Blogging the End of the World™
By Marty Silk12 March 2013 (AAP) – A survivor of the Fukushima nuclear accident is urging the Queensland government to reinstate a ban on uranium mining. Japanese dairy farmer Hasegawa Kenichi is in Brisbane with a delegation from the Japanese disaster relief organisation Peace Boat. “Uranium is something the human body cannot handle, cannot cope […]
4 March 2013 (NIWA) – February rainfall totalled less than 15 mm (and also less than 15 percent of February normal) in parts of Northland, Auckland, and the Bay of Plenty. It was the driest February on record for Leigh (north Auckland), and Milford Sound. In the case of Leigh, it was also the driest […]
25 March 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – Sydney is on target for its hottest week since January and hottest March week in a decade, with an average maximum temperature of about 29 degrees. The city has already begun its unusually warm week. On Friday, the mercury rose to 31.8, 6 degrees above the long-term monthly […]
By Dan Vergano23 March 2013 (USA TODAY) – How you ask the question skews the results when it comes to public opinion on global warming, finds an analysis of hundreds of polls. The public mostly agrees on global warming’s reality, it says. The Arctic keeps melting, the atmosphere keeps warming, and polls keep bouncing around […]
By Michael Marshall 22 March 2013 The lawyers will be as busy as bees. The long-running row over insecticides linked to declines in bee numbers is going to court. Beekeepers and activists are suing the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), saying it should have banned neonicotinoid insecticides. Neonicotinoids are relatively new chemicals but have already […]
By Suzy Khimm22 March 2013 (Washington Post) – Both Democrats and Republican leaders celebrated the passage of a short-term budget that averted a government shutdown while blunting some of the worst effects of sequestration. “I am so proud the Senate bill protects national security while meeting compelling human needs. It makes investments in human infrastructure […]
By Nicky Phillips, Science Reporter24 March 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – Endangered species experts plan to save the mountain pygmy possum from becoming the continent’s first climate-change victim. A rapidly warming globe has contracted the Snowy Mountains’ blanket of winter snow that serves as a possum refuge from freezing temperatures when it hibernates for six […]
By Dave Levitan20 March 2013 (Discover Magazine) – Diamond City, North Carolina, is not actually a city, in that no one actually lives there. People did live there, though, back in 1899. That was when a major hurricane hit the community, on a small barrier island near Cape Hatteras. Homes were destroyed, animals were killed, […]
By Bill McKibben 17 March 2013 (Bloomberg) – If you go to the website of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Eastern District of Missouri, you can read more than 1,000 letters from retired coal miners and their widows. Their words are like the lyrics to an endless Johnny Cash ballad, and even more heartbreaking. […]
20 March 2013 (Practical Fishkeeping) – A study has found that, weakened by microscopic borers, the world’s coral reefs will erode more rapidly as the oceans warm and acidify. This phenomenon, combined with a slower growth of coral reefs due to ocean acidification, may make reefs more vulnerable to storms and cyclones, says Ms Catalina […]
