Blogging the End of the World™
World’s nations must drastically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, author says By MONIQUE BEAUDIN, The Gazette, Published: Thursday, September 17, 2009 For more than two years, Canadian writer Alanna Mitchell travelled the world’s oceans, meeting scientists whose research was uncovering a crisis in the planet’s large bodies of water. Overfishing, coastal dead zones and rising water temperatures […]
This graph from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which collects and collates data on the Antarctic ozone “hole”, makes clear that although the exact size of the hole varies from year to year, it’s stubbornly resistant to going away. This is despite the fact that within months, the Montreal Protocol’s list of banned chemicals will […]
By Sylvia Poggioli The construction of mobile floodgates aims to safeguard the 1,300-year-old island city of Venice. It’s an ambitious engineering project, but some scientists say it may not be sufficient to protect Venice from rising sea levels due to climate change. Venice rose from mudflats in the middle of a lagoon which forms the […]
By CHARLES DUHIGG, Published: September 17, 2009 MORRISON, Wis. — All it took was an early thaw for the drinking water here to become unsafe. There are 41,000 dairy cows in Brown County, which includes Morrison, and they produce more than 260 million gallons of manure each year, much of which is spread on nearby […]
By Rhishja Larson, Published on September 17th, 2009 Nine black rhino from Zululand game reserves are being airlifted to a new home as part of a range expansion project for the critically endangered species. In an effort to ensure the survival of critically endangered black rhino, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife […]
By DAN JOLING, The Associated Press Up to 200 dead walruses have been spotted on the shore of Chukchi Sea on Alaska’s northwest coast. Federal wildlife researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey on their way to a walrus tagging project spotted 100 to 200 carcasses near Icy Cape about 140 miles southwest of Barrow. They […]
The islands have been generally shrinking and migrating landward since the late 1800s. A survey in the 1980s estimated that they would be in existence for about three more centuries. Before 1996, the seaward front of the islands lost about 20-30 feet of land each year, mostly replaced at the rear. From 1996 to 2004, […]
By Ben Sharples Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) — An oil spill from a leaking well off Western Australia that has polluted the Timor Sea with 1,200 metric tons of oil may worsen and is a “major ecological disaster in the making,” a conservation group says. “This is a disaster that risks blowing out further in terms […]
Millions face loss of homes as sea levels rise By Helene Franchineau, THE WASHINGTON TIMES Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Dipu Moni warned Thursday that rising oceans from climate change could swallow up to a third of her low-lying country and urged other nations to take action at an upcoming environmental summit to mitigate the damage. “We […]
By Alex Morales Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) — Diverting overseas aid from economic development to fight global warming may threaten the lives of at least 4.5 million children in the poorest nations, the anti-poverty group Oxfam said. Pledges made by the 27-nation European Union and various donors to help the developing world adapt to higher sea […]
