Record drought in Bolivia drains lakes, threatens capital, and kills livestock by the thousands – “The situation in our area is critical”

4 January 2017 (The Associated Press) – Last year, the flowering quinoa plants painted Florencio Tola’s farmlands in vibrant sepia and ochre tones. But this season, all that could be seen was the straw colour of dried-out stalks that never germinated amid Bolivia’s worst drought in 30 years. Nearby a collection of scrawny cows, with […]

Tenfold jump in green technologies needed to meet global emissions targets – “We must scale them up and spread them globally at unprecedented speeds”

3 January 2017 (Duke University) – The global spread of green technologies must quicken significantly to avoid future rebounds in greenhouse gas emissions, a new Duke University study shows. “Based on our calculations, we won’t meet the climate warming goals set by the Paris Agreement unless we speed up the spread of clean technology by […]

Thousands of starfish strand on Dutch beach

29 December 2016 (Dutch News) – Thousands of dead starfish have been washed up on the beach near the seaside resort of Callantsoog but only those close to beach pavilions are being cleared up. The dead sea creatures will be cleared from a 2km stretch of strand to stop the smell disturbing winter beach goers, […]

South Pacific sea-Level rise migrants on the move

By Henry Oritimae and Sonal Shivangani15 December 2016 SUVA, Fiji (IDN) – With sea levels rising rapidly across the South Pacific and the resulting movement of people within and across countries, the region is facing a new problem of a lack of proper migration policies to address the issue, according to experts. Inhabitants of artificial […]

50 doomiest graphs of 2016

31 December 2016 (Desdemona Despair) – The data don’t lie. Unfortunately, the antiscience forces of the incoming Trump administration clearly intend to defund vital government data collection programs for climate science and Earth observation. In the extreme case, they could wage a war on scientific expertise, by stripping empiricism out of America’s regulatory systems altogether. […]

Ignoring global warming just got more expensive

By Eric Roston23 December 2016 (Bloomberg) – If President-elect Donald Trump stops taking climate change into account when making federal energy policy, he’ll do so just as a leading projection of climate-related costs bolts upward. William Nordhaus of Yale University is a central figure in the study of climate change and economics. In the early […]

Up to 20,000 dead fish and other animals wash up on Nova Scotia coast

By Azadeh Ansari and Dave Alsup30 December 2016 (CNN) – The carcasses of thousands of sea creatures have mysteriously washed up on the western coast of Nova Scotia. As many as 20,000 fish, lobsters, starfish, scallops, crabs and other animals have turned up dead at Savory Park, Canadian authorities said. And they have no idea […]

Britain flooding during winter of 2015-2016 was worst in 100 years – “At a national scale, the winter floods of 2015-16 were the most extreme on record”

5 December 2016 (Natural Environment Research Council) – A NERC centre’s scientific review of the winter floods of 2015-2016 confirms that the event was one of the most extreme and severe hydrological events of the last century. The study, carried out by scientists from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) in collaboration with the […]

Birds migrating earlier as global temperatures rise

29 December 2016 (BBC News) – Migrating birds are arriving at their breeding grounds earlier as global temperatures rise, a study has found. Birds have reached their summer breeding grounds on average about one day earlier per degree of increasing global temperatures, according to the research by Edinburgh University. The study looked at hundreds of […]

The 15 most ridiculous things that media figures said about environmental issues in 2016

By Kevin Kalhoefer and Andrew Seifter28 December 2016 (Media Matters) – Donald Trump and the presidential election dominated news coverage in 2016. But talking heads still found plenty of time to make jaw-dropping comments about climate change, energy, and the environment. This year’s list of ridiculous claims includes a dangerous conspiracy theory about Hurricane Matthew, […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial