Blogging the End of the World™
By Nick Kirkpatrick 23 January 2015 (Washington Post) – Along a seashore in Hong Kong yesterday, a vibrant blue glow was seen emanating from the water. Beautiful photographs show the shore glimmering, with the lights of the city sparkling in the background. But this idyllic setting is potentially toxic. The luminescence is an algal bloom […]
By Allison Jackson22 January 2015 (Global Post) – The human tragedy caused by the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has been well documented. […] But humans are not the only victims of this horrible disease, which is spread through contact with the blood, sweat and other bodily fluids of an infected person. Since the 1990s, […]
SEATTLE, 24 January 2015 (AP) — A 32-foot gray whale that turned up dead under the Washington state ferry terminal in downtown Seattle died earlier this week because it was struck by the propeller of a large vessel, according to the initial results of a necropsy completed Saturday. The necropsy found large, deep gashes on […]
Desdemona defines “the end of the world” as the destruction of the biosphere in which humans evolved. Conversely, “saving the world” would mean preserving at least some of the original biosphere. The human impulse for acquisitiveness drives the accelerating destruction. As the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) observed, “our planet is constantly losing […]
By Patrik Stollarz22 January 2015 (AFP) – Climate change and the danger of nuclear war pose an ever-growing threat to civilization and are bringing the world closer to doomsday, a group of prominent scientists and Nobel laureates said Thursday. “It is now three minutes to midnight,” said Kennette Benedict, executive director of the Bulletin of […]
São Paulo, 16 January 2015 (Associated Press) – Halfway through the rainy season, the key reservoir for the southern hemisphere’s largest city holds just 6% of its capacity, and experts warned Friday that São Paulo’s authorities must take urgent steps to prevent the worst drought in more than 80 years from drying it out. The […]
7 December 2014 (YouTube) – Either we come together now to make these the last days of ivory-funded terrorism or we witness the last days of elephants in the wild. Created by Director Kathryn Bigelow, Writer Scott Z. Burns, and Annapurna Pictures, in collaboration with WildAid. Visit http://lastdaysofivory.com to get informed and take action. Last […]
By Carl Zimmer15 January 2015 (The New York Times) – A team of scientists, in a groundbreaking analysis of data from hundreds of sources, has concluded that humans are on the verge of causing unprecedented damage to the oceans and the animals living in them. “We may be sitting on a precipice of a major […]
16 January 2015 (ONE News) – Foreign Minister Murray McCully is urging Sea Shepherd to avoid actions that put their lives or the lives of others at risk in the Southern Ocean. The controversial anti-whaling campaigners claim they’re taking over the fight against illegal fishing operations by three boats in the Southern Ocean. A navy […]
By Stefan Rahmstorf14 January 2015 (RealClimate) – The “zoo” of global sea level curves calculated from tide gauge data has grown – tomorrow a new reconstruction of our US colleagues around Carling Hay from Harvard University will appear in Nature (Hay, et al., 2015). That is a good opportunity for an overview over the available […]
