Biodiversity safeguards bird communities under a changing climate

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI

 

IMAGE: THE MOURNING DOVE IS A HABITAT GENERALIST. view more 

CREDIT: ALEKSI LEHIKOINEN

A new study shows that North American bird communities containing functionally diverse species have changed less under climate change during the past 50 years than functionally simple communities.

Climate change has undisputable global effects on ecosystems and ecological community compositions, but why certain communities are better able to resist the effects of climate change than others remains unclear. In a recent scientific study covering nearly all North American bird species, researchers studied community composition changes and community diversity over half a century. Consistently, bird communities with higher species richness and a larger variety of functional properties changed less radically in their community composition following climate change.

– For example, if a community contained birds of prey, insectivores, and seed-eaters rather than birds from just one feeding guild, it was better safeguarded against the negative impacts of climate change, highlights PhD Emma-Liina Marjakangas, the leading researcher of the study from University of Helsinki.

Community-level diversity works as a buffer against negative climate change impacts, especially during winter, i.e the season that has shown strongest climatic warming across the Northern Hemisphere. On the other hand, biodiversity played a smaller role during the breeding season. Indeed, earlier studies have shown that bird communities change faster during winter than summer, which explains this pattern.

– Habitat and available food determine a species’ flexibility for changing its breeding and wintering areas. For example, grassland species have shifted their distributions northwards slower than forest passerines, such as the American robin, or habitat generalists, such as the mourning dove, explains Senior curator Aleksi Lehikoinen from the University of Helsinki.

Functionally diverse bird communities help maintain ecosystems via plant seed dispersal, pest insect control and even pollination of flowering plants. Climate change reshuffles the composition of these important bird communities and therefore threatens their ability to provide ecosystem services.

– Our results strengthen the understanding that biodiversity safeguards ecosystem functioning and that the biodiversity and climate crises need to be mitigated simultaneously to avoid multiplicative effects, Marjakangas emphasizes.

The study is based on a community science database from 1966–2016 covering all of North America, and it was published in the international journal Scientific Reports.

---

JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-022-26248-1 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Effects of diversity on thermal niche variation in bird communities under climate change

New research shows humans impact wolf packs in national parks

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

 

IMAGE: TRAIL CAMERA FOOTAGE OF THE SHOEPACK LAKE PACK WALKING ALONG A SANDY BEACH IN VOYAGEURS NATIONAL PARK IN THE FALL. view more 

CREDIT: CREDIT: VOYAGEURS WOLF PROJECT

New research shows how humans are a substantial source of mortality for wolves that live predominantly in national parks — and more importantly, that human-caused mortality triggers instability in wolf packs in national parks.

Published today in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, the study was led by Kira Cassidy, a research associate at Yellowstone National Park, and included co-authors at five national parks and University of Minnesota Voyageurs Wolf Project researchers Thomas Gable, Joseph Bump and Austin Homkes.

“For gray wolves, the biological unit is the pack or the family. We wanted to focus on the impacts of human-caused mortality to the pack, a finer-scale measure than population size or growth rate,” said Cassidy. “We found the odds a pack persists and reproduces drops with more human-caused mortalities.” 

While many studies have looked at how humans impact wolf populations, this study took a different approach and examined how human-caused mortality affects individual wolf packs. To do this, Cassidy and her team contrasted what happened to wolf packs after at least one pack member was killed by human-causes with packs where no members died of human-causes.

The researchers found that the chance a pack stayed together to the end of the year decreased by 27% when a pack member died of human causes, and whether or not that pack reproduced the next year decreased by 22%. When a pack leader died, the impact was more substantial, with the chance of the pack making it to the end of the year decreasing by 73% and reproduction by 49%.

Although the researchers did not examine whether human-caused mortality alters the size of wolf populations in national parks, this work shows that people are clearly altering certain aspects of wolf ecology in national parks even if they are not impacting overall population size.

One reason for this is that humans are a disproportionate cause of mortality for wolves that live predominantly in national parks. In other words, wolves die more often of human-causes than would be expected for the amount of time wolves spend outside of park boundaries. 

Of all national parks in the study, wolves in Voyageurs National Park spent the most time outside of park boundaries. In fact, wolves that had territories in or overlapping Voyageurs spent 46% of their time outside of the park. The result: 50% of all mortalities for these wolves came at the hands of people, with poaching being the most common cause of death.

“The unique shape of Voyageurs means that there are very few wolf packs that live entirely within the boundaries of the park. Instead, many wolf pack territories straddle the park border and when wolves leave the park, they are at an increased risk of being killed by people,” said Gable, a post-doctoral associate in the University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences and project lead of the Voyageurs Wolf Project, which studies wolves in and around Voyageurs National Park.

However, Voyageurs was hardly unique as this pattern was similar across the other national parks in the study — Denali National Park and Preserve, Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve — with human-caused mortality accounting for 36% of collared wolf mortality across all five parks.

Legal hunting and trapping of wolves outside of national park boundaries accounted for 53% of all human-caused mortality for wolves from national parks during hunting and trapping seasons.

These findings highlight why collaboration between different state and federal agencies is key when conserving and managing wildlife that go in and out of protected areas such as national parks. 

“Wildlife populations that cross hard boundaries from federal to state ownership are a challenge to manage. Wolves don’t know the park boundary lines,” said Bump, an associate professor in the U of M’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences.

The Voyageurs Wolf Project is funded by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).

Fall 2021 trail camera footage of wolves from the Cranberry Bay Pack in Voyageurs National Park.

CREDIT

Credit: Voyageurs Wolf Project.JOURNAL

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment

DOI

10.1002/fee.2597 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Human-caused mortality triggers pack instability in gray wolves

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Jan-2023

Bulgaria secretly supplied Ukraine fuel and ammunition in early months of war

Story by Jon Henley Europe correspondent •


Bulgaria, one of the poorest EU members and long perceived as pro-Moscow, helped Ukraine survive Russia’s early onslaught by secretly supplying it with large amounts of desperately needed diesel and ammunition, the politicians responsible have said.


Photograph: Serhii Nuzhnenko/Reuters© Provided by The Guardian

The former Bulgarian prime minister Kiril Petkov and finance minister Assen Vassilev said their country provided 30% of the Soviet-calibre ammunition Ukraine’s army needed during a crucial three-month period last spring, and at times 40% of the diesel.

The men, who are now in opposition, have described along with the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, the remarkable operation mounted by the small Balkan state, which officially was refusing all requests to arm Ukraine, in interviews with Die Welt.

“Kiril Petkov has shown his integrity, and I will always be grateful to him for using all his political skill to find a solution,” Kuleba told the German newspaper, adding that the Bulgarian leader “decided to be on the right side of history, and help us defend ourselves against a much stronger enemy”.

Petkov had to act covertly because of the overtly pro-Kremlin sympathies among many in Bulgaria’s political class, including his Socialist coalition partners. Days after Russia’s so-called special operation in Ukraine began on 24 February, he fired his defence minister, who was refusing to call the invasion an act of war.

ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

People take part in a demonstration in support of Russia in Sofia, Bulgaria, in December. 

Photograph: Spasiyana Sergieva/Reuters© Provided by The Guardian

Meanwhile, polls showed more than 70% of Bulgarians feared being drawn into the conflict and opposed supplying arms to Ukraine, despite their country having large stocks of Soviet-calibre arms and ammunition that Kyiv urgently needed.

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According to Kuleba, the arms shipments began in mid-April after he visited Sofia. Ukraine had repelled Russia’s initial drive on Kyiv but was running dangerously short of supplies, with many western deliveries not yet under way and Soviet-calibre ammunition being particularly needed.

“We knew Bulgaria had large quantities of the ammunition needed, so [I was sent to] procure the necessary materials,” Kuleba told Die Welt. He said it was a matter of “life and death”, adding that Petkov had replied that while his domestic political situation was “not easy”, he would do “everything in his power”.

Sofia did not supply Ukraine directly, but allowed Bulgarian intermediaries to sell to their counterparts in Ukraine or Nato member states, and kept open its air links with Poland and land routes via Romania and Hungary, Petkov told the paper. Many deliveries were ultimately paid for by the US and UK, Die Welt said, without citing sources.



The fuel Bulgaria was shipping to Ukraine was produced from Russian crude oil at a refinery near Burgas operated by Russia’s Lukoil.

 Photograph: Nikolay Doychinov/AFP/Getty Images© Provided by The Guardian

Even greater secrecy surrounded the diesel exports, again via international intermediaries. They were especially sensitive since the fuel Bulgaria was shipping to Ukraine was produced from Russian crude oil, at a refinery near Burgas on the Black Sea operated by Russia’s Lukoil.

“Trucks and tankers regularly went to Ukraine via Romania, and in some cases the fuel was also loaded on to freight trains,” Vassilev said. “Bulgaria became one of the largest suppliers of diesel to Ukraine,” exporting about half the Burgas refinery’s output, he added. Kuleba confirmed the deliveries, saying they came “at a critical time”.

Moscow retaliated with crippling cyber-attacks and an intelligence onslaught (70 Russian diplomats were expelled for spying between March and June last year), as well as by turning off gas supplies to heavily dependent Bulgaria as early as 27 April.

But Petkov said he resolved a looming energy crisis by organising two tankers of liquefied petroleum gas from the US, making it clear to Washington that the delivery was “a political signal to the whole of Europe that there are always ways out of dependence on Russia”.

In June, his government fell after a vote of no confidence. In December, Bulgaria’s parliament voted to officially allow arms supplies to Ukraine. Since the start of this year, the Lukoil refinery has been controlled entirely from Bulgaria, and is looking to import crude from other countries.

Petkov and Vassilev said their anti-corruption We Continue the Change party will fight in a general election – the country’s fifth in two years – that is likely to be called this spring. Whatever its outcome, Petkov said they had shown that a “world without dependence on and fear” of Russia was possible.

As his building lives on, architect of the Saddledome and much of Calgary's character passes away

Story by Bill Kaufmann • Yesterday 2:25 p.m.


In the end, Barry Wayne Graham’s signature work and an iconic part of the Calgary skyline outlived him.


Barry Graham, the retired lead architect for the Saddledome, poses in front of the building in 2008. Graham passed away in December at 84.© Provided by Calgary Herald

Graham, the longtime architect whose vision gave birth to the Scotiabank Saddledome and many other structures that have come to define Calgary, died Dec. 26 at the age of 84.

David Edmunds, who worked with Graham for three decades, reeled off a dizzying list of projects his late business partner had a hand in, including the Olympic Speed Skating Oval at the University of Calgary, the Plus-15 system, then-Mount Royal College and the Village Square Leisure Centre.

“He was very well-respected in the construction industry with contractors and tradespeople — and certainly in the sports and entertainment world, he was really respected,” said Edmunds.
‘He was a giant’

In the 1960s such projects were viewed through more of a utilitarian lens but Graham was one of those who changed that, said Edmunds.

“There was not a lot of concern for the people who used them, but Barry was able to straddle the worlds of engineering and architecture — not just esthetics, but things like sight lines and how dressing rooms work. He was very good at that,” said Edmunds.

“He was a giant in the Calgary (architectural) world.”

Born in Turtleford, Sask., in 1938, Graham moved to Calgary after high school to work as a lab technician with Imperial Oil.

Noting his intelligence, his supervisors encouraged him to study as an architect and he did, at Washington State University, followed by a master’s degree of architecture and urban design at the University of Minnesota under the renowned Ralph Rapson.

After joining the City of Calgary in 1971, Graham immersed himself in developing downtown Calgary’s distinctive Plus-15 network.

“That was a very innovative program Calgary was implementing,” said Edmunds, noting Graham was involved by creating sketches and offering incentives to developers.

Graham was at peace with the Saddledome being replaced

A decade later, when the Saddledome project emerged, Edmunds was a newcomer to the craft but recalled its prominence and Graham’s role in it.

“I had just started, but every architect and student knew what was going on with it,” he said.

Graham’s attention to detail and even the psychology of a structure were remarkable, said Art Froese, a close friend and business partner.

“He got the essence of what was going on in the (Saddledome),” said Froese, who was president of the Olympic Coliseum Society at the time.

“He brought colour and texture to the building.”


The Saddledome was built in 1983. It hosted ice hockey and figure skating at the 1988 Olympic Games.

In an interview with Postmedia in July 2019, Graham was at peace with the Saddledome making way for a newer building.


“ I’ve been around a long time, ” said Graham. “ I’ve seen a lot of them demolished. I’ve been in the architecture business for a long time, so it’s part of the world these days. There’s not much you can do about it. They get old and they need to be replaced. ”

Despite its association with the cowboy culture of Western Canada, Graham said that wasn’t the original intent when the Saddledome first started taking shape. His firm, Graham McCourt Architects (now GEC Architecture), actually settled on its now well-known design to satisfy a variety of technical and budgetary requirements.

“ You’re looking for something that’s somewhat unique, ” said Graham. “I can’t remember exactly what generated the shape of the building, but it was part of the process of developing various ideas and seeing how they look.”

Negotiations between the city and Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corp. to replace the Saddledome broke down at the end of 2021, but have since been rekindled.

Saddledome’s success led to projects that solidified Graham’s legacy

Work on the Saddledome’s design led to Graham’s firm’s participation in building Mariucci Arena at the University of Minnesota, which was finished in 1993.

In 2007, Sports Illustrated listed it as one the top 10 venues in college sports, the only hockey arena to qualify.

“Being chosen to do that was the biggest compliment he could have gotten — they could have picked any architect in North America,” said Froese.

Arguably the architect’s most enduringly impressive work, Froese said, is the speedskating oval, whose mechanics have enabled it to host a record number of best times in the sport.

“That was a very complex project — the U of C didn’t want it any higher than 40 feet,” said Froese.

Graham is not the first person who shaped those marquee structures to die in recent years. Engineer Harold Nash, who helped build the Saddledome, McMahon Stadium, the speedskating oval and many other structures, died in November 2020 at the age of 87.

But those who knew Graham said his professional legacy went far beyond sports venues and were influenced by his affinity for the Prairies.

“ Love of the western Canadian landscape flows through Barry’s work. This is seen in his design for the Athabasca bridges in Jasper National Park — a site of considerable beauty and environmental sensitivity,” states his obituary.

The father of five with an extraordinary sense of humour was also an avid fisherman and bird hunter who forged special relationships with ranchers whose land he trod, said Froese.

It’s an outlook that inspired in Graham an appreciation for simplicity in design, but a simplicity that recognized its limits, he said.

Graham deserves more fulsome accolades for his legacy than he’s likely to ever receive, added Froese.

“It seems like you can never be a hero in your hometown,” he said.

— With files from Sammy Hudes

BKaufmann@postmedia.com

Twitter: @BillKaufmannjrn

FREE MARKET PRIVATEERS
Drug dealers still control 33% of Canada's cannabis market despite legalization

Marijuana.© Provided by Toronto Sun

Five years after Ottawa legalized marijuana, 33% of the market is still controlled by drug dealers, says the Department of Public Safety.

“One of the main goals of legalization of cannabis was to reduce criminal activity by keeping profits out of the pockets of criminals,” the department wrote in an October 17 briefing note Cannabis Black Market.

“The illicit drug trade provides organized crime with one of its most financially lucrative criminal markets. A well-regulated legal cannabis industry is in place and is significantly displacing the black market,” said the note. “Today the legal cannabis market accounts for approximately 67% of market shares. However, there continues to be a well-entrenched illegal market in place.”

The briefing says drug dealers sell marijuana at a 55% discount compared to licensed retailers.

“As the legal market matures there will be downward pressure on wholesale prices as producers’ costs decline. However, long-term prices are less predictable as consumer tastes and product offerings, including value-added products, evolve,” the findings say.

“One has to be careful not to move above the illegal price,” Mostafa Askari, then-assistant budget officer, told reporters at the time. “As soon you move above the illegal market price, based on our estimates, you lose a lot of market share to the illegal market so that defeats the purpose.”

SPOT THE CONTRADICTION

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“There still exists a flourishing and illegal cannabis market in Canada,” said the report Operational Alert: Laundering Of Proceeds From Illicit Cannabis.

“Such illegal markets contribute to increased risk of harm to Canada’s financial system and its citizens through significant loss of tax revenue and increased funding of criminal activity by organized crime groups.”

Many Canadians feel hosting sporting events like Olympics a waste of money

The Olympic rings are pictured in front of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, Jan. 26, 2021.

Story by Kevin Connor •  Toronto Sun

Many Canadians have mixed feelings about hosting future world sporting events, according to the Department of Canadian Heritage.

They feel events like the Olympics are “corrupt” and a waste of money, according to a Blacklock’s report.

“There is no clear consensus among respondents who believe large scale international sporting events will be fairly or very valuable to Canadians in the future,” said a report Future Of Sport Public Opinion Research.

“In fact the single largest proportion of respondents, 38%, don’t know how these events will offer value to Canadians.”

People question how valuable large scale international sporting events such as the Olympics will be to Canadians in the future.

Twenty-six percent said they did not consider them valuable, 34% said, “fairly valuable,” 32% said, “very valuable.”

“Among those who feel large-scale international events don’t offer much value to Canadians, two in five believe these events are too expensive and that taxpayers’ money should be spent addressing other priorities,” wrote researchers.

“Other reasoning provided included that these events are elitist (13%), that this is not beneficial to Canadians (13%), or that they don’t care or are not interested (11%).”

Nine percent said, “These events are corrupt.”

Six percent replied, “These events are too political.”

Findings were based on questionnaires with 9,208 Canadians.

“The purpose of the quantitative public opinion research was to collect information on Canadians’ perceptions of the future of sports in Canada,” said the report.

“‘Excellence’ funding was focused on the highest priority sports to better meet their needs to achieve medal success,” said a 2006 Road To Excellence Business Plan by the Canadian Olympic Committee.

“Because the ‘excellence’ funding was limited, a number of lower priority sports did not receive funding.”

Opinion: For UFO believers, new report may provide some solace

Opinion by Erik German • 5h ago


On Thursday, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a congressionally mandated report about “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” the preferred Pentagon nomenclature for what most folks call “UFOs.”

Hear the details of a new UFO report released by US government

Duration 2:17    View on Watch

This report is part of a relatively new push by the US intelligence community and the Pentagon to try and make sense of more than 500 UFO sightings over the past couple of decades that have mostly been made by US service personnel.

As part of that push, in July the Pentagon established a new office with the wonderfully opaque name of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

In plain English, this office attempts to figure out what’s behind UFO sightings made by Department of Defense personnel or members of the US intelligence community.

There is a sound national security reason for this office that has nothing to do with aliens or little green men. If there are unidentified objects flying around in US airspace, could these be evidence of American adversaries like Russia or China deploying new kinds of exotic weapons? And whatever these UFOs might be, they could represent a risk to US Air Force planes and commercial aircraft.

The creation of this office is also part of a pattern since the late 1940s when the US Department of Defense has bolstered the case for UFOs – in some cases to disguise top secret new aircraft that the Air Force was developing –while at the same assuring the general public that what some might believe are alien aircraft are explained by more prosaic phenomena such as weather events, or balloons, or airborne debris or good old human error.

Thursday’s new UFO report had some striking findings: The number of UFO sightings dramatically increased between March 2021 and August 2022, during which 247 new sightings were reported. Most of those reports came from pilots or others working for the US Navy and US Air Force.

The report suggests that these increased sightings may be the result of less stigma associated in reporting such sightings and also more guidance from the Pentagon to report “anomalies” in the sky. In other words, if you are instructed to look for something odd, you likely will find it.

For UFO believers, new report may provide some solace

According to a Gallup poll from 2021, around 40% of Americans believe that unidentified flying objects that are sometimes seen in the sky are, in fact, alien spacecraft.

For UFO true believers, the new report doesn’t provide information that would buttress their beliefs, but it leaves open a number of unexplained sightings that UFO believers will surely seize upon.

In some of the cases that the Pentagon investigated, an unspecified number of UFO sightings were “attributable to sensor irregularities or variances, such as operator or equipment error.”

The Pentagon also found that a very large number of the sightings, 163, were actually balloons or “balloon-like entities,” while 26 were unmanned aircraft systems, otherwise known as drones, and six were attributable to airborne “clutter,” such as plastic bags or birds.

Still, there are 171 unidentified object sightings that the Pentagon hasn’t attributed to anything yet, and some of those objects “demonstrated unusual flight characteristics.”

The Pentagon’s long, complex history with UFOs

This is not the first time the Pentagon has investigated UFOs and provided information that, in some cases, has helped to fuel the UFO believer movement.

In July 1952, following months of sightings across the US, pilots and ground personnel at Andrews Air Force Base said they spotted unaccountably fast, maneuverable objects flying over Washington, DC. Multiple military witnesses said they’d caught the objects on radar and at least one pilot reported seeing them with the naked eye.

As a result, the officer in charge of US Air Force intelligence, Major General John Samford, held a televised press conference. One US Air Force captain investigating the incident called Samford’s press conference “the largest and longest the Air Force had held since World War II.”

Seated soberly behind several microphones, Samford told reporters “the great bulk” of UFO sightings could be dismissed as hoaxes, friendly aircraft or aberrations of weather and light. Nevertheless, he said, there remained a certain percentage of reports that have been made by “credible observers of relatively incredible things.”

These relatively incredible possibilities of course inflamed UFO enthusiasts.

Newspapers across the country carried headlines like “Saucers Swarm Over Capitol,” and “Jets Chase DC Sky Ghosts.” One Air Force investigator in 1952 counted more than 16,000 newspaper stories on UFOs that year.

But less than a year after Samford’s press conference, a government panel of scientists, military and intelligence officials convened to study evidence and testimony from more than 20 purported UFO sightings. It concluded that UFOs did indeed pose a strategic threat to the US – but not because of aliens, but rather because America’s civil air defense could be overwhelmed by reports of UFOs.

This worry, writes aerospace historian Curtis Peebles, “was not really about flying saucers, it was about Pearl Harbor.” At the height of the Cold War, “the US was haunted by the specter of a surprise Soviet nuclear attack.”

The panel suggested a policy of “debunking” reports and recommended officials take “immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired.”

The US Air Force tasked a small office called Project Blue Book with doing just that. Until the 1970s, Blue Book officers followed up on UFO reports, interviewed witnesses, collected evidence and consistently put a narrative into the press stressing that most sightings could be attributable to normal aircraft, hoaxers or weather phenomena.

Then, as now, the vast majority of UFO reports easily submitted to conventional explanation.

But there remained a small group of American UFO-watchers who could not be talked down. And they kept watching the skies, reporting on craft that seemed able to fly higher and faster than any known planes.

In some cases, they were spotting real and very secret US assets. CIA historian Gerald Haines estimated that as many as half of the reports investigated by Project Blue Book were actually sightings of the CIA’s U-2 and the Air Force’s SR-71 Blackbird spy planes.

The need to protect these and later stealth projects spawned a new approach from some corners of the US counterintelligence community.

“The US Air Force and the CIA had their own working UFO to hide,” writes Mark Pilkington in his book “Mirage Men,” an extensive history of purported UFO sightings. “The finer, fleshier details had been filled in by the imaginations of the people on the ground, encouraged and embellished by…the CIA and others in the alphabet soup of intelligence organizations.”

Pilkington documented cases in the early 1980s of Air Force counterintelligence agents making contact with UFO investigators and egging them on – even leaking faked evidence of secret contact between the US government and alien visitors. Stories like these inevitably spread. And any useful intelligence about top secret, real life aircraft became lost in increasingly outlandish noise about UFOs.

Pilkington described the Pentagon’s communication strategy as “a two-channel system” – one for debunking and calming down the general public when it came to reports of UFOs, the other for hiding potential leaks about top secret US technology.

So where does that leave us today? Perhaps, with the Cold War behind us, the Pentagon’s new UFO office signals a new chapter of sensible transparency surrounding aerial unknowns that could pose a threat to our security. But with the Pentagon’s long history of whipsawing between stoking and stifling public fascination, it doesn’t seem likely that UFO true believers will give up on the mystery any time soon.

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TRUDEAU HATES ALBERTA
Feds announce $25.5M for job creation and business scale up in Calgary

Story by Josh Aldrich • 

Fifteen local businesses are getting a $25.5 million boost from the federal government to assist in scaling up and to create more than 800 jobs.


Dan Vandal, Minister of PrariesCan, is pictured speaking during a press conference at the Telus Spark science centre on Wednesday, March 16, 2022.© Gavin Young/Postmedia

Dan Vandal, Minister of PrariesCan, made the announcement from Headversity in Calgary on Wednesday morning. The funding will reach key sectors of the Canadian economy including health, digital technology, clean energy, and manufacturing.

“Albertans are innovators and always looking forward at new opportunities to grow and succeed,” said the minister in a press release. “Our government is making investments here in Alberta to ensure leading-edge companies scale up and provide high-quality jobs Alberta workers can depend on. Today’s investment will help further position Calgary as a leader in innovation while further strengthening the competitiveness of Alberta businesses.”

Headversity is one of the major recipients of the funding and will receive $6 million to expand its digital mental health technology platform to measure, track and train mental health resilience in youth.

Kathairos is receiving $3.9 million to grow its emission reduction business to help eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas well sites.

ProposeMed is getting $3.5 million to scale up their operations and extend delivery of telehealth solutions to at-risk and underserved Canadians.

Harvest Builders has been granted $3 million to build an online talent platform to grow the tech sector across the prairies.

The government forecasts this funding will help create and support 815 jobs.

The funding is coming out of the Job and Growth Fun through PrairiesCan.

converts catalytic converter and electronic waste into precious metals.

•Kent Imaging ($1,859,500) — Expand and enhance its non invasive medical diagnostics device line and increase sales support to spur growth in global markets.

• 2301114 Alberta Ltd – operating as Watts ($1,420,083) — Expand operations and distribution capacity to better serve new markets in Canada and the USA with its advanced lighting solutions.

• Lumiio ($1,372,908)— Enhance digital products and develop advanced wearable integrations to better capture real-world health data that aids in medical diagnostics, disease characterization, and improved patient outcomes.

• Medlior Health Outcomes Research ($584,500) — Scale up operations of health economics and outcomes research services to better serve North American and European markets.

• Black Owl Systems ($460,500) — Complete the development of its specialized accounting software and scale up marketing and sales efforts throughout North America.

• ICwhatUC – operating as IrisCX ($270,000) — Enhance its software with artificial intelligence capabilities to better connect business experts and consumers virtually, enabling businesses to provide accurate service, and advice without the need for an in-person site visit.

• 2311520 Alberta Ltd – operating as The Co+Kitchen ($223,500) — Grow a shared-use commercial kitchen in Canmore to provide entrepreneurs and small businesses an affordable and accessible space to cook, store, and sell locally produced food.

• Krux Analytics ($167,250) — Design and produce equipment that optimizes drilling performance by aggregating and integrating data to enable real-time analysis.

• The Alberta Food Processors Association ($131,250) — Create a digital portal that enables agri-food companies to find and connect with existing Alberta food and beverage co-packers or contract manufacturers to efficiently produce and package their products.

• Ammolite Technology ($123,468) — Scale up operations and integrate an enterprise resource planning and e-commerce system to better serve clients and increase revenue opportunities.

This story will be updated.

jaldrich@postmedia.com

Twitter: @JoshAldrich03

Opinion: Enough denial; Alberta should start talking about a just transition

AMERICAN ANTI WOKEISM

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has denounced the federal government’s proposed Just Transition Act as “divisive, polarizing language” that is merely “virtue signalling to an extreme base.”

A worker walks past a Caterpillar 797 heavy hauler at a machine shop at Syncrude Canada, north of Fort McMurray, Alta., on Tuesday August 15, 2017. Vincent McDermott/Fort McMurray

Opinion by Keith Stewart • Edmonton Journal

This will come as a surprise to the scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who used the term “just transition” over 300 times in their 2022 report on climate solutions . Just transition is also one of the core principles in the International Energy Agency’s road map for getting to net zero.

The IPCC defines a just transition as “a set of principles, processes and practices aimed at ensuring that no people, workers, places, sectors, countries or regions are left behind in the move from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy. It includes respect and dignity for vulnerable groups; creation of decent jobs; social protection; employment rights; fairness in energy access and use and social dialogue and democratic consultation with relevant stakeholders … . A Just Transition entails targeted and proactive measures from governments, agencies, and other non-state authorities to ensure that any negative social, environmental, or economic impacts of economy-wide transitions are minimized, whilst benefits are maximized for those disproportionally affected.”

This is not a new idea. I’ve been involved in discussions between the Canadian labour and environmental movements on just transition policies since the mid-1990s, and in recent years governments around the world have begun implementing them .

Related video: Federal 'just transition' memo sparks outrage in Alberta (cbc.ca) 

Duration 8:24    View on Watch

What we’ve learned is that good transition policies are about making decisions with people, not for them. It’s about looking at who — workers, communities and Indigenous nations — might be affected by the energy transition and how. It’s about listening to their fears, but also their visions of possible futures. In spite of the premier’s rhetoric, most Albertans believe that the transition away from oil and gas will be good for their economy in the long run.

Bad transition policies flow from denying that the shift away from fossil fuels is happening. As much as some in the oil patch would like to believe that global demand for oil will grow endlessly, that’s not in the cards. According to the IEA’s most recent World Energy Outlook , demand for fossil fuels will soon peak and then decline even in the absence of new climate policies. How fast we make the transition to clean energy will be determined by the policies we adopt, but the economics, and increasingly energy security concerns, are driving us towards a fossil-free future. The choice is between a just and unjust transition, not whether or not to have one.

Yet denial seems to be at the core of the Alberta government’s opposition to even talking about a just transition. Environment Minister Sonya Savage, who was a registered lobbyist for pipeline companies for 14 years prior to getting into politics, said that just transition measures were a “non-starter” for Alberta because “it means phasing out fossil fuels immediately, keeping it in the ground. Even more than that, it means restructuring societies and economies and redistributing wealth.”

The truth is that we don’t yet know how the Trudeau government intends to implement its 2019 election promise to bring in a Just Transition Act. But the evidence shows that it could be of greatest benefit to regions like Alberta that are currently highly invested in the extraction and processing of fossil fuels.

The chances of federal measures being good for Alberta would rise dramatically if the provincial government would at least talk about how to deal with the transition to a low-carbon economy, rather than sticking their fingers in their ears and denying it could ever happen.

Keith Stewart is a senior energy strategist at Greenpeace Canada. He also teaches a course on energy policy at the University of Toronto

The world is moving to net-zero. How do we make it fair?

We commissioned a poll that shows that 88% of fossil fuel workers are interested in training and upskilling to transition to a net-zero economy. 

As the Canadian government resumes its Just Transition consultations, we want to ensure that the outcomes they propose match what workers actually want and need.

JUST TRANSITION IRON & EARTH

Politicians and business leaders seem to dominate the conversation around energy transition and climate change. But at the end of the day it's our livelihoods that are impacted.

That’s why we started Community Conversations, a series of small group conversations in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland - all places deeply impacted by a transitioning economy.

For those of you living in downtown Edmonton, will you join us this Saturday, January 21st so that we can hear about what matters most to you?

We’ll take the results of all of these sessions and amplify your voices to political, business, and funding stakeholders across Canada so that the voices of the community are heard loud and clear.

It’s important to us that anyone who wants to participate can, so we have compensation available as well as reimbursements for transportation and childcare costs.

RSVP Here

For those of you not in Edmonton, help us to spread the word by sharing this work on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram.

At the end of our Community Conversation series we’ll be able to share powerful lessons with our leaders: where do communities have common goals? When do we need to nuance support for regional differences? We can only make economic transitions that support working people if we’ve first heard from them, and that’s what these sessions are all about.

With thanks,
Ana Guerra Marin
Communities Director & Just Transition Lead
Iron & Earth
http://www.ironandearth.org/

New ice core analysis shows sharp Greenland warming spike

Story by The Canadian Press • TODAY

A sharp spike in Greenland temperatures since 1995 showed the giant northern island 2.7 degrees (1.5 degrees Celsius) hotter than its 20th-century average, the warmest in more than 1,000 years, according to new ice core data.



Until now Greenland ice cores -- a glimpse into long-running temperatures before thermometers -- hadn’t shown much of a clear signal of global warming on the remotest north central part of the island, at least compared to the rest of the world. But the ice cores also hadn’t been updated since 1995. Newly analyzed cores, drilled in 2011, show a dramatic rise in temperature in the previous 15 years, according to a study in Wednesday’s journal Nature.

“We keep on (seeing) rising temperatures between 1990s and 2011,” said study lead author Maria Hoerhold, a glaciologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany. “We have now a clear signature of global warming.”

It takes years to analyze ice core data. Hoerhold has new cores from 2019 but hasn’t finished studying them yet. She expects the temperature rise to continue as Greenland's ice sheet and glaciers have been melting faster recently.


“This is an important finding and corroborates the suspicion that the ‘missing warming’ in the ice cores is due to the fact that the cores end before the strong warming sets in,” said climate scientist Martin Stendel of the Danish Meteorological Institute, who wasn’t part of the research.

The ice cores are used to make a chart of proxy temperatures for Greenland running from the year 1000 to 2011. It shows temperatures gently sloping cooler for the first 800 years, then wiggling up and down while sloping warmer until a sharp and sudden spike hotter from the 1990s on. One scientist compared it to a hockey stick, a description used for other long-term temperature data showing climate change.

The jump in temperature after 1995 is so much larger than pre-industrial times before the mid-19th century that there is “almost zero” chance that it is anything but human-caused climate change, Hoerhold said.

The warming spike also mirrors a sudden rise in the amount of water running off from Greenland's melting ice, the study finds.

What had been happening in Greenland is that natural weather variability, undulations because of an occasional weather system called Greenland blocking, in the past had masked human-caused climate change, Hoerhold said.

Related video: Greenland’s Glaciers Are Likely Melting Exponentially Faster than Even the Most Dire Predictions Indicate (Amaze Lab)  Duration 1:10  View on Watch

But as of about 25 years ago, the warming became too big to be hidden, she said.

Past data also showed Greenland not warming as fast as the rest of the Arctic, which is now warming four times faster than the global average. But the island appears to be catching up.

Ice core data for years showed Greenland acted a bit differently from the Arctic. That’s likely because of Greenland blocking, Hoerhold said. Other scientists said as a giant land mass Greenland was less affected by melting sea ice and other water factors compared to the rest of the Arctic, which is much more water-adjacent.

Hoerhold’s team drilled five new cores near old cores so as to match established ice core records. They use the difference between two different types of oxygen isotopes found in the ice to calculate temperature, using an already established formula that is checked against observed data.

Hoerhold and outside scientists said the new warming data is bad news because Greenland’s ice sheet is melting. In fact, the study ends with data from 2011 and the next year had a record melt across Greenland and the island’s ice loss has been on high since then, she said.

“We should be very concerned about North Greenland warming because that region has a dozen sleeping giants in the form of wide tidewater glaciers and an ice stream,” said Danish Meteorological Institute ice scientist Jason Box. And when awakened, it will ramp up melt from Greenland, he said.

And that means “rising seas that threaten homes, businesses, economies and communities,” said U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center Deputy Lead Scientist Twila Moon.

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Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press