By Michael Halpern23 October 2015 (UCS) – We have long been suspicious of the House Science Committee’s expanded subpoena power. The evidence now demonstrates that the committee is using this new authority not to conduct effective oversight but to harass those who produce robust scientific analysis it refuses to accept. The committee is harassing individuals, […]
By Farai Mutsaka26 October 2015 HARARE, Zimbabwe (Associated Press) – Cyanide poisoning has killed 22 elephants in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority said on Monday. This brings to 62 the number of elephants poisoned by poachers in this southern Africa country in October. Rangers found the carcasses of […]
By Jon Gerberg13 October 2015 (TIME) – The biggest city in the Western hemisphere is facing its greatest water crisis in over 80 years — and climate change is only part of the problem. Millions of residents in São Paulo, Brazil face daily water shutoffs unless the city manages its water better. It is not […]
By Seth Borenstein24 October 2015 WASHINGTON (AP) – Hurricane Patricia zoomed from tropical storm to record-beater in 30 hours flat like a jet-fueled sports car. Why? The Pacific storm had just the right ingredients. Plenty of warm water provided the energy what meteorologists call explosive intensification. The air was much moister than usual, adding yet […]
By Alastair Jamieson and Richard O’Kelly 24 October 2015 CALAIS, France (NBC News) – Renowned street artist Banksy is pricking the world’s conscience by taking the remnants of a sell-out exhibition to a vast, squalid camp for refugees and migrants in northern France. His Disneyland spoof dubbed “Dismaland” — and associated merchandise — are not […]
Guest post by Richard Pauli24 October 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – Bill Gates has a new interview on the web site of The Atlantic magazine. Many will read it because it’s Bill Gates, but I suspect he positioned himself there because of public pressure to take a stand on global warming. Bill Gates now faces growing […]
[UPDATE5: In SETI: No Signal Detected from KIC 8462852, Paul Gilster quotes Seth Shostak: “The history of astronomy tells us that every time we thought we had found a phenomenon due to the activities of extraterrestrials, we were wrong. But although it’s quite likely that this star’s strange behavior is due to nature, not aliens, […]
By Christopher Sherman, with additional reporting by Peter Orsi, and E. Eduardo Castillo23 October 2015 MANZANILLO, Mexico (AP) – Hurricane Patricia headed toward southwestern Mexico Friday as a monster Category 5 storm, the strongest ever in the Western Hemisphere that forecasters said could make a “potentially catastrophic landfall” later in the day. Residents of a […]
22 October 2015 (AFP) – The death toll from a ferocious typhoon in the Philippines climbed to 54 on Thursday, as home-wrecking floods shifted downstream to coastal villages, displacing tens of thousands of residents. Inundations from torrential weekend rains in mountain regions caused by Typhoon Koppu cascaded into coastal fishing and farming villages, submerging them […]
By: Jeff Masters21 October 2015 (wunderground.com) – September 2015 had the largest departure of temperature from average of any month among all 1629 months in the record that began in January 1880, said NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) on Wednesday. (Note that since July and August are typically the warmest months globally in […]
