Blogging the End of the World™
By Jonathan Watts31 October 2014 (Rio de Janeiro) – The Amazon rainforest has degraded to the point where it is losing its ability to benignly regulate weather systems, according to a stark new warning from one of Brazil’s leading scientists. In a new report, Antonio Nobre, researcher in the government’s space institute, Earth System Science […]
By Ellen Knickmeyer and John Locher18 August 2014 Ivanpah Dry Lake, California (Associated Press) – Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant’s concentrated sun rays — “streamers,” for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair. Federal wildlife investigators […]
By Evan Halper and Ralph Vartabedian 25 October 2014 (Los Angeles Times) – California’s pioneering climate-change law has a long reach, but that doesn’t mean all its mandates will help stave off global warming. To meet the requirement that it cut carbon emissions, for example, Southern California Edison recently sold its stake in one of […]
By Laura Parker 15 July 2014 (National Geographic) – When marine ecologist Andres Cozar Cabañas and a team of researchers completed the first ever map of ocean trash, something didn’t quite add up. Their work, published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, did find millions of pieces of plastic debris […]
Jaguari Reservoir, 16 August 2013 Jaguari Reservoir, 3 August 2014 By Brad Plumer 23 October 2014 (Vox) – São Paulo, in southeast Brazil, is the largest city in South America and the 7th largest metropolitan region in the world, with more than 21 million people. It’s the engine behind Brazil’s richest state, which is […]
By Melanie Fitzpatrick17 October 2014 (UCSUSA) – What would it be like to live in a place that floods every full moon? We asked that question and others in our report, Encroaching Tides, which was released last week. During that week, there was a perigean spring tide – an extra-high tide when the sun, moon, […]
Washington, 21 October 2014 (Reuters) – Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has hit an all-time high despite years of counter-narcotics efforts that have cost the US $7.6bn (£4.7bn), according to a US government watchdog. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime [pdf] reported that Afghan farmers grew an “unprecedented” 209,000 hectares (523,000 acres) of opium […]
By Mike Merritt and Tristan Stewart-Robertson13 October 2014 (The Scotsman) – Scottish otters are only living a third of the lifespan of those on mainland Europe because of poisoned seas, a leading expert on the species has warned. Zoologist Dr Paul Yoxon said chemicals in everyday products are accumulating in fish and shellfish on which […]
[Short answer: No.] By Verlyn Klinkenborg9 October 2014 (Yale Environment 360) – Ever since Darwin, biologists have been arguing about altruism — the concept that an individual may behave in a way that benefits its species, at a cost to itself. After all, the self-sacrifice implicit in altruistic behavior seems to run against the grain […]
By Rebecca Trager22 October 2014 (Chemistry World) – A pro bono network that will provide legal protection for US scientists in government and academia has been launched by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), an environmental group based in Washington, DC. The new Alliance for Legal Protection of Science (Alps), will provide legal information, […]
