Blogging the End of the World™
THERE was only one way to describe it: “Terrible.” That was the response from cattle grazier Mick Tomb when new NSW Premier Kristina Keneally asked him how things were on her first visit to drought-ridden NSW. His one word answer was no exaggeration. If it doesn’t rain in the next two months, the Tomb family […]
On the Tibetan Plateau, temperatures are rising and glaciers are melting faster than climate scientists would expect based on global warming alone. A recent study of ice cores from five Tibetan glaciers by NASA and Chinese scientists confirmed the likely culprit: rapid increases in black soot concentrations since the 1990s, mostly from air pollution sources […]
Irvine, Calif., December 14, 2009 — New space observations reveal that since October 2003, the aquifers for California’s primary agricultural region – the Central Valley – and its major mountain water source – the Sierra Nevada – have lost nearly enough water combined to fill Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir. The findings, based on satellite […]
By Janice Lloyd, USA TODAY YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo — A dozen tourists in parkas huddle around wolf researcher Colby Anton in the northern range of the park, an area famous for gray wolves, to catch a glimpse of the images on his digital camera. The wolf watchers have become a familiar scene since the […]
By MICHAEL LUO and MEGAN THEE-BRENANPublished: December 14, 2009 More than half of the nation’s unemployed workers have borrowed money from friends or relatives since losing their jobs. An equal number have cut back on doctor visits or medical treatments because they are out of work. Almost half have suffered from depression or anxiety. About […]
By ELISABETH ROSENTHALPublished: December 13, 2009 EL ALTO, Bolivia — When the tap across from her mud-walled home dried up in September, Celia Cruz stopped making soups and scaled back washing for her family of five. She began daily pilgrimages to better-off neighborhoods, hoping to find water there. Though she has lived here for a […]
Catabolic collapse described by the inimitable Archbishop of Doom, Dmitry Orlov. …The decade will be marked by many instances of autophagy, in business, government, and in the higher echelons of society, as players at all levels find that they are unable to control their appetites or alter their behavior in any meaningful way, even in […]
Torrential rainfall increases – e.g. development of the summer monsoon. Goswami, B.N. et al. (2006), Science 314 Ambitious climate protection targets are needed – or the cost of climate change will keep rising [pdf] Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,flood,monsoon,India
The northern coastline of Alaska midway between Point Barrow and Prudhoe Bay is eroding by up to one-third the length of a football field annually because of a “triple whammy” of declining sea ice, warming seawater and increased wave activity, according to new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder. The conditions have […]
(NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) Black soot deposited on Tibetan glaciers has contributed significantly to the retreat of the world’s largest non-polar ice masses, according to new research by scientists from NASA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Soot absorbs incoming solar radiation and can speed glacial melting when deposited on snow in sufficient quantities. Temperatures […]
