Author: The Mound of Sound

Over the years I’ve watched as any number of really important reports and studies are published then broadly reported across the mainstream news outlets only to disappear down the Memory Hole in just a few days. Gone, forgotten, ignored. On their own many of these reports should have sparked some

Global warming is a symptom of the disease. Overpopulation is another symptom of the same disease. The degradation of our farmland, the loss of biodiversity, deforestation, the freshwater crisis, the collapse of populations of wildlife both terrestrial and aquatic – they’re all symptoms of this killer disease. So what’s this

They’ll feed you no end of horseshit about how fossil fuels are critical to the Canadian economy. They don’t want to tell you why they never have much, if anything, to show for it. They prefer not to dwell on why they collect minuscule royalties a fraction of what other

RCMP announce the bodies of Schmegelsky and McLeod have been found in northern Manitoba.

A Boy and His Toy In ‘Murica, the 2nd Amendment and mass shootings go hand in hand. It’s right up there with ‘mom’s apple pie.’ There are enough mass shootings in the US, roughly 1.2 per day, that a consensus is emerging on what constitutes a ‘mass shooting.’ Stanford University

It finally struck me that you can only go so far with climate blogging.  At first there was some utility to it, relating the latest science showing that it’s real, we made it, and there’s going to be Hell to pay if we neglected the warnings. It was important to

No surprise here.  A quarter of the world’s population is in “extreme water stress.” There’s not enough to go around. Experts at the World Resources Institute (WRI) warned that increasing water stress could lead to more “day zeroes” – a term that gained popularity in 2018 as Cape Town in

In Hungary there’s talk of re-branding authoritarian illiberal democracy with something more palatable, less jarring – Christian Liberty. That does sound mighty fine, eh? In his Demokrata editorial, András Bencsik says that by reframing his idea of illiberal democracy as ‘Christian liberty,’ the Prime Minister made clear that by illiberalism

A somewhat different way to view climate change is by losers (many) and winners (few).  Which species will tough it out. Which won’t. An article from BBC explores this subject. Hint – Cockroaches and bull frogs, they’ve got a solid future. Pandas and humans – not so much. In fact,

It’s a disease as old as the United States itself, probably older – white supremacy. Georgia Southern University prof, Jared Yates Sexton, writes that it’s now a full-blown epidemic. It is an epidemic aided by the vast and inescapable twisted political propaganda that is aimed at mobilizing an aggrieved based

Two questions: from where and to where? Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have seized a foreign oil tanker in the Gulf that was smuggling fuel to Arab states, Iran’s state TV reported, adding that seven sailors onboard had been detained.  “The IRGC’s naval forces have seized a foreign oil tanker in the

It’s been raining dead Americans over the past 24 hours. Two mass shootings – first in El Paso, Texas, and then in Dayton, Ohio – have left 30 dead and scores of wounded in hospitals. Talk about a fitting tribute to the efficacy of American and Russian assault rifles. They

It’s a trite cliché to say the time has long since past the critical tipping point when humanity can no longer have it both ways. Every human must, sooner or later, once and for all, choose which side of the debate they’re on and then accept the consequences of whichever

It’s come to the point where, if we don’t stop them, we’re toast. For a couple of years, OPEC and the International Energy Agency have projected big increases in fossil fuel consumption over the next 30 years. Sure, alternative clean energy will grow but, with the indifference of governments such

They’re armed. They’re trained. They’re waiting for an opportunity to return to their homelands in the West to show what they can do. From VICE News: Many far-right extremists, estimated to number between the hundreds and the low thousands, have flocked to eastern Ukraine to take up arms since civil

You might’a thunk they’d know better. Wrong. For eight states, including Connecticut, Rhode Island, Mississippi and South Carolina, the percentage increase in homes built in the flood zone exceeded the rate of increase in the rest of the state.  There are many reasons construction persists despite the danger. In some

The Land of Vlad has declared a state of emergency over wildfires sweeping Siberia. Officials said 2.7 million hectares of forest (about 10,400 square miles) were ablaze on Tuesday as soaring temperatures, lightning storms and strong winds combined, sending smoke hundreds of miles to reach some of Russia’s biggest regional