PLANET IN PERIL

DESMOG CLEARING THE PR POLLUTION THAT CLOUDS CLIMATE SCIENCE EXONERATED: Dr. Andrew Weaver, Nobel Prize-winning scientist & BC Green Party MLA who Tim Ball disgracefully tried, but failed, to libel & discredit. Climate science denier and  Trump transition team advisor  Dr.  Tim Ball , who a Canadian court earlier derided as incompetent, ill-intended, and apparently indifferent to the truth, has been further rebuffed in the British Columbia Court of Appeal and must now stand libel for a 9-year-old attack against prominent Canadian climate scientist (and outgoing  BC  Green Party leader) Dr. Andrew Weaver (above).     RELATED: COVIDeniers: Anti-Science Coronavirus Denial Overlaps with Climate Denial This blogger has been trying to sound the alarm over this climate rogue, Tim Ball, for years. More than nine years ago, my hometown newspaper, the Roblin Review, published this letter of mine, below, objecting to the space he'd been given in the paper previously. L.

World Health Organization A WHO photo. Agencies call for joint effort to safely deliver routine immunization and proceed with vaccination campaigns against deadly vaccine-preventable diseases. Story here.

YaleEnvironment360 In the line of fire? Giraffe in a Ugandan National Park destined for major oil development. Photo by  DrexRockman . Despite the global plunge in oil prices, a major pipeline that would carry oil 900 miles across East Africa is moving ahead. International experts warn that the $20 billion project will displace thousands of small farmers and put key wildlife habitat and coastal waters at risk. Story here.

PHYS ORG Photo by Red Charlie Discussions of drought often centre on the lack of precipitation. But among climate scientists, the focus is shifting to include the growing role that warming temperatures are playing as potent drivers of greater aridity and drought intensification. Story here.

thejournal.i.e. John Gibbons IMAGINE FOR A moment that our government and others around the world had been given detailed information and warnings about the coronavirus years, even decades before it finally erupted.  Story here. RELATED: What could our post-pandemic world look like? It depends on you and me!

  Journal:  Nature Sustainability Before:The Drum Bridge, Dunmurry,UK , 2009. After: Photos by  Albert Bridge First responders, such as fire and ambulance services, will likely struggle to reach urgent cases in a timely manner during low-level flooding in England. These findings are reported in an analysis of emergency response time in England under adverse geographic and climate conditions, published this week in  Nature Sustainability .

NATURE RESEARCH -  Climate sciences:  Empty streets are the order of the day now that Covid-19 has forced lockdowns in many places. Daily global CO 2  emissions fell by 17% by early April 2020, compared to mean 2019 levels, as a result of governments’ policies to prevent the spread of COVID-19, suggests a paper in  Nature Climate Change .  Policies implemented by governments to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have had a significant impact on energy demand globally. With much of the world’s population confined to their homes and international borders closed, consumption and transportation rates have fallen. However, the lack of real-time global emissions data has made it difficult to quantify the impacts. Corinne Le Quéré and colleagues reviewed a combination of energy, activity and policy data available up to end of April 2020 to estimate the changes in daily CO 2  emissions compared to 2019. Changes in CO 2  emissions were estimated across six economic sectors — pow