Amazon deforestation in Brazil up 108 percent in June 2018

By Stefania Costa 20 July 2018 In June 2018, SAD detected 1169 square kilometers of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. In this bulletin, the fraction of deforestation between 1 and 10 hectares was 4% of the total detected (52 square kilometers). Considering only the alerts from 10 hectares, there was an increase of 108% compared […]

Fire crews continue battling dozens of fires in northeastern Ontario – “Everything is very, very dry. We haven’t had much rain at all. We have new fires that are starting every single day.”

KILLARNEY, Ontario, 22 July 2018 (The Canadian Press) – Crews are continuing to battle dozens of forest fires in northeastern Ontario, after the biggest of the blazes more than doubled in size over the course of a day. The province’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry said in a release that as of Saturday night […]

Genetic testing confirms whale harpooned in Iceland was rare blue/fin hybrid – “Now that the evidence has been confirmed, we once again call for an immediate and permanent end to this whaling to prevent further harm to these endangered species”

WASHINGTON, 20 July 2018 (IFAW) – Conservationists are calling for an immediate end to commercial whaling in Iceland after genetic testing revealed a whale harpooned in Icelandic waters earlier this month was a rare blue/fin whale hybrid.There was international outcry after it was revealed that on July 7, whalers working for Kristjan Loftsson’s Hvalur hf, […]

Global warming and the giant iceberg off Greenland’s shore – “This iceberg is the biggest we have seen”

By Carolyn Kormann 20 July 2018 (The New Yorker) – For a week, an iceberg as colossal as it is fragile held everyone in suspense. It arrived like a gargantuan beast that you hope won’t notice you, at the fishing village of Innaarsuit, Greenland, about five hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. The iceberg […]

Video: 10 billion tons of ice fall into the ocean as Greenland iceberg calves – “Global sea-level rise is both undeniable and consequential”

9 July 2018 (NYU) – A team of scientists has captured on video a four-mile iceberg breaking away from a glacier in eastern Greenland, an event that points to one of the forces behind global sea-level rise. The resulting iceberg, broken off from Greenland’s Helheim Glacier, would stretch from lower Manhattan up to Midtown in […]

Storms, landslides, and extreme heat hit Asia – More than 900,000 people evacuated in China and the Philippines

By Sandi Sidhu and Susannah Cullinane 22 July 2018 (CNN) – Extreme weather is striking parts of Asia with deadly flash-flooding in Vietnam, a tropical storm prompting evacuations and disrupting travel in China and an ongoing heat wave in Japan.In Vietnam, 21 people have died and more people are missing after Tropical Depression Son Tinh […]

The U.S. natural gas industry is leaking way more methane than previously thought. Here’s why that matters.

By Anthony J. Marchese and Dan Zimmerle 2 July 2018(The Conversation) – Natural gas is displacing coal, which could help fight climate change because burning it produces fewer carbon emissions. But producing and transporting natural gas releases methane, a greenhouse gas that also contributes to climate change. How big is the methane problem?For the past […]

In Mexico town with little water, Coca-Cola is everywhere. So is diabetes. “It doesn’t rain like it used to. Almost every day, day and night, it used to rain.”

By Oscar Lopez and Andrew Jacobs 14 July 2018 SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico (The New York Times) – Maria del Carmen Abadía lives in one of Mexico’s rainiest regions, but she has running water only once every two days. When it does trickle from her tap, the water is so heavily chlorinated, she […]

Southeast Asian forest loss much greater than expected, with negative implications for climate – 113,000 square miles of forest razed and converted to cropland between 2000 and 2014

By John Sullivan 3 July 2018 (Princeton University) – Researchers using satellite imaging have found much greater than expected deforestation since 2000 in the highlands of Southeast Asia, a critically important world ecosystem. The findings are important because they raise questions about key assumptions made in projections of global climate change as well as concerns […]

As inequality grows, so does the political influence of the rich

21 July 2018 (The Economist) – Squeezing the top one percent ought to be the most natural thing in the world for politicians seeking to please the masses. Yet, with few exceptions, today’s populist insurgents are more concerned with immigration and sovereignty than with the top rate of income tax. This disconnect may be more […]

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