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Firestorm: How Wildfire Will Shape Our Future - a new book by Edward Struzik

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The Science Writers and Communicators of Canada is pleased to announce the winners of this year's book awards for books published in 2017.   The winner in the general audience category  is  Firestorm: How Wildfire Will Shape Our Future by Edward Struzik . A summary. For two months in the spring of 2016, the world watched as wildfire ravaged the Canadian town of Fort McMurray. Firefighters named the fire “the Beast.” It acted like a mythical animal, alive with destructive energy, and they hoped never to see anything like it again. Yet it’s not a stretch to imagine we will all soon live in a world in which fires like the Beast are commonplace. A glance at international headlines shows a remarkable increase in higher temperatures, stronger winds, and drier lands– a trifecta for igniting wildfires like we’ve rarely seen before. This change is particularly noticeable in the northern forests of the United States and Canada. These forests require fire to maintain healthy

Opposition Member of Parliament accuses Canada of buying 'lemon' from Kinder Morgan after estimated size of oil spill multiplies by 48 times

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NATIONAL OBSERVER The "Kinder Morgan police" arrest those who protest against the project. Photo by Mark Klotz NDP MP Nathan Cullen is accusing the Trudeau government of buying "the biggest lemon in Canadian history," after a dramatic revision of the estimated size of an oil spill that occurred right before it announced a $4.5 billion deal to buy the pipeline involved in the incident. More here.

Ocean Conservation Is an Untapped Strategy for Fighting Climate Change

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WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE Mangroves in Benin. Such vegetation provides an important  buffer from the ravages of ocean storms and currents. Photo credit - Ji-Elle.  The ocean contributes  $1.5 trillion annually  to the overall economy and assures the livelihood of  10-12 percent of the world’s population. But there’s another reason to protect marine ecosystems—they’re crucial for curbing climate change. More here.

Taxpayers Still Shelling Out Billions Annually in Fossil Fuel Subsidies

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EcoWatch The world's richest countries continue to subsidize at least $100 billion a year in subsidies for the production and use of  coal ,  oil  and  gas , despite repeated pledges to phase out  fossil fuels  by 2025. More here. Alberta's tar sands.  Photo by  Howl Arts Collective

A "Goldilocks World" for Disease? Climate Change Threatens to Make Things "Just Right" for a Dangerous Bug in Even More of Canada!

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by Larry Powell The culprit is the common wood tick (D. variabilis), also known as the American dog tick. Its range already sprawls across central and eastern North American, from the Gulf of Mexico to southern Canada. It carries diseases that make both people and animals sick. These include the human ailments of Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever and a parasitic disease that kills domesticated cats. The common wood tick,  also American dog tick. (Dermacentor variabilis)  Benjamin Smith - USA. But the present range of the ticks may be nothing compared to what the future might hold.   A Canadian research paper just published in  ScienceDirect , predicts climate change could actually shrink the southern reaches of the tick’s range. But overall, the news is not good. The climate could well become “just right” for the bug, in an area of this continent that is, by 2070, larger by half than it is now! This could include a northward expansion in Canada.  The

Oil may be Canada's past, but we cannot let it be our future

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David Suzuki - The Guardian Pipes loaded on a train in Manitoba. A  PinP  photo.  There's a lot of fear around abandoning an industry that has been an economic driver for decades - yet the rest of the world is moving on. More here.