Blogging the End of the World™
By MARTIN FACKLER6 December 2011 FUTABA, Japan – Futaba is a modern-day ghost town — not a boomtown gone bust, not even entirely a victim of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that leveled other parts of Japan’s northeast coast. Its traditional wooden homes have begun to sag and collapse since they were abandoned in March […]
By Brian Williams, The Courier-Mail12 December 2011 ONE in every six species related to characters in the smash hit kids’ movie Finding Nemo is threatened with extinction. Scientists analysed risks faced by Nemo, the charismatic clownfish, and more than 1500 other species related to characters in the 2003 animation. International Union for Conservation of Nature […]
There are deals and then there are deals. That’s my takeaway from the U.N. climate negotiations in the South African city of Durban, which finally concluded early Sunday local time — more than a day after the talks had been scheduled to end. Exhausted negotiators — seriously, look at these poor guys — managed to […]
Projected annual changes in dryness assessed from change in annual maximum number of consecutive dry days (CDD, days with precipitation <1 mm). Increased dryness is indicated with yellow to red colors; decreased dryness with green to blue. Projected changes are expressed in units of standard deviation of the interannual variability in the three 20-year periods […]
By Captain Locky MacLean10 December 2011 When one thinks of world-class diving, the tiny Republic of the Maldives immediately comes to mind. Keen divers travel from all corners of the globe to this Indian Ocean island nation. They come to marvel at the biodiversity its atolls and islands shelter under their shores. The Maldivian islands, […]
It’s time for the yearly retrospectives on 2011, and we’re kicking them off with 2011’s most-viewed stories on Desdemona. It won’t surprise anyone to see that the triple meltdown at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant was the most popular event, with 9 of the top 20 stories. Most surprising is the continued popularity of a 2009 […]
By Mara Lee, Hartford Courant 8 December 2011 Reporting from Hartford, Conn.— The United States had a dozen weather disasters that each caused at least $1 billion in damages in 2011, the greatest frequency of severe weather that caused costly losses in more than 30 years of federal government tracking. However, even with the number […]
[The penguins are released at about 1:00.] The first of the little blue penguins, cleaned and recovered after the Rena oil spill, are released back to their home shores. Interview with lead vet at the National Oiled Wildlife Recovery Team. (C) WWF-New Zealand / Amy Taylor WWF film of NZ penguin release post oil-spill Technorati […]
By Alex Morales and Kim Chipman9 December 2011 China, the U.S. and India, the three biggest polluters, maintained their resistance to a time line leading to a legally-binding climate treaty, threatening efforts to keep up the fight on global warming this year. European Union Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said she hasn’t yet won backing for […]
By Kim Chipman and Alex Morales7 December 2011 The U.S. view that no new global climate deal is possible before 2020 is derailing negotiations aimed at slashing the world’s oil and coal emissions, according to an envoy at the talks. “The present U.S. position of no new agreement until post- 2020 is really blowing negotiations […]
