Oct 13 2019 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — The road should have been frozen solid, but it was anything but. When drivers tried to travel the Mackenzie Valley winter road in the Northwest Territories last March, it was an unpassable highway of muck well before its usual closure date. Four communities were left without vehicle access. That's what Paul Barrette — using everything from steel […]
Oct 10 2019 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — Canada's medical professionals are presenting a solid front during the federal election campaign to urge political parties to take climate change seriously as a public-health issue. "From a population health basis, it is the most critical problem that we're facing," Sandy Buchman, president of the Canadian Medical Association, said Thursday. Buchman's group is one of 22 organizations to have signed […]
Oct 10 2019 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — Canadian research is part of an extensive global climate change study that has found billions of the world's poorest people are at risk. The results, published Thursday in the journal Science, raise troubling questions about who will be able to adapt in a shifting, less dependable world. "There's a great potential for the problems to […]
Oct 10 2019 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — Climate change threatens extinction for two-thirds of bird species across North America, including almost all of those filling the forests and tundra of northern Canada, says an extensive report. "More than we thought are vulnerable," said Jeff Wells of the Audubon Society, which crunched 140 million records from 70 data sources on 604 different species for […]
Oct 6 2019 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — Inuit are hoping to use the alphabet to help keep their far-flung people together. Canada's national Inuit organization recently decided on a standard way to write their language that could be understood from Inuvik in the northern corner of the Northwest Territories to Nain on the east edge of Labrador. The new orthography replaces a […]
Oct 3 2019 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — New research says job growth from clean energy will dramatically outpace that from fossil fuels over the next decade — as long as future Canadian governments maintain or increase attempts to fight climate change. "The clean-energy sector is a good-news story that no one's talking about," said Merran Smith of Clean Energy Canada, a think tank based at […]
Oct 1 2019 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — EDMONTON — A review board has ruled that a mentally ill man found not criminally responsible after killing five young people at a house party can be eased back into the community under strict controls. But the Alberta Review Board says Matthew de Grood of Calgary remains a potential danger and must be monitored by experts. "De […]
Sep 26 2019 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — Scientists spent weeks up to their elbows in coffee grounds and banana peels to come up with what they say is the most accurate measure yet of how much food is wasted in Canadian kitchens. "To be honest, it's not something you'd want to do forever," said Michael von Massow, a food economist at the University of Guelph. […]
Sep 25 2019 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — Damage to Earth's oceans and glaciers from climate change is outpacing the ability of governments to protect them, a new report from an international scientific panel concludes. The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says those changes are having direct impacts on human health — including in Canada. "It doesn't matter where you live in […]
Sep 23 2019 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — A survey suggests that the trust Canadians place in science may be eroding. The survey, by the polling firm Ipsos for the multinational 3M company, also found that nearly half of those surveyed thought scientists are elitist and that a significant number of respondents discounted findings that don't accord with their personal beliefs. "While science skeptics represent the minority […]
Sep 19 2019 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — An extensive study of hundreds of bird species across decades worth of data has for the first time estimated how badly numbers of even the most common birds have shrunk. The paper, published Thursday in the journal Science, concludes the total number of North American birds has dropped by three billion since 1970 — about 30 […]
Sep 17 2019 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — EDMONTON — A review panel has reserved its decision on what privileges it may allow a man found not criminally responsible for killing five young people at a Calgary house party while suffering schizophrenic delusions. A Crown prosecutor and mental health officials have agreed with a proposal to ease Matthew de Grood back into society. The psychiatrist […]
Sep 13 2019 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — EDMONTON — Alberta's United Conservative government plans to eliminate its stand-alone offices for climate change policy and environmental monitoring, a move some say will damage the province's standing and its ability to make science-based plans. "What's going to suffer is Alberta's international reputation (and) our overall approach to science and evidence-based decision making," said New Democrat […]
Sep 12 2019 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — The Northwest Territories is facing a lawsuit over a stolen laptop containing medical files that could include information on every resident in the territory. "I would be surprised if it's anything less than 100 per cent," said Steven Cooper, an Edmonton lawyer who has filed a statement of claim in the N.W.T. Supreme Court. "The government of the […]
Sep 11 2019 — Bob Weber, The Canadian Press — Tiny eyes blinking at him from the rockface of the Burgess Shale drew Jean-Bernard Caron to the fossil of the oldest known ancestor of today's spiders and scorpions. "I was sitting there along the quarry and I turned my head to the right and I see this glowing light coming from this rock," he said. […]