This page is a subpage of www.nsforestmatters.ca/In the News
See In the News for other subpages.
New page Aug 23, 2024.
Selected news, articles etc. most not about NS but relevant
Adding older items bit by bit
Sep 13, 2024:
How scientists debunked one of conservation’s most influential statistics
Tim Fischer in The Guardian “The factoid about biodiversity and Indigenous peoples spread around the world, but scientists say bad data can undermine the very causes it claims to support”
Sep 12, 2024:
Nature Conservancy Releases Innovative Emerald Edge Carbon Map
The Nature C0nservancy/ ” The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and our Canadian affiliate Nature United are excited to announce the launch of the Emerald Edge Carbon Map, an innovative, interactive map to help identify the most impactful and actionable opportunities for natural climate solutions projects that also support Indigenous and community priorities. Natural climate solutions are actions to protect, manage and restore ecosystems that help sequester carbon and fight climate change. The Emerald Edge is the world’s largest coastal temperate rainforest and is a globally important carbon storage and sequestration heavyweight. The region spans 125 million acres across Oregon, Washington state, British Columbia and Alaska, and comprises the territories of more than 50 Indigenous Nations who continue to care for the land to support their cultures, food security, ecotourism services and other economic uses.”
Sep 9, 2024:
Why ‘the UK’s biggest carbon emitter’ receives billions in green subsidies
By Jillian Ambrose The Guardian UK
Sep 7, 2024
–‘Sustainable’ logging operations are clear-cutting Canada’s climate-fighting forests
C. Kirkham et al for a Reuters Special Report. “Nonprofit environment watchdogs put their stamps of approval on countless wood products that get touted as responsibly produced. But Reuters found that the timber firms these groups certify are harvesting large swaths of Canada’s older forests, which are critical to containing global warming.” Examines issue of Certification, “The rapid loss of older Canadian forests highlights the flaws of certification programs that have come under heavy influence of the logging and forest-products industries, a Reuters investigation has found.”
Sep 4, 2024:
Logging is the 3rd highest emitter in Canada. It should be measured that way, a new report says
Inayat Singh, Benjamin Shingler · CBC News “UN experts and environmental groups continue to call on Canada to report true climate cost of logging” Comment, I cant locate the ‘Report’ referred to in the article, apparently published very recently. The article cites this scientific paper: High emissions or carbon neutral? Inclusion of “anthropogenic” forest sinks leads to underreporting of forestry emissions by Bysouth et al., 2024 in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change (AR Taylor, one of the authors, is in the Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management, University of New Brunswick Fredericton, Fredericton, NB, Canada and is often consulted by NS NRR).
Sep 3, 2024
Contrary to industry claims, forests left alone are best able to combat climate change
Joan Baxter in the Halifax Examiner. Subscription required. Cites this scientific paper: Carbon sequestration and storage implications of three forest management regimes in the Wabanaki-Acadian Forest: A review of the evidence by Emma Cox et al., 27 November 2023 in Environmental Reviews. Baxter discusses also how forest industry is “trying to convince the public that industrial forestry is a force for good in our forests and for the climate”. Says Baxter, ” The Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) has been running a massive PR campaign called “Forestry For The Future” that makes over-the-top boasts such as “Canadian Forestry Can Save The World.” The Examiner delved into the Forestry For The Future propaganda campaign in March 2024.”
Aug 29, 2024:
– Can dumping seaweed on the sea floor cool the planet? Some scientists are skeptical
Warren Caldwell in Science. “An ambitious strategy aims to cool the planet by dumping farmed seaweed on the sea floor. Will it work? “I think it’s nonsense,” one expert says”
Aug 28, 2024
– How low can we go? To cut the carbon that goes into buildings to net zero, we need radical change
By Philip Oldfield et al., in The Conversation AU. ‘Our new research shows while we can greatly reduce embodied carbon in Australia, it will require radical changes in how we design, construct, use and reuse buildings…Of all the changes we made, the one that reduced embodied carbon the most was simply replacing carpet with hardwood floors.”
– Surging Methane Emissions Could Be a Sign of a Major Climate Shift
By Bob Berwyn for Inside Climate News “New studies suggest global warming boosts natural methane releases, which could undermine efforts to cut emissions of the greenhouse gas from fossil fuels and agriculture…A new trouble spot is in the Arctic, where scientists recently found unexpectedly large methane emissions in winter. ”
– Why biodiversity urgently needs more financing options
By Saijel Kishan for Bloomberg “…The question is how do you get profit-loving capitalists to plow money into a niche market that focuses on the well-being of insects, the health of marine species and the preservation of mangroves?””
– MSU researchers contribute to study revealing salamanders are surprisingly abundant in eastern North American forests
By Emilie Lorditch in MSU Today. References Range-wide salamander densities reveal a key component of terrestrial vertebrate biomass in eastern North American forests ny Grant et al., 2024 in Biology Letters.”…We demonstrate that overall the biomass of P. cinereus, a secondary consumer, is of similar or greater magnitude to widespread primary consumers such as white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and Peromyscus mice, and two to three orders of magnitude greater than common secondary consumer species. Our results add empirical evidence that P. cinereus, and amphibians in general, are an outsized component of terrestrial vertebrate communities in temperate ecosystems.”
Aug 22, 2024
Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades
Annika Stechemesser et al., in Science, 22 Aug 2024 Vol 385, Issue 6711 pp. 884-892 Description from Inside Climate News: “A new study analyzed 1,500 policies around the world aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and found that only 4 percent resulted in significant carbon cuts. There are a few ingredients in the secret sauce of successful projects in that slim margin, including making polluters pay for their emissions. “Other policies help, but nibble around the edges,” Rob Jackson, a climate scientist at Stanford University who was not involved in the study, told The Associated Press. “Carbon pricing puts the onus on the owners and products causing the climate crisis.”
Aug 14, 2024:
Will regulators OK controversial effort to supercharge ocean’s ability to absorb carbon?
Warren Cornwall in www.science.org “Geoengineering study that would disperse alkaline chemicals off Cape Cod draws environmental opposition…Some other alkalinity experiments have fared better. With the blessing of local regulators, the Canadian company Planetary Technologies last summer poured 280 tons of a mineral form of magnesium hydroxide—a common ingredient in antacid tablets—into the harbor in Halifax, Novia Scotia, and dyed parts of the water near the busy downtown pink with a tracer for several days. The experiment generated local news stories, but little opposition, says Katja Fennel, an ocean modeling expert at Dalhousie University who is collaborating with the company, which began a second round of tests there this year. In contrast, the company’s plan to pour magnesium hydroxide into the U.K.’s scenic St. Ives Bay has been met with suspicion and protests by some local officials and residents. The company postponed the experiment, originally scheduled for 2023, but is still seeking a permit. Fennel suspects the receptions have differed partly because Halifax Harbor is industrialized whereas St. Ives Bay seems unspoiled. “Doing an experiment or field trial in an environment that people value as pristine or people perceive as undisturbed is probably not a good idea,” she says.”
June 18, 2024:
Healthy Rivers, Healthy Planet Naturally (Video)
Presentation by Eddie Halfyard & Shannon Sterling to the Halifax Field Naturalists Recorded on Zoom & archived by HFN.
“The Nova Scotia Salmon Association’s Ecologist Edmund Halfyard, PhD, along with Dalhousie environmental scientist Shannon Sterling, PhD, co-founded Carbon Run, a company whose mission is to ‘restore the health of rivers and their natural ability to draw carbon from land — to sea’. The presentation details the situation we are currently in, the steps needed to rectify this, and Carbon Run’s approach to doing so. Through their research, they have found that when water quality is restored, rivers regain their natural ability to markedly increase biodiversity while drawing down carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.” View more about Carbon Run/Liming of Forest Soils