Blogging the End of the World™
By Jennifer Chu 6 May 2019 (MIT News) – Virtually all marine life depends on the productivity of phytoplankton — microscopic organisms that work tirelessly at the ocean’s surface to absorb the carbon dioxide that gets dissolved into the upper ocean from the atmosphere. Through photosynthesis, these microbes break down carbon dioxide into oxygen, some […]
By Nita Bhalla7 May 2019 NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Aid workers were on Tuesday racing to contain a cholera outbreak in northern Mozambique after a powerful cyclone contaminated water sources and damaged health clinics. Cyclone Kenneth crashed into the province of Cabo Delgado on April 25, flattening entire villages and killing more than 40 […]
By Michael Shellenberger 6 May 2019 (Forbes) – Over the last decade, journalists have held up Germany’s renewables energy transition, the Energiewende, as an environmental model for the world. “Many poor countries, once intent on building coal-fired power plants to bring electricity to their people, are discussing whether they might leapfrog the fossil age and build […]
5 May 2019 (Wild Fish Conservancy) – A peer-reviewed paper has been published in Virology Journal showing showing that the strain of Piscine Reovirus (PRV) found in escaped farmed Atlantic salmon in Puget Sound and British Columbia originates from Iceland, where the eggs that supply the net pens are sourced. The study is co-authored by […]
6 May 2019 (IPBES) – Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history — and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the summary of which was […]
18 April 2019 (Gallup) – Gallup’s Positive and Negative Experience Indexes measure life’s intangibles — feelings and emotions — that traditional economic indicators such as GDP were never intended to capture. Each index provides a real-time snapshot of people’s daily experiences, offering leaders insights into the health of their societies that they cannot gather from […]
29 April 2019 (The Weather Channel) – Hurricane Michael ripped through the Southeast U.S. six months ago. The damage at the coast was unreal, but inland, another astounding loss: pecan, timber and row crops. While row crops can be planted again this year, it’ll be a decade before farmers can grow pecans and earn an […]
By Shirin Jaafari 29 April 2019 (PRI) – Since March, Iran has been ravaged by record rainfall and unprecedented flash flooding. At least 26 of 31 provinces have been impacted by the deadly floods. One city received 70% of its annual rainfall in a single day. Dozens of people have died. “This is the largest disaster to hit Iran in more than 15 years,” […]
By Bianca Padró Ocasio29 March 2019 (Orlando Sentinel) – Luis Angel Santos Baez was rummaging in his apartment complex’s dumpster in the early days of January 2018 when he found what seemed like a gift from God: a plastic storage cart that held several bags filled with unused notebooks and other arts-and-crafts supplies. Santos Baez, […]
By James Temple1 May 2019 (Technology Review) – Climate change is clearly making some regions wetter and others drier. But it’s been difficult for scientists to detect a clear, consistent human role in increasing the frequency and severity of global droughts given natural climate variability, regional differences, and limited data. A new report in Nature adds evidence […]
