By Adam Frank26 July 2016 (NPR) – This is a year of politics. That means everyone has opinions about where the world should be headed and how we should get there. No matter how weird this political season has been, however, there remains a key difference between opinions and facts. That difference comes into the […]
By Charles Iceland, Betsy Otto, and Richard Waite25 July 2016 (WRI) – A changing climate means less rain and lower water supplies in regions where many people live and much of the planet’s food is produced: the mid-latitudes of the Northern and Southern hemispheres, including the U.S. Southwest, southern Europe and parts of the Middle […]
29 July 2016 (LSE) – Increasingly hot summers can have devastating effects on worker productivity. As temperatures increase, workers feel decreased energy, loss of concentration, muscle cramps, heat rash, and in extreme cases heat exhaustion or heatstroke. Cities are especially prone to such productivity loses. First, cities tend to be warmer than surrounding areas. This […]
[Des has been skeptical of claims that China’s coal consumption has declined and/or peaked, but Des may be convinced now, largely due to the presence of Prof. Nicholas Stern on this paper.] By Shreya Dasgupta27 July 2016 (mongabay.com) – China is the largest consumer of coal in the world. It is also the world’s biggest […]
8 July 2016 (IUCN) – New IUCN Red List assessments reveal that growing human pressures on whale sharks, winghead sharks and Bornean orangutans are putting these species at an increasing risk of extinction. Whale sharks and winghead sharks are now listed as Endangered and Bornean orangutans as Critically Endangered – only one step from going […]
27 July 2016 (NASA) – On 24 July 2016, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a natural-color image (top) of a phytoplankton bloom in Hood Canal—a fjord in Washington’s Puget Sound. The second image shows a more detailed view of the bloom on July 27 as observed by the Operational […]
18 July 2016 (UN) – An average of 29 adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19 are infected with HIV every hour, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, which is calling for a redoubling of prevention and treatment efforts. After all of the saved and improved lives thanks to prevention, treatment and care; […]
By Elizabeth Mizon26 July 2016 (The Canary) – Amnesty International is reporting that it has “gathered credible evidence” that thousands of detainees, accused of being connected to the recent failed coup attempt in Turkey, are being tortured. Yet, politicians in the West have responded with a deafening silence. Why is this? Is the situation in […]
By Vladimir Hernandez28 July 2016 (BBC) – It’s one thing to talk to people you’ve never met before who are suffering from hunger, and it’s a completely different thing when they are from your own family, as the BBC’s Vladimir Hernandez discovered when he returned to his native Venezuela to report on its failure to […]
Dr. Barnaby Smith27 July 2016 (Centre for Ecology & Hydrology) – Current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations already commit the planet to air temperatures over many land regions being eventually warmed by greater than 1.5°C, according to new research published today (27 July 2016) in the journal Scientific Reports. The results of the new […]
