Blogging the End of the World™
By Marc Lallanilla18 April 2014 (LiveScience) – The icy slopes of Mount Everest have seen hundreds of deaths in the years since 1922, when seven people perished during the British Mount Everest Expedition. An avalanche today (18 April 2014) claimed at least 12 lives, in what may be the single deadliest climbing event in the […]
Tokyo, 18 April 2014 (AFP) – Japan says it will redesign its controversial Antarctic whaling mission in a bid to make it more scientific, after a United Nations court ruled it was a commercial hunt masquerading as research. The bullish response, which could see harpoon ships back in the Southern Ocean next year, sets Tokyo […]
By Liz Burlingame 19 April 2014 (weather.com) – A major 7.5-magnitude earthquake was recorded off the coast of Papua New Guinea Saturday, and the tremors could lead to a tsunami, warned the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The earthquake occurred 42 miles southwest of Panguana at a depth of approximately 6 miles. A tsunami warning was […]
[UPDATE: Objections have been raised about this study, e.g., here. I asked Prof. Gilens for his rebuttal, and he graciously replied. His response is appended at the end of this post. –Des] By Tom McKay16 April 2014 (PolicyMic) – A new scientific study, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens” [pdf], […]
By Jeremy Hance16 April 2014 (mongabay.com) – In what is a major victory for environmentalists, campaigners with United for Yasuní have collected 727,947 signatures triggering a national referendum on whether or not oil drilling should proceed in three blocs of Yasuní National Park in Ecuador. The effort started last year after Ecuador’s President, Rafael Correa, […]
By Tom Jackman 17 April 2014 (Washington Post) – Unpublished research by university scientists is exempt from the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Thursday, rejecting an attempt by skeptics of global warming to view the work of a prominent climate researcher during his years at the University of Virginia. The […]
1 April 2014 (Associated Press) – On the same day the world’s scientists issued their latest report on climate change and the risks it poses to society, America’s biggest oil and gas company said the world’s climate policies are “highly unlikely” to stop it from selling fossil fuels far into the future. Exxon Mobil issued […]
By Rhett A. Butler10 April 2014 (mongabay.com) – Forest clearing within areas zoned for timber, logging, oil palm, and mining accounted for nearly 45 percent of deforestation in Indonesia between 2000 and 2010, finds a new study that examined forest loss within industrial concessions. The research, published in the journal Conservation Letters, used a combination […]
By Chris Dolce23 January 2014 (Weather Channel) – California’s reservoirs are severely depleted due to the ongoing widespread drought conditions in the state. As of 21 January 2014, 67 percent of California was in extreme drought [69% on 8 April 2014], the second worst category possible on the U.S. Drought Monitor [now 23% in “Exceptional” […]
By Dave Burdick8 Apr 2014 (Grist) – The world as we knew it is gone. Even if nobody is talking explicitly about it, it’s clear that something terrible has happened and in its wake, humanity must once again reset its priorities. Can we, in this resource-scarce new world, fashion some kind of idyllic agrarian commune […]
