By Nicholas St. Fleur14 September 2015 (The New York Times) – The snow that blanketed the Sierra Nevada in California last winter, and that was supposed to serve as an essential source of fresh water for the drought-stricken state, was at its lowest levels in the last 500 years, according to a new study. The […]
2 September 2015 (CU-Boulder) – The longest and largest controlled burn experiment ever conducted in the Amazon rainforest has yielded new insight into the ways that tropical forests succumb to—and bounce back from—large-scale wildfires, according to new research co-authored by a University of Colorado Boulder professor. The findings, which were published today in the journal […]
By Veronica Rocha, Paige St. John, Frank Shyong, and Hailey Branson-Potts22 September 2015 SACRAMENTO, California (Los Angeles Times) – As firefighters continued to advance on the deadly wildfires in Northern California, President Barack Obama declared a major disaster for the Valley fire. The move frees up federal assistance for home repairs, replacements and other aid. […]
By Adam Voiland13 September 2015 (NASA) – Russians normally flock to the shores of Lake Baikal during the summer to camp and enjoy spectacular views of the world’s deepest freshwater lake. In summer 2015, such views were frequently obscured by smoke. For months, fires have raged around the lake, inspiring observers to use words like […]
By Harry Davies17 September 2015 (The Guardian) – Environmentalists have criticised a decision to appoint a former consultant to major oil and gas companies as David Cameron’s key adviser on energy and environment policy. Stephen Heidari-Robinson, a little-known consultant from oilfield services company Schlumberger, arrives in Downing Street just months before the prime minister is […]
[Translation by Bing.] By André Martins 14 September 2015 (O Globo) – The drought, the worst in a century in the São Francisco River, affects the lives of Brazilians of all ages and backgrounds who live in cities or villages bordering the river. The problems range from difficulty in taking care of the Earth up […]
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 […]
[cf. Starving polar bears observed killing and eating dolphins that were forced north by global warming and Status of polar bear populations for 2014. As of the beginning of 2015, the Polar Bear Specialist Group lists the Barents Sea population as “data deficient”, so the status of this population officially is unknown. –Des] By Lorenzo […]
By Sophia Tesfaye18 September 2015 (Salon) – Arizona Republican Congressman Paul Gosar, describing himself as a “a proud Catholic” took to the conservative website Townhall to lecture Pope Francis and announce his planned boycott of his historic papal visit to Congress next week. Calling it his “moral obligation” to call out Catholic leaders who […]
20 September 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – Here’s an update to last month’s post on wildfire data from the Western United States. Data from the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center (Fuels and Fire Danger [pdf]) show that the area burned by wildfires in the Northwest is well above average, and a spike in the number of wildfires […]
