9 October 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – 2015 is likely to be among the worst years for forest fires on record. A lot of this destruction is caused by fires that are intentionally set to clear forests for agriculture. In Sumatra and southern Borneo, rainforest and peatlands are burned to make room for palm oil plantations. […]
By Damian Carrington 7 October 2015 (The Guardian) – Fires raging across the forests and peatlands of Indonesia are on track to pump out more carbon emissions than the UK’s entire annual output, Greenpeace has warned. As well as fuelling global warming, the thick smoke choking cities in the region is likely to cause the […]
By Olga Gertcyk11 September 2015 (The Siberian Times) – Buryatia has been hit in summer 2015 by the massive destruction of its pristine forests in a series of fast-spreading fires. Most shocking have been the scenes – pictured here – showing uncontrolled burning around Lake Baikal, the oldest and deepest lake in the world, containing […]
30 July 2015 (University of Utah) – In the virtual worlds of climate modeling, forests and other vegetation are assumed to bounce back quickly from extreme drought. But that assumption is far off the mark, according to a new study of drought impacts at forest sites worldwide. Living trees took an average of two to […]
By Lynn Jenner21 May 2015 (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) – The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite collected this natural-color image which detected dozens of fires burning in southwestern Africa on May 21, 2015. The location, widespread nature, and number of fires suggest that these fires were deliberately set to manage land. […]
By Katie Herzog 21 August 2015 (Grist) – Get ready, folks! The most magical time of year is almost upon us. That’s right: Burning Man. Lest you mistake me for a tech billionaire with a penchant for fuzzy boots, hula hoops, group showers, and dudes named Dusty Unicorn — au contraire. The reason I love […]
By Trevor Hughes14 August 2015 FAIRBANKS, Alaska (USA TODAY) – One of the state’s worst wildfire seasons in history has scorched 5 million acres of tundra and forests across Alaska, and experts here fear climate change will cause even more devastating fires through a combination of lower snowpack, drying tundra and melting permafrost. Like an […]
OAKLAND, CA, USA, 12 August 2015 (GFN) – In less than eight months, humanity has used up nature’s budget for the entire year, with carbon sequestration making up more than half of the demand on nature, according to data from Global Footprint Network, an international sustainability think tank with offices in North America, Europe and […]
13 June 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – Data show that growth of human carbon emissions in the modern era is pretty close to exponential (cf. “Graph of the Day: Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels, 1751-2013”). But what about carbon emissions per person? The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) maintains a database of fossil-fuel CO2 […]
17 February 2015 (BP) – Despite the dramatic recent weakening in global energy markets, ongoing economic expansion in Asia – particularly in China and India – will drive continued growth in the world’s demand for energy over the next 20 years. According to the new edition of the BP Energy Outlook 2035, global demand for […]
