Blogging the End of the World™
4 January 2020 (Australian Associated Press) – Canberra and the outer western Sydney suburb of Penrith have broken temperature records that have stood for 80 years. The mercury climbed to 48.9°C [120°F] in Penrith and 43.6°C in Canberra on Saturday afternoon, the hottest temperatures recorded in those areas. The Canberra mark later rose above 44°C […]
By Matt Rivers, Lily Lee, and Yong Xiong 2 January 2020 BEIJING (CNN) – Uyghur poet Aziz Isa Elkun fled China’s far western Xinjiang region nearly 30 years ago. He’s not welcome in the country. He can’t even phone his mother. She said it was better if he didn’t, because every time he did, police […]
By Jim Sergent 27 December 2019 (USA TODAY) – The end of each decade affords us a chance to look at our world from the proverbial 30,000-foot view and see how we’ve changed. With the help of Maxar, a provider of advanced, space-based technology solutions, Google and NASA, we’ve taken many more steps back – […]
31 December 2019 (DW) – The Panama Canal’s handover from the United States 20 years ago has been marked in Panama amid water supply worries. Managers say less rainfall due to climate change has depleted the inter-ocean conduit’s Gatun Lake. President Laurentino Cortizo hoisted a giant Panamanian flag outside Canal headquarters Tuesday as its operators […]
By Ben Smee 3 January 2020 (The Guardian) – Australian authorities have made a final plea for people to flee bushfire-affected areas in three states before the onset of extreme conditions so dangerous that firefighters may be unable to defend entire towns. On Friday, authorities in New South Wales urged people still in a 14,000 […]
3 January 2020 (EIA) – In its newly released International Energy Outlook 2019 (IEO2019) Reference case, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that world energy consumption will grow by nearly 50 percent between 2018 and 2050. Most of this growth comes from countries that are not in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and […]
ROME, 1 January 2020 (WFP) – Escalating hunger needs in sub-Saharan Africa dominate a World Food Programme (WFP) analysis of global hunger hotspots in the first half of 2020 with millions of people requiring life-saving food assistance in Zimbabwe, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central Sahel region in the coming months. […]
By Ben Smee and Luke Henriques-Gomes 2 January 2020 (The Guardian) – Tens of thousands of people remained stranded on Thursday evening while attempting to flee bushfire-ravaged areas of the south-east Australian coast – having earlier been urged to leave before the return of extreme and dangerous weather conditions. The mass evacuation of communities in […]
By Sarah Kaplan 31 December 2019 (The Washington Post) – At the start of the last decade, Kallan Benson was 5 years old, her favorite story was “The Secret Garden,” and Earth was in the midst of its warmest year on record. Benson had heard about climate change (her mother is an environmental scientist), but she […]
By Kyla Mandel 26 December 2019 (Huffington Post) – This year comes to a close after an onslaught of bleak and terrifying revelations about the state of our planet. Glaciers are melting, species are dying, forests are burning and climate tipping points ― thresholds which, if breached, will usher in uncontrollable warming ― are about […]
