This is from September: Aliens: “Take us to your leader.”Me: “I would wait.”— Jesse Lifson (@DoYouEvenLif) September 12, 2020 Turned out to be pretty good advice.

Read time: 7 minsBy Erin Brock Carlson, West Virginia University and Martina Angela Caretta, Lund University

More than 2 million miles of natural gas pipelines run throughout the United States. In Appalachia, they spread like spaghetti across the regi…

Read time: 3 minsWith Donald Trump set to become the President of the United States, the international climate change political scenery has shifted.

The president-elect’s stance on “quitting” the Paris Agreement seems to have softened in recent day…

When Trump doesn’t succeed on Wednesday to get Pence to “do something” about winning the election, I believe he is going to try to declare Martial Law, thinking that will stop Biden from being sworn in. It’s going to be a nightmare. We’re alr…

Read time: 12 minsOn the evening of February 1, a fire erupted at a West Virginia facility that processes radioactive oilfield waste generated from nearby fracking operations, injuring two workers. A video of the fire captured by local news station WTR…

Promoting the conceit that setting up a “corruption committee” to harass the Trudeau government isn’t really an issue of confidence in the government is just silly. Of course it is. The Tories had initially billed the committee as one focused on “…

Read time: 4 minsThat anyone today could deny the overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence for human-caused climate disruption is shocking. You don’t even need a science background to see its worsening effects occurring worldwide, from record-high te…

And this happened here, in Saskatoon: Meanwhile in Canada:A 10-year old boy wanted to do something nice for the dogs in his neighborhood.So he built them a stick library.He now has two locations and is already expanding to more.🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/fzC4p…

Plainly, 2020 has been an awful year.And I know that I haven’t been blogging, but it just feels wrong to be writing about nutrition, medicine, or weight management in the face of our tragic new realities.I do hope this post finds you and yours healthy…

Damien Cave, in The New York Times, on how Australia is maintaining near normalcy of life in the time of COVID19
James Hamblin, in the Atlantic, on the Brazilian variant that’s currently rampaging through a city that had been thought to be immune due …

Yes, I know in the overall scheme of things, the sinking of some of the boats in Trump’s boating parade this weekend is pretty trivial. 

Daniela J. Lamas, in The New York Times, reflects as a front line physician on her vaccination.
Julia Belluz in Vox, on the new COVID variants and their implications for vaccinations

Alex Crozier, in The Guardian, on how lockdowns can’t work without …

Read time: 7 minsBy Morgan Bazilian, Colorado School of Mines; Deb Niemeier, University of Maryland; Edward R. Carr, Clark University; Kristie Ebi, University of Washington, and Walt Meier, NASA

The United States is formally back in the Paris climate …

Since 2004, Constant Health’s expert team has been at the forefront behavioural weight management, and now, by leveraging the best that technology has to offer, the goal is to share that expertise while eliminating geographic boundaries. Our headquart…

Read time: 12 minsWhen Congress lifted the export ban on U.S. crude oil in December of 2015 to allow for exports beginning in 2016, the oil industry celebrated. However, looking back at the impact of lifting the 40-year-old ban, it appears the move has…

Read time: 13 minsA groundbreaking four-part report by Environmental Health News (EHN) offers new scientific evidence that living near oil and gas development can expose people to a wide array of hazardous and carcinogenic chemicals — not just those li…

Michael Mina, in TIME, on why he thinks cheap, rapid, testing could dig us out of our holes long before vaccines start going into arms. James Hamblin, in The Atlantic, with the most important rule to follow to protect yourself from COVID thi…

Read time: 5 minsFossil fuel air pollution is responsible for roughly one in five deaths worldwide, a much higher death toll than previously thought, according to a new study published Tuesday.

Poor air quality from burning fossil fuels such as coal …

Anyone else make this mistake recently? 😳#climatechange #wildfires #apocalypse2020 #motordumb #yycbike pic.twitter.com/Gn1TljmSgu

— REWORKS (@ReWorksYYC) September 12, 2020

Apparently AP style now says you can use “less” even when “fewer” is correct and so 2020 continues to plumb new depths.

— Jonathan Gitlin (@drgitlin) September 11, 2020

What an awful week. I’m still processing the horror of what happened, and what almost happened, in Washington.  It seems pretty clear now that Trump and his grotesque family wanted the mob to invade Congress and lynch them if they would…

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, in The Guardian, discusses which vaccine you should get.James Hamblin, in The Atlantic, on what summer might look like (in the US mind you, here in Canada, given our exceedingly slow pace of vaccination, this might not apply)

…

George Davey Smith, Michael Blastland, and Marcus Munafò, in the BMJ, on how when it comes to COVID, certainty is a red flag.Amy McDermott, in PNAS, on how it’ll likely be rapid home COVID testing that brings back some sense of normalcy – it can’t com…

Read time: 7 minsIn 2019 and 2020, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) conducted three helicopter surveys over the oil fields of West Texas. Flying over flare stacks at more than three hundred oil and gas drilling sites, EDF staff used infrared camera…

Read time: 8 minsHuman rights experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council issued a statement on March 2 raising concerns about the further industrialization of Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.” This largely Black-populated stretch of the Mis…

For a delightful change of pace, here’s some of the best dog videos now on the web:

Crazy agility by Pink the border collie..

Come for the speed – stay for flying hug…pic.twitter.com/ReL9buvhyi

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) November 27, 2020

Gm tweeties, happy hump day! Enjoy your day everyone.
pic.twitter.com/QdlH6vwcNn

— ༺🦋༻ᗰᗩƳᖇᗩ༺🦋༻ (@LepapillonBlu) November 25, 2020

His favorite toy pic.twitter.com/gFO2N7Q5tp

— The Feel Good Page ❤️ (@akkitwts) November 23, 2020

ok it is time to remember when three dogs thought it was just another day and it turned out to be a great day they are so happy tbh pic.twitter.com/UlhK5MJZbu

— darth™ (@darth) November 11, 2016

These two are Branch Managers.. pic.twitter.com/m23hJhf5QL

— Land of cuteness (@landpsychology) November 27, 2020

Don’t mind him. He’s just trying to fit in.. pic.twitter.com/k2MRNq7gDz

— Land of cuteness (@landpsychology) November 27, 2020

Read time: 4 minsShell’s new net zero strategy is “grotesque” and includes an “impossible” reliance on tree-planting, campaigners have claimed.

The oil major today revealed an “accelerated” strategy to reduce oil production and decarbonise its product…

Its difficult to realize that a governmental system that seemed to be so strong and healthy is actually so weak and brittle that the election of one man and the death of one woman could destroy it.  But that’s the way I feel right now about t…

 Here’s some stuff I collected from Twitter – enjoy! My goal was to lose 10 lbs by the end of 2020. Only 24 lbs to go!— Jordan (@FoxyDocKnoxy) December 28, 2020 Okay, who did this? pic.twitter.com/Ezmgd3p441— jamie (@gnuman1979) December 28, 2020…

Read time: 3 minsBy Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams

Texas oil refineries released hundreds of thousands of pounds of pollutants including benzene, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, and sulfur dioxide into the air as they scrambled to shut down during la…

Ed Yong, in The Atlantic, predicts what the future of COVID in America will look like following a Biden or a Trump election win.Jeff Passan, in ESPN, discusses how this year’s World Series was a metaphor for 2020 America.Helen Branswell, in STAT, on h…

Angela Rasmussen, in Slate, on how we can’t rely on vaccines alone to end this pandemic (this is especially true right now in Canada where our vaccination program is barely off the ground)
Alice Lu-Culligan and Akiko Iwasaki, in the New York Times, on…

On March 5, 1963, 30-year-old singer Patsy Cline was killed in a plane crash – one of the first musical losses I can remember, though far from the last. Here is a pretty good documentary about Patsy Cline and her music:

Zain Chagla, Sumon Chakrabarti, Isaac Bogoch and Lynora Saxinger, in The National Post, on what we should be doing with vaccines on the horizon.Helen Branswell, in STAT, on how we might make best use of the vaccines once they arrive.Jennifer Yang, Kat…

Read time: 7 minsThe decade-long fracking boom in Appalachia has not led to significant job growth, and despite the region’s extraordinary levels of natural gas production, the industry’s promise of prosperity has “turned into almost nothing,” accordin…

Trudeau addressed the United Nations today and his speech was simply outstanding: Other people have posted, but ICYMI10 minutes worth watching. Headline Politics: PM Trudeau Addresses UN General Assembly – September 25, 2020 | CPAChttps://t.co/M4CO0c9q…

Here’s a map I found that illustrates the Jan 6 Trump Insurrection: The New York Times has an excellent interactive article which describes how the attack on the US Capital building went, and here’s an article from the Washington Post describing what W…

Read time: 7 minsAs the Biden administration turns to environmental concerns, one of its top priorities will be how to better protect the world’s oceans. With more than 80 percent of the world’s fish stocks at or near collapse, some marine conservation…

Andre Picard, in The Globe and Mail, on the price we’re paying for complacency with COVID.Helen Branswell, in STAT, with some reassurance on Danish COVID minks. Yes minks.
       Related StoriesSaturday Stories: The E…

Read time: 7 minsExxonMobil announced a $19.3 billion write-down on Tuesday, a big hit to a company reeling from depressed oil and gas prices and a rapidly changing global energy market.

The write-down reduces the value of the assets on Exxon’s books…

Jonathan Corum and Carl Zimmer, in The New York Times, explain how the Pfizer vaccine will work inside of your body.Melissa Davey, in The Guardian, digs past the alarmist headlines and breathless tweets and speaks with epidemiologist Gid MK to explore…