Typhoon Bolaven batters Korean Peninsula – Typhoon Tembin to hit South Korea tomorrow

By SAM KIM with additional reporting by Associated Press writers Hye Soo Nah, Foster Klug, and Hyung-jin Kim SEOUL, South Korea August 29, 2012 (AP) – The Korean Peninsula cleaned up Wednesday after one powerful typhoon and girded itself for another that could be particularly damaging to North Korea, which is still recovering from earlier […]

Graph of the Day: Average Size of Largest Annual Rain or Snow Storm in the U.S., 1948-2011

2 August 2012 (PennEnvironment) – The biggest rainstorms and snowstorms are getting bigger. Not only are extreme downpours more frequent, but they are also more intense. The total amount of precipitation produced by the largest storm in each year at each station increased by 10 percent over the period of analysis, on average across the […]

Forest fires rage in Russian Far East – Tomsk firefighters ill-equipped, pilots on strike over back pay

On 28 August 2012, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this natural-color satellite image of several wildfires burning in the Khabarovsk region of eastern Russia. Red outlines indicate hot spots where MODIS detected unusually warm surface temperatures associated with fires. Large fires have burned across Siberia throughout the summer. Wildfires […]

Tax cuts, wars account for nearly half of U.S. public debt by 2019

By Ezra Klein 28 August 2012 You can see it kind of looks like a layer cake. In fact, the folks at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities call it “the parfait graph.” The top layer, the orange one, that’s the Bush tax cuts. There is no single policy we have passed that has […]

Image of the Day: Satellite view of record minimum Arctic sea ice, 26 August 2012

Caption by Michon Scott28 August 2012 On 26 August 2012, the extent of Arctic water covered by sea ice fell below 4.17 million square kilometers (1.61 million square miles), the record minimum set in 2007. Arctic sea ice stood at 4.10 million square kilometers (1.58 million square miles), the National Snow and Ice Data Center […]

Typhoon Bolaven takes aim at North Korea and China

By Yoo Li-an, Arirang News28 August 2012 Typhoon Bolaven is currently steering back into the West Sea, a hundred and twenty kilometers from Seoul at a speed of 44 kilometers per hour. The Korea Meteorological Administration says the typhoon will enter the western region of North Korea starting tonight and reach China by early Wednesday. […]

Russia announces enormous finds of radioactive waste and nuclear reactors in Arctic seas

By Charles Digges28 August 2012 Enormous quantities of decommissioned Russian nuclear reactors and radioactive waste were dumped into the Kara Sea in the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia over a course of decades, according to documents given to Norwegian officials by Russian authorities and published in Norwegian media. Bellona had received in 2011 a draft […]

Typhoon Bolaven pounds South Korea, smashes ships; 9 dead – Typhoon Tembin skirts Taiwan

By HYUNG-JIN KIM, with additional reporting by Associated Press writers Hye Soo Nah, Foster Klug and Sam Kim in Seoul, and Annie Huang in Taipei, Taiwan28 August 2012 SEOUL, South Korea – A powerful typhoon pounded South Korea with strong winds and heavy rain Tuesday, killing nine and churning up rough seas that smashed two […]

Most serious drought for 6 decades in Hubei Province, China – ‘We don’t have enough water for residents, let alone for irrigation’

20 August 2012 (SINA) – In Suizhou City of Hubei Province, where maximum temperatures have been as high as 35 degree centigrade, since July, insufficient rainfall over the past 25 months is endangering the drinking water supply for more than 520,000 local residents and 160,000 livestock. In Langhe Village, worst hit in Suizhou, nearly one […]

World nuclear electric production peaked in 2006 and is already declining

By Gail the Actuary 27 August 2012 The issue of nuclear electricity is a complex one. In this post, I offer a few insights into the nuclear electric situation based on recent reports and statistical data. Nuclear Electric Production Is Already Declining According to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, the highest year of nuclear […]

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