Blogging the End of the World™
Global Highlights The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for March 2013 tied with 2006 as the 10th warmest on record, at 0.58°C (1.04°F) above the 20th century average of 12.3°C (54.1°F). The global land surface temperature was 1.06°C (1.91°F) above the 20th century average of 5.0°C (40.8°F), the 11th warmest March […]
By Will Oremus 22 April 2013 (Slate) – Environmentalists like to think that the public is in their corner—that it’s only the pernicious influence of Big Oil and Big Coal that keeps Congress from passing a carbon tax or Obama from nixing the Keystone Pipeline. They’re right that most voters care about the planet, insofar […]
By Harold Meyerson23 April 2013 (Washington Post) – On May 21, Los Angeles voters will go to the polls to select a new mayor. Who will govern Los Angeles, however, is only the second-most important local question in the city today. The most important, by far, is who will buy the Los Angeles Times. The […]
By Neela Banerjee23 April 2013 WASHINGTON (Los Angeles Times) – A federal appeals court unanimously backed the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate a controversial form of coal mining called mountaintop removal, overturning a lower court decision that barred the agency from stopping a large coal mine in West Virginia. The ruling by the D.C. […]
By MASAKAZU HONDA22 April 2013 FUKUSHIMA (Asahi Shimbun) – Radioactive cesium levels exceeding 100,000 becquerels per kilogram were measured in mud accumulated at the bottom of swimming pools at two high schools in and around Fukushima city. Mud in the pool of a third high school in Minami-Soma, which is closer to the crippled Fukushima […]
By Mark Hertsgaard22 April 2013 4:45 AM EDT (Newsweek) – “It’s as safe as Dawn dishwashing liquid.” That’s what Jamie Griffin says the BP man told her about the smelly, rainbow-streaked gunk coating the floor of the “floating hotel” where Griffin was feeding hundreds of cleanup workers during the BP oil disaster in the Gulf […]
(Climate Commission) – Very hot days and heatwaves have a significant impact on human health, infrastructure, agriculture and natural ecosystems. Research at the Natural Hazards Research Centre (NRHC) has shown that heatwaves are the most significant natural hazard in Australia in terms of loss of life. There have been 4287 fatalities directly attributable to heatwaves […]
By Joel Connelly22 April 2013 (Seattle PI) – Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, oft-faulted for a go-it-alone governing style, became a coalition builder Monday, joining with other city officials and Indian tribes in a new organization designed to build opposition to location of big coal export terminals in Northwest waters. In an interview, McGinn suggested that […]
By Neela Banerjee 22 April 2013 WASHINGTON (The New York Times) – The Environmental Protection Agency issued a sharply critical assessment of the State Department’s recent environmental impact review of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, certain to complicate efforts to win approval for the $7-billion project. In a letter to top State Department officials overseeing […]
By John Upton22 April 2013 (Grist) – The good news: Heavy rainfall across the Midwest has helped ease a widespread drought. The bad news: Rainfall has been so heavy that drought has been replaced by flooding The scary news: The cycle of flood-drought-flood that has ravaged the Midwest over the past two years is the […]
