Blogging the End of the World™
By Jeff Tollefson 19 April 2018 (Nature) – Grasslands in warm and dry climates could grow faster as carbon dioxide levels rise, according to data from a long-term ecological field experiment in Minnesota. The finding, which runs counter to long-established ideas about how plants will respond to the greenhouse gas, suggests that grasslands could provide […]
By John W. Fitzpatrick and Nathan R. Senner 27 April 2018 (The New York Times) – A worldwide catastrophe is underway among an extraordinary group of birds — the marathon migrants we know as shorebirds. Numbers of some species are falling so quickly that many biologists fear an imminent planet-wide wave of extinctions. These declines […]
By Ashley Killough and Deirdre Walsh 26 April 2018 (CNN) – Scott Pruitt’s controversial spending and travel decisions were the subject of a blistering congressional hearing Thursday, where the embattled administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency faced House members amid weeks of scandal. [Of course, his denial of climate and environmental science is not a […]
11 April 2018 (Climate Central) – With flooding in parts of the Mississippi Valley and a strong Pacific storm coming into the Northwest, we examined the trend in the number of days each year with heavy precipitation at 244 individual sites in the U.S. This expands our nationwide-averaged heavy precipitation analysis from earlier this year, […]
By Jason Samenow 19 April 2018 (The Washington Post) – While abnormally cold weather continues to grip the Eastern United States, a full-fledged dose of summer weather has overtaken much of Europe.An enormous heat dome, parked over Germany, has covered a large part of the continent in record or near-record warmth.High temperatures in the 70s […]
19 Apr 2018 (James Cook University) – A new study published online today in Nature shows that corals on the northern Great Barrier Reef experienced a catastrophic die-off following the extended marine heatwave of 2016.“When corals bleach from a heatwave, they can either survive and regain their colour slowly as the temperature drops, or they […]
19 April 2018 (Climate Feedback) – This article in The Australian covers a new study published in Nature that concludes global warming played a key role in the recent large-scale bleaching and mortality of corals in the Great Barrier Reef. Based on the comments of a single oceanographer (Prof. Kaempf), the article was headlined “Not […]
By Patrick Barkham 26 April 2018 (The Guardian) – “We’re doomed,” says Mayer Hillman with such a beaming smile that it takes a moment for the words to sink in. “The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There […]
By Melia Robinson 22 April 2018 (Busniess Insider) – A small island smack in the middle of the South Pacific has never been inhabited by people — and yet, its white sand beaches are home to more than 37 million pieces of junk.Every day on Henderson Island — one of the most remote places on […]
By Mike Rosenberg 24 April 2018 (The Seattle Times) – As the Seattle area continues its run as the nation’s hottest real-estate market, it has now seen home prices surge upward for a full six years — with more growth in home values during the current boom than during last decade’s bubble. [cf. How the […]
