Blogging the End of the World™
By Brian Brown13 July 2014 MANHATTAN, Kansas (NBC News) – In America’s Breadbasket, a battle of ideas is underway on the most fundamental topics of all: food, water, and the future of the planet. Last August, in a still-echoing blockbuster study, Dave Steward, Ph.D., and his colleagues at Kansas State University, informed the $15 billion […]
By Diana Marcum4 July 2014 TERRA BELLA (Los Angeles Times) – At first they called Fred Lujan a gentleman farmer. The retired barber washed his tractor every night and parked it in the garage, a source of gentle amusement to the veteran growers around him. He called his pistachio trees his babies, his girls, and […]
By Benon Herbert Oluka9 July 2014 (mongabay.com) – Uganda’s Kafu River, which is about 180 kilometers (110 miles) long, is part of a vast chimpanzee habitat that includes Budongo and Bugoma Forest Reserves, as well as several unofficial protected areas. However, this region is losing a significant portion of valuable chimpanzee habitat, with Global Forest […]
By Drazen Jorgic12 July 2014 NAIROBI (Reuters) – Two armed gangs killed four rhinos for their horns in rural Kenya this week in possibly the worst rhino poaching incident in the country in more than 25 years, the spokesman for Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said on Friday. Poaching across sub-Saharan Africa is on the rise […]
By Robin McKie, science editor11 July 2014 MIAMI (The Observer) – A drive through the sticky Florida heat into Alton Road in Miami Beach can be an unexpectedly awkward business. Most of the boulevard, which runs north through the heart of the resort’s most opulent palm-fringed real estate, has been reduced to a single lane […]
12 June 2014 (NOAA) – Parts of the West, especially the southern portions, have been in drought for the last several years, with the PHDI reaching record or near-record low values at times. Time series of precipitation departure show the variation over time (New Mexico, California), while maps of the SPEI show the spatial extent […]
By Brett Walton7 July 2014 (EcoWatch) – Lake Mead—America’s largest reservoir, Las Vegas’ main water source and an important indicator for water supplies in the Southwest—will fall this week to its lowest level since 1937 when the manmade lake was first being filled, according to forecasts from the federal Bureau of Reclamation. The record-setting low […]
By Chelsea Matiash8 July 2014 (Wall Street Journal) – Rodrigo Baleia first embarked on a Greenpeace trip to make photographs of the Amazon rainforest in 2000 – and after twelve years and about 218,000 miles of flight documentation, he is still not satisfied with his mission in chronicling the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon. “I […]
By Jeremy Hance8 July 2014 (mongabay.com) – In Southern Italy over the weekend, Pope Francis reiterated his view that environmental destruction constituted a sin. Visiting the largely agricultural region of Molise, the pope responded to an address by a local farmer attending university. “I fully agree what has been said about ‘safeguarding’ the earth, to […]
July 2014 (Sea Shepherd) – Sea Shepherd founder, Captain Paul Watson, writes a personal letter to the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe on his visit to Australia. In the copy below, Captain Watson asks on behalf of Sea Shepherd volunteers worldwide, “that Japan abide by the ICJ ruling and that Japan respects both the moratorium […]
