By Scott Thill8 August 2011 Mass extinction is finally fighting its way back into the news cycle, thanks to recent scary reports on climate change from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean, the United Nations Environment Program and the July issue of Science. But University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward has been […]
CHAUVIN, Louisiana, August 5, 2011 (ENS) – This year’s dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is roughly equal to the land area of the state of New Jersey, scientists said this week. At 6,765 square miles, this area of low oxygen is the 10th largest on record and is considered about average for the […]
By Darryl Fears24 July 2011 A giant underwater “dead zone” in the Chesapeake Bay is growing at an alarming rate because of unusually high nutrient pollution levels this year, according to Virginia and Maryland officials. They said the expanding area of oxygen-starved water is on track to become the bay’s largest ever. This year’s Chesapeake […]
Almost 200 square miles (500 square kilometers) of the Yellow Sea off China are covered by a massive bloom of green algae, according to a report from China’s Xinhua news service. The bloom has spread to almost 7,400 square miles (19,050 square kilometers) in total and is expected to grow, Xinhua reported, citing the North […]
By Fred Pearce7 Jul 2011 If you wanted to really mess with the world’s food production, a good place to start would be Bou Craa, located in the desert miles from anywhere in the Western Sahara. They don’t grow much here, but Bou Craa is a mine containing one of the world’s largest reserves of […]
By Chris Morris, Times & Transcript Staff2 July 2011 Derek Hatfield has always known about the loneliness of the long-distance sailor, but he’s never felt as alone as he does these days when racing over the vast, empty expanses of our dying oceans. Hatfield recently completed his second successful race around the world, sprinting to […]
By Stephen Lacey1 July 2011 Irony can be so ironic. A day after cancelling his keynote address at the Heartland climate denial conference because he felt “under the weather,” Republican Senator Jim Inhofe today insisted his sickness was due to a toxic algae bloom on the Grand Lake in Oklahoma where he has a home […]
LONDON, UK, June 21, 2011 (ENS) – The oceans are at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history, a panel of international marine experts warns in a report released today [pdf]. A deadly trio of factors – warming, acidification and lack of oxygen – is creating the […]
By Jonathan Watts3 June 2011 The Chinese government issued its annual “State of the Environment” report on Friday. Here are the highlights along with my interpretation and year-end grade for each subject based on the following standard: A – World classB – GoodC – PassableD – Poor but showing signs of improvementE – Poor and […]
By JUSTIN GILLIS4 June 2011 On a warming planet, humanity faces a great challenge in feeding itself at reasonable cost in the coming century, as I explain in Sunday’s paper. An issue I raise only in passing in the article is that agriculture itself is one of the earth’s greatest environmental threats. To put a […]
