Blogging the End of the World™
30 April 2015 (Scripps Institution) – A workshop on an unusually warm pool of North Pacific Ocean water and associated conditions will take place May 5 and 6 at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. Participants in the 2014-2015 Pacific Anomalies Science and Technology Workshop will include federal, non-federal, state and local scientists and […]
February 2015 (McKinsey Global Institute) – A new McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report, Debt and (not much) deleveraging [pdf], examines the evolution of debt across 47 countries—22 advanced and 25 developing—and assesses the implications of higher leverage in the global economy and in specific sectors and countries. The analysis, which follows our July 2011 report […]
By Geena Fowles4 May 2015 (America Herald) – A massive 16 percent of our planet’s species may be facing extinction by 2100 as a result of the havoc that climate change is wreaking, a recent study published in Science states. According to a team of researchers, the ever-increasing temperatures will contribute to the wipe-out of […]
By Chelsea Harvey4 May 2015 (Washington Post) – When it comes to combating climate change, many scientists and policy makers focus on one major goal: cut carbon emissions enough to keep the planet’s average surface temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above its pre-industrial level. But a new analysis [pdf], published on Monday […]
By Fred Barbash and Justin Wm. Moyer4 May 2015 (Washington Post) – They never ate anybody — but now, some of planet Earth’s innocent vegetarians face end times. Large herbivores — elephants, hippos, rhinos and gorillas among them — are vanishing from the globe at a startling rate, with some 60 percent threatened with extinction, […]
By Michaeleen Doucleff21 April 2015 (NPR) – Looks like many of us don’t have the right stomach for a paleodiet. Literally. Two studies give us a glimpse into our ancestors’ microbiome — you know, those trillions of bacteria that live in the human gut. And the take-home message of the studies is clear: Western diets […]
By Chris Clarke22 April 2015 (KCET) – Some new figures have been published about the likely wildlife impact of a controversial solar facility in the Mojave Desert by biological consultants working on contract with the plant — and the numbers are startling. According to the firm H.T. Harvey and Associates, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating […]
By Yang Jiang, Mercedes Ekono, and Curtis SkinnerJanuary 2015 (NCCP) – Children under 18 years represent 23 percent of the population, but they comprise 33 percent of all people in poverty.1 Among all children, 44 percent live in low-income families and approximately one in every five (22 percent) live in poor families. Being a child […]
By Perry Lindstrom20 April 2015 (EIA) – For the second year in a row, energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the United States have increased. However, unlike 2013, when emissions and gross domestic product (GDP) grew at similar rates (2.5% and 2.2%, respectively), 2014’s CO2 emissions growth rate of 0.7% was much smaller than the […]
By Gayathri Vaidyanathan23 April 2015 (Scientific American) – Slivers of dust float in the upper atmosphere, scattering the sun’s rays back into space and cooling the planet in some places. In other places, the particles warm the planet. The equivocation has meant that the particles, known as aerosols, are a significant wild card in our […]
