Blogging the End of the World™
By Emily Williams11 May 2016 (CU Denver) – A researcher at the University of Colorado Denver has found that Neanderthals in Europe showed signs of nutritional stress during periods of extreme cold, suggesting climate change may have contributed to their demise around 40,000 years ago. Jamie Hodgkins, a zooarchaeologist and assistant professor in the Department […]
26 May 2016 (UN) – At a meeting today in the United Nations Security Council on the situation in the Sahel region of sub-Saharan Africa, senior UN officials stressed that climate change plays a direct role in the region’s security, development and stability by increasing drought and fuelling conflict. Speaking via videoconference from Niger, the […]
[cf. Leave fossil fuels buried to prevent climate change, study urges – ‘We’ve binged to the edge of our own destruction’] By Megan Darby24 May 2016 (Climate Change News) – Total is slashing expensive oil ventures in line with international efforts to hold global warming below 2C. The French oil major is reducing its exposure […]
By Vera Salnitskaya5 May 2015 (Siberian Times) – A leading Siberian scientist has delivered another stark warning about climate change and said melting peat bogs could speed up the process. Professor Sergey Kirpotin, director of the BioClimLand Centre of Excellence for Climate Change Research in Tomsk, said he has concerns over the ‘awful’ consequences in […]
By Anthony LeRoy Westerling23 May 2016 (The Conversation) – Dramatic images of out-of-control wildfires in western North American forests have appeared on our television and computer screens with increasing regularity in recent decades, while costs of fire suppression have soared. In 2015, federal spending on suppression exceeded US$2 billion, just 15 years after first exceeding […]
By Bob Henson 20 May 2016 (wunderground.com) – The sea ice that coats the Arctic Ocean each winter and erodes each summer is going through its most depleted spring since modern observing began. The Danish Meteorological Institute reported the lowest sea ice extent of any April in the Arctic’s 38-year-long satellite record. As luck would […]
By Alexey Eremenko24 May 2016 MOSCOW (NBC News) – Colossal wildfires in Russia have burned an area the size Vermont and Delaware combined, Greenpeace said Tuesday, amid fears the country could suffer its worst wildfire season in more than 100 years. The season is still in its early stages, but wildfires blazing across the country’s […]
By Arthur Neslen18 May 2016 Białowieża, Poland (The Guardian) – Europe’s last primeval forest is facing what campaigners call its last stand as loggers prepare to start clear-cutting trees, following the dismissal of dozens of scientists and conservation experts opposed to the plan. Poland’s new far right government says logging is needed because more than […]
By Michael Snyder9 May 2016 (Activist Post) – Why are millions upon millions of dead sea creatures suddenly washing up on beaches all over the world? It is certainly not unusual for fish and other inhabitants of our oceans to die. This happens all the time. But over the past month we have seen a […]
By John Vidal22 May 2016 Lilongwe, Malawi (The Guardian) – Up to 50 million people in Africa will need food by Christmas as a crisis across the continent triggered by El Niño worsens, the UN and major international charities have warned. A second year of deep drought in much of southern and eastern Africa […]