Blogging the End of the World™
From The Big Picture: The state of our global economy: foreclosures, evictions, bankruptcies, layoffs, abandoned projects, and the people and industries caught in the middle. It can be difficult to capture financial pressures in photographs, but here a few recent glimpses into some of the places and lives affected by what some are calling the […]
By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) – A nerve toxin produced by marine algae off California appears to affect creatures in the deep ocean, posing a greater threat that previously thought, U.S. researchers said on Sunday. Surface blooms of the algae known as Pseudo-nitzschia can generate dangerously high levels of domoic acid, a neurotoxin blamed […]
Mar. 13–TAMPA — With local lakes and rivers at critically low levels, the region’s water provider has virtually shut down the surface water supply to the Tampa Bay region. "The reservoir’s level is so low we are unable to provide water, consistently, to the water treatment plant and we are unable to pull water from […]
Go down to the beach today and you’ll find plenty of garbage among the sand — but that’s nothing compared with the continent-sized whirlpools of lethal waste out there beyond the horizon By WINIFRED BIRD, Special to The Japan Times Umbrella handles. Pens. Popsicle sticks. Lots and lots of toothbrushes. These are just a few […]
(Cell Press) By combining data from 48 studies of coral reefs from around the Caribbean, researchers have found that fish densities that have been stable for decades have given way to significant declines since 1995. The study appears online on March 19 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. "We were most surprised to discover […]
(Wiley-Blackwell) A new study published in the journal Soil Use and Management attempts for the first time to measure the extent and severity of land degradation across the globe and concludes that 24 percent of the land area is degrading — often in very productive areas. Land degradation – the decline in the quality […]
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The International Monetary Fund said on Thursday that the world economy, reeling from financial crisis, was on track to shrink for the first time in 60 years in 2009, by as much as 1.0 percent. In a report prepared for the Group of 20 meeting of finance chiefs last week in Britain […]
by Abby Haight, The Oregonian Researchers were shocked when they counted breeding tufted puffins along the Oregon coast last summer. The numbers showed the charismatic seabird with the comical mask had become alarmingly scarce. From 6,560 tufted puffins in 1979 to a rough count of 142 found on Oregon’s cliffsides and rock islands last year. […]
As the cold, dry climate of the western Antarctic Peninsula becomes warmer and more humid, phytoplankton – the bottom of the Antarctic food chain – is decreasing off the northern part the peninsula and increasing further south, Rutgers marine scientists have discovered. In research to be published tomorrow in the journal Science, Martin Montes-Hugo and […]
