Blogging the End of the World™
By SAFFRON HOWDEN AND JESSICA MAHARJanuary 12, 2010 Roads remain submerged in floodwater, ghostly rivers have risen from the dead, paddocks are a sea of green, and mosquitoes are breeding like it’s the tropics. Welcome to the drought, NSW style. Despite a surge of devastating floodwaters through parts of the west and central west since […]
Human expansion is wiping out species at about 1,000 times the “natural” or “background” rate and something must be done to slow the decline, according to the United Nations. The UN will launch the International Year of Biodiversity today, warning that the on-going loss of species around the globe will seriously affect the future of […]
A film released this week in Britain recounts the 16-year battle by Ecuadorians for damages against Chevron for oil pollution By Esme McAvoy It’s barely eight in the morning and already the dusty oil town of Lago Agrio, on the fringes of the Ecuadorian Amazon, is sweltering. Its name means “sour lake” in Spanish, after […]
Last year, B.C.’s forests were praised in the climate-change fight. But the pine beetle has forced the province to rethink its forest policy By Justine Hunter Victoria — From Saturday’s Globe and Mail Published on Friday, Jan. 08, 2010 7:54PM EST Last updated on Saturday, Jan. 09, 2010 4:31PM EST In a single season, an […]
Britain’s wildlife is being pushed to “the brink of a crisis” as sub-zero temperatures continue to grip the nation, according to conservationists. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is organising emergency feeding of several threatened species, including bitterns and cirl buntings. The RSPB is also asking people to feed garden birds, which […]
The world’s largest shopping mall, in Guangzhou, China, is almost entirely empty. If you thought Minnesota’s Mall of America was the world’s biggest shopping center, think again. South China Mall is a Vegas-like spectacle built in 2005 that now sits almost entirely empty. In the current economic climate, could this be a symbol of things […]
By MATT WEISER, Sacramento Bee SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Salmon didn’t make the big fall comeback in California’s Central Valley rivers that anglers and nature lovers yearned for, raising the likelihood of a third year of fishing restrictions. Some areas saw more fall-run chinook return from the ocean to the Sacramento River and its tributaries. This […]
Long-term 50-year change in sea surface temperature (SST) during 1959-2008 calculated by fitting a linear trend to 50 years of monthly SST data at each grid point. The SST fields are from the Hadley Centre data set as described by Rayner et al. (2006). The Copenhagen Diagnosis, 2009: Updating the world on the Latest Climate […]
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA, January 2010 — A long-term study showing the changes in habitat associations of polar bears in response to sea ice conditions in the southern Beaufort Sea has implications for polar bear management in Alaska. Karyn Rode, a polar bear biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, Alaska and one […]
(University of Colorado at Boulder) Contrary to conventional belief, as the climate warms and growing seasons lengthen subalpine forests are likely to soak up less carbon dioxide, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study. As a result, more of the greenhouse gas will be left to concentrate in the atmosphere. “Our […]
