Blogging the End of the World™
By Emily Beament, Press AssociationMonday, 19 July 2010 One of the UK’s most familiar birds of prey, the kestrel, has drastically declined in numbers, a survey of British birds reveals today. The latest Breeding Birds Survey shows that the number of kestrels, which are often seen hovering over roads looking for small rodents, plunged by […]
By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com July 18, 2010 A new report by the United Nation Environment Program (UNEP) and the Nature Conservancy has found that mangrove forests are being lost at staggering rates worldwide: since 1980 one fifth of the world’s mangroves have been felled. Mangroves, which grow in saline coastal habitats, are disappearing four times […]
By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.comJuly 19, 2010 Kakadu National Park, one of the Australia’s “largest and best-resourced” protected areas, is experiencing a staggering decline in its small mammal population, according to a new study published in Wildlife Research. Spanning nearly 2 million hectares—larger than Fiji—the park lies in tropical northern Australia. “This decline is catastrophic,” John […]
By Louise Gray, Environment CorrespondentPublished: 12:42PM BST 18 Jul 2010 The two pictures show an “alarming” retreat in ice over more than 80 years. The first was taken in 1921 by British mountaineer George Mallory, who later died trying to conquer Everest. The Asia Society commissioned the same picture to be taken of the main […]
By Colleen Long and Harry R. Weber of The Associated PressSunday, July 18, 2010, 4:56 PM NEW ORLEANS — A federal official said Sunday that scientists are concerned about a seep and possible methane seen near BP’s busted oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. Both could be signs there are leaks in the well […]
The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for June 2010 was the warmest on record at 16.2°C (61.1°F), which is 0.68°C (1.22°F) above the 20th century average of 15.5°C (59.9°F). The previous record for June was set in 2005. June 2010 was the fourth consecutive warmest month on record (March, April, and May […]
By Dmitry Solovyov, Gleb Bryanski and Alexander Reshetnikov; Editing by Matthew Jones (Reuters) – Soaring temperatures across large swathes of Russia have destroyed nearly 10 million hectares of crops and prompted a state of emergency to be declared in 17 regions. On Friday the state-run Moscow region weather bureau said it expected the heatwave, […]
Thailand is to release a quarter of a million wasps to fight a South American insect wreaking havoc on the country’s cassava crops. The tiny parasitic wasps will be unleashed in Thailand’s northeastern province of Khon Kaen on Sunday in an attempt to control the pest outbreak. The invader, the cassava mealybug, sucks sap from […]
Boulder, Colo. (UPI) Jul 15, 2010 – Indian Ocean sea levels are rising unevenly, posing a threat to residents in some densely populated coastal areas and islands, a new study says. The study, led by researchers at the University of Colorado in Boulder and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, attributes the sea-level rise […]
By Brad Johnson15 July 2010 As experts warned, Bobby Jindal’s “obvious” response to the BP oil disaster is failing. Since the beginning of May, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) has pushed a crash effort to build artificial “barrier islands” from dredged sand to prevent BP’s toxic oil from reaching Louisiana’s fragile coastline. He and other Louisiana […]
