Blogging the End of the World™
By Stephen Leahy27 December 2011 UXBRIDGE, Canada (Tierramérica) – The water supplied by the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca, vital to a huge region of northwest Peru, is decreasing 20 years sooner than expected, according to a new study. Water flows from the region’s melting glaciers have already peaked and are in decline, Michel Baraer, […]
Washington DC, December 20 (SPX) – The science behind counting fish in the ocean to measure their abundance has never been simple. A new scientific paper authored by NOAA Fisheries biologist Eric Prince, Ph.D., and eight other scientists shows that expanding ocean dead zones – driven by climate change – have added a new wrinkle […]
Mexico City (AFP) Dec 19, 2011 – Authorities Monday shut down Mexico’s — and possibly the world’s — biggest garbage dump and said they would invite bids to exploit methane gas generated by the decomposing waste. Waste Management Commission chief Fernando Menendez called the closing “historic” as “it is the world’s largest (truck-filled open-air) dump.” […]
Contact Skip Derra, skip.derra@asu.edu, 480-965-4823, Media Relations15 December 2011 Humans are having an effect on Earth’s ecosystems but it’s not just the depletion of resources and the warming of the planet we are causing. Now you can add an over-abundance of nitrogen as another “footprint” humans are leaving behind. The only question is how large […]
New Delhi, December 20 (UPI) – India’s rising population and economic growth are straining the country’s supply of water, a report from India’s Infrastructure Development Finance Co. warns. Of India’s 20 major river basins, 14 are considered water-stressed, the report from IDFC, an independent group, report said. Nearly 25 percent of the country’s population live […]
By Chris HedgesPosted on 14 September 2010 by rockingjude The United States, locked in the kind of twilight disconnect that grips dying empires, is a country entranced by illusions. It spends its emotional and intellectual energy on the trivial and the absurd. It is captivated by the hollow stagecraft of celebrity culture as the walls […]
By George Webster, for CNN23 December 2011 When Tropical Storm Washi ripped through the southern Philippine city of Cagayan de Oro last weekend, it dumped in one day more than the city’s entire average rainfall for the month of December. According to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, a total of 181 millimeters […]
In this world of 7 billion people, the global rural-urban balance of populations has tipped irreversibly in favour of cities. But what, exactly, is a “city” in 2011? Hania Zlotnik, the director of the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs cautions against assuming too easy a definition because governments […]
December 21 (AFP) – Ecologists have warned production of frankincense, one of the three gifts the Wise Men gave to the baby Jesus in a key part of the Nativity story celebrated at Christmas, is in dramatic decline. A research team from the Netherlands and Ethiopia says a new study has shown numbers of the […]
Here are 2011’s most profoundly doom-laden stories, chosen arbitrarily by Des. Last year, this feature was The Twelve Doomiest Stories of 2010, to evoke “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, but twelve stories just aren’t enough to capture the zeitgeist of doom that permeated the year. Nuclear meltdowns at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi plant and the resulting […]
