Blogging the End of the World™
By Nina Chestney; Editing by Janet Lawrence2 May 2012 LONDON (Reuters) – Plants are flowering faster than scientists predicted in response to climate change, research in the United States showed on Wednesday, which could have devastating knock-on effects for food chains and ecosystems. Global warming is having a significant impact on hundreds of plant and […]
Patterns of 50-year surface salinity changes (PSS-78 50 / year). (A) The 1950–2000 observational result from P. J. Durack, S. E. Wijffels, “Fifty-year trends in global ocean salinities and their relationship to broad-scale warming”, J. Clim. 23, 4342 (2010). ABSTRACT: Fundamental thermodynamics and climate models suggest that dry regions will become drier and wet regions […]
[Looks like some parts of the U.S. have passed Peak Education.] By ANDREW ROSENTHAL1 May 2012 Wishing doesn’t make it so, but don’t tell that to the Tennessee Legislature. It seems determined to lead the nation in yearning for an era when Genesis was the last word on science, when there were no gay people, […]
BRUSSELS, 30 April 2012 (AFP) – Brussels on Monday announced a further 20 million euros in aid to victims of Pakistan’s 2011 monsoon floods, as well as people displaced by conflict, bringing funding this year to 55 million euros. While the world had responded with generosity to the country’s devastating 2010 and 2011 floods [not […]
By Kate Mackenzie2 May 2012 Bernstein’s energy analysts have looked at the upstream costs for the 50 biggest listed oil producers and found that — surprise, surprise — “the era of cheap oil is over”: Tracking data from the 50 largest listed oil and gas producing companies globally (ex FSU) indicates that cash, production and […]
[cf. U.S. worry about water, air pollution at historic lows – Concern about global warming dead last] 30 April 2012By Ben Cubby CONCERN for the environment has dwindled into a ”middling” issue that many people do not have strong feelings about, a major study into Australian attitudes towards society, politics and the economy has found. […]
[Declaring an end to the Big Dry seems premature, cf.: While the systematic accumulation of rainfall deficits was reversed with the heavy spring and summer rainfall of 2010, the total two-year record rainfall makes up for about one third of the total rainfall ‘missed out on’ since 1996. Additionally, the recovery peaked in autumn 2011, […]
By Saffron Howden1 May 2012 IN THE absence of any exact figure, Gunnedah’s koala population is best measured by the number spotted on the three kilometre drive from town to the local sanctuary. Five years ago, three or four sightings were not uncommon. Now, ”you’d be lucky” to see one, says Nancy Small, who has […]
By Richard A. Kerr27 April 2012 How bad will global warming get? The question has long been cast in terms of how hot the world will get. But perhaps more important to the planet’s inhabitants will be how much rising greenhouse gases crank up the water cycle. Theory and models predict that a strengthening greenhouse […]
By Brandon Keim 1 May 2012 Herbicide-resistant superweeds threaten to overgrow U.S. fields, so agriculture companies have genetically engineered a new generation of plants to withstand heavy doses of multiple, extra-toxic weed-killing chemicals. It’s a more intensive version of the same approach that made the resistant superweeds such a problem — and some scientists think […]
