Bird’s Eye: She’s been teaching us for millennia: as ye sow, so ye shall reap. Fracking produces earthquakes; giant dams redistribute weight, and then things shift; warmer weather produces changing weather patterns. There’s a lesson here, though I don’t suppose we’ll be quick to learn it without some more of Her exemplary grandmotherly kindness.

* Earthquakes Linked To Oil And Gas Extraction, Studies Show Toronto Star

If you prod Mother Earth, she’s likely to shake you up, a new U.S. study has found. It builds on earlier studies – some performed in Canada – that draw links between small earthquakes and a gas production technique known as “fracking,” or breaking up underground shale to release natural gas.

A study by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey says that a “remarkable” increase in the number of small quakes in the middle of the U.S. is “almost certainly manmade.” The frequency of quakes recorded in 2011 was six times anything recorded before 2000, the study found. “A naturally occurring rate of change of this magnitude is unprecedented outside volcanic settings or in the absence of a main shock, of which there were neither in this region,” the abstract says.

* Three Gorges Forces Further Displacement  China Digital Times

Twenty years ago this month, the Chinese government, amid great controversy but with the blessing of a Canadian government report, authorized construction of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River.The critics said the dam would be an environmental and economic nightmare that would flood millions of people off their land, induce landslides and earthquakes, cripple navigation and produce unaffordable electricity.

Twenty years later, the critics have been proven right on all counts. The arguments in favour of the dam were always thin gruel, without scientific depth or credibility, repeated ad nauseam in the form of propaganda, while the arguments against the dam were extensive and detailed and, as we now know, accurate.

About one year ago, Beijing officially acknowledged the negative social and environmental impact of the project. So far, over a million people have been forced to relocate as the waters of the Yangtze consumed their homes and farmland, and more may soon be forced to move due to related geological changes. The Washington Post reports: Another 100,000 people may have to move away from China’s Three Gorges Dam due to the risk of disastrous landslides and bank collapses around the reservoir of the world’s biggest hydroelectric facility, state media said Wednesday.

* Global Warming is Affecting Weather

Global warming is making hot days hotter, rainfall and flooding heavier, hurricanes stronger and droughts more severe.

This intensification of weather and climate extremes will be the most visible impact of global warming in our everyday lives. People who have the least ability to cope with these changes–the poor, very old, very young, or sick–are the most vulnerable.