Image via CrunchBasehttp://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2010/07/30/mb-wheat-board-crop-outlook-manitoba.html?ref=rss
Farmers will likely face bleaker returns in the coming year because of heavy rains in recent months that soaked much of the Prairies. Excess rains have left 4.25 million hectares unseeded and ruined the prospects for another one million hectares that did get in the ground.
Oilsands database shows chronic pollution
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2010/07/30/edmonton-oilsands-pollution-database-timoney.html?ref=rss
You start to see hundreds and hundreds of fairly serious (emissions) well above the regulated guidelines and nothing's done.You go and look at the next month and nothing's done. The same pattern continues month in, month out, year in, year out.
Most of the records had to be obtained using federal and provincial freedom-of-information legislation. The result is a database that takes up 14 megabytes of computer memory.
Oilsands pollution database (FTP)
Negligence
http://my.opera.com/arduinna/blog
Dying waterways need federal help: minister
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/prince-edward-island/story/2010/07/25/anoxic-rivers-need-federal-help.html?ref=rss
Anoxia, the absence of oxygen in water often caused by a build-up of nutrients from farming, septic systems, or clear-cut logging.
It causes a bloom of aquatic vegetation that rots, stinks and sucks oxygen from the water, killing fish and shellfish.
Environmental activists win Ramon Magsaysay award
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10840011
Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, a survivor of the WWII nuclear bomb, has led a global campaign for nuclear disarmament.
Photographer Huo Daishan has publicised the poisoning of the Huai river.
Ancient reptile tracks found in N.B.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/07/30/reptile-footprints.html?ref=rss
Scientists have discovered 318 million-year-old reptile footprints in rock slabs that have broken free of the sea cliffs, and say they show reptiles were the first vertebrates — animals with a backbone — to move inland away from the swampy coasts.
Pie ruling a boon to potential G20 lawsuit
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/07/23/supreme-court-pie-ruling-reaction-g20.html?ref=rss
Vancouver lawyer Cameron Ward was arrested Aug. 1, 2002, because he matched the description from a tip police received about a man planning to throw a pie at then-prime minister Chrétien. The lawyer was arrested, spent hours behind bars and was strip-searched.
Friday’s Supreme Court ruling upheld $5,000 in damages against British Columbia for breaching Ward’s charter rights. Essentially, it means people whose rights are infringed can seek damages even if they suffered no actual loss and even if authorities acted in good faith.
David Midanik, one lawyer pursuing a class-action lawsuit related to police action at the G20, says he’s received a lot of inquiries but many are unwilling to represent the lawsuit due largely to mistrust of the system.
“They believe because police behaved the way they did … that there’s little or no chance of a court — which they see as part of the same thing — giving them justice, so they’re reluctant to co-operate,” said Midanik.
Midanik believes, however, that though the ruling doesn’t mark a legal change, it could make more people feel comfortable enough to come out of the woodwork with their claims.
Hiring prison-farm workers not an option: union
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/07/26/prison-farms-hiring.html?ref=rss
Cheryl Gallant, Conservative MP: Prison farms were being closed because no one who comes out of the program is able to find work in agriculture and prison work should provide inmates with marketable skills.
Renfrew County National Farmers Union secretary treasurer Lauretta Rice said farmers don't have the money to hire anyone new, much less ex-convicts.
"We can hardly keep our farms going here, without taking extra people, there's just no work for these people," she said.
The Correctional Service of Canada said in February 2009 it would wind down Canada's six farms over a two-year period. The government has estimated that the farms, which were started in the 1880s, cost roughly $4 million a year. Farms in Atlantic Canada and the Prairies were auctioned off in June. The two remaining farms are in Kingston, Ont.
( Cost $4 million a year ? That sounds like a fabulous custodial bargain to me. Who is going to profit at taxpayer expense ? )
EI denied to mother caring for sick son
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2010/07/29/nb-ei-benefits-denied-brain-surgery-636.html?ref=rss
The best of Calvin & Hobbes!
http://calvy.wordpress.com
DND computers used to change Wikipedia site
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/07/29/wikipedia-dnd.html?ref=rss
As first reported in a story by Postmedia, Wikipedia traced the edits to computers owned by Defence Research Development Canada's Ottawa offices. Wikipedia locked down the entry, labelled the changes as vandalism and only allowed recognized editors to work on the page.
In one entry, all information outlining the criticism of the jets and the plan to buy them was removed. In another, someone added that Ignatieff thought the deal to buy the planes for Canada was an "awesome, amazing decision to proceed with this contract." In reality, Ignatieff has been critical of the sole-source contract, calling for a reconvening of the defence committee to examine the decision.
All’s Not Fair When it Comes to Energy Subsidies
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/alls-not-fair-when-it-comes-to-energy-subsidies
Fuels of convenience are getting around 10 times the advantages around the world as non-polluting energy sources.
Michael Liebreich, chief executive of Bloomberg New Energy Finance :
Setting aside the fact that in many cases clean energy competes on its own merits — for instance in the case of well‐situated wind farms and Brazilian sugarcane ethanol — this analysis shows that the global direct subsidy for fossil fuels is around ten times the subsidy for renewables. And that is without taking into account the enormous security and public health costs of fossil fuels, as well as the appalling pollution catastrophes on the Gulf Coast, the Niger Delta and elsewhere. Read the rest…
NYT
About Dot Earth
By 2050 or so, the world population is expected to reach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where, scientists say, humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. In Dot Earth, which recently moved from the news side of The Times to the Opinion section, Andrew C. Revkin examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits. Conceived in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Dot Earth tracks relevant developments from suburbia to Siberia. The blog is an interactive exploration of trends and ideas with readers and experts.
- Follow Revkin on Twitter | Facebook | Google Reader | YouTube | RSS
Introducing 
Apture allows readers to dig deeper into a subject without ever leaving the blog post. When you click on any link marked by the icons 
, 
, or 
, you will be able to view video, reference materials, images and other related media. Please e-mail your feedback and thoughts on this feature to apture@nyt.com.On the Oil Spill
An Unfolding Environmental Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico
After an explosion on April 20 of an oil rig leased by the oil company BP, crude oil has been gushing into the gulf in the worst oil disaster in United States history.
On the Dot
Energy
New Options Needed
Access to cheap energy underpins modern societies. Finding enough to fuel industrialized economies and pull developing countries out of poverty without overheating the climate is a central challenge of the 21st century.Climate
The Arctic in Transition
Enshrined in history as an untouchable frontier, the Arctic is being transformed by significant warming, a rising thirst for oil and gas, and international tussles over shipping routes and seabed resources.Society
Slow Drips, Hard Knocks
Human advancement can be aided by curbing everyday losses like the millions of avoidable deaths from indoor smoke and tainted water, and by increasing resilience in the face of predictable calamities like earthquakes and drought.Biology
Life, Wild and Managed
Earth’s veneer of millions of plant and animal species is a vital resource that will need careful tending as human populations and their demands for land, protein and fuels grow.Slide Show
A Planet in Flux
Andrew C. Revkin began exploring the human impact on the environment nearly 30 years ago. An early stop was Papeete, Tahiti. This narrated slide show describes his extensive travels.
How are climate change, scarcer resources, population growth and other challenges reshaping society? From science to business to politics to living, reporters track the high-stakes pursuit of a greener globe in a dialogue with experts and readers. Join the discussion at Green.
Killing the future in its cradle Carl Pope - Chairman Sierra Club ***
While Washington waits to see just how many wrenches the oil industry can throw into the Democratic Congressional leadership's effort to pass a modest "reform oil drilling, help low-carbon vehicles, and finance jobs and green-home makeovers" bill, the rest of us need to do some serious thinking about the next round.
It's very bad news that we won't have comprehensive energy and climate legislation by January.
It's worse news why we find ourselves in this situation: Because oil and coal have in recent months been able to leverage their old alliances with manufacturers, utilities, regulators, and ideological reactionaries to block not just cap-and-trade legislation but all kinds of attempts to move forward toward clean energy -- whether in Congress or elsewhere.
We need to level the playing field. We're not short of capital to finance the energy revolution. Corporations are sitting on $2 trillion in cash and having a hard time finding credit-worthy, high-return investments. Clean-energy investments have very high returns, and the federal government could use its backstop authority to guarantee high-quality clean-energy loans -- instead of throwing billions at low-quality, high-default nuclear boondoggles.
Incidentally, this is exactly what China is already doing. You don't need an elaborate, quant-modeled, impossible-to-understand, collateralized debt obligation to make this work -- it's just old-fashioned project finance.
( These are excerpts. At the original I make a comment which is almost as long as what I reposted here.)
Green, a New Blog From the News Side
Energy and the Environment
How are climate change, scarcer resources, population growth and other challenges reshaping society? From science to business to politics to living, reporters track the high-stakes pursuit of a greener globe in a dialogue with experts and readers. Join the discussion at Green.Killing the future in its cradle Carl Pope - Chairman Sierra Club ***
While Washington waits to see just how many wrenches the oil industry can throw into the Democratic Congressional leadership's effort to pass a modest "reform oil drilling, help low-carbon vehicles, and finance jobs and green-home makeovers" bill, the rest of us need to do some serious thinking about the next round.
It's very bad news that we won't have comprehensive energy and climate legislation by January.
It's worse news why we find ourselves in this situation: Because oil and coal have in recent months been able to leverage their old alliances with manufacturers, utilities, regulators, and ideological reactionaries to block not just cap-and-trade legislation but all kinds of attempts to move forward toward clean energy -- whether in Congress or elsewhere.
We need to level the playing field. We're not short of capital to finance the energy revolution. Corporations are sitting on $2 trillion in cash and having a hard time finding credit-worthy, high-return investments. Clean-energy investments have very high returns, and the federal government could use its backstop authority to guarantee high-quality clean-energy loans -- instead of throwing billions at low-quality, high-default nuclear boondoggles.
Incidentally, this is exactly what China is already doing. You don't need an elaborate, quant-modeled, impossible-to-understand, collateralized debt obligation to make this work -- it's just old-fashioned project finance.
( These are excerpts. At the original I make a comment which is almost as long as what I reposted here.)
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