Blogging the End of the World™
By JOSEPHINE TOVEYNovember 26, 2009 NEXT month Viv Lemottee will have to make a choice between his animals and his washing machine. One of about 130 residents of the tiny hamlet of Euabalong, in the Lachlan Valley in the state’s west, he’s about to receive his daily ration of water by truck: just 150 litres […]
Sixty years ago, the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear weapon, nicknamed “First Lightning”, at a test facility on the steppe of northeast Kazakhstan (formerly the Kazakh SSR). The test site, named the Semipalatinsk Polygon, would go on to host 456 atomic explosions over its 40-year existence. Residents in the surrounding area became unwitting guinea […]
By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com, November 25, 2009 Rhino poaching has hit a fifteen-year high, and the rising price for black-market rhino horn is likely the reason why. For the first time in a decade rhino horn is worth more than gold: a kilo of rhino horn is worth approximately 60,000 US dollars while gold is […]
This graph shows the uptake history over the industrial era (ad 1765 to ad 2008) computed from the time-varying inventory. (The corresponding space- and time-varying change in surface disequilibrium of CO2 driving this uptake is also estimated by our inversion method.) There has been a sharp increase in ocean uptake since the 1950s in response […]
By Staff WritersGeneva (AFP) Nov 23, 2009 Greenhouse gas emissions have kept increasing, reaching a record level since the pre-industrial era, the UN climate agency warned Monday, just weeks before a crucial climate change summit. “Levels of most greenhouse gases continue to increase,” said the World Meteorological Organisation in a statement. “In 2008, global concentrations […]
NEW YORK (November 24, 2009) — The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced today a report revealing that the last remaining population of Siberian tigers has likely declined significantly due to the rising tide of poaching and habitat loss. WCS says the report will help inform Russian officials of what needs to be done to protect […]
Thermokarst lakes appear on thawing permafrost soil in northeast Siberia in August 2007. For thousands of years, layers of animal and plant waste have been sealed inside the frozen permafrost. Now climate change is thawing the permafrost and lifting this prehistoric ooze from suspended animation. Russian scientists believe that this organic matter will significantly accelerate […]
November 24, 2009 – 2:13PM (AAP) – As heatwave conditions hit last week, record temperatures were recorded across much of southeastern Australia, but there was no hotter place than Marree. The temperature in the small town, at the junction of the Oodnadatta and Birdsville tracks, on the edge of the desert 685km north of Adelaide, […]
East Antarctic sheet shedding 57bn tonnes of ice a year and contributing to sea level rises, according to NASA aerial survey By Ian Sample, science correspondentwww.guardian.co.uk, Sunday 22 November 2009 18.00 GMT The world’s largest ice sheet has started to melt along its coastal fringes, raising fears that global sea levels will rise faster than […]
Greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power stations and industries far to the south are putting shellfish in the Arctic Ocean at risk, an international team reports in the Nov. 20 edition of the journal Science. Acidification may put “some species at risk,” the researchers said, saying this could have a major impact on the entire […]
