Blogging the End of the World™
A weak housing market and decreased consumer spending raised the state’s jobless rate to its highest level in 14 years By Dean Calbreath (Contact) Union-Tribune Staff Writer The unemployment rate in California soared to 9.3 percent last month – its highest point in 15 years – as construction firms, hotels, restaurants, casinos and amusement parks […]
By TRACIE CONE and GARANCE BURKE, Associated Press Writers Consumers may pay more for spring lettuce and summer melons in grocery stores across the country now that California farmers have started abandoning their fields in response to a crippling drought. California’s sweeping Central Valley grows most of the country’s fruits and vegetables in normal years, […]
By Rex Springston NEWPORT NEWS – The light of a cold dawn revealed an endangered species on the James River — waterman Rodgers Green of Gloucester. Green catches oysters the old-fashioned way, with 16-foot tongs that resemble two rakes attached like scissors. Disease, pollution and long-ago overharvesting have sunk Virginia’s oyster population to about 1 […]
PATANCHERU, India – When researchers analyzed vials of treated wastewater taken from a plant where about 90 Indian drug factories dump their residues, they were shocked. Enough of a single, powerful antibiotic was being spewed into one stream each day to treat every person in a city of 90,000. And it wasn’t just ciprofloxacin being […]
(University of Copenhagen) Unchecked global warming would leave ocean dwellers gasping for breath. Dead zones are low-oxygen areas in the ocean where higher life forms such as fish, crabs and clams are not able to live. A team of Danish researchers have now shown that unchecked global warming would lead to a dramatic expansion of […]
Monrovia (AFP) Jan 24, 2009 – Tens of thousands of Liberians face hunger owing to an invasion of crop-destroying caterpillars, local authorities said Saturday. "More than 40 towns and villages have now been affected by the army worms," Joseph Urey, the commissioner of Zota district, told AFP. The previous figure was around 20. The Zota […]
Charles Perrow GLOBAL CATASTROPHES AND TRENDS: The Next Fifty Years. Vaclav Smil. xii + 307 pp. The MIT Press, 2008. $29.95. Prolific writer Vaclav Smil characterizes his latest book, Global Catastrophes and Trends, as “a multifaceted attempt to identify major factors that will shape the global future and to evaluate their probabilities and potential impacts.” […]
Up to one billion frogs are taken from the wild for human consumption each year, according to a new study. Researchers arrived at this conclusion by analysing UN trade data, although they acknowledge there is a lot of uncertainty in the figure. France and the US are the two biggest importers, with significant consumption in […]
Posted by Khebab at The Oil Drum: Caclulated Risk has a good series of charts showing how depressed the US economy is; no wonder oil demand is collapsing: Vehicle miles driven are off a record 3.7% Year-over-year (YoY); the decline in miles driven is worse than during the early ’70s and 1979-1980 oil crisis: […]
Death Rates Have Doubled, Researchers Find By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post Staff Writer The death rates of trees in western U.S. forests have doubled over the past two to three decades, driven in large part by warmer temperatures and water scarcity linked to climate change, a new study spearheaded by the U.S. Geological Survey has […]
