Blogging the End of the World™
By JUSTIN GILLIS4 June 2011 On a warming planet, humanity faces a great challenge in feeding itself at reasonable cost in the coming century, as I explain in Sunday’s paper. An issue I raise only in passing in the article is that agriculture itself is one of the earth’s greatest environmental threats. To put a […]
Contact: Andrea Elyse Messer, 814-865-9481, http://live.psu.edu6 June 2011 University Park, Pennsylvania – The rate of release of carbon into the atmosphere today is nearly 10 times as fast as during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 55.9 million years ago, the best analog we have for current global warming, according to an international team of geologists. […]
SPRINGERVILLE, Arizona, June 6 (MSNBC) — More evacuations were ordered Monday as Arizona’s third largest wildfire on record threatened new areas, including a New Mexico town. Officials also revised upwards their estimate of the burn size, now saying that it covers 365 square miles, up from 301 square miles earlier Monday. Those who hadn’t already […]
By Mu Qing, Epoch Times Staff6 June 2011 The overall environmental situation in China is very grim with all seven major river systems polluted, according to Li Ganjie, Vice Minister of the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection, speaking at a press conference on June 3 to discuss the Report of the State of the Environment […]
By MITSURU OBE6 June 2011 TOKYO — The Japanese government, providing fresh evidence on the severity of a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, more than doubled Monday its estimate for the amount of radiation released from the plant in the first week of the crisis in March. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety […]
By Luzi Ann Javier, Madelene Pearson, and Whitney McFerron; William Bi in Beijing, Phoebe Sedgman in Wellington, Chanyaporn Chanjaroen in Singapore, and Tony Dreibus in London; Editors: James Poole, Steve Stroth 6 June 2011 The worst droughts in decades are wilting wheat fields from China to the U.S. to the U.K., overwhelming Russia’s return to […]
BY ROSSLYN BEEBY, SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT REPORTER04 June 2011 Australia’s leading climate change scientists are being targeted by a vicious, unrelenting email campaign that has resulted in police investigations of death threats. The Australian National University has confirmed it moved several high-profile climate scientists, economists and policy researchers into more secure buildings, following explicit threats […]
June 4 (Yomiuri Shimbun) – The government has ordered the suspension of tea leaf shipments from Ibaraki Prefecture and parts of Kanagawa, Chiba and Tochigi prefectures after radioactive cesium exceeding government limits was found in fresh and dried leaves. The radiation was first detected last month, but since contamination levels change depending on the stage […]
By Rowena Mason4 Jun 2011 The likely shortage of wheat and barley next season is already causing wholesale prices to rise, with a knock-on effect on the price of bread and beer. This spring’s lack of rainfall is severely affecting crops, particularly in the east of England, where wheat and malting barley are wilting and […]
By JUSTIN GILLIS4 June 2011 CIUDAD OBREGÓN, Mexico — The dun wheat field spreading out at Ravi P. Singh’s feet offered a possible clue to human destiny. Baked by a desert sun and deliberately starved of water, the plants were parched and nearly dead. Dr. Singh, a wheat breeder, grabbed seed heads that should have […]
