Blogging the End of the World™
From Climate Progress: Drought, fires, killer heat waves, wildlife extinction and mosquito-borne illness — the things that climate change models are predicting have already arrived there, [scientists] say. That’s the subhead on a stunning L.A. Times piece, “What will global warming look like? Scientists point to Australia,” which opens starkly: Reporting from The Murray-Darling Basin, […]
By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Illegal poaching has escalated to such a degree in Zimbabwe that some rhinos there are now under round-the-clock armed protection, Discovery News has learned from conservationists who are attempting to defeat poachers equipped with automatic machine guns and ammunition belts. See footage of the protected rhinos here. “We are losing […]
From Climate Progress: While Newsweek is wandering off into pseudoscientific climate denial, Time continues to do the best science-based global warming coverage of any major national magazine. I don’t spend a lot of time on species extinction here, since so many others do such a great job on that subject. But the cover story, “The […]
Tom Moyer, one of Portland’s most successful real estate developers, will halt work Monday on his 32-floor tower now under construction in downtown Portland. Moyer’s decision to pull 350 workers off the Park Avenue West is a stunning sign that no city, no person and no block is spared from this recession. Moyer is one […]
Bolivia accounts for a tiny fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions. But it will soon be paying a disproportionately high price for a major consequence of global warming: the rapid loss of glaciers and a subsequent decline in vital water supplies. By Carolyn Kormann Earlier this year, the World Bank released yet another in a […]
“Leatherback turtles are ancient creatures with a modern problem: Plastic.” A new study has looked at “necropsy reports of more than 400 leatherback” turtles and found that about 1/3 of them had plastic in their digestive system. They’re not saying it was the immediate cause of death, but as Mike James, a marine biologist […]
Surely this has nothing to do with the raw sewage that Dubai is pumping into the Gulf. Beaches in the Gulf tourism hub of Dubai have been plagued by a bloom of algae known as the "red tide" that has killed fish and is potentially harmful to humans, a municipality official said on Tuesday. "This […]
By GLENDA ANDERSON Coho salmon migrating toward the ocean this week were killed by a sudden water-level drop in a Russian River tributary near Healdsburg, the result of efforts to protect crops from frost, officials said. The deaths of the endangered salmon add urgency to a multi-agency task force meeting, scheduled Tuesday in Sacramento, aimed […]
The Miami dolphins need your help. No, not Bill Parcels and the boys, but the real Miami dolphins. Miami’s iconic wild dolphins, especially those who live near downtown Miami, are chock full of toxins, according to a new government study. Scientists say they are so full of chemicals that they worry about their long-term survival, […]
From Calculated Risk: The DOL reports on weekly unemployment insurance claims: In the week ending April 4, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 654,000, a decrease of 20,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 674,000. The 4-week moving average was 657,250, a decrease of 750 from the previous week’s revised average […]