By Michael Mann, John Abraham, Dr. Peter Gleick, Scott Mandia, Richard C.J. Somerville20 October 2014 (EcoWatch) – Georgia Tech’s Judith Curry has authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal claiming that “there is less urgency to phase out greenhouse gas emissions now” than in the past. This could not be further from the […]
By Keith M. Parsons15 October 2014 (Huffington Post) – I grew up in the heroic age of American science and engineering. In my lifetime, the space program put men on the moon, the interstate highway system connected the continent, Salk and Sabin conquered polio, and computers went from room-sized behemoths to hand-held wonders. In my […]
By Jeremy Hance20 October 2014 (mongabay.com) – Rhino conservation suffered another tragic setback this weekend with the sudden death of Suni, a male northern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. Suni’s passing means there are only six northern white rhinos left in the world, and only one breeding male. […]
By Jonathan Watts 19 October 2014 Rio de Janeiro (The Guardian) – The deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has accelerated rapidly in the past two months, underscoring the shortcomings of the government’s environmental policies. Satellite data indicates a 190% surge in land clearance in August and September compared with the same period last year as […]
ABSTRACT: Wildfire activity in boreal forests is anticipated to increase dramatically, with far-reaching ecological and socioeconomic consequences. Paleorecords are indispensible for elucidating boreal fire regime dynamics under changing climate, because fire return intervals and successional cycles in these ecosystems occur over decadal to centennial timescales. We present charcoal records from 14 lakes in the Yukon […]
By Ryan Gabrielson, Ryann Grochowski Jones, and Eric Sagara10 October 2014 (ProPublica) – Young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts – 21 times greater – according to a ProPublica analysis of federally collected data on fatal police shootings. The 1,217 […]
By Amelia Urry13 October 2014 (Grist) – Perhaps you have heard about Ebola, otherwise known as The Most Terrifying Disease Of Our Modern Times (Sorry, MERs; panic is a fickle friend). But you might not have heard that Ebola’s origin story also features a favorite environmental arch-villain? And by “favorite,” I mean “actually the worst”: […]
By Peter Wynn Kirby13 October 2014 TOKYO (The New York Times) – The International Court of Justice’s decision last March to prohibit Japan’s annual whale hunt in Antarctic waters was greeted by many as an historic step against a reprehensible practice. Yet last month, despite the enormous diplomatic toll, Japan vowed to continue its whaling […]
By Coral Davenport13 October 2014 WASHINGTON (The New York Times) – The Pentagon on Monday released a report asserting decisively that climate change poses an immediate threat to national security, with increased risks from terrorism, infectious disease, global poverty, and food shortages. It also predicted rising demand for military disaster responses as extreme weather creates […]
By Oliver Milman 13 October 2014 (theguardian.com) – The rise in sea levels seen over the past century is unmatched by any period in the past 6,000 years, according to a lengthy analysis of historical sea level trends. The reconstruction of 35,000 years of sea level fluctuations finds that there is no evidence that levels […]
