By Ken Caldeira25 January 2016 (Technology Review) – Many years ago, I protested at the gates of a nuclear power plant. For a long time, I believed it would be easy to get energy from biomass, wind, and solar. Small is beautiful. Distributed power, not centralized. I wish I could still believe that. My thinking […]
By Sam Jones1 December 2015 Tonlé Sap lake (Guardian) – Out past the floating villages, the daytrippers and the mangrove arcades, the brown waters of the Tahas river open into a vast, dull green lake fringed by forest and a seemingly endless horizon. Silhouetted by a sinking afternoon sun, distant figures fish from small boats […]
By Ari Daniel24 January 2016 (PRI) – The breakfast on the edge of Greenland’s massive ice sheet is ordinary — granola, yogurt, bread and jam. Everything else here is anything but. “You’d pay a million bucks for a view like this,” says Gordon Hamilton, from the University of Maine by way of Scotland. “Pretty nice […]
By Judith Magyar22 January 2016 (SAP Community Network) – Emerging technologies such as 3D printing and genetic engineering offer a lot of promise, but can also be double-edged swords. They can help make our lives easier, safer and healthier, but there is also potential to build weapons or dangerously modify organisms. Developments like these raise […]
By Eric Roston22 January 2016 (Bloomberg) – As chairman of investments at Guggenheim Partners, Scott Minerd thought he had a realistic view on how big an economic challenge climate change poses. Then, at a Hoover Institution conference almost three years ago, he met former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz. Minerd recalled him saying: “Scott, […]
By Andrew Freedman and Megan Specia23 January 2016 (Mashable) – This blizzard has another hazard besides the snow, sleet and strong winds its bringing to the East Coast: flooding. The storm is pounding the New Jersey and Delaware shorelines with 22-foot waves and a 3 to 5-foot storm surge that sent water levels to all-time […]
5 January 2016 (The Siberian Times) – Average temperatures in the north of the Kara and Barents seas were 4C to 5C higher than previous years. This startling increase comes as meteorologists say the negative consequences of this warning can be measured directly, with a rapid rise in deadly and destructive wild fires, for example. […]
By Carlos Valdez, with additional reporting by Frank Bajak21 January 2016 UNTAVI, Bolivia (AP) – Overturned fishing skiffs lie abandoned on the shores of what was Bolivia’s second-largest lake. Beetles dine on bird carcasses and gulls fight for scraps under a glaring sun in what marshes remain. Lake Poopo was officially declared evaporated last month. […]
By Lucy Nicholson, with additional reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Alistair Bell20 January 2016 (Reuters) – Air quality regulators, meeting for the third time this month to address a huge natural gas leak that has forced thousands of Los Angeles residents from their homes, delayed action again on Wednesday on a proposal to curtail […]
20 January 2016 (NASA) – Earth’s 2015 surface temperatures were the warmest since modern record keeping began in 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Globally-averaged temperatures in 2015 shattered the previous mark set in 2014 by 0.23 degrees Fahrenheit (0.13 Celsius). Only once before, in […]
