By Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff WriterMonday, August 16, 2010 (08-16) 12:22 PDT SAN FRANCISCO — The California sea otter – which fought back from near extinction after a century or so of wholesale slaughter – appears to again be hitting the skids, and nobody can figure out the reason. It is the second consecutive year […]
John Paul says, at first, he couldn’t believe his own scientific data showing toxic microscopic marine organisms in the Gulf of Mexico. He repeated the field test. A colleague did his own test. All the results came back the same: toxic. It was the first time Paul and other University of South Florida scientists had […]
By Dmitry SolovyovTue Aug 17, 2010 10:50am EDT MOSCOW (Reuters) – Several thousand Muscovites are thought to have died in July alone from this year’s unprecedented heatwave and August could add more fatalities to the grim statistics, a Russian scientist said on Tuesday. Moscow, a metropolis of over 10 million people, suffered from intense heat […]
By Staff WritersNiamey (AFP) Aug 16, 2010 Poachers in Niger killed two baby West African Giraffes, the first attack on the endangered species in the country for 20 years, an environment official said on Monday. “In less than a month, we have recorded two giraffe deaths linked to poaching,” Colonel Malam Issa, who heads Niger’s […]
By Sajjad Tarakzai (AFP)16 August 2010 NOWSHEHRA, Pakistan — Six million children are suffering from Pakistan’s devastating floods: lost, orphaned or stricken with diarrhoea, they are the most vulnerable victims of the nation’s worst-ever natural disaster. At relief camps in government schools and colleges, and in tent villages on the edge of towns and by […]
TUCSON, Ariz.— A scientific review of federal endangered species recovery plans finds that scientists are increasingly identifying global warming as an extinction threat but government agencies have yet to respond with any national strategy. The lack of recovery plan guidance from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has led to inconsistent efforts to save species […]
By Kim Chipman Aug 16, 2010 8:51 PM PT A group of scientists says as much as 79 percent of BP Plc’s leaked oil remains in the Gulf of Mexico, challenging an Obama administration assessment that the crude is largely gone or rapidly disappearing. Most of the oil that leaked from BP’s Macondo well from […]
By Staff WritersAug 16, 2010 Fortaleza, Brazil (AFP) – The United Nations Monday launched a campaign to save the planet from deserts that are threatening a third of the planet along with the livelihoods of more than a billion people. The decade-long initiative aims to “reverse and prevent desertification” and to soften the effects of […]
By Anil Ananthaswamy 17 August 2010 15:12 Even as the world’s attention was focused on the floods in Pakistan, a rare and extreme cloudburst devastated the Himalayan town of Leh in Ladakh, India – normally one of the driest regions on Earth. Heavy rainfall is common elsewhere in the Himalayas, but not in Ladakh. The […]
By Jason Box with assistance from David Decker The recent ice island detachment at Petermann glacier is part of a larger pattern of deglaciation observed at 31/34 glaciers (91%) in our survey. We just updated our survey to include year 2010. Retreat continues at the 110 km (68 mi) wide Humboldt glacier and at the […]
