Tag Archives: Emissions

Environment, Opinion

2021: A Climate Scientist talks about the good news that came out of COP 26

[From the Archives: Nov 19, 2021]

Dr Simon Donner is an interdisciplinary climate scientist at the University of British Columbia. He studies some of the areas where the rise in global temperatures is most evident: ocean warming, sea-level rise; climate change adaptation in the developing world and coral reefs. Given that work, Donner admits he is “probably a weird person to sound optimistic,” but he is encouraged about the good news from COP 26. 

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Waste

Recycling isn’t the ‘panacea’ that will save oceans from plastic at UN Ocean summit

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Canada has the opportunity to position itself as a leader in tackling the world’s marine plastics problem at this week’s UN Ocean Conference, experts say. 

However, to effect real change, Canada and its international partners will have to aggressively wean themselves off unnecessary plastics and accelerate the development of a global circular economy to make sure plastic pollution doesn’t end up in oceans. 

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Environment, Opinion

The Quadra Project: Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity is the ability of the human brain to adapt to new kinds of learning, a subject studied by David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University. In an interview with Clare Wilson in New Scientist magazine (15 May 2021), he makes the passing comment that, “Mother Nature is taking a sort of gamble with humans, in that she drops our brains into the world half-baked and lets experience take over and shape them. Our babies have much less well-developed brains than other animals do at birth. All in all, this has been a successful strategy. We’ve taken over every corner of the planet, invented the internet—even gotten off the planet to the moon.”

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Environment

Coastal carbon capture project aims to sink emissions in ocean floor and turn them to stone

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A team of scientists believes it has a “rock-solid” way to combat the climate crisis by sucking carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it deep below the ocean floor. 

The proposed Solid Carbon project aims to scrub vast amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air and inject it nearly three kilometres beneath the ocean’s surface into basalt aquifers where it will eventually transform into rock. 

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Environment

Ecology? Look it up! You’re still involved

Originally published on Greenpeace International

This year has been the 50th Anniversary of Greenpeace; 2022 will be the 50th anniversary of the Limits to Growth study. During this era, a half-century ago, citizens around the world began seeing signs of a pending ecological crisis, and began to talk about it. 

The image above could be considered the first Greenpeace public media statement, one of twelve billboards erected in Vancouver, in 1969, by Greenpeace co-founders Dorothy and Ben Metcalfe.

Continue reading Ecology? Look it up! You’re still involved →