DBON - September 15, 2020

Topics:

Russian President Vladimir Putin bestowed a $1.5 billion loan on Belarus on Monday after its leader Alexander Lukashenko flew to a  Black Sea resort to ask for additional support.

In Berlin, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is able to breathe on his own, successfully been removed from mechanical ventilation, and can briefly leave his hospital bed, his doctors said Monday.

More than two dozen phones belonging to members of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team were “accidently” wiped clean of data before the Justice Department’s inspector general could comb them for records, the DOJ said in records released Thursday.

The perfectly preserved remains of an Ice Age cave bear, could be as much as 39,500 years old, have been discovered in the Russian Arctic -- the first example of the species ever to be found with soft tissues and internal organs intact.

Biologists at New Mexico State University are trying to find out why hundreds of thousands of migratory birds have been found dead.

According to the Bloomberg Green environmental data watch page, Spokane, WA has the most air pollution on the planet in sensor range on this morning, Sept 15, 2020, due to the smoke from fires.

Remarks transcribed from the President Trump Briefing on Wildfires in McClellan Park, CA on Sept 14th, with the Gov of California Gavin Newson.

Both Governor Newsom and President Trump engaged in respectful conversation that included both men hailing their good relationship. At the meeting, when President Trump said, “It'll start getting cooler, you just watch,” Wade Crowfoot, Newsom's natural resources secretary,  responded, “I wish science agreed with you.”

Biden’s campaign proposals include a detailed, $2 trillion plan to stave off the very worst of climate change by reducing burning of fossil fuels over the next several decades.

Colorado state also is battling a few fires of their own, though relatively in less densely populated areas. The Cameron Peak Fire in the mountains west of Fort Collins has burned 102,596 acres, making it the fifth-largest wildfire in Colorado history.

University of Colorado Boulder researchers show high-severity fires leave behind massive burn areas with almost nothing alive. For areas that can't regenerate, research has found they may instead convert to grasslands. What we may have to accept, in this new and changing world, is that these ecosystems are going to look different than the ones that maybe we have grown fond of in the past.

In July, House and Senate Republicans came together to unveil a new Roosevelt Conservation Caucus. The formation of the Roosevelt Caucus signaled the beginning of a new era in conservative politics, reflecting  the growing number of Republicans interested in addressing a wide range of environmental issues, particularly young voters.

In China, they launched a tree planting program in 1978 to protect regions affected by sandstorms sweeping out of the Gobi Desert; the Three-North Shelter Forest Program aimed to grow 87 million acres of new trees—a forest the size of Germany—across the country’s north by 2050. Today in 2020, Forest coverage has officially increased since 1978, from 12% to almost 22%. NASA satellite images confirm that China is in this regard a world leader for afforestation. The China Green Foundation will be created by 2030 that links China with countries in Central and West Asia, including Iran, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, and Turkey.

The British government has condemned an Iranian court's decision to bring new charges against Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian charity wor