Refugee arrivals in Europe top one million in 2015 – Highest migration flow since World War II

GREECE, 22 December 2015 (IOM) – IOM confirmed yesterday (21 December 2015) that over a million irregular migrants and refugees arrived in Europe in 2015, mostly from Syria, Africa, and South Asia. Through the weekend, IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix – Flow Monitoring System counted 999,745 irregular arrivals across the Mediterranean, including migrants journeying by both […]

Poll: Australians want government to intervene against Japan whale poachers – ‘The Prime Minister of Australia is ignoring the will of the Australian people’

21 December 2015 (Maritime Executive) – A national poll, commissioned by Sea Shepherd Australia and undertaken by Australian market research company Roy Morgan Research, has shown that 76.9 percent of Australians want the Federal Government to send a ship to oppose Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean. The poll, involving 1,000 people, was announced by […]

Common thread at 2015 AGU Conference: Global warming and ‘The Big Melt’

By Bob Henson  18 December 2015 (Weather Underground) – The weather story of this month is the record warmth swaddling much of eastern North America and Europe. We’ll have much more to say about that next week, but keeping with the warm theme for today, I’ll share a couple of melt-related tidbits that drew my […]

Video: Scientists at AGU 2015 react to Paris agreement on global warming

By Roz Pidcock18 December 2015 (CarbonBrief) – With the ink only just dry on the agreement signed in Paris to curb global carbon emissions, scientists at this year’s American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco have been reacting to the landmark deal and digesting some of the finer details. Here are a few scientists Carbon […]

The American middle class is losing ground

9 December 2015 (Pew Research Center) – After more than four decades of serving as the nation’s economic majority, the American middle class is now matched in number by those in the economic tiers above and below it. In early 2015, 120.8 million adults were in middle-income households, compared with 121.3 million in lower- and […]

Pumped beyond limits, many U.S. aquifers in decline

By Ian James and Steve Reilly10 December 2015 SUBLETTE, Kansas (USA TODAY) – Just before 3 a.m., Jay Garetson’s phone buzzed on the bedside table. He picked it up and read the text: “Low Pressure Alert.” He felt a jolt of stress and his chest tightened. He dreaded what that automated message probably meant: With […]

November 2015: Earth’s warmest November and 2nd warmest month of any kind on record

By Jeff Masters17 December 2015 (Weather Underground) – November 2015 was Earth’s warmest November on record by a huge margin, according to data released by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) on Thursday. November 2015 also had the second largest positive departure of temperature from average of any month among all 1631 months in […]

Paris climate conference: current national commitments fall short of global warming goals

    14 December 2015 (Climate Interactive) – Negotiations concluded this weekend with the adoption of the Paris Agreement. If all INDCs included in the pact are fully implemented, with no further action, global temperatures are expected to rise 3.5°C (6.3°F) above preindustrial levels. The 5-year review mechanism that was included in the final agreement […]

2015 on track to see worldwide forced displacement exceeding 60 million people for the first time

GENEVA, 18 December 2015 (UNHCR) – With almost a million people having crossed the Mediterranean as refugees and migrants so far this year, and conflicts in Syria and elsewhere continuing to generate staggering levels of human suffering, 2015 is likely to exceed all previous records for global forced displacement, the UN Refugee Agency warned in […]

India says Paris climate deal won’t affect plans to double coal output – ‘Our dependence on coal will continue. There are no other alternatives available.’

By Krishna N. Das and Tommy Wilkes; editing by Susan Fenton 14 December 2015 NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India still plans to double coal output by 2020 and rely on the resource for decades afterwards, a senior official said on Monday, days after rich and poor countries agreed in Paris to curb carbon emissions blamed […]

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