By Ferris Jabr16 August 2011 So far the relentless heatwave scorching Texas has killed numerous crops and dried up the reservoir in San Angelo State Park, leaving a shallow pool of blood-red water teeming with red bacteria that thrive in low oxygen. The drought in Lake Nacogdoches has exposed a piece of the space shuttle […]
By Timothy McDonald13 August 2011 The Queensland and Federal Government’s first report card on water quality in the Great Barrier Reef has found pesticides used in agriculture are causing significant problems for the reef. The report says some farmers need to be more careful with their chemicals, finding that nearly one-quarter of horticulture producers and […]
[UPDATE: Dole responds to allegations it is illegally growing bananas in national park] By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com14 August 2011 Dole Food Company, a US-based corporation famous for its tropical fruit products, is allegedly destroying rainforest in Somawathiya National Park in Sri Lanka for a banana plantation, reports local press. The 4,700 hectare (11,600 acre) plantation, […]
By Scott Thill8 August 2011 Mass extinction is finally fighting its way back into the news cycle, thanks to recent scary reports on climate change from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean, the United Nations Environment Program and the July issue of Science. But University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward has been […]
By Naoko Fujimura, with assistance from Jae Hur in Tokyo; Editors: Jim McDonald, Paul Tighe13 August 2011 Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) – Mushrooms are the latest addition to threats facing Japan’s food chain from radiation spewed by Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant. Nameko mushrooms grown in the open air in Soma, a city […]
By DOROTHY SPEARS12 August 2011 During the shooting of his 2010 documentary Climate Refugees, the Irish-American filmmaker Michael Nash visited nearly 50 countries in about 18 months, interviewing politicians, scientists, health workers and victims of floods, cyclones, hurricanes and droughts. His conclusion was that short- and longer-term changes in climate are causing vast numbers of […]
By Gregor MacLennan11 August 2011 Brazilian officials fear for the survival of an isolated Amazon group after a remote guard post on the Peru-Brazil border was overrun by heavily armed suspected drug traffickers who crossed the border from Peru. The guard post was protecting the headwaters of the Envira river where stunning aerial photographs of […]
By George Monbiot, www.guardian.co.uk 8 August 2011 Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a year, after which no one will ever eat fish again. Almost everywhere fish stocks are collapsing through catastrophic mismanagement. But no one in the rich […]
Soil contamination levels of cesium-134 and cesium-137 near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, 26 May 2011. Department of Energy / Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology / The New York Times Doubting Assurances, Japanese Find Radioactivity on Their Own Technorati Tags: Fukushima,Japan,Asia,pollution,infrastructure failure,agriculture
By Duncan Green8 August 2011 So is famine in the Horn of Africa linked to climate change or not? The question arises whenever “extreme weather events” – hurricanes, floods, droughts – hit our TV screens. It’s impossible to answer with a simple yes or no – but here’s what we think we know so far. […]
