By Elaine Lies; Editing by Jeremy Laurence 19 June 2015 TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan hopes to resume whale hunting in the Antarctic later this year, a top official said on Friday, despite a finding by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) that Tokyo had yet to prove the kill was scientifically justified. In April, an IWC […]
By Rusty Surette18 June 2015 COLLEGE STATION (KBTX) – Record rainfall totals in many parts of Texas the past few weeks means a record amount of freshwater pouring into the Gulf of Mexico – as high as 10 times the normal rate – and that could lead to huge problems for marine life and commercial […]
17 June 2015 (Carbon Counter) – Last year China installed more new wind and solar capacity than any country in history. This is a fact, and it has led some to talk of China being a “renewables powerhouse” and of there being a “renewables revolution”. But out of context, this fact can be much less […]
17 June 2015 (WBUR) – Drought is creating problems in river systems all around the Northwest. Nowhere is this more evident than on the Klamath River in Southern Oregon and Northern California. Scientists there say there’s not enough cool water flowing, and a massive die-off of young Chinook salmon could happen anytime now. Releasing more […]
By Rachel Nuwer17 June 2015 (BBC) – As the seaplane lifts off the water’s surface and begins to climb, paradise opens up beneath us. The deep blue ocean stretches in every direction, but it is punctuated here and there by aquamarine discs of shallow coral reef that give way to the slightest slivers of white […]
Irvine, California, 16 June 2015 (UCI) – Two new studies led by UC Irvine using data from NASA Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites show that human consumption is rapidly draining some of its largest groundwater basins, yet there is little to no accurate data about how much water remains in them. The result is […]
16 June 2015 (Reuters) – Eastern cougars that once roamed North America from Canada to South Carolina are extinct and no longer warrant federal Endangered Species Act protections, US wildlife managers have said. The proposal to remove so-called eastern cougars from the list of endangered and threatened species comes nearly 80 years after the last […]
By Sandi Doughton15 June 2015 (Seattle Times) – A team of federal biologists set out from Oregon Monday to survey what could be the largest toxic algae bloom ever recorded off the West Coast. The effects stretch from Central California to British Columbia, and possibly as far north as Alaska. Dangerous levels of the natural […]
By Adam Vaughan18 June 2015 (The Guardian) – On Thursday the Vatican published Pope Francis’s long-awaited encyclical on the environment, which warns of ‘serious consequences’ if the world does not act on climate change. [English translation: LAUDATO SI’, mi’ Signore] Ban Ki-moon reacts: The secretary-general welcomes the papal encyclical released today by His Holiness Pope […]
By Charles Iceland12 June 2015 (The Guardian) – Every inhabited continent, to varying degrees, has areas where there is extremely high water stress. These are areas where more than 80% of the local water supply is withdrawn by businesses, farmers, residents and other consumers every year. These so-called stressed areas are also the ones most […]