Blogging the End of the World™
By Michon Scott, based on The New Climate Normals by Jennifer FreemanJuly 6, 2011 In July 2011, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center updated the U.S. Climate Normals: three-decade averages of weather observations, including temperature. The new annual normal temperatures for the United States reflect a warming world. Following procedures set by the World Meteorological Organization, […]
Contact: Patrick Lynch, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., 757-897-2047, patrick.lynch@nasa.gov 25 July 2011 An international team of researchers has combined data from multiple sources to provide the clearest account yet of how much glacial ice surges into the sea following the collapse of Antarctic ice shelves. The work by researchers at the University […]
By Joe Romm 27 Jul 2011 One way to tell if a nationwide heat wave is truly record-breaking is, well, to look at the total number of records that it breaks. Even better is to compare the high records with the low records, since we have very good historical data and analysis on that — […]
By Brian Merchant11 July 2011 Brooklyn, New York – Unruly herbicides are making headlines again: A couple weeks ago, it was the fact that the world’s top-selling weedkiller was causing birth defects. This time, it looks like the brand new herbicide Imprelis, manufactured by the chemical giant DuPont and okayed for use by the EPA, […]
By Christina Maria Paschyn27 April 2011 Natalia Manzurova was a 35-year-old nuclear engineer in Russia when she was assigned to be part of the clean-up crew at the Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine, site of the worst nuclear accident in history. Despite her training, Manzurova did not fully comprehend the dangers. On a preliminary […]
By David McNeill26 July 2011 Atsushi Watanabe (not his real name) is an ordinary Japanese man in his 20s, about average height and solidly built, with the slightly bemused expression of the natural sceptic. Among the crowds in Tokyo, in his casual all-black clothes, he could be an off-duty postman or a construction worker. But […]
By Steve Campbell, sfcampbell@star-telegram.com, 817-390-798124 July 2011 The ferocious Texas drought is clobbering crops, thinning out cattle herds, decimating wildlife, and drying up streams and reservoirs, but it’s also wreaking havoc deep underground, where the state’s aquifers are dropping at a precipitous rate, experts say. The dip in groundwater levels is forcing many rural homeowners […]
MEDIA CONTACT: James Leonard, 209-228-440625 July 2011 MERCED — An increase in wildfires due to climate change could rapidly and profoundly alter the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, according to a new study authored by environmental engineering and geography Professor Anthony Westerling of the University of California, Merced. The study by Westerling and his colleagues — which […]
By Darryl Fears24 July 2011 A giant underwater “dead zone” in the Chesapeake Bay is growing at an alarming rate because of unusually high nutrient pollution levels this year, according to Virginia and Maryland officials. They said the expanding area of oxygen-starved water is on track to become the bay’s largest ever. This year’s Chesapeake […]
By Dmitry Orlov23 July 2011 With each passing week more and more of us become ready to concede that economic growth is no longer possible. Economic development, on the old model, which UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon recently characterized as a “global suicide pact,” is becoming constrained by the limits of natural resources of the finite […]
