6 January 2012 (BBC) – Australian police are searching fire-ravaged towns in southern Tasmania looking for 100 unaccounted people. Tasmania’s police commissioner said he feared lives may have been lost in the wildfires which swept through parts of the island in recent days. Almost 3,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, many stranded in […]
By John Roach, NBC News 6 January 2013 Melting glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland may push up global sea levels more than 3 feet by the end of this century, according to a scientific poll of experts that brings a degree of clarity to a murky and controversial slice of climate science. Such a rise […]
By Stephanie Gardiner7 January 2013 THE heatwave Sydney has managed to avoid is due to hit on Tuesday, as firefighters prepare for the most dangerous bushfire conditions in years in the city and around the state. […] Some of the hottest areas in the state at the weekend were in the far west and the […]
By Marie Doezema1 January 2013 PARIS, France (Global Post) – From rising shorelines to devastating hurricanes, the visible effects scientists say climate change is wreaking on daily life no longer surprise many people around the world. The French have their own take on just how radically life may change. “In 20 years, the English will […]
By Ned Potter5 January 2013 (ABC News) – The narwhal, a kind of Arctic whale, has been called “the unicorn of the sea” because of the long, straight, often spiraling tusk that males of the species can grow. It is illegal to import the tusks into the United States because narwhals are listed by the […]
This is by far the best news that Desdemona has ever posted on this blog. After obsessive consideration of the plausible post-fossil fuel energy technologies, Desdemona has believed for some time that this is the only solution that scales to power civilization globally and also has an immediate salutary effect on climate. Contact: Louis Michaud, […]
In 2011, Desdemona experienced déjà vu while collecting doom-laden images, but not so this year. Doom has begun to have a certain characteristic look: the record flooding looks the same, whether it’s in the Philippines or Nigeria; spiderwebs coat the flooded landscape in Pakistan and Australia alike. Mega-fires in Siberia and the U.S. West produce […]
4 January 2013 (The Asahi Shimbun) – Cleanup crews in Fukushima Prefecture have dumped soil and leaves contaminated with radioactive fallout into rivers. Water sprayed on contaminated buildings has been allowed to drain back into the environment. And supervisors have instructed workers to ignore rules on proper collection and disposal of the radioactive waste. Decontamination […]
By Nick Ralston and Saffron Howden6 January 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – NSW is facing its most dangerous bushfire threat in 12 years as the state swelters through a record-breaking heatwave and fire officials express concern about the public’s preparedness. Across the country, fire crews were battling more than 100 bushfires on Saturday. The NSW […]
By MALCOLM FOSTER4 January 2013 TOKYO (Associated Press) – A bluefin tuna sold for a record $1.76 million at a Tokyo auction Saturday, nearly three times the previous high set last year. In the year’s first auction at Tokyo’s sprawling Tsukiji fish market, a 222-kilogram (489-pound) tuna caught off northeastern Japan sold for 155.4 million […]
