the most destroyed eco-system there is!" 

In a demonstration for his audience (similar to the one shown, l.), Archuleta had volunteers drop different samples of the same type of soil into clear, plastic tubes. Some of those samples were from fields that had been tilled and treated with pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. Others had not been tilled, but planted with cover crops that kept them constantly green and fed with valuable nutrients. When water was added, the first soil group rapidly disintegrated. The second kept their shapes for a prolonged period and absorbed the water into their pores, instead. This was indicative of healthy soil that would hold moisture and nutrients for the plants growing in it.

Archuleta says, after working for the government for a long time, promoting the kind of system he now campaigns against, he saw the light and quit to start ranching and spreading the word of a new and better way called Regenerative Agriculture. He sees too many conventional farmers going broke and doesn't like it. He calls them "The poorest millionaires I know," due to the tremendous debt they carry for expensive infrastructure. In his words, "The money goes to the tool-makers," meaning the machinery and farm input manufacturers. He believes producers like himself, who emulate nature (a process called "bio-mimicry"), are the ones who are now making the money.

His partner, Gabe Brown (above), says cover crops hold the secret to healthy soil and crops. On his five thousand acre farm near Bismark, Brown keeps his fields diversified with a constant cover of green during the growing season; before, after and during development of the main crop.

An example is intercropping - planting several grain crops in the same field, then harvesting and separating or using the mix for feed.Brown says, too many inputs (like pesticides and artificial fertilizers), even on "zero-till" fields, can, over time, turn soil into virtual "bricks." These can result in "ponding," rather than absorption in heavy rains. He wonders whether the disastrous flooding which ravaged vast parts of the U.S. midwest this summer, might have been as bad had the soils in states like Iowa, not been turned into "crap" by misguided farming practises over many years.

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"Towards a livable future - climate-friendly agriculture"

How the power of the pork industry thwarts efforts to protect the public from infectious diseases. A CBS "Sixty-Minutes" video.

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• "In Hogs We Trust" Part 1 Could the Manitoba government’s return to a deregulated hog industry actually contribute to a world health crisis?

Wildfires in Western Canada Created Air Pollution Spikes as Far Away as New York City

Eco Watch

Fires around Ft. MacMurray, Alberta, Canada in 2016.
Satellite photo by NASA Earth Observatory.

New York City isn't known for having the cleanest air, but researchers traced recent air pollution spikes there to two surprising sources — fires hundreds of miles away in Canada and the southeastern U.S. Story here.