Japan whale poachers end Pacific slaughter with 115 whales dead

By Reissa Su30 July 2014 (International Business Times) – Japan has wrapped up its whaling campaign in the Pacific with 115 whales caught and killed in its two-and-a-half month operation. It is the second whaling hunt of Japan since the United Nations’ international court had ordered Japan to stop catching and killing whales in the […]

Climate disinformer Roger Pielke, Jr. out at Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog

By Laurence Lewis28 July 2014 (Daily Kos) – When Nate Silver’s new FiveThirtyEight blog hired climate disinformer Roger Pielke, Jr., there was a fierce backlash from climate scientists and activists. As I wrote, in an extensive post: Climate change is the most important issue humanity has ever faced. On the questions of whether it is […]

Climate models on the mark, Australian-led research finds – ‘We’re still setting records even during the cold phase because we’re still warming’

By Peter Hannam, Environment Editor21 July 2014 (Sydney Morning Herald) – A common refrain by climate sceptics that surface temperatures have not warmed over the past 17 years, implying climate models predicting otherwise are unreliable, has been refuted by new research led by James Risbey, a senior CSIRO researcher. Setting aside the fact the equal […]

California halts injection of fracking waste, warning it may be contaminating aquifers – State’s drought has forced farmers to rely on groundwater, even as aquifers have been intentionally polluted due to exemptions for oil industry

  By Abrahm Lustgarten18 July 2014 (ProPublica) – California officials have ordered an emergency shut-down of 11 oil and gas waste injection sites and a review more than 100 others in the state’s drought-wracked Central Valley out of fear that companies may have been pumping fracking fluids and other toxic waste into drinking water aquifers […]

U.S. coastal flooding on the rise, U.S. government study finds – ‘The effects of rising sea levels are only going to become more noticeable and much more severe in the coming decades’

By Ryan McNeill; editing by John Blanton28 July 2014 (Reuters) – Flooding is increasing in frequency along much of the U.S. coast, and the rate of increase is accelerating along the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts, a team of federal government scientists found in a study released Monday. The study examined how often 45 […]

Walmart planned for endangered forest lands in South Florida – ‘You wonder how things end up being endangered? This is how.’

By Jenny Staletovich13 July 2014 (Miami Herald) – One of the world’s rarest forests, a section of Miami-Dade County’s last intact tracts of endangered pine rockland, is getting a new resident: a Walmart. About 88 acres of rockland, a globally imperiled habitat containing a menagerie of plants, animals and insects found no place else, was […]

A year into Detroit’s bankruptcy, many residents still feel abandoned – ‘It’s more than a tough pill to swallow. It’s tantamount to eating an elephant in one bite.’

By Alana Semuels16 July 2014 DETROIT (Los Angeles Times) – In the year since this city filed for bankruptcy, becoming the largest municipality ever to do so, leaders have adopted a more optimistic tone about the future, pledging to fix streetlights and attract new residents and jobs.. But Eric Byrd isn’t buying it. “No change […]

Graph of the Day: Global fishing fleet capacity and productivity, 1975-2005

24 June 2014 (Global Oceans Commission) – The main drivers leading to overfishing on the high seas are vessel overcapacity and mismanagement. However, measures to improve management alone will not succeed without solving the problem of overcapacity caused by subsidies, particularly fuel subsidies. Overcapacity is often described as “too many boats trying to catch too […]

‘Lost’ tribe returns to the rainforest despite the threat of violence and disease – Some show flu-like syptoms, prompting fears of epidemic

By Jonathan Brown20 July 2014 (The Independent) – When they emerged from the forest on the outskirts of an Ashaninka indigenous community on the upper reaches of Brazil’s Envira river, it was the first time in recent history that members of an uncontacted tribe of Amazonian Indians had chosen to leave their home and visit […]

Sri Lanka still losing forests at rapid rate, on track to ‘go beyond the critical point’

By Janaki Lenin15 July 2014 (mongabay.com) – In 1983, Sri Lanka became embroiled in a 26-year-long civil war in which a rebel militant organization fought to establish an independent state called Tamil Eelam. The war took an enormous human toll; unknown numbers disappeared and millions more were displaced. Economic development stagnated in the rebel-held north […]

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