Massive molasses spill devastates Honolulu marine life – ‘Everything down there is dead’

By Mark Memmott12 September 2013 (NPR) – “Everything down there is dead.” That’s one stunning quote from Hawaii News Now’s latest report about the devastating damage that’s been done to the marine life off Honolulu’s Sand Island by 233,000 gallons of molasses that were spilled into Honolulu harbor on Monday. Gary Gill, deputy director of […]

Image of the Day: Smoke from the Rim fire rising over Groveland, California, 28 August 2013

By Robin Wilkey 28 August 13 (Huffington Post) – In the tidal wave of Yosemite Rim Fire photos, no image has quite captured the awe and terror of the disaster for local residents quite like this shot of smoke over downtown Groveland. Almost as shocking as the photo itself is the source of the image: […]

Climate scientist makes Bloomberg’s 10 Most Influential Thinkers list for 2013

Professor Michael Mann, Pennsylvania State University – Mann, 47, and colleagues are the climate scientists who brought the world the so-called hockey stick graph, showing a sharp rise in global temperatures in the last century. He responds to climate change deniers on his RealClimate blog. Bloomberg Markets’ Most Influential Thinkers Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change

Climate scientists fighting back against the forces of antiscience as IPCC report looms

By Jeff Goodell12 September 2013 (Rolling Stone) – On September 27th, a group of international scientists associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will gather in an old brick brewery in Stockholm and proclaim with near certainty that human activity is altering the planet in profound ways. The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report offers slam-dunk […]

Graph of the Day: Measles outbreak in unvaccinated Protestant communities in the Netherlands, 28 August 2013

By Tara Culp-Ressler 11 September 2013 (Think Progress) – At the end of last month, epidemiologists in Texas traced the source of a measles outbreak to a right-wing megachurch whose pastor has preached against vaccines. Even though about 98 percent of Texas residents are vaccinated against the highly contagious disease, the congregants who attended that […]

Climate change, not hunting by humans, drove woolly mammoths to extinction

By Pallab Ghosh, Science correspondent10 September 2013 (BBC News) – Researchers have found evidence to suggest that climate change, rather than humans, was the main factor that drove the woolly mammoth to extinction. A DNA analysis shows that the number of creatures began to decrease much earlier than previously thought as the world’s climate changed. […]

Actor Harrison Ford causes stir while investigating deforestation in Indonesia

By Rhett A. Butler10 September 2013 (mongabay.com) – Harrison Ford sparked a complaint from Indonesia’s top forest official after the actor asked a series of tough questions about ongoing rainforest destruction in the Southeast Asian nation, reports Indonesian state media. Ford is in Indonesia filming a segment for Years of Living Dangerously, a Showtime documentary […]

Image of the Day: Satellite view of record floods inundating Russia’s Far East, 8 September 2013

By Holli Riebeek10 September 2013 (NASA) – The extreme floods that have been threatening northeastern China and the Russian Far East are slowly moving north along the length of the Amur River. The bulge of flood water has now reached Komsomolsk-on-Amur, a Russian city of about 500,000 people. The flood overwhelmed a dam, and the […]

Drought: The stealth disaster – Losses from 2012 drought could be greater than losses from Hurricane Sandy

By Jon Campbell10 September 2013 (USGS) – Drought is a stealthily incremental disaster that is much more costly to the national economy than most people suspect. Even as the eastern states have seen an unusually wet summer, citizens in the midsection of the country read in May that the High Plains Aquifer could no longer […]

Iowa corn, soybeans suffer under growing drought – ‘Hot temperatures and lack of moisture continue to stress corn and soybeans as well as pastures and hay ground’

By Donnelle Eller9 September 2013 (Des Moines Register) – Another week of hot, dry weather continued to punish Iowa’s crops, with 35 percent of Iowa’s corn and 33 percent of soybeans rated good to excellent , a report looking at crop conditions through Sunday shows. Last week, 39 percent of both Iowa corn and soybeans […]

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