Subsidies are not cash handouts. They're a mix of tax breaks, tax credits, and regulations that forego government revenue, transfer liability, or provide services at below-market rates. Another significant subsidy takes the form of uncompensated government costs for fixing roads damaged by heavy fracking trucks. Governments justify these as supporting economic growth and job creation.

The analysis looked at the impact of $4 billion a year in production subsidies given to oil companies. Study authors argue this money encourages companies to drill oil fields that would otherwise be unprofitable. That would likely produce 17 billion barrels and, once burned, add 7 billion tonnes of additional climate-heating carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere by the year 2050.

The tropical storm, which passed the Brittany coast on its way north, brought with it particles of sand from the Sahara [!] desert and the smell of the huge forest fires that have ravished parts of Portugal [!] and Spain [!].

#ophelia yellow and orange clouds Bretagne pic.twitter.com/sxBzkMu6FE

— Charu (@Charurumi) October 16, 2017

archived: Ophelia is expected to transition...

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Here, we used a standardized protocol to measure total insect biomass using Malaise traps, deployed over 27 years in 63 nature protection areas in Germany (96 unique location-year combinations) to infer on the status and trend of local entomofauna. Our analysis estimates a seasonal decline of 76%, and mid-summer decline of 82% in flying insect biomass over the 27 years of study. We show that this decline is apparent regardless [?] of habitat type, while changes in weather, land use, and habitat characteristics cannot explain this overall decline. This yet unrecognized loss of insect biomass must be taken into account in evaluating declines in abundance of species depending on insects as a food source, and ecosystem functioning in the European landscape.