By Matt McGrath 12 October 2015 Alaska (BBC News) – Expanding the search for oil is necessary to pay for the damage caused by climate change, the Governor of Alaska has told the BBC. The state is suffering significant climate impacts from rising seas forcing the relocation of remote villages. Governor Bill Walker says that […]
By Tim Dickinson 24 September 2014 (Rolling Stone) – The enormity of the Koch fortune is no mystery. Brothers Charles and David are each worth more than $40 billion. The electoral influence of the Koch brothers is similarly well-chronicled. The Kochs are our homegrown oligarchs; they’ve cornered the market on Republican politics and are nakedly […]
By Michael Casey 29 September 2015 (CBS News) – Federal officials are trying to understand what is behind a sharp rise in the stranding and deaths of threatened fur seals, with dozens washing up along the California coast this year. Designating it an Unusual Mortality Event, NOAA Fisheries said that as many as 80 Guadalupe […]
[Some good news to start the week. A dry hole really is the best outcome. – Des] By Charisse Jones28 September 2015 (USA TODAY) – Royal Dutch Shell will end exploration in off shore Alaska “for the forseeable future,” after an exploratory well in the Chukchi Sea failed to yield the oil and gas that […]
By Tim Dickinson 15 September 2015 (Rolling Stone) – In May this year, the nearly unthinkable happened in the Pacific Northwest: The rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula, one of the wettest places on the continent, caught fire. By August, an inferno was stirring in the forests east of the Cascades. A wind-whipped blaze near the […]
By Hilary Beaumont14 August 2015 (VICE News) – In only one week, the corpses of four humpback whales have been found along Canada’s west coast, fueling questions of whether their deaths are connected to a recent uptick of whale and other marine animal deaths in Alaskan waters. So far scientists don’t know what’s causing the […]
[This again. Looks like it will be an annual event, as the Arctic sea ice dwindles inexorably. – Des] By Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent27 August 2015 16.51 EDT (The Guardian) – The extreme loss of Arctic sea ice due to climate change is forcing thousands of walruses to crowd ashore on a remote barrier […]
1 September 2015 (NBC News) – As climate change threatens their way of life, natives in the Alaskan Arctic may soon be forced to leave their ancestral lands becoming some of the first climate refugees in the U.S. Arctic Villages Melting Away in Alaska Technorati Tags: Alaska,Arctic,coastal erosion,sea ice,global warming,climate change,North America,climate refugees
26 August 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – Here’s an update to last week’s post on wildfire data from the Western United States. Data from the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center (Fuels and Fire Danger [pdf]) show that Northwest wildfires continue to rage, with 200,000 acres (80,937 hectares) burned again this week – the Okanagan complex “remains the […]
18 August 2015 (ABC) – As wildfires continue to burn dozens of homes and force thousands of evacuations around the Pacific Northwest, NASA has released images illustrating the massive plumes of smoke and charred Earth that can be seen from space. Wildfires have burned around 7 million acres, according to NASA, which is 2 million […]
