Blogging the End of the World™
By Abjata Khalif 3 February 2012 MARSABIT – Nomadic communities living off the dry terrain of northern Kenya have relied for generations on the powers of village elders to predict the weather. But the divinations of traditional forecasters were confounded by an unexpectedly severe drought in 2011, threatening herders’ livelihoods. Now pastoralists and meteorological experts […]
By Eric Johnson8 February 2012 SEATTLE – Debris from last year’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan is already washing up on Washington beaches, and much more is expected. Oceanographer Dr. Curtis Ebbsmeyer said chunks of wood and plastic and other pieces of flotsam from the tsunami will continue to show up on local beaches for […]
As anyone with the slightest interest in Earth’s climate knows, the Merchants of Doubt have been hired by the fossil fuel industries to attack climate science, in the same way that the tobacco industry attacked studies linking smoking to lung cancer. For a neat graphical summary of the history of attacks on climate science, check […]
By Sue Sturgis2 November 2011 Rank of coal-fired power plants among America’s biggest sources of air pollution: 1 Of the five leading causes of death in the United States, number to which coal plant pollution contributes: 4 Number of U.S. water bodies impaired by mercury, a particularly toxic component of coal plant pollution: 3,781 Of […]
By CAIN BURDEAU, The Associated Press7 February 2012 NEW ORLEANS – A scientific report [Recommendations for Anticipating Sea-Level Rise Impacts on Louisiana Coastal Resources during Project Planning and Design, pdf] issued by Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration predicts that the Louisiana coast could see about 3 feet of sea level rise along the already low and […]
By Christine Shearer6 February 2012 If you are interested in weather, chances are you have visited Weather Underground and read the posts of its director of meteorology, Dr. Jeff Masters. The consistently reliable Masters has been a rare voice in helping make sense of, rather than cloud (zing!), the increasingly strange weather events hitting the […]
By Keith Miller, NBC News correspondent8 February 2012 ATHENS – When you touch down in Athens, the signs of an economic slump are immediately evident. The arrivals hall in the domestic terminal is almost deserted, with flights within Greece having been cut back by about 25 percent. Outside the taxi pick-up point stretches a long […]
By Andrew Fraser, The Australian9 February 2012 FLOODED St George in southern Queensland is facing a delayed hit from the surging Balonne River while more than a fifth of the surrounding cotton crop faces ruin. The Balonne yesterday peaked at 13.95m, and is expected to stay near that record mark for days, frustrating the hopes […]
By arevamirpal::laprimavera 7 February 2012 There was a piece of news about 20,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium found in earthworms collected in Kawauchi-mura, Fukushima Prefecture (20 kilometers from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant) in Mainichi Shinbun (2/6/2012). The article says the researchers at the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, a government institution, found radioactive […]
By Steve Connor4 February 2012 The bitterly cold weather sweeping Britain and the rest of Europe has been linked by scientists with the ice-free seas of the Arctic, where global warming is exerting its greatest influence. A dramatic loss of sea ice covering the Barents and Kara Seas above northern Russia could explain why a […]
