By James Morgan, Science reporter, BBC News Harbour seals, or common seals, are familiar faces along coastlines across the northern hemisphere. But they are now vanishing in the UK at an alarming rate, warn scientists from St Andrews University. Numbers have halved in the hardest hit area, the Orkney Islands, since 2001 – falling almost […]
SARASOTA, Florida, December 3, 2008 (ENS) – A new analysis of economic activity generated by Florida’s coral reefs finds that some 70,000 jobs and more than $5.5 billion in business in the state could disappear if climate change destroys the reefs. "A business-as-usual approach to climate change could mean a lot less business for Florida," […]
An ant species that forms huge supercolonies and infests gardens and parks is marching rapidly across Europe and will soon invade the UK, according to entomologists who are monitoring its spread. The colonies can swell to 10 or 100 times the size of those of common garden ants and scientists warn that they can cause […]
By Peter Michael SCIENTISTS say a white possum native to Queensland’s Daintree forest has become the first mammal to become extinct due to man-made global warming. The white lemuroid possum, a rare creature found only above 1000m in the mountain forests of far north Queensland, has not been seen for three years. Experts fear climate […]
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) – The Yangtze River dolphin, the Christmas Island shrew and the Venezuelan skunk frog are all victims in an alarming flood of extinctions, but how do scientists decide when such "possibly extinct" creatures no longer exist? The United Nations says the world faces the worst spate of extinctions […]
by Jessica Aldred, The Observer As the rain begins to fall on Tanzania’s Tarangire National Park, thousands of zebra, wildebeest and giraffe will begin one of the world’s greatest migrations. But many of the herds trampling across the grass at the foot of the Rift Valley highlands are falling in number – and scientists do […]
By Tom Knudson, tknudson@sacbee.com Driving home from Lake Tahoe, Leah Wills watched the column of ash-gray smoke from the Moonlight fire grow and grow – until finally she was under it. Overhead, the sky that September afternoon in 2007 turned eerie pink. Orange-red flecks of burning bark streaked like missiles through the air. And the […]
Prolonged periods of drought resulting from China’s 23rd consecutive "warm winter" will pose a serious threat to the country’s crop yields, the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) said in a report published Tuesday. Some regions could experience droughts until the spring, the report said, adding that the warm weather might even continue until summer. Warm winter […]
A persistent pollutant, tributyltin, has effects on gene activity in a wide range of animal species at concentrations of parts per billion. and its chemical relatives bind to nuclear receptors that in turn activate genes influencing the formation of fat storage cells. This and other evidence suggests a possible role for tributyl tin in the […]
NEAH BAY — Measurements of ocean acidification off the North Olympic Peninsula coast at Tatoosh Island show acidity is rising more than 10 times faster than climate models have predicted. The researchers cannot say whether the trend is widespread. The eight years of research also revealed that the corrosive effect of acidic ocean waters could […]
