White shrimp harvest down 80 percent in Gulf of Mexico

By Faimon A. Roberts, Advocate Florida Parishes bureau11 OCtober 2011 This year’s white shrimp harvest in the waters off Louisiana’s southeastern coast is significantly lower than in the past, forcing some people in the industry to look elsewhere for product and scale back operations while others blame the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. “I […]

Bleak future predicted for snow in Australian Alps

By David Wroe10 October 2011 AUSTRALIA’S ski slopes could be completely bare of natural winter snow by 2050 unless concerted action is taken against global warming, according to a government-commissioned report that paints a grim picture of the effects of climate change on alpine areas. The report, Caring For Our Australian Alps Catchments [pdf], has […]

Shellfish harvesters plagued by acidic ‘dead muds’

By Seth Koenig, BDN Staff7 October 2011 SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — They’re called dead muds. Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere combined with unregulated nitrogen pollution are having a deadly effect on Maine’s shellfish, some researchers say. Scientists are starting to measure the impact of increasingly acidic waters on coastal organisms, and what […]

2010 Amazon drought released more carbon than India’s annual emissions

October 9 (mongabay.com) – The 2010 drought that affected much of the Amazon rainforest triggered the release of nearly 500 million tons of carbon (1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide) into the atmosphere, or more than the total emissions from deforestation in the region over the period, estimates a new study published in the journal […]

Sewage dumped into oceans harms coral, new study reveals

By Jeff Kart, Bay City, Michigan9 October 2011 Elkhorn coral is endangered. And it’s being threatened by us, as in humans, and what we flush down the toilet. A recent study published in the journal PLoS One says that human sewage is largely responsible for a disease which is killing off elkhorn coral in Florida. […]

The Amazon rainforest dieback scenario

By JUSTIN GILLIS7 October 2011 In an article last weekend about rising stress in the world’s forests, I briefly mentioned that computer projections regarding the future of forests are still in a primitive state. Scientists cannot really say whether trees will continue to take up a big proportion of our carbon emissions through the rest […]

Graph of the Day: Age of Arctic Sea Ice, 1983-2011

Why did ice extent fall to a near record low without the sort of extreme weather conditions seen in 2007? One explanation is that the ice cover is thinner than it used to be; the melt season starts with more first-year ice (ice that formed the previous autumn and winter) and less of the generally […]

Climate change eradicating Arctic’s oldest ice – ‘What was once a refuge for older ice has become a graveyard’

By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News 5 October 2011 The Arctic’s oldest, thickest sea ice — much of which used to survive the year’s warmest months — had all but disappeared by the end of this summer’s near-record meltdown, according to new U.S. analyses that vividly show how the circumpolar region is being transformed by warmer […]

Empty nets, empty future in West Africa

By Hayley Baker 6 October 2011 We’ve been investigating overfishing in West African waters for a long time and our new report, Empty Nets, Empty Future shows, in a stark light, how the local fishing industry in West Africa is under threat. The report focuses on how millions of Senegalese people depend on the fish […]

Feds order Transocean to investigate oil floating above well responsible for Deepwater Horizon spill

By Ben Raines, Press-Register27 September 2011 MOBILE, Alabama — The U.S. Coast Guard announced Tuesday that it would require Transocean, owner of the drilling rig that exploded and unleashed the Gulf spill, to determine the source of the BP oil found floating above the wellhead. The announcement came one month after the Press-Register collected samples […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial