Blogging the End of the World™
By Emily Holden 16 December 2018 WASHINGTON, D.C. (The Guardian) – Ryan Zinke’s exit as interior secretary elevates a former lobbyist to the job, meaning the top two US environmental agencies will now be run by people previously paid by industry.The deputy secretary, David Bernhardt, will take over at least temporarily when Zinke steps down […]
By Julia Fair 15 December 2018 (Staunton News Leader) – A federal court has vacated an environmental permit that would have allowed The Atlantic Coast Pipeline to cross two national forests, according to a court opinion filed Thursday with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The opinion quotes Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, saying: “We trust […]
By John Sutter and Lawrence Davidson 17 December 2018 (CNN) – Greta Thunberg, a 15-year-old student from Sweden, captured the attention of the world recently when she shamed climate change negotiators at a United Nations climate summit in Poland. “You are not mature enough to tell it like is,” she said at the COP24 summit, […]
By Juliet Eilperin, Josh Dawsey, and Darryl Fears 15 December 2018 (The Washington Post) – Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke submitted his resignation to the White House Saturday, facing intense pressure to step down because of multiple probes tied to his real estate dealings in his home state of Montana and his conduct while in […]
Dr. Jeff Masters 8 December 2018 (Weather Underground) – Preliminary research by precipitation expert Dr. Kenneth Kunkel of the North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies, announced in September 2018, found that the three highest-volume rainfall events in the U.S. in the last 70 years have occurred since 2016: Hurricane Harvey in Texas/Louisiana in 2017, Hurricane […]
11 December 2018 (NT News) – Did your air con just not cut it in Darwin last night? Well, no surprises there because the Top End capital has just sweltered through its hottest ever night on record. In a message on social media this morning the Bureau of Meteorology (Northern Territory) posted: “This will not […]
By Griff Witte and Brady Dennis 10 December 2018 KATOWICE, Poland (The Washington Post) – President Trump’s top White House adviser on energy and climate stood before the crowd of some 200 people on Monday and tried to burnish the image of coal, the fossil fuel that powered the industrial revolution — and is now […]
NEW DELHI, 6 December 2018 (Press Trust of India) – One in eight deaths in India last year was attributable to air pollution, which contributes to more disease burden than tobacco use, a study said Thursday while asserting the highest exposure to ultra-fine particulate matter, PM2.5, was in Delhi followed by Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. […]
By Eric Holthaus 11 December 2018 (Grist) – Our current rate of warming will quickly lead us back to a climate that predates the evolution of modern humans, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That kind of rapid change has no direct comparison in all of Earth’s […]
5 December 2018 (University of Leeds) – Harmless flies have evolved over millions of years to mimic the appearance of stinging insects, but new evidence suggests climate change is reducing the effectiveness of that disguise. Many species have adopted a form of the yellow and black banding commonly seen on stinging insects, which predators such […]
