By Fred Pearce9 October 2015 (The Guardian) – Drought is arguably the biggest single threat from climate change. Its impacts are global. Some say drought triggered the crisis in Syria that sent tens of thousands of refugees heading for Europe this summer. Relief failures and poor drought forecasting caused innumerable deaths in the Horn of […]
By Tim Dickinson 24 September 2014 (Rolling Stone) – The enormity of the Koch fortune is no mystery. Brothers Charles and David are each worth more than $40 billion. The electoral influence of the Koch brothers is similarly well-chronicled. The Kochs are our homegrown oligarchs; they’ve cornered the market on Republican politics and are nakedly […]
By Samantha Page27 September 2015 (ClimateProgress) – Climate change costs an incredible amount of money. Whether it is deaths during heat waves, reconstruction after a superstorm, or even lost revenues at ski slopes, rising temperatures and increased extreme weather events are costing the economy. In fact, Citibank reported earlier this year that it will cost […]
By Warren Cornwall5 October 2015 (ScienceInsider) – A scientist who helped organize a call for a federal investigation of the fossil fuel industry—for allegedly orchestrating a cover-up of climate change dangers—has himself become the target of a congressional probe. Last week, Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX), the chairman of the science panel of the House of […]
By Sue Sturgis8 October 2015 (Facing South) – South Carolina continues to assess the damage from the historic rains that fell between Friday and Monday and dumped as much as 20 inches of rain in some parts of the state. At least 16 people were killed and more than a dozen dams breached in the […]
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ10 October 2015 MIAMI (The New York Times) – Amid the alligators, oversize iguanas, pythons and giant snails that habitually seize the spotlight in Florida, there stands a more mundane but no less iconic creature that roams the state: the Florida black bear. The bears, or those who represent their interests, recently got […]
By Tim Gaynor9 October 2015 GENEVA, 9 October 2015 (UNHCR) – UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres today appealed to the European Union to provide “massive support” to Greece to meet the needs of up to 6,000 refugees arriving each day as winter looms across Europe. He stressed that Greek authorities alone were not […]
[UPDATE: Des was suspicious of this number and emailed BLM. Turns out it’s a typo. The actual number is 9,276,416 acres burned year-to-date]. 10 October 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – Just last week, the NIFC site computed the year-to-date acres burned for 2015 to be neck-and-neck with the most recent record year, 2006, at slightly above […]
By Joseph Serna10 October 2015 (Los Angeles Times) – A heat wave gripped Southern California on Friday, with one Ventura County community hitting the highest temperature reading since record-keeping began. A weather station near Camarillo Airport recorded 108 degrees, breaking the all-time high of 103 recorded on 23 September 1978. Elsewhere, triple-digit readings were recorded […]
9 October 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – 2015 is likely to be among the worst years for forest fires on record. A lot of this destruction is caused by fires that are intentionally set to clear forests for agriculture. In Sumatra and southern Borneo, rainforest and peatlands are burned to make room for palm oil plantations. […]
