By Claire Thompson9 Jul 2013 (Grist) – Having trouble beating the heat this summer? Imagine how your infrastructure feels. Last summer, we told you about extreme heat leading to buckling roads, melting runways, and kinky railroad tracks. Now we’re also hearing about droopy power lines and grounded airplanes. NPR’s Science Friday hosted a discussion last […]
10 July 2013 (mongabay.com) – A new mapping tool based on NASA satellite data confirms that the majority of fires that drove the recent haze over Sumatra and Malaysia were concentrated in deforested peatlands and scrub, rather than natural forest areas. The interactive fire risk tool, developed by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), […]
By Lindsay Fendt 9 July 2013 (Tico Times) – The murder of 26-year-old Jairo Mora in late May exposed cracks in the country’s international environmental image, and proved that protecting nature sometimes has a terrible cost. Costa Rican park rangers switched out their muck boots for loafers and converged on San José two weeks ago […]
By Natalie Starkey 11 July 2013 (The Guardian) – Pumping water underground at geothermal power plants can lead to dangerous earthquakes even in regions not prone to tremors, according to scientists. They say that quake risk should be factored into decisions about where to site geothermal plants and other drilling rigs where water is pumped […]
By Denise Chow10 July 2013 (LiveScience) – A massive iceberg, larger than the city of Chicago, broke off Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier on Monday and is now floating freely in the Amundsen Sea, according to a team of German scientists. The newborn iceberg measures about 278 square miles (720 square kilometers), and was seen by […]
10 July 2013 (BBC) – A landslide has buried between 30 and 40 people in China’s Sichuan province following heavy rain, state media say. Rescue workers with search dogs are at the scene in the city of Djiangyan, Xinhua news agency reports. On Tuesday a bridge collapsed in the nearby city of Jiangyou, leaving at […]
By Andrew Freedman9 July 2013 (ClimateCentral) – The explosion and fires that followed a runaway oil train slamming into the town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec were so powerful that they were visible from space. At least 13 people died and about three dozen are still reported missing after the accident on July 6. The train was […]
By Oliver Laughland 10 July 2013 (The Guardian) – An alarming set of reports on the condition of the Great Barrier Reef published on Wednesday say its overall condition in 2011 declined from moderate to poor, and highlights that reef-wide coral cover has declined by 50% since 1985. The series of reports blame part of […]
By Christi Turner24 June 2013 (Barents Observer) – Scientists recently learned that the total biomass of snow crabs is ten times higher than king crabs in the Barents Sea. What’s more, the snow crabs have reached these high numbers in a far shorter period of time: the king crab was intentionally released into the Barents […]
By Phil Plait8 July 2013 (Slate) – If you’ve read my blog for any amount of time, you know I am no fan of the Wall Street Journal op-ed section. In fact, I think it’s simply awful: They will print mind-numbingly bad and outright ridiculous climate change denial articles like clockwork. The other day, though, […]
