Blogging the End of the World™
By BETSY BLANEY, Associated Press27 July 2011 Randy McGee spent $28,000 in one month pumping water onto about 500 acres in West Texas before he decided to give up irrigating 75 acres of corn and focus on other crops that stood a better chance in the drought. He thought rain might come and save those […]
By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News28 July 2011 An exceptional wildfire in northern Alaska in 2007 put as much carbon into the air as the entire Arctic tundra absorbs in a year, scientists say. The Anaktuvuk River fire burned across more than 1,000 sq km (400 sq miles), doubling the extent of Alaskan tundra […]
By Rob Manning 28 July 2011 PORTLAND, OREGON – Northwest tribal leaders say they’re seeing climate change affect food sources that are vital to their culture. “All we can do is try to help these plants and animals adapt. If we don’t, the future of the tribes’ First Foods could be at stake” says Paul […]
By James Fallows25 July 2011 The Chart That Should Accompany All Discussions of the Debt Ceiling It’s this one, from yesterday’s New York Times. Click for a more detailed view, though it’s pretty clear as is. It’s based on data from the Congressional Budget Office and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Its significance […]
By Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent, www.guardian.co.uk28 July 2011 It was seen as one of the most distressing effects of climate change ever recorded: polar bears dying of exhaustion after being stranded between melting patches of Arctic sea ice. But now the government scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a […]
MANDERA/WAJIR, 28 July 2011 (IRIN) – In his village, Kiliwehiri in northeastern Kenya, Abdullah Mohamed is known as “that mentally disturbed man”. “It is difficult to be normal after you have watched your entire life’s savings get wiped out before your eyes,” said Ibrahim Abdi, assistant chief of the village. “We are Somalis, we look […]
By Takahiko Hyuga28 July 2011 As temperatures soared to 100 degrees Fahrenheit on a recent July morning, school children in Fukushima prefecture were taking off their masks and running around playgrounds in T-shirts, exposing them to a similar amount of annual radiation as a worker in a nuclear power plant. Toshinori Shishido, a Japanese literature […]
July 27 (CBC News) – Fish kills on two P.E.I. salmon-spawning rivers have been “catastrophic,” says a UPEI scientist. Mike van den Heuvel, a toxicologist with the Canadian Rivers Institute, says most Islanders are unaware of just how serious the fish kills on western P.E.I. have been. “The fish kills are particularly catastrophic. There are […]
NYT Editorial27 July 2011 For centuries, the whitebark pine, Pinus albicaulis, has grown on hundreds of thousands of acres across the West. It is a keystone species of an entire ecosystem — one now seriously at risk. Most of the whitebark pines in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks are dead. It has been declared an […]
By arevamirpal::laprimavera27 July 2011 Afraid of a “chaos” in the harvest season, perhaps? After more than 4 months since the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident started, the Japanese government must be feeling it safe to admit to a far wider contamination by radioactive fallout. The Ministry of Education and Science announced that it will […]
