Blogging the End of the World™
15 July 2018 (UN News) – The number of civilians killed in Afghanistan hit a record high in the first half of the year, despite last month’s unprecedented ceasefire between the Afghan Government and the Taliban, the United Nations reported on Sunday.According to the latest figures released on Sunday by the UN Assistance Mission in […]
13 July 2018 (UN News) – For the first time ever, United Nations Member States have agreed an all-encompassing Global Compact to better manage international migration, address its challenges, strengthen migrant rights and contribute to sustainable development.After more than a year of discussions and consultations among Member States, local officials, civil society and migrants themselves, […]
By Chris Sellers, Lindsey Dillon, and Phil Brown 6 June 2018 (The Conversation) – The Environmental Protection Agency made news recently for excluding reporters from a “summit” meeting on chemical contamination in drinking water. Episodes like this are symptoms of a larger problem: an ongoing, broad-scale takeover of the agency by industries it regulates.We are […]
By Fintan O’Toole 26 June 2018 (The Irish Times) – To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialled is fascism – a word that should be […]
By Jessica Damiana and Ed Davies; Editing by Nick Macfie 15 July 2018 (Reuters) – Indonesian villagers armed with knives, hammers, and clubs slaughtered 292 crocodiles in revenge for the death of a man killed by a crocodile at a breeding farm, an official said. Photographs released by Antara news agency showed bloodied carcasses of […]
15 July 2018 (Desdemona Despair) – It’s well known that human population is increasing relentlessly, with no peak in sight for at least the next century. Various projections estimate that the population will be somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to twelve billion by the year 2100 (cf. New projection shows human population could reach […]
By Dr. Minqi Li 28 June 2018(Peak Oil Barrel) – This figure compares the historical world economic growth rates and the primary energy consumption growth rates from 1991 to 2017. The primary energy consumption growth rate has an intercept of -0.012 at zero economic growth rate and a slope of 0.914. That is, primary energy […]
By Bob Henson 9 July 2018 (Weather Underground) – For the third time in four years, the contiguous U.S. saw one of its warmest Junes in more than a century of recordkeeping, as reported by NOAA on Monday. June 2018 came in at third place among all Junes going back to 1895, behind the warmest […]
By Matt McGrath 8 July 2018 (BBC News) – Cut-price Chinese home insulation is being blamed for a massive rise in emissions of a gas, highly damaging to the Earth’s protective ozone layer. The Environmental Investigations Agency (EIA) found widespread use of CFC-11 in China, even though the chemical was fully banned back in 2010. […]
By Albi Deak 6 July 2018Hvalur 9 returns to whaling station with two more endangered fin whales, 9 hours ago. Hvalur 8 arrives at whaling station with two more endangered fin whales, 3 hours ago.Today marks 14 fin whales poached in #Iceland‘s illegal commercial hunt 2018.Two fin whales beached today near the river at Oyrini […]