Why Michael Mann’s defamation suit against climate denialists is the right move – With the facts on his side, there’s no reason to hide

By Ethan Elkind   18 August 2014 (Legal Planet) – Dr. Michael Mann, one of the country’s leading climate scientists, has been harassed, threatened, and berated for his views that human actions are contributing to global climate change. But not just from anonymous commenters on websites — from leading publications like the National Review Online. After […]

Photo gallery: Building toward disaster – Aerial photographs from 1933 to 2014 show how development contributed to deadliest landslide event in U.S. history

Reporters: Ken Armstrong, Justin Mayo, Mike Baker and Jim BrunnerInteractive: Thomas WilburnGraphics: Mark NowlinEditor: Beth KaimanJuly 2014 (Seattle Times) – The decades preceding the deadly landslide near Oso reflect a shifting landscape with one human constant: Even as warnings mounted, people kept moving in. This interactive graphic tells that story, starting in 1887. Thirteen aerial […]

Police tell Detroiters to buy guns in city riven by race issues and crime

By Rose Hackman    17 August 2014 (theguardian.com) – Detroit police chief James Craig – nicknamed “Hollywood” for his years spent in the LAPD and his seeming love of being in front of the camera – has repeatedly called on “good” and “law-abiding” Detroiters to arm themselves against criminals in the city. His words have not […]

The rise of suburban poverty in America – ‘The American public has been slow to realize this transition from urban poverty to suburban poverty’

By Josh Sanburn2 August 2014 (TIME) – The suburbs aren’t the middle-class haven many imagine them to be as new numbers show 16.5 million suburban Americans are living beneath the poverty line. Colorado Springs is often included on lists of the best places to live in America thanks to its 250 days of sun a […]

Glaciologist: If we release a small fraction of Arctic carbon, ‘We’re fucked’

By Brian Merchant1 August 2014 (Vice) – This week, scientists made a disturbing discovery in the Arctic Ocean: They saw “vast methane plumes escaping from the seafloor,” as the Stockholm University put it in a release disclosing the observations. The plume of methane—a potent greenhouse gas that traps heat more powerfully than carbon dioxide, the […]

Scientists raise questions about the doomsday scenario that made one Pacific island leader spend millions on new land

By Christopher Pala21 August 2014 (The Atlantic) – Mikarite Temari, the mayor of Christmas Island, Kiribati’s largest atoll, rolled his eyes and shook his head as I read off my laptop in his office what his president, Anote Tong, had said during a visit to New York. “According to the science and the projections,” Tong, […]

Welcome to the Age of Denial – ‘Today, it is politically effective, and socially acceptable, to deny scientific fact’

By ADAM FRANK21 August 2013 ROCHESTER (The New York Times) – IN 1982, polls showed that 44 percent of Americans believed God had created human beings in their present form. Thirty years later, the fraction of the population who are creationists is 46 percent. In 1989, when “climate change” had just entered the public lexicon, […]

Russia holds Japan whale poaching ship – ‘This is the ship that in 2011 deliberately rammed and destroyed the vessel Ady Gil’

22 August 2014 (AFP) – A Japanese whaling vessel and its crew were being held in Russia on Friday after the ship entered Russian territorial waters without permission, Tokyo said. The 712-tonne Shonan Maru No. 2 was ordered into a Russian port on August 15 after sailing through the Sea of Okhotsk off Sakhalin island, […]

20 percent of Africa’s elephants killed in three years – ‘We are shredding the fabric of elephant society and exterminating populations across the continent’

By Jeremy Hance19 August 2014 (mongabay.com) – Around 100,000 elephants were killed by poachers for their ivory on the African continent in just three years, according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Between 2010 and 2012 an average of 6.8 percent of the elephant population was killed annually, […]

Greenland ice loss doubles from late 2000s – Greenland and Antarctica together are losing 500 cubic kilometers of ice each year – ‘To us, that’s an incredible number’

By Jonathan Amos20 August 2014  (BBC News) – A new assessment from Europe’s CryoSat spacecraft shows Greenland to be losing about 375 cu km of ice each year. Added to the discharges coming from Antarctica, it means Earth’s two big ice sheets are now dumping roughly 500 cu km of ice in the oceans annually. […]

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