In many cases, this was deadly. The researchers estimated that warming due to deforestation accounted for 28,330 annual deaths over that 20-year period. More than half were in south-east Asia, owing to the larger populations in areas with heat vulnerability. About a third were in tropical Africa, and the remainder in Central and South America. The study was published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Climate Change. Researchers in Brazil, Ghana and the UK compared non-accident mortality rates and temperatures in areas affected by tropical land clearance.

Previous studies have shown how cutting and burning trees causes long-term localised warming, but the new paper is the first to calculate the ensuing death toll. Prof Dominick Spracklen of the University of Leeds said the message was that “deforestation kills”. He expected many people would be shocked by the findings because the local dangers of deforestation were often lost in the global climate debate and the market-focused expansion of agricultural frontiers. As an example, he pointed to the Brazilian region of Mato Grosso, where there has been massive deforestation to open up land for vast soya bean plantations. Farmers from this area are now pushing for an end to the soy moratorium in the Amazon so they can clear more territory......read on      https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/27/deforestation-has-killed-half-a-million-people-in-past-20-years-study-finds                                                     

AND THERE'S MORE......Colombian Amazon deforestation surges as armed groups tighten grip. Country had previously turned the tide on deforestation but armed rebels have revoked the ban. Guardian Luke Taylor in Bogota Thu 11 Apr 2024 Deforestation in the Colombian Amazon is surging and could be at a historic peak as armed groups use the rainforest as a bargaining chip in peace negotiations with the government.  Preliminary data shows that deforestation in the region was 40% higher in the first three months of this year than in 2023 as armed groups tightened their control over the rainforest, said Susana Muhamad, the country’s environment minister. “We are seeing an upward trend that is quite worrying and this has two main reasons,” Muhamad told a press conference in Bogotá. “The first is the very significant coercion [of local people] by armed Colombia has been turning the tide on runaway deforestation in recent years after a 2016 peace accord with the country’s largest guerrilla group left forests unprotected. Without the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) policing the jungle, a record 219,973 hectares (544,000 acres) were lost in 2017.

Gustavo Petro’s government – the first leftwing administration in the country’s history – has rapidly reversed the trend by negotiating with the armed rebels who have filled the Farc’s power vacuum.d groups in the area, and the second is obviously the favourable conditions [for fires] that have to do with the El Niño phenomenon. Deforestation across Colombia plummeted 29% from 2021 to 2022 to reach the lowest level since 2013, and preliminary data suggests it dropped another 25%-35% in 2023, the environment ministry said.

That trend has come to an end, however. The unprecedented drop in deforestation was largely due to the order of the Estado Mayor Central (EMC), a group of dissident rebels who dominate vast swathes of Colombia’s forests in the south of the country. The EMC banned forest clearing in 2022 to get a seat at the negotiating table with Petro’s government. But as those talks became strained last year, the armed rebels revoked the ban. Rather than protecting the Amazon the EMC is now allowing land grabbers to lay waste to the forests in order to show the government who controls the region and extract more favourable negotiating terms......will it ever end!?......read on   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/11/colombian-amazon-deforestation-surges-armed-groups  

Climate Change

Photo: Brian Burger

The scientific consensus is clear: human-induced climate change is well underway, changing the very nature of our planet. The impacts on human communities and on wildlife are already being felt – around the world and right here at home.

What’s at stake

If we are unable to change course fast enough to stay below a global rise in temperature of 2 degrees, we face the prospect of dangerous climate change. The world’s top scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are warning not only of increasing extreme weather-related disasters such as droughts, coastal storm surges from sea-level rise and wildlife extinctions, but also of rises in climate-related conflict and refugees, and devastating impacts on food stocks and human security.

Here in British Columbia, coastal waters are becoming more acidic, the pine beetle has damaged our forestry industry, warming rivers threaten our salmon stocks, forest fires and droughts are becoming more severe and common, and rising seas are encroaching on our coastal communities.

The message is clear

To have a chance at a livable planet for our children and grandchildren, we need to break our addiction to fossil fuels now and leave the majority of the world’s remaining reserves in the ground.

There are currently over a dozen new fossil fuel projects proposed for the shores of the Salish Sea, with a combined carbon output greater than the annual emissions of 90 nations combined. This puts our region on the front lines of the climate challenge, and presents us with a stark choice:

Do we want to become a climate leader, paving the way towards a green economy, or a global fossil fuel hub, exporting climate change to the world?

What you can do

There is now also an overwhelming consensus that climate protection is affordable and achievable with already-available technology and modest lifestyle changes. To get there, we need to say ‘no’ to the trans mountain pipeline and other dirty fossil fuel projects, and ‘yes’ to a clean energy future of stable local jobs, connected communities, and clean air and water.

Act now to stop TMX

‘The stakes could not be higher’: world is on edge of climate abyss, UN warns. Top climate figures respond to Guardian survey of scientists who expect temperatures to soar, saying leaders must act radically. Guardian Damian Carrington 11 May 2024The world is on the verge of a climate abyss, the UN has warned, in response to a Guardian survey that found that hundreds of the world’s foremost climate experts expect global heating to soar past the international target of 1.5C. A series of leading climate figures have reacted to the findings, saying the deep despair voiced by the scientists must be a renewed wake-up call for urgent and radical action to stop burning fossil fuels and save millions of lives and livelihoods. Some said the 1.5C target was hanging by a thread, but it was not yet inevitable that it would be passed, if an extraordinary change in the pace of climate action could be achieved.

The Guardian got the views of almost 400 senior authors of reports by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Almost 80% expected a rise of at least 2.5C above preindustrial levels, a catastrophic level of heating, while only 6% thought it would stay within the 1.5C limit. Many expressed their personal anguish at the lack of climate action. “The goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C is hanging by a thread,” said the official spokesperson for António Guterres, the UN secretary general. “The battle to keep 1.5C alive will be won or lost in the 2020s – under the watch of political and industry leaders today. They need to realise we are on the verge of the abyss. The science is clear and so are the world’s scientists: the stakes for all humanity could not be higher.”Alok Sharma, the president of the Cop26 climate summit in 2021, said: “The results of the Guardian’s survey should be another wake-up call for governments to stop prevaricating and inject much more urgency into delivering on the climate commitments they have already made.” He said world leaders needed to get on and deliver on the pledge they made to transition away from fossil fuels at Cop28 in December. 

Christiana Figueres, the UN climate chief who oversaw the landmark 2015 Paris climate deal where the 1.5C goal was adopted, said: “These climate scientists are doing their job. They are telling us where we are, but now it’s up to the rest of us to decide what this moment requires of us and [to] turn the seemingly impossible into the new normal.” She said the world was on the edge of positive societal tipping points away from fossil fuels. “It doesn’t mean a utopian future – we know too much climate change is already baked into the system – but enormous positive change is coming. A world in which we pass 1.5C is not set in stone.”The 1.5C target was initially proposed by the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis). Fatumanava Pa’olelei Luteru, the chair of Aosis, said: “Our islands are quite literally sinking as the temperatures rise. The lack of ambition on climate change from bigger countries is consigning our states to a reality of devastating loss. The [Guardian] report must be a wake-up call to the world.”.....the situation is dire.....read on    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/09/world-is-on-verge-of-climate-abyss-un-warns

Collapse of critical Atlantic current is no longer low-likelihood, study finds. Scientists say ‘shocking’ discovery shows rapid cuts in carbon emissions are needed to avoid catastrophic fallout. Guardian Damian Carrington 28Aug 2025 The research found that if carbon emissions continued to rise, 70% of the model runs led to collapse, while an intermediate level of emissions resulted in collapse in 37% of the models. Even in the case of low future emissions, an Amoc shutdown happened in 25% of the models. Scientists have warned previously that Amoc collapse must be avoided “at all costs”. It would shift the tropical rainfall belt on which many millions of people rely to grow their food, plunge western Europe into extreme cold winters and summer droughts, and add 50cm to already rising sea levels. The new results are “quite shocking, because I used to say that the chance of Amoc collapsing as a result of global warming was less than 10%”, said Prof Stefan Rahmstorf, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who was part of the study team. “Now even in a low-emission scenario, sticking to the Paris agreement, it looks like it may be more like 25%. “These numbers are not very certain, but we are talking about a matter of risk assessment where even a 10% chance of an Amoc collapse would be far too high. We found that the tipping point where the shutdown becomes inevitable is probably in the next 10 to 20 years or so. That is quite a shocking finding as well and why we have to act really fast in cutting down emissions.”

Scientists spotted warning signs of a tipping point in 2021 and know that the Amoc has collapsed in the Earth’s past. “Observations in the deep [far North Atlantic] already show a downward trend over the past five to 10 years, consistent with the models’ projections,” said Prof Sybren Drijfhout, at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, who was also part of the team. “Even in some intermediate and low-emission scenarios, the Amoc slows dramatically by 2100 and completely shuts off thereafter. That shows the shutdown risk is more serious than many people realise.” The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, analysed the standard models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The scientists were particularly concerned to find that in many models the tipping point is reached in the next decade or two, after which the shutdown of the Amoc becomes inevitable owing to a self-amplifying feedback. Air temperatures are rising rapidly in the Arctic because of the climate crisis, meaning the ocean cools more slowly there. Warmer water is less dense and therefore sinks into the depths more slowly. This slowing allows more rainfall to accumulate in the salty surface waters, also making it less dense, and further slowing the sinking, forming the feedback loop. Another new study, using a different approach, also found the tipping point is probably going to be reached around the middle of this century......(ed.- an ominous outcome- a new Ice Age' in medieval Europe as before and and many other dire outcomes)....read on  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/28/collapse-critical-atlantic-current-amoc-no-longer-low-likelihood-study