By Julia Belluz9 November 2015 (Vox) – Over the past nine years, Canada has been a pretty dreary place for scientists. Under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, the country made headlines for restricting communications by federal scientists, shutting down important research stations, phasing out the role of federal science adviser, and generally ignoring evidence […]
[cf. Peak Coal in China? Not so fast –Des] By Tom Phillips, with additional reporting by Luna Lin 4 November 2015 (Beijing) – China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, has been dramatically underreporting the amount of coal it consumes each year, it has been claimed ahead of key climate talks in Paris. Official Chinese data, […]
By Amanda Cabrejo le Roux3 November 2015 (The Conversation) – A court in São Tomé and Príncipe, a small oceanic island off the African west coast, recently delivered an historical verdict in the fight against the transnational criminal syndicates involved in fisheries crime. The court convicted the Chilean captain and two Spanish officials of the […]
By Jonathan Watts30 October 2015 (Rio de Janeiro) – Brazilian rangers, firefighters and indigenous communities are battling against a wildfire that has blazed for two months and devastated some of the last Amazonian forest in the northern state of Maranhão, including part of the territory of an uncontacted tribe. The fire – which has spread […]
By Andrey Kuzmin, with additional reporting by Alister Doyle; Editing by Bruce Wallace and Kevin Liffey29 October 2015 MOSCOW (Reuters) – Wildfires crackled across Siberia this summer, turning skies ochre and sending up enough smoke from burning pines to blot out satellite views of the 400-mile-long Lake Baikal. To many climate scientists, the worsening fires […]
28 October 2015 (UNHCR) – In late 2014, four members of a brutal street gang abducted Norma and took her to a cemetery nearby her home in El Salvador. Three of the four then raped her. She believes she was targeted because she was married to a police officer. “They took their turns … they […]
By Michael Halpern23 October 2015 (UCS) – We have long been suspicious of the House Science Committee’s expanded subpoena power. The evidence now demonstrates that the committee is using this new authority not to conduct effective oversight but to harass those who produce robust scientific analysis it refuses to accept. The committee is harassing individuals, […]
20 October 2015 (CTV News) – Nearly a decade after he became prime minister, Stephen Harper has resigned as party leader following a decisive defeat by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. In a statement sent out late on Monday evening, Conservative Party President John Walsh said he had spoken to Harper, “and he has instructed me to […]
By Sara Jerving, Katie Jennings, Masako Melissa Hirsch, and Susanne Rust9 October 2015 (Los Angeles Times) – Back in 1990, as the debate over climate change was heating up, a dissident shareholder petitioned the board of Exxon, one of the world’s largest oil companies, imploring it to develop a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions […]
By Peter Frumhoff10 October 2015 (UCS) – Internal Exxon memos recently brought to light through meticulous investigative reporting by Inside Climate News (ICN) show that senior company executives knew by 1978 that emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels posed significant risks of disrupting the climate. Over the decade before NASA scientist James Hansen’s 1988 […]
