By George Webster, for CNN23 December 2011 When Tropical Storm Washi ripped through the southern Philippine city of Cagayan de Oro last weekend, it dumped in one day more than the city’s entire average rainfall for the month of December. According to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, a total of 181 millimeters […]
In this world of 7 billion people, the global rural-urban balance of populations has tipped irreversibly in favour of cities. But what, exactly, is a “city” in 2011? Hania Zlotnik, the director of the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs cautions against assuming too easy a definition because governments […]
December 21 (AFP) – Ecologists have warned production of frankincense, one of the three gifts the Wise Men gave to the baby Jesus in a key part of the Nativity story celebrated at Christmas, is in dramatic decline. A research team from the Netherlands and Ethiopia says a new study has shown numbers of the […]
Here are 2011’s most profoundly doom-laden stories, chosen arbitrarily by Des. Last year, this feature was The Twelve Doomiest Stories of 2010, to evoke “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, but twelve stories just aren’t enough to capture the zeitgeist of doom that permeated the year. Nuclear meltdowns at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi plant and the resulting […]
[Desdemona can’t help thinking that the blue tarps in this first image contain radioactive soil.] By Beenish Ahmed21 December 2011 Years before the monster earthquake shook Japan and unleashed a massive tsunami in March, Google had mapped the roads of northeast Japan with its Street View project, as it had done in many parts of […]
By NOAKI SCHWARTZ and GARANCE BURKE, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS8 November 2011 CADIZ, California – Off historic Route 66 in the heart of the California desert, the barren landscape of dry scrub and rock abruptly gives way to an oasis of tall green trees heavy with lemons and grape vines awaiting next month’s harvest. Some think […]
White dots indicate documented localities with forest mortality related to climatic stress from drought and high temperatures. Background map shows potential environmental limits to vegetation net primary production (Boisvenue and Running, 2006). Only the general areas documented in the tables are shown—many additional localities are mapped more precisely on the continental-scale maps. Drought and heat-driven […]
By JUSTIN GILLIS20 December 2011 In my article over the weekend about the climate risks from buried Arctic carbon, I omitted any discussion of one issue that sometimes appears in the news: methane deposits under relatively shallow seawater near the coasts of Siberia, Canada and Alaska. It was a purposeful omission because my piece focused […]
By Jim Forsyth; Editing by Corrie MacLaggan and Greg McCune20 December 2011 SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – The massive drought that has dried out Texas over the past year has killed as many as half a billion trees, according to new estimates from the Texas Forest Service. “In 2011, Texas experienced an exceptional drought, prolonged high […]
21,000 villagers are in “full revolt” against Communist authorities, for illegally selling farmland and pocketing the profits. Chinese Authorities Lose Control as Village Revolts Technorati Tags: China,Asia,conflict,corruption,agriculture
