Blogging the End of the World™
By Michael McCarthy environment editor Melting ice is pouring off Greenland and Antarctica into the sea far faster than was previously realised because of global warming, new scientific research reveals today. The accelerating loss from the world’s two great land-based ice sheets means a rise in sea levels is likely to happen even more […]
Coastal Louisiana has lost an average of 34 square miles of land, primarily marsh, per year for the last 50 years. From 1932 to 2000, coastal Louisiana lost 1,900 square miles of land, roughly an area the size of the state of Delaware. If nothing more is done to stop this land loss, Louisiana could […]
By Michael Perry SYDNEY (Reuters) – A huge outback dust storm swept eastern Australia and blanketed Sydney on Wednesday, disrupting transport, forcing people indoors and stripping thousands of tonnes of valuable farmland topsoil. The dust blacked out the outback town of Broken Hill on Tuesday, forcing a zinc mine to shut down, and swept […]
LONDON (Reuters) – Floods, storms, drought and other climate-related natural disasters drove 20 million people from their homes last year, nearly four times as many as were displaced by conflicts, a new U.N. report said Tuesday. The study tried to quantify for the first time the number of people forced to flee their homes because […]
A report released by the Indonesian government shows the country is the world’s third largest greenhouse gas emitter, largely as a result of the destruction of rainforests and carbon-dense peatlands. Indonesia accounts for 8 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. The ‘National Council on Climate Change’ report reveals that degradation and destruction of peatlands (45 […]
New York (AFP) Sept 21, 2009 – As world leaders gather for key climate talks here, small island nations Monday warned they were running out of time with rising seas threatening to wipe them off the map. Spread across the Earth’s oceans, the planet’s tiniest members grouped together in the Alliance of Small Islands States […]
Rome (AFP) Sept 21, 2009 – Drought, conflict and displacement are causing the worst humanitarian crisis in war-torn Somalia in 18 years, the UN food agency warned Monday. Some 3.6 million people, about half the Somali population, need emergency aid including 1.3 million people displaced by fighting in the Horn of Africa country, the Food […]
Woodland caribou is one of the species likely to be extirpated from regions subjected to Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) development. Caribou declines across Alberta have been correlated with the level of industrial development within their ranges.43 In the past ten years, the East Side Athabasca River caribou herd, whose range overlaps much of the […]
Posted by Nate Hagens at The Oil Drum …The liquid tailings, a by product of the oil sands mining process, contain naphthenic acids, unrecovered hydrocarbons and trace metals, making it toxic to aquatic organisms21 and mammals22. Operators are required to store tailings waste on site in large containment dykes because the water is too toxic […]
By Philippe Naughton, From Times Online, September 22, 2009 The BBC wildlife expert Chris Packham has questioned the millions spent trying to save the giant panda from extinction and suggested that the bamboo-eating bear should be allowed to die out “with a degree of dignity”. The zoologist, who has replaced Bill Oddie as a presenter […]
