Blogging the End of the World™
By RUSSELL SADLERJournal of the San Juans Correspondent NORTHWEST OF YELLOW ISLAND, SAN JUAN CHANNEL — “Lost” gill nets are never really lost. Fishing boat operators cut loose snagged nets and get their boats free and head for port. The derelict nets remain where they were snagged — often for decades — catching and killing […]
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – As many as 6.2 million Ethiopians need emergency humanitarian assistance due to severe drought, an official from the Oxfam charity said on Monday. The Ethiopian government puts the number in need at 5.3 million. Pastoralist communities in the country’s southern Borena area have been particularly hard hit by the lack of […]
Galkayo, Somalia (AFP) Oct 4, 2009 – Living in twig and cloth shelters after fleeing raging violence in Mogadishu, a severe drought has worsened the misery of thousands of Somalis settled outside the central town of Galkayo. The prolonged drought affecting millions across war-ravaged Somalia is forcing more people into Margaga camp, which was initially […]
Fumes from wood fires and from diesel engines accelerate melting, Indian scientists warn By Randeep Ramesh and Suzanne Goldenberg, The Observer, Sunday 4 October 2009 Glaciers in the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau that feed the river systems of almost half the world’s people are melting faster because of the effects of clouds of soot […]
By CHARLES J. HANLEY (AP) ON THE PORCUPINE RIVER TUNDRA, Yukon Territory — Here on the endlessly rolling and tussocky terrain of northwest Canada, where man has hunted caribou since the Stone Age, the vast antlered herds are fast growing thin. And it’s not just here. Across the tundra 1,500 kilometers (1,000 miles) to the […]
Media Relations Contact: Katherine Leitzell, NSIDC: leitzell@nsidc.org or +1 303.492.1497. This is a press release from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), which is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. At the end of the Arctic summer, more ice cover remained […]
By Wendell Roelf CAPE TOWN (Reuters) – African farmers said on Monday floods and droughts expected to worsen with climate change have already brought poor harvests, and women workers are turning to prostitution and falling victim to HIV/AIDS. Testifying at the first pan-African climate hearings, the farmers’ stories will be relayed at December’s climate talks […]
Science Leader Says Population and Global Warming Make the Job Hard By NED POTTER, Oct. 5, 2009 How serious is the world’s situation? Bad enough, says a leading Australian scientist, that the world will have to produce more food in the next 50 years than we have in the thousands of years since civilization began, […]
BUENOS AIRES (AFP) — Drought could parch close to 70 percent of the planet’s soil by 2025 unless countries implement policies to slow desertification, a senior United Nations official has warned. “If we cannot find a solution to this problem… in 2025, close to 70 percent could be affected,” Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of the […]
There is a lack of reliable data on land degradation but it is likely that soil degradation has affected some 1 900 million hectares of land worldwide (UNEP/ISRIC 1991). The largest area affected, about 550 million hectares, is in Asia and the Pacific. In China alone, between 1957 and 1990, the area of arable land […]
