By Jan Rocha15 September 2014 (theguardian.com) – The unprecedented drought now affecting São Paulo, South America’s giant metropolis, is believed to be caused by the absence of the “flying rivers” − the vapour clouds from the Amazon that normally bring rain to the centre and south of Brazil. Some Brazilian scientists say the absence of […]
By Amel Ahmed11 September 2014 (Al Jazeera) – The rate of destruction blighting the world’s largest rain forest spiked by nearly a third last year, according to new data released by the Brazilian government. Satellite data showed that 2,315 square miles of forest had been cleared from the Brazilian Amazon in the 12 months through […]
15 September 2014By Amy Remeikis (Brisbane Times) – It’s the 35-year plan designed to stave off UNESCO’s “in danger” rating and save the reef, but conservationists are already doubting it will work. Queensland Environment Minister Andrew Powell announced the Reef 2050 plan on Monday while the government was in Yeppoon for community cabinet. The plan, […]
By Johnny Langenheim 15 September 2014 (theguardian.com) – The tuna fishermen use a crane to lift the clutch of frozen sharks onto a flat bed truck backed up on the edge of the wharf at Benoa harbour in Bali, Indonesia. The sharks’ heads and dorsal fins are missing, but the crane operator obligingly tells me […]
By Stefanie Spear11 September 2014 (EcoWatch) – Marianne Hougen-Moraga from Denmark explores in her short film Vanishing World—part of the Action4Climate video competition—how people from the remote Alaskan village of Newtok are directly affected by climate change. Their village is literally sinking and now they are starting to build America’s first climate-change refugee camp. The […]
By Joseph Serna12 September 2014 (Los Angeles Times) – The first eight months of 2014 were the warmest on average in California’s history since record-keeping began in 1895, federal scientists announced this week. The average temperature was 62.6 degrees in California over the time period, coming in at 1.1 degrees hotter than the previous high […]
By Taylor Hill12 September 2014 (takepart.com) – Hawaiian green sea turtles, monk seals, and black-footed albatrosses are all closer to getting a cleaner, plastic-free home as the federal government takes a step toward declaring a remote Pacific atoll a Superfund site. The designation, which the United States Environmental Protection Agency gives for areas severely contaminated […]
By Phil Plait9 September 2014 (Slate) – Global warming is real. Climate change is occurring faster than any time in recorded history. Humans dumping carbon dioxide into the air is to blame. In the scientific community, those statements are not controversial at all. A solid 97 percent of climate scientists doing active research into the […]
Translated by Fabrício Ferreira8 September 2014 (Agência Brasil) – Activists from the Friends of the Manatee Association (Ampa) have placed a 12-meter-tall inflatable dolphin dummy outside the National Congress. The act was staged as part of a campaign entitled Red Alert, which aims to urge the Ministry of Environment to take action and bring into […]
3 September 2014 (CDC) – This year the United States is experiencing a record number of measles cases. From January 1 to August 29, there have been 592 confirmed measles cases reported to CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). This is the highest number of cases since measles elimination was documented in […]
