Barack Obama swipes at Mitt Romney over climate change jibe

By Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent, www.guardian.co.uk 7 September 2012 Barack Obama chose the biggest night of his re-election campaign to acknowledge the dangers of climate change – and to take a swipe at Mitt Romney for turning global warming into a laugh line in his convention speech. Obama thrilled Democrats when he accepted his […]

With food scarce from drought, desperate animals enter towns – ‘Right now, they’d eat about anything’

By JACK HEALY6 September 2012 DENVER – People move to the mountains to be closer to nature. But not this close. At least two candy stores have been burglarized this summer by ravenous, drought-starved bears. They are being struck by cars as they roam dark highways, far from their normal foraging grounds. Growing numbers are […]

Crops in India wilt in a weak monsoon season

By VIKAS BAJAJ3 September 2012 MURUMA, India – Vilas Dinkar Mukane lives halfway around the world from the corn farmers of Iowa, but the Indian sharecropper is at risk of losing his livelihood for the same reason: not enough rain. With the nourishing downpours of the annual monsoon season down an average of 12 percent […]

Coastline erosion due to sea level rise greater than previously thought: new study

4 September 2012 (PhysOrg) – A new model allows researchers at UNESCO-IHE, Delft University of Technology and Deltares to much more accurately predict coastline erosion due to rising sea levels. It would appear that the effects of coastline erosion as a result of rising sea-level rise in the vicinity of inlets, such as river estuaries, […]

Natural disasters in North Korea trigger widespread food shortage – ‘Definitely people are dying. How many is the big question’

By Ben Blanchard, Reuters31 August 2012 North Korea could be heading toward a crisis similar to the 1990s when a million people are thought to have died after a series of natural disasters brought widespread famine, said an aid worker, just back from a tour of the impoverished state. North Korea has suffered heavy floods […]

Humor: Bill Nye on Christian conservatives: ‘I caused a hurricane by challenging creationism? Who can possibly take these people seriously anymore?’

[Note: This is satire.] 30 August 2012 (Daily Currant) – Bill Nye may still be The Science Guy, but he’s no longer Mr. Nice Guy. During a live interview this morning with the Smithsonian Channel, the mild mannered science educator unloaded on U.S. Congressman Todd Akin, calling him “a fucking idiot” for accusing Nye of […]

Graph of the Day: Cumulative mass balance for Himalaya glaciers, 1975-2010

Above, Cumulative mass balance for 11 glaciers in 2006–2010 (Supplementary Table S6 and Figs S3–S13). Below, Cumulative mass balance for the three longest time series of glacier mass-balance measurements along transect 1 (Supplementary Table S7 and Figs S14 and S15). ABSTRACT: The Tibetan Plateau and surroundings contain the largest number of glaciers outside the polar […]

British summer 2012 ‘wettest in 100 years’, Met Office figures show

30 August 2012 (BBC) – This summer is set to be the second wettest in the UK since records began – and the wettest summer in 100 years – provisional Met Office figures suggest. The wettest summer – defined as June, July and August – since national records began was in 1912. Figures up until […]

Image of the Day: Satellite view of glacier retreat on Puncak Jaya, 1989 and 2009

Glaciers on Puncak Jaya, 1989   Glaciers on Puncak Jaya, 2009 Caption by Adam Voiland, with information from Michael Prentice, Lonnie Thompson, and Andrew Klein 1 September 2012 Tropical and glacier don’t seem like words that belong in the same sentence. But mountain peaks near the equator in South America, Africa, and tropical Asia have […]

North Korea says Typhoon Bolaven ‘brought big damage’, left 48 dead, displaced more than 20,000

3 September 2012 (BBC) – Typhoon Bolaven has killed 48 people in North Korea and left more than 50 others injured or missing, state-run KCNA news agency reports. The typhoon “brought big damage” to North Korea and displaced more than 20,000 people, it said. Hundreds of trees were felled and power cut. The North was […]

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