Blogging the End of the World™
By Mari Saito and Antoni Slodkowski30 December 2013 SENDAI, Japan (Reuters) – Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men. He isn’t a social worker. He’s a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in […]
2013 began with record heat waves in Australia, and the year ended there with more record heat waves. Australia is the bellwether of abrupt climate change: what happens there will happen soon to the rest of the world. So it’s no surprise that this year’s graphs have a lot of data on Australia and global […]
By Margaret Munro29 December 2013 (Postmedia News) – Mercury wafting out of oilsands operations is impacting an area – or “bull’s-eye” — that extends for about 19,000 square kilometres in northeast Alberta, according to federal scientists. Levels of the potent neurotoxin found near the massive industrial operation have been found to be up to 16 […]
29 December 2013 (M24 Digital) – The Mayor of Buenos Aires Mauricio Macri, declared on Saturday a state of “emergency” in the city of Buenos Aires as a result of power outages and called the nation to form a committee to “monitor the crisis” and work to solve the problems. In a press conference, Macri […]
By Mike De Souza27 December 2013 OTTAWA (Postmedia News) – More than $100 million in cuts are underway at the federal department in charge of protecting Canada’s water and oceans, despite recommendations from top bureaucrats that it needs to increase spending for both environmental and economic reasons. According to internal federal briefing notes obtained by […]
By Elizabeth Weise 28 December 2013 (USATODAY) – Something is killing starfish up and down the West Coast and no one knows what. A mysterious illness that first appeared in June in Washington state has now spread from Sitka, Alaska, to San Diego. Starfish first waste away and then “turn into goo,” divers say. Whatever […]
Desdemona updated the IDMC graph from here with the number of Filipinos displaced by Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013: 4 million people. Des also added a parabolic curve (red) with a pretty good fit (R2 = 0.89). cf. Philippines: 4 million people remain displaced after Typhoon Haiyan and Graph of the Day: Philippines internal displacement […]
By Chris Thomas26 December 2013 (Science Network) – Ocean warming and acidification are leading to an increase in the rate of sponge biomass and bioerosion. Combined German-Australian research, recently presented at the Ninth World Sponge Conference in Fremantle, used past, present and future climate scenarios to explore how changes are occurring. The Australian Institute of […]
By Kiley Kroh27 December 2013 (Center for American Progress) – As California enters its third consecutive dry winter, with no sign of moisture on the horizon, fears are growing over increased wildfire activity, agricultural losses and additional stress placed on already strained water supplies. The city of Los Angeles has received only 3.6 inches of […]
By Louis Sahagun 26 December 2013 (Los Angeles Times) – Elizabeth Lopez maneuvered a massive steel claw over the side of a 134-foot sailboat and guided its descent through swaying kelp and schools of fish 10 miles off the coast of San Diego. She was hoping to catch pieces of a mysterious marine ecosystem that […]
