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The Lancet countdown on health and climate change. (Video)

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Fires scorching Bolivia’s Chiquitano forest

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Science magazine Wildfires in the Amazon rainforests of Bolivia. Photo by  List Top 10. The Chiquitano Dry Forest - endemic to Bolivia, highly biodiverse, and considered the world’s best-preserved tropical dry forest -  has lost a staggering 1.4 million hectares to fires since July.  Story here.

Thirteen years after the pesticide Lorsban sickened a Manitoba family, Health Canada is proposing it be severely restricted in Canada. The European Union will ban it in the new year. by Larry Powell

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In the fall of 2006, Loyd Burghart told his story to "Planet in Peril." Burghart, a livestock farmer in the Swan Valley of western Manitoba, said he, his wife, Donna and their four children inhaled fumes from the chemical, Lorsban (chlorpyrifos) which a neighbour had been sparing on a nearby crop. ( Many farmers in that part of the province had done the same that year, in an effort to control a severe infestation of  Bertha Army worms.)  Some time after the incident, Burghart, his wife  and one of their children,  pose by a mother sow and  piglets in their yard.  A PinP photo. The spray had left Burghart's entire family with severe symptoms. He says he, himself, was left writhing with severe pain in his eyes.  It's not immediately known how many other Canadians have suffered in similar incidents. But it's hard to believe this was the only case. ( Burghart was also worried how the chemical might impact the health of his animals and their feed.)

Nitrogen crisis threatens Dutch environment—and economy

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Science Magazine Public domain - by  Sachiho   They're protesting a Dutch high court decision in May that suspended construction projects that pollute the atmosphere with nitrogen compounds and harm nature reserves. The freeze has stalled the expansion of dairy, pig, and poultry farms—major sources of nitrogen in the form of ammonia from animal waste. Also blocked are plans for new homes, roads, and airport runways, because construction machinery emits nitrogen oxides. All told, the shutdown puts some €14 billion worth of projects in jeopardy, according to ABN AMRO Bank. “It has really paralyzed the country,” says a political scientist  Details here.

Marine life, fisheries increasingly threatened as the ocean loses oxygen – IUCN report

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International Union for the Conservation of Nature The Daggernose shark, one of several larger species considered especially vulnerable. A NOAA rendering. The loss of oxygen from the world’s ocean is increasingly threatening fish species and disrupting ecosystems, a   new IUCN report   warns. Ocean oxygen loss, driven by climate change and nutrient pollution, is a growing menace to fisheries and species such as tuna, marlin and sharks, according to the report released today at the UN Climate Change conference in Madrid.

Without drastic and immediate action, climate change will spell less food for the vast majority of Earth's population by century's end. Study. by Larry Powell

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A disastrous 2019 growing season in Manitoba included drought, rain and snow at the wrong times. Both seeding and harvesting of food crops like canola (above) were disrupted, yield and quality reduced. A PinP photo. There are few bright spots in this body of research.  If developed countries don't reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a changing climate "promptly," it warns, a "perfect storm" will result. Food such as soy, corn, wheat and rice produced by the agriculture sector and seafood by marine fisheries, will go down for about 90 percent of Earth's population - more than seven billion, by 2100. Most of those affected already live in the most sensitive and least developed countries. As overwhelming as the impacts would be, they wouldn't be universal. A scant three percent of the population would actually experience a food production  increase  over the same period. And, if countries actually make those emissions cutbacks (a &q

Re-thinking extinction

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New research  suggests that pollution may be playing a bigger and more ominous role in pushing many of Canada's plants and animals to the brink than earlier thought. by Larry Powell                                               One of the species at risk, the small white lady's slipper,  Cypripedium candidum.  Photo by Mason Brock . Habitat loss, climate change and invasive species are often referred to as significant players in Earth's calamitous descent into a sixth Great Extinction. While those factors obviously play a part, this new study better recognizes the magnitude of the role played by yet another culprit in the piece - pollution. The authors of the research label contamination of our air, soil and water as a "pervasive, often invisible threat to biodiversity in Canada."  And, up until now, the threat it poses, especially to vascular plants (ones that flower, bear fruit and seed), they suggest, has been underestimated by experts in the