Blogging the End of the World™
By Ishaan Tharoor 3 June 2019 (The Washington Post) – China’s democratic dream was snuffed out as night fell on 3 June 1989. In mid-April, thousands of idealistic university students had gathered in the heart of Beijing to mourn the passing of an admired Communist Party official who had championed liberalizing reforms. In the weeks […]
3 June 2019 (BBC News) – A student has attempted to catch the eye of Donald Trump by mowing an environmental message into grass under the flight path of Air Force One. Ollie Nancarrow, 18, cut an image of a giant penis, a polar bear and a climate change message on his family’s land close […]
By Michael J. Coren 30 May 2019 (Quartz) – The angst on farmer Twitter is palpable. Across the Midwest, torrential rains have soaked the fields, leaving the sodden soil unsuitable for planting millions of acres with corn, soybeans, and other crops, presaging a terrible harvest. Seeds are usually in the ground this time of year. […]
30 May 2019 (Desdemona Despair) – Last week, the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory posted its annual update to the NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI), which measures the climate-warming influence of long-lived trace gases, including carbon dioxide and methane. To nobody’s surprise, the AGGI continued its inexorable rise in 2018 because, for another year, […]
By Dr. Jeff Masters 28 May 2019 (Weather Underground) – Torrential rains in Oklahoma over the past two weeks have brought the Arkansas River in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma to its highest water level ever recorded. Near the Oklahoma border at Fort Smith, Arkansas (population 300,000), the river rose to two feet above its previous […]
By Julia Jacobo 28 May 2019 (ABC News) – The last male Sumatran rhinoceros in Malaysia has died, eliminating the likelihood of saving the species in the country, according to animal conservationists. Less than 100 Sumatran rhinos are left in the world, according to the Borneo Rhino Alliance (BORA). They are scattered across the wild in Indonesia […]
By Jonathan Mingle 13 May 2019 (Undark) – Every week, dozens of metal flasks arrive at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, each one loaded with air from a distant corner of the world. Research chemist Ed Dlugokencky and his colleagues in the Global Monitoring Division catalog the canisters, and then use a series of […]
26 April 2019 (The Science News Reporter) – Due to the deforestation across India, numerous elephants can be seen wandering in the villages and communities. [Sadly, this is very common, cf. Photo of baby elephant on fire after being attacked by mob wins international award – “The calf screams in confusion and fear as the […]
By Sean Boynton 12 April 2019 (Global News) – If you live in a newly-built luxury condo building, you may be enjoying some of the perks being offered: swimming pools, fitness centres, even movie theatres and bowling alleys. But a new report from BC Hydro says those amenities come at a cost — and it […]
By Bernard Lagan 25 May 2019 SYDNEY (The Times) – Climate change was supposed to have won the Labor Party the Australian election. But yesterday, after having been routed by voters, its panicked leaders backed the mining of a coalfield bigger than the UK. Fearing a wipeout in state elections next year amid a rise in […]