Blogging the End of the World™
These geo-engineering “solutions” usually make my blood run cold. But the sulfate injection scheme is so badly conceived that I’m always reminded of the rather horrifying sequence in Animatrix, “The Second Renaissance Part II,” in which humanity’s plan to save the world from the robot apocalypse is to cripple the robots’ solar power by cutting […]
Malta is an important way-point for birds migrating between Europe and Africa. But the spring and autumn migrations attract illegal hunters, who pick off the birds as they fly overhead. There has been a huge rise in illegal hunting in recent years, prompting conservationist group BirdLife Malta to set up camps to deter illegal hunters. […]
During the last two decades, mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia has destroyed or severely damaged more than a million acres of forest and buried nearly 2,000 miles of streams. Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining, a video report produced by Yale Environment 360 in collaboration with MediaStorm, focuses on the environmental and […]
By John Gachiri, 14 October 2009 More Kenyans are in need of emergency food today than they were 20 years ago and the situation may get worse, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) says in a new report. The report, Global Hunger Index (GHI), that measures levels of malnutrition and hunger was released on […]
Internally displaced families on Friday started experiencing what could be the most trying time of their lives in camps as the much-anticipated rains pounded Nakuru and its environs. The heavy rains, linked to the El Niño weather phenomenon, fell in the town for the second day running. In recent months, the town has been […]
By Boris BachorzSat, 17 Oct 2009 12:07 The camel, its legs attached with branches, brays desperately, blood spurting from the cut artery; nomads in Turkana in Kenya’s extreme north have been reduced to sacrificing their animals to survive a bruising drought. “I brought this dromedary to have it killed and make a little money after […]
Authorities in central China plan to move 15 000 residents away from smelting plants in the area after nearly 1000 children tested positive for lead poisoning, state media said on Friday. Zhao Suping, mayor of Jiyuan city in Henan province, said the mass relocation would cost one billion yuan ($146-million), the official Xinhua news agency […]
The combined global land and ocean surface temperatures for September 2009 ranked as the second warmest September on record since records began in 1880. The combined global land and ocean temperature anomaly was 0.62°C (1.12°F), falling only 0.04°C (0.07°F) short of tying the record set in 2005. Similar to the combined global land and ocean […]
By Matt WalkerEditor, Earth News Noise pollution is becoming a major threat to the welfare of wildlife, according to a scientific review. Sounds produced by vehicles, oil and gas fields and urban sprawl interfere with the way animals communicate, mate and prey on one another. The sounds are becoming so ubiquitous that they may threaten […]
By James Kilner LONDON (AlertNet) – Once one of the world’s largest lakes, Lake Chad in west Africa has shrunk by 90 percent since 1963 and pushed millions of people living along its shores into a competition for survival, the U.N. said on Thursday. The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) blamed climate change and […]