Blogging the End of the World™
By KEN BELSON31 July 2011 IWAKI, Japan — Kiyoko Okoshi had a simple goal when she spent about $625 for a dosimeter: she missed her daughter and grandsons and wanted them to come home. Local officials kept telling her that their remote village was safe, even though it was less than 20 miles from the […]
July 27 (Nairobi Star) – ABOUT 2,000 Mau Forest evictees have asked the government to give them land. They said they preferred being given land and not money. Speaking in Nakuru, leaders from 12 IDP camps accused those who wanted compensation in form of cash as impostors. The camps include Kongasis, Chepkoburon, Tiriyta, Kaptembwo, Kiletien, […]
By Robert Sanders, Media Relations 28 July 2011 BERKELEY — California’s native grasses, already under pressure from invasive exotic grasses, are likely to be pushed aside even more as the climate warms, according to a new analysis from the University of California, Berkeley. In the study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal […]
July 29 (NHK) – Nearly 50,000 tons of sludge at water treatment facilities has been found to contain radioactive cesium as the result of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Over 1,500 tons is so contaminated that it cannot be buried for disposal. Water treatment facilities in eastern and northeastern Japan have […]
By Benjamin Wermund; Editing by Karen Brooks and Jerry Norton29 July 2011 MARFA, Texas (Reuters) – A historic Texas drought is driving bears into urban areas searching for food and water, the latest in a series of bizarre wildlife stories to come out of the deadly hot and dry weather across the nation. Authorities have […]
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent30 July 2011 Freshwater fish are the most endangered group of animals on the planet, with more than a third threatened with extinction, according to a report being compiled by British scientists. Among those at the greatest risk of dying out are several species from UK rivers and lakes including the […]
July 31 (New Scientist) – ANTARCTICA is rising like a cheese soufflé: slowly but surely. Lost ice due to climate change and left-over momentum from the end of the last big ice age mean the buoyant continent is heaven-bound. Donald Argus of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and colleagues used 15 years of […]
By John Platt30 July 2011 Add another species to the long list of plants and animals being eaten out of existence so men can try to get it up in the bedroom. This time, instead of medically useless tiger penises or sea turtle eggs, it’s an African plant called White’s ginger (Mondia whitei), often wrongly […]
By MASAMI ITO, Staff writer28 July 2011 The government ordered a complete ban Thursday on all shipments of beef cattle from Miyagi Prefecture after detecting radioactive cesium above the government limit in some local cattle. The government is also considering placing a similar ban on beef cattle from Iwate Prefecture, where five cattle from Ichinoseki […]
By John D. Cox28 July 2011 Before the last ice age, during a warm era some 125,000 years ago that was comparable to modern times, scientists know that the oceans reached levels that were some 15 to 20 feet higher than they are today. What they don’t know is, where did the extra water come […]
