by Fred Pearce, environment correspondent for New Scientist “I AM shocked, truly shocked,” says Katey Walter, an ecologist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. “I was in Siberia a few weeks ago, and I am now just back in from the field in Alaska. The permafrost is melting fast all over the Arctic, lakes […]
Warm summers are dramatically reducing populations of daddy long legs, which in turn is having a severe impact on the bird populations which rely on them for food. New research by a team of bird experts, including Newcastle University’s Dr Mark Whittingham, spells out for the first time how climate change may affect upland bird […]
Slideshow: Inside California’s Tent Cities By JESSE McKINLEY FRESNO, Calif. — As the operations manager of an outreach center for the homeless here, Paul Stack is used to seeing people down on their luck. What he had never seen before was people living in tents and lean-tos on the railroad lot across from the center. […]
From Calculated Risk: The graph shows New Home Sales vs. recessions for the last 45 years. New home sales have fallen off a cliff. Sales of new one-family houses in February 2009 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 337,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department […]
Flint Michigan typifies the plight of inner city urban decay. Inquiring minds are wondering what if anything can be done. MLive explores that issue in an article discussing what to do with abandoned neighborhoods in Flint. Look in any direction from Bianca Bates’ north Flint home, and you’ll see graffiti-covered siding, boarded-up windows and overgrown […]
This is highly refined doomer source material. The global economic crisis isn’t about money – it’s about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution By MATT TAIBBI It’s over — we’re officially, royally fucked. no empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of […]
Poachers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) threaten the existence of the largest remaining continuous population of chimpanzees in the world. This conclusion is based on observations made during a 2007-2008 survey of towns, villages and forests in the Buta-Aketi region of the country. Hicks, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), […]
Twenty years ago today—at 12:04 AM on March 24th, 1989—the Exxon Valdez tanker struck Bligh reef in Prince William Sound causing 10.8 million gallons of crude oil to spill into the sea. The spill decimated the ecosystem and wildlife for 11,000 square miles and became one of the world’s most infamous oil spills. Twenty years […]
From Calculated Risk: Here are the Kennedy-Greenspan estimates (NSA – not seasonally adjusted) of home equity extraction for Q4 2008, provided by Jim Kennedy based on the mortgage system presented in “Estimates of Home Mortgage Originations, Repayments, and Debt On One-to-Four-Family Residences,” Alan Greenspan and James Kennedy, Federal Reserve Board FEDS working paper no. 2005-41. […]
By Peter Greste, BBC News, Nairobi Kenya has mobilised 3,500 security personnel to fight a series of bush fires raging out of control in some of the country’s most important forests. The government estimates that more than 4,600 hectares (11,370 acres) of bushland have already been destroyed. At least 10 people have been arrested on […]
