Transition Brockville

Canada natural gas emissions far worse than feared

The Guardian / Ashifa Kassam / 17 October 2017

Alberta’s oil and gas industry – Canada’s largest producer of fossil fuel resources – could be emitting 25 to 50% more methane than previously believed, new research has suggested.

The pioneering peer reviewed study, published in Environmental Science & Technology on Tuesday, used airplane surveys to measure methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure in two regions in Alberta. The results were then compared with industry-reported emissions and estimates of unreported sources of the powerful greenhouse gas, which warm the planet more than 20 times as much as similar volumes of carbon dioxide.

“Our first reaction was ‘Oh my goodness, this is a really big deal,” said Matthew Johnson, a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa and one of the study’s authors. “If we thought it was bad, it’s worse.”

[ FULL ARTICLE ]

The relationship between hurricanes and climate change

New York Times / John Schwartz / 25 August 2017

Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University and an author of the report, said even if global warming does not change the number of storms — and, she noted, there could even be fewer hurricanes over all — tropical storms and hurricanes do gain energy from warm water, so the unusually warm water that has accompanied climate change “can have a role in intensifying a storm that already exists.”

More moisture in the atmosphere, she said, means the amount and intensity of rain associated with hurricanes and other storms is growing. While people might think of high winds and storm surge as the risks of hurricanes, she said, “freshwater flooding is potentially a much greater problem than the storm surge.”

[ FULL ARTICLE ]

California fires: deadliest week in history

The Guardian / Associated Press / 13 October 2017

Northern California’s wildfires have now killed 31 people, making this the deadliest week of wildfires in state history.

Sonoma County sheriff Robert Giordano said Thursday night that two more people have been confirmed dead there. That raises the statewide death total from 29 to 31. The Oakland Hills fire of 1991 killed 29 people by itself.

While no one fire currently burning has killed that many, collectively this is the deadliest series of simultaneous fires in the state since records have been kept.

[ FULL ARTICLE ]

Screening of “Call of the Forest”

Transition Brockville / 12 October 2017

Visionary scientist and acclaimed local author Diana Beresford-Kroeger will be featured at the next Transition Brockville presentation on Sunday, October 22, 2 p.m., at the Brockville Public Library.

She will introduce her documentary, Call of the Forest – The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees, nominated for an award by the Pariscience International Film Festival, and answer questions after its screening.

Humans cut down billions of trees every year. Today only five percent of the worldʼs old growth forests remain intact. Yet trees are one of this planetʼs most significant creators of food, new medicines, and oxygen. Forests hold the answer to many of the worldʼs problems, from climate change to human health and well-being. Kroeger explores the science, folklore and history of this essential eco-system, reminding us that when we improve our profound human connection to woodlands we can restore not only our health but our planet.

From the sacred sugi and cedar forests of Japan, the ancient Raheen Wood of Ireland, and the walnut and redwood trees of America, to the great boreal forest of Canada, Call of the Forest tells the amazing stories behind the history and legacy of these ancient forests while also explaining the science of trees and the irreplaceable roles they play in protecting and feeding the planet.

As she travels across the globe to tell the story of the life and the science of the global forest, Beresford-Kroeger presents a revolutionary conception of their value to all life and a message that could, literally, save mankind from itself.

Carbon levels in the atmosphere are rising. As the planet warms, it becomes more difficult to alter the outcome of human impact on climate change. Woodlands are the beating heart of our ecosystem and Beresford-Kroegerʼs call to action – to protect the native forests of the world and for every person to plant one tree a year for the next six years – provides a simple and powerful solution for climate change.

Sunday’s presentation is free and open to the public; however, a free will donation to Transition Brockville is always welcomed.

Home Food Preservation Headquarters

Mother Earth News

Stretching the shelf life of food can be as low-tech and hands-off (set trays in the sun to dry) or as elaborate and large-scale (a day devoted to pressure-canning summer’s bounty) as you’d like. No matter where you fall on that spectrum or whether you have surplus fruit from an ample orchard or a profusion of basil from a petite, potted herb garden, the information you need to safely and deliciously put by fresh food awaits here in our online Home Food Preservation Headquarters.

[ FULL ARTICLE ]

TLTI thinking tiny (homes)

Recorder & Times / Wayne Lowrie / 07 October 2017

Council members decided this week to embrace the tiny-house movement that has become the darling of environmental trend-setters in the United States and Europe.

They asked planning director Elaine Mallory to prepare a zoning bylaw amendment that would remove the minimum size requirements for new houses, and include tiny houses in the township’s definition of permissible dwellings.

The township’s building rules now say that new houses should be at least 807 square feet in size, although houses can go as small as 484 square feet in a mobile home park.

Tiny houses, on the other hand, can run as small as 223 square feet, plus a “wash closet” in the bachelor model.

[ FULL ARTICLE ]

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In passing

So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent… Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger…. The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…. We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now….

— Winston Churchill