By Raveena Aulakh 16 February 2013 (Toronto Star) – Masud, 19, lives in Korail, Dhaka’s largest slum. Its roughly 70,000 residents dwell in the shadow of the affluent Gulshan neighbourhood, with its mansions, restaurants, and western-style shopping centres. Masud, her husband Mohammed, and their year-old daughter Karima share a one-room shanty that can be crossed […]
By MATT SIEGEL4 March 2013 SYDNEY, Australia (The New York Times) – Climate change was a major driving force behind a string of extreme weather events that alternately scorched and soaked large sections of Australia in recent months, according to a report [pdf] issued Monday by the government’s Climate Commission. A four-month heat wave during […]
By Roger Harrabin, Environment analyst3 March 2013 (BBC) – Britain must become more resilient to both drought and flooding, Environment Agency chairman Chris Smith has said. New figures from the agency show that one in every five days saw flooding in 2012, but one in four days saw drought. Rivers such as the Tyne, Ouse, […]
By Christopher Joyce 22 February 2013 (NPR) – Since the drubbing that Superstorm Sandy gave the Northeast in November, there’s a new sense of urgency in U.S. coastal cities. Even though scientists can’t predict the next big hurricane, they’re confident that a warmer climate is likely to make Atlantic storms bigger and cause more flooding. […]
By Rick Jervis 23 February 2013 LEEVILLE, Louisiana (USA Today) – At the 85th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, an independent Louisiana-shot film, Beasts of the Southern Wild, will be up for four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, for its fictional account of a desolate band of folks living beyond the levees. Nearly […]
By Peter Hannam, Carbon economy editor18 February 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – Australia has been re-rated on international reinsurance markets after another summer of flooding and extreme weather raised the country’s peril profile, said Insurance Council of Australia chief executive Rob Whelan. As a result of the re-rating, Australian insurers have to pay more for […]
By Peter Hannam, carbon economy editor17 February 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – Thousands of Australians are facing soaring insurance premiums for flood cover, forcing many to ditch protection even as the risk of extreme weather increases. Insurers blame the increases on the spate of flooding across much of eastern Australia in recent years – with […]
By Philip Bump8 February 2013 (Grist) – “We live in a world in which the climate is changing.” This statement from the EPA, the first line in its draft “Climate Change Adaptation Plan” [PDF] released today, is basic. But that the EPA is saying it is important. For two reasons. The first is that the […]
By Coral Davenport7 February 2013 NORFOLK, Virginia (National Journal) – Jimmy Strickland can tell you exactly how much money rising sea levels have cost his business. In 1989, he opened his accounting firm in a one-story brick building near Norfolk’s historic cobblestoned Hague district, which surrounds one of this low-lying city’s many tidal rivers. Dressed […]
By Tim Wall4 February 2013 (Discovery News) – Don’t let the drought in the U.S. fool you, intense rainfall around the world has been causing deadly floods in the past few years. Several have died in the current flooding in Queensland, Australia. In July 2012, the heaviest rain in decades left 37 dead in Beijing, […]
