By Jennifer Liberto10 May 2013 WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) – The U.S. flood alarm system is about to get smaller. On May 1, the U.S. Geological Survey began turning off some 150 stream gauges that monitor water levels on the nation’s rivers and streams, thanks to the federal spending cuts, also known as sequester. It’s a one-two […]
By Coral Davenport9 May 2013 (National Journal) – Kerry Emanuel registered as a Republican as soon he turned 18, in 1973. The aspiring scientist was turned off by what he saw as the Left’s blind ideology. “I had friends who denied Pol Pot was killing people in Cambodia,” he says. “I reacted very badly to […]
By Terry Devitt 6 May 2013 (UW–Madison) – For plants and animals forced to tough out harsh winter weather, the coverlet of snow that blankets the north country is a refuge, a stable beneath-the-snow habitat that gives essential respite from biting winds and subzero temperatures. But in a warming world, winter and spring snow cover […]
By Lucy Jordan 7 May 2013 BRASÍLIA, BRAZIL (The Rio Times) – The federal government said Monday it would not negotiate with indigenous groups which on Tuesday entered their sixth day of occupying the controversial Belo Monte dam construction site. In the inflammatory statement, the Secretariat General of the Presidency accused some indigenous leaders of […]
By MICHELLE FAUL7 May 2013 JOHANNESBURG (AP) – Scientists say a disease destroying entire crops of cassava has spread out of East Africa into the heart of the continent, is attacking plants as far south as Angola and now threatens to move west into Nigeria, the world’s biggest producer of the potato-like root that helps […]
TELESCOPE, Grenada (AP) – The old coastal road in this fishing village at the eastern edge of Grenada sits under a couple of feet of murky saltwater, which regularly surges past a hastily-erected breakwater of truck tires and bundles of driftwood intended to hold back the Atlantic Ocean. For Desmond Augustin and other fishermen living […]
By Joanna M. Foster 7 May 2013 (Takepart.com) – On the southern edge of Louisiana, there is almost as much water as land. You can’t drive to anyone’s house, you have to travel by boat, and sometimes there are hours of water between neighbors. It takes a special breed to make a home here, in […]
By Joe Wertz 6 May 2013 (NPR) – “Extreme” and “exceptional” drought persists throughout much of the state, especially in southwestern Oklahoma. Low reservoir levels have forced city officials in Altus to issue emergency water restrictions, and Oklahomans throughout the region are worried about the future. Associated Press reporter Sharon Cohen interviewed Kent Walker, a […]
By Dr. Jeff Masters3 May 2013 (wunderground.com) – The water content of the snowpack in the Southern Sierra Mountains of California, from San Joaquin through Kern and Owens, was 9% of average for the date on 2 May 2013 (and 7% of the average for April 1.) The snowpack is usually not this thin until […]
GLOUCESTER POINT, 5 May 2013 (Richmond Times-Dispatch) – For years, computer simulations have predicted that climate change will cause East Coast sea levels to rise at an increasingly rapid rate. In a 2010 study, Virginia Institute of Marine Science oceanographer John Boon looked at decades of tide-gauge readings for evidence of this ever-faster-rising water. Boon […]
