Blogging the End of the World™
By now I’m sure you know that deforestation is a major source of carbon emissions — in fact more than all the fuel burned for transportation — which would be enough to worry about, except that when it comes to emissions from chopping down trees in the Amazon, those emissions are actually increasing as […]
By MARY PEMBERTON (AP) ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Yukon River smokehouses should be filled this summer with oil-rich strips of king salmon — long used by Alaska Natives as a high-energy food to get through the long Alaska winters. But they’re mostly empty. The kings failed to show up, and not just in the Yukon. One […]
A new El Niño has started, bringing a change in weather patterns and the increased threat of drought in many parts of the world. The phenomenon, which happens every two to seven years, occurs when the surface ocean waters of the Eastern Pacific are unusually warm. Officially known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, it […]
Catastrophic shortfalls threaten economic recovery, says world’s top energy economist By Steve Connor, Science Editor The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned. Higher oil prices […]
Commentary by Hambone Littletail Barely six weeks after dozens of Amazon natives were gunned down in cold blood by the Peruvian Army in the oil town of Bagua for protesting the cozy relationship between Big Oil and the government of President Alan Garcia, I find myself on the banks of the Mother of God River […]
By James Painter, BBC News, Khapi, Bolivia Marcos Choque is a 67-year-old Aymara Indian with holes in his trousers and battered sandals. He appears remarkably cheerful. Sitting among his fellow villagers from Khapi, perched high up in the Bolivian Andes, he seems to delight in cracking jokes. But ask him about Illimani – the 6,400m […]
By David Ljunggren OTTAWA (Reuters) – Regions of Arctic tundra around the world are heating up very rapidly, releasing more greenhouse gases than predicted and boosting the process of global warming, a leading expert said on Wednesday. Professor Greg Henry of the University of British Columbia also said higher temperatures meant larger plants were starting […]
By EVAN LEHMANN of ClimateWire British insurers are raising rates on homeowners to insulate themselves from increasing claims blamed on climate change, a justification that U.S. companies are hesitant — or unable — to embrace. The price of policies covering buildings in the United Kingdom rose 10 percent over the last year as insurers struggle […]
From Calculated Risk: An update: the graph shows the decline in real GDP (quarterly) from the previous peak since 1947. GDP is now 3.9% below the recent peak. In terms of declines in real GDP, the current recession is the worst since quarterly records have been kept (starting in 1947). Note: This includes the downward […]
By Michael Smith and Adriana Brasileiro July 31 (Bloomberg) — For four decades, Edimar Bentes and his family have survived by farming tiny clearings in the jungle near their dirt-floor shack in the state of Para in the Brazilian Amazon. On this April afternoon, Bentes, 56, squats in the driving rain and dips a glass […]
