By by Andrea Nicolau, Andi Thomas, and Leah Kucera 18 April 2019 (NASA) – Considered a hotspot for biodiversity, the Madre de Dios region of southeastern Peru is an exceptionally fertile landscape. Standing at the edge of the Amazon basin, Madre de Dios has a rich concentration of endemic species—plants and animals that are found nowhere […]
4 June 2019 (NOAA) – Atmospheric carbon dioxide continued its rapid rise in 2019, with the average for May peaking at 414.7 parts per million (ppm) at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory. The measurement is the highest seasonal peak recorded in 61 years of observations on top of Hawaii’s largest volcano and the seventh consecutive […]
5 June 2019 (AFP) – The noxious air hanging over India’s towns and cities kills more than 100,000 children under five every year, a damning study published Wednesday for World Environment Day found. India has repeatedly failed to address environmental concerns. Last year a UN report found 14 of the world’s 15 most polluted cities […]
30 May 2019 (Desdemona Despair) – Last week, the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory posted its annual update to the NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI), which measures the climate-warming influence of long-lived trace gases, including carbon dioxide and methane. To nobody’s surprise, the AGGI continued its inexorable rise in 2018 because, for another year, […]
By Jonathan Mingle 13 May 2019 (Undark) – Every week, dozens of metal flasks arrive at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, each one loaded with air from a distant corner of the world. Research chemist Ed Dlugokencky and his colleagues in the Global Monitoring Division catalog the canisters, and then use a series of […]
26 May 2019 (AFP) – As nuclear explosions go, the U.S. “Cactus” bomb test in May 1958 was relatively small — but it has left a lasting legacy for the Marshall Islands in a dome-shaped radioactive dump. The dome — described by a UN chief Antonio Guterres as “a kind of coffin” — was built […]
By Jonathan Hair 26 May 2019 (ABC News) – There are fears national parks in NSW are being damaged by a revenue-making tree-planting scheme, after revegetation works were carried about in the Capertee National Park. About three hours’ drive west of Sydney, Capertee National Park was a working cattle property until 2010, when it was […]
By Natasha Gilbert 26 May 2019 (The Guardian) — Hundreds of rivers around the world from the Thames to the Tigris are awash with dangerously high levels of antibiotics, the largest global study on the subject has found. Antibiotic pollution is one of the key routes by which bacteria are able develop resistance to the […]
By Sara Reardon 13 May 2019 (Nature) – The Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health has tracked the lives of hundreds of children in New York City since 1998. Scientists have collected samples of blood, urine and even the air in children’s homes, starting when their subjects were in the womb, to tease out the […]
By Eoin Higgins 17 May 2019 (Common Dreams) – A bill making its way through the Texas legislature would make protesting pipelines a third-degree felony, the same as attempted murder. H.B. 3557, which is under consideration in the state Senate after passing the state House earlier this month, ups penalties for interfering in energy infrastructure […]
