Global temperature rise could exceed 1.5°C climate threshold in the next 15 years, scientists warn

By Chelsea Harvey 9 May 2017 (The Washington Post) – Global temperatures could exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above their preindustrial levels within the next 15 years, according to a new scientific study, crossing the first threshold under the Paris climate agreement and placing the world at a potentially dangerous level of climate change. The report […]

Update on the “alien megastructures” star, 21 May 2017

By Jim Galasyn21 May 2017 (Desdemona Despair) – The most interesting star in the galaxy just got more interesting. Recall that in October 2015,  The Atlantic reported on KIC 8462852, a star that’s about 1,500 light-years away, and how it was caught exhibiting strange fluctuations in its light emissions. The Atlantic interviewed Yale Postdoc Tabetha […]

Trump is deleting climate change, one site at a time – Here are some of the more egregious examples

Under President Obama Under Trump The impacts of climate change are forcing us to change how we manage these resources. Climate change may dramatically affect water supplies in certain watersheds, impact coastal wetlands and barrier islands, cause relocation of and stress on wildlife, increase wildland fires, further spread invasive species, and more. The impacts of […]

Amid ‘alarming rise’ in obesity, UN study finds one in three European adolescents overweight

17 May 2017 (United Nations) – Citing eating habits, physical activity, and sedentary behaviours, the United Nations health agency launched a new publication today at the European Congress on Obesity in Portugal which revealed a rising number of obese adolescents in many countries across Europe. “Despite sustained efforts to tackle childhood obesity, one in three […]

U.S. Army climate report predicts dramatic changes for Ohio River basin

By Don Hopey15 May 2017 (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) – A soon-to-be-released federal report on climate change for the Ohio River basin predicts accelerating temperature increases over the next 80 years, coupled with significant and dramatic precipitation changes in the eastern and western portions of the watershed. Although the region’s climate is already changing, the data suggest […]

Moss is turning Antarctica’s icy landscape green – Moss growth has “increased by 4 or 5 times” in the past five decades

By Zamira Rahim20 May 2017 (CNN) – Antarctica is home to ice, penguins and — thanks to climate change — rapidly increasing levels of moss, scientists say. Moss banks, found across parts of the western Antarctic Peninsula, have grown dramatically over the past 50 years, according to a study published in the scientific journal Current […]

Chinese appetite for totoaba fish bladder kills off rare porpoise – No more than 30 vaquita left in the northern Gulf of California today, and they could be extinct within months

By Damian Carrington16 May 2017 (The Guardian) – The world’s rarest marine mammal is on the verge of extinction due to the continuing illegal demand in China for a valuable fish organ, an undercover investigation has revealed. There are no more than 30 vaquita – a five-foot porpoise – left in the northern Gulf of […]

Global warming has created a new generation of sex-trafficking victims

By Justine Calma2 May 2017 (Quartz) – When Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines in November 2013, it was, at the time, the strongest storm in history ever to make landfall. A “super typhoon” with wind speeds that reached 196 miles per hour, Haiyan displaced more than 4 million people and nearly wiped out the coastal […]

Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts – “This is supposed to last for eternity”

By Damian Carrington19 May 2017 (The Guardian) – It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures […]

Jurassic drop in ocean oxygen lasted a million years

12 May 2017 (University of Exeter) – Dramatic drops in oceanic oxygen, which cause mass extinctions of sea life, come to a natural end – but it takes about a million years. The depletion of oxygen in the oceans is known as “anoxia”, and scientists from the University of Exeter have been studying how periods […]

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