Posts

Compassion needed for farm animals. (Letter)

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The following letter appeared in the Saturday, Oct. 10th edition of the Winnipeg Free Press, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. (Photo added by PinP.) Sows like this spend much of their lives in tiny steel cages. Re: Changes needed to protect farms, animals (Opinion, Oct. 5)  As a former executive director at the Winnipeg Humane Society, I feel compelled to respond to Bill Campbell’s op-ed on the need to protect farms and animals. After starting at the Humane Society in 1994, I quickly came to learn that some of the most egregious suffering imposed on animals by humans occurs in the industrial barns of today’s animal agriculture. I am not speaking of the few remaining family farms, but rather the large industrial-style buildings that house thousands of animals in small confined spaces with no access to the outdoors. These operations treat the animals more like cars on an assembly line, as they do not allow the animals to fulfill natural instincts and limit their movement severely. In short, t

Nitrous oxide emissions pose an increasing climate threat

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The sprawling Koch fertilizer plant in Brandon, Manitoba, CA. Each month, hundreds of trucks and rail cars deliver both nitrogen and methane-based fertilizers made here, to farmers in western Canada & the US. Both nitrogen & methane are more potent as greenhouse gases than CO2, the commonest one. The plant has, for many years, been the single-biggest industrial source of GH gases in MB. A PinP photo. Rising nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions are jeopardizing the climate goals of the Paris Agreement, according to a major new study. The growing use of nitrogen fertilizers in farming worldwide is increasing atmospheric concentrations. N2O is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide and remains in the atmosphere for more than 100 years. Story here.

The Arctic is burning in a whole new way

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ScienceDaily "Where There's Smoke There's Fire" by Western Arctic National Parklands Widespread wildfires in the far north aren't just bigger; they're different. Details here.

Global heating. How will it impact the world’s nature reserves?

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ScienceDaily The Athabasca glacier in Jasper National Park, Canada. Already a shadow of its former self, many fear it will be gone altogether within a generation. A 2020 photo by Ethan Sahagun. Nature reserves will be affected by future climate change in very different ways - especially in the tropics. A new study drawing attention to this fact, raises even more fears for wildlife species. It's based on forecasts for more than 130,000 nature reserves worldwide. Story here.

The Bio of Larry Powell - publisher of this blog.

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Larry Powell Powell is a veteran, award-winning journalist based in Shoal Lake, Manitoba, Canada. He specialize in stories about agriculture and the environment. For decades, he worked for broadcast outlets in all four provinces in western Canada. This included a 5 years stint as Senior Editor for CBC Radio News in Saskatchewan. He is authorized to receive embargoed news releases on important, global stories, through the Science Media Centre of Canada, the Royal Society, Nature Research and the World Weather Attribution Network. He's a member of the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada, the Canadian Association of  Journalists and a past member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2020, Powell joined an international team of writers providing articles for the Swiss-based online journal, Focusing on Wildlife - celebrating  the biodiversity of Planet Earth. In June, 2014, he was a panelist at a world conference in          Winnipeg entitled Holding

Plants at Risk of Extinction, New Report Finds

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Common Dreams One of several species at risk in Canada, the small white lady's slipper, (Cypripedium candidum).  Photo by Mason Brock. A grim new assessment of the world's flora and fungi has found that two-fifths of its species are at risk of extinction as humans encroach on the natural world.  Details here.                 

Someday, even wet forests could burn due to climate change

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PHYS ORG A wet "sclerophyll" mixed forest. Might even it be vulnerable in a warming world?  Photo by Hagasfagas. Millions of years ago, fire swept across the planet, fuelled by an oxygen-rich atmosphere in which even wet forests burned, according to new research by CU Boulder scientists. Story here.