Articles by Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Jan 26 2020 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — Weather matters in the Arctic like it does in few other places, but Environment Canada's forecasts for the North have long been hampered by poor data. Now, two new "supersites" in Whitehorse, Yukon, and Iqaluit, Nunavut, should give northerners a more accurate sense of some of the country's most extreme weather — and improve scientific understanding of the changing Arctic. "There's interest […]

Jan 24 2020 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — A group of Alberta landowners is asking farmers and ranchers to fight back against unpaid debts and unreclaimed oil and gas wells by closing valves and cutting power to energy company sites. "The landowners need to safely shut down those surface leases, whether it's safely turning off the power or safely shutting off the valve," Daryl Bennett […]

Jan 22 2020 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — A former provincial Liberal leader and member of the Alberta legislature says he won't pay his provincial taxes until oilpatch players pay theirs. "It's getting worse," David Swann said Wednesday. "(This) government suddenly throws this double standard of a message that paying taxes is optional for one particular industry." Swann's civil disobedience is part of a growing […]

Jan 21 2020 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — A team of Canadian scientists may have cracked one of the toughest problems in conservation by peering into the lives of long-ago seabirds through 1,700 years of droppings. "It's actually not so bad," said Queen's University biologist Matthew Duda, a co-author of a paper on how bird droppings found in centuries worth of lake sediments have been used […]

Jan 21 2020 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — The amount of unpaid property taxes that oil and gas companies owe Alberta rural municipalities has more than doubled over the last year, a trend some are calling a tax revolt. Rural Municipalities Alberta said Monday that a survey of its members shows that they are owed a total of $173 million — a 114 per cent increase […]

Jan 19 2020 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — New research suggests Canada's largest national park is not drying out from upstream hydro dams or being contaminated by the oilsands. Recently published papers from scientists at the University of Waterloo question previous studies done for the federal government and the United Nations as well as long-held conclusions from Indigenous people. "Our findings counter widespread perceptions," said Roland […]

Jan 19 2020 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — EDMONTON — In a few weeks, Ken Block will hang up his uniform as head of Edmonton Fire Rescue and head Down Under to assume command of 5,000 firefighters in Australia. "I'm really looking forward to getting over there," the fire chief said in an interview this week. Block is to lead a newly created force […]

Jan 18 2020 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — A spectacular swath of mountains, glaciers and forests once proposed for a ski resort is being turned over to the First Nations people who have lived there for centuries. After decades of controversy that reached all the way to the Supreme Court, the Jumbo Glacier in British Columbia's central Purcell Mountains is to be handed over to […]

Jan 15 2020 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — EDMONTON — A group tasked with cleaning up thousands of abandoned energy sites in Alberta says the province's rules for ensuring polluters reclaim their wells before selling them off are inadequate. The industry-funded Orphan Well Association made the criticism in a letter to Alberta's energy regulator, which is considering a proposed transfer of hundreds of toxic gas […]

Jan 13 2020 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — Environmental groups are applauding international shippers and shipping companies that have voluntarily promised to stay away from controversial Arctic routes. "We were really excited to get this pledge together," said Dan Hubbell of the Ocean Conservancy, which is co-ordinating the campaign. So far, 21 companies that either ship goods internationally or carry those goods have signed. That means […]

Jan 12 2020 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — EDMONTON — The increasing frequency of wildfires in Canada's boreal forest may be permanently changing one of the largest intact ecosystems left on Earth, research suggests. "We feel pretty confident these effects will persist," said Ellen Whitman, a forest ecologist at Natural Resources Canada and the University of Alberta. Whitman is a co-author on a recently […]

Jan 10 2020 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — It's a small step toward the moon, but a giant leap for two Canadians. Joshua Kudryk and Jenni Sidey-Gibbons graduated Friday along with 11 Americans from NASA's basic astronaut training and will be part of the next generation of space explorers hoping to return to Earth's satellite and beyond. "We want to be part of the […]

Jan 10 2020 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — Sheyda Shadkhoo was afraid as she boarded the flight from Tehran that was supposed to have eventually returned her to her family in Toronto. She thought she was leaving trouble behind, not flying into it.  "Behind me, behind me," she wrote in a poem she sent her husband minutes before the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing taxied down […]

Jan 1 2020 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — When storm winds howl and rivers flood, buildings take the brunt. And as climate change makes all kinds of extreme weather more frequent and more destructive, scientists at the National Research Council are trying to figure out how to ensure Canada's built environment is ready. "We're going to see change in the way we're designing new […]

Dec 30 2019 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — Somewhere in west Texas, amid one of the most productive oilfields in the continent, a Canadian company is building a plant that it hopes will eventually suck from the air a million tonnes of carbon being pumped out of the ground all around it. Carbon Engineering's groundbreaking plant is one of many projects hoping to help in […]