How an ex-Mountie’s 10-year, $700,000 narwhal-tusk smuggling scheme came crashing down

By Tristin Hopper4 October 2013 (National Post) – Little is known of Gregory Logan from court documents. He is a former Mountie, he is in his late 50s, he hails from Grand Prairie, Alta., and, from a summer home in Maine, he orchestrated what may well be the largest narwhal smuggling ring of modern times. […]

Nobel laureates press EU leaders to classify tar sands as high carbon – ‘The extraction of unconventional fuels is having a particularly devastating impact on climate change’

3 October 2013 (Reuters) – Twenty-one Nobel laureates including South African anti-apartheid campaigner Desmond Tutu have written to European Union leaders urging them to implement a law that would label oil from tar sands as dirtier than other crudes. The EU tar sands proposal has incensed the government of Canada, whose economy is highly dependent […]

Video: Canadian expedition spotlights thinning Arctic sea ice – ‘There’s still ice up there, but there’s far less ice than there was before’

NEW YORK, 28 September 2013 (CBS News) – From afar, we watched this summer as four Vancouver-based men launched their custom-made, kevlar-coated, wood and fiberglass row boat, the Arctic Joule, from Canada’s Northwest territory in early July, heading east, toward Greenland. The rowers — Kevin Vallely and Frank Wolf, from Canada, with Denis Barnett and […]

Graph of the Day: Harp seal strandings and sea ice decline, 1991-2010

ABSTRACT: The effects of climate change on high latitude regions are becoming increasingly evident, particularly in the rapid decline of sea ice cover in the Arctic. Many high latitude species dependent on sea ice are being forced to adapt to changing habitats. Harp seals (Pagophilus groenlandicus) are an indicator species for changing high-latitude ecosystems. This […]

Climate scientists fighting back against the forces of antiscience as IPCC report looms

By Jeff Goodell12 September 2013 (Rolling Stone) – On September 27th, a group of international scientists associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will gather in an old brick brewery in Stockholm and proclaim with near certainty that human activity is altering the planet in profound ways. The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report offers slam-dunk […]

Alberta oil sands spills have been going on for weeks with no end in sight – ‘This is a new kind of oil spill and there is no off button’

By Emma Pullman and Martin Lukacs 19 July 2013 (The Toronto Star) – Oil spills at a major oil sands operation in Alberta have been ongoing for at least six weeks and have cast doubts on the safety of underground extraction methods, according to documents obtained by the Star and a government scientist who has […]

Climate change killing harp seal pups as sea ice habitat melts away

By Alexander Holmgren 20 August 2013 (mongabay.com) – As sea ice levels continue to decline in the northern hemisphere, scientists are observing an unsettling trend in harp seal young mortalities regardless of juvenile fitness. While a recent study found that in harp seal breeding regions ice cover decreased by up to 6% a decade from […]

Forum: How daring is President Obama’s new climate plan?

President Obama has unveiled a proposal to combat global warming that would, for the first time, regulate carbon dioxide emissions from all U.S. coal-fired power plants. Yale Environment 360 asked a group of experts to assess the president’s climate strategy. 22 July 2013 (Yale Environment 360) – Stymied by Congress, and no longer weighed down […]

Losing our monarchs: iconic monarch butterfly down to lowest numbers in 20 years – ‘It is perhaps a deadly combination of climate change and human behavior’

By Lacey Avery 15 July 2013 (mongabay.com) – In the next few months, the beating of fragile fiery orange and black wings will transport the monarch butterfly south. But the number of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) reaching their final destination has steadily declined, dropping to its lowest level in two decades last winter, according to […]

Canada’s 2nd largest fire on record spreading smoke to Europe

By Dr. Jeff Masters 13 July 2013 (wunderground.com) – A massive fire burning in northern Quebec is Canada’s second largest fire since fire records began in 1959, according to the Canadian Forest Service. The fire was more than twice the size of Rhode Island on Tuesday–1,621,000 acres. Called the Eastmain fire, the near-record blaze was […]

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