By Robin McKie 11 February 2017 (The Observer) – Physicist Steven Desch has come up with a novel solution to the problems that now beset the Arctic. He and a team of colleagues from Arizona State University want to replenish the region’s shrinking sea ice – by building 10 million wind-powered pumps over the Arctic […]
10 February 2017 (Stockholm Resilience Centre) – A paper recently published in the journal The Anthropocene Review puts the current rate of change of Earth’s life support system in the context of the last 4-billion-year evolution of the biosphere. The paper, which is written by the centre’s Owen Gaffney and senior research fellow Will Steffen, […]
By Anna M. Phillips, Matt Hamilton, Paige St. John, and Chris Megerian12 February 2017 (Los Angeles Times) – Residents of Oroville and nearby towns were ordered to immediately evacuate on Sunday afternoon after a “hazardous situation” developed involving an emergency spillway at the Oroville Dam. The National Weather Service said the auxiliary spillway at the […]
By Valerie Volcovici2 February 2017 (Reuters) – Scientists may steal a page from the oil industry’s playbook to stop President Donald Trump rewriting the U.S. position on climate change, by relying on an obscure law meant to ensure federal agencies present accurate information. The 2001 Information Quality Act, passed under Republican President George W. Bush, […]
By Charles P. Pierce8 February 2017 WASHINGTON (Esquire) – The House of Representatives organized its committees on Tuesday, setting up the ground rules for the real mischief to come. One of these committees is the ironically named House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, and it is chaired by one Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas. […]
By Rafi Letzter9 February 2017 (Business Insider) – […] Every step climate scientists take happens under the scrutiny of a well-funded peanut gallery of professional science deniers, anti-science politicians, and agenda-driven writers eager to spin any misstep into evidence of a vast conspiracy. This happened back in 2009, when several climate scientists found their names […]
By Pola Lem1 February 2017 (NASA) – Wildfires continued to ravage Chile’s countryside in early February 2017, weeks after they flared up in mid-January. The blazes have thwarted firefighters’ efforts to control them, with new hot spots emerging daily. Satellite data and scientific analysis suggest the fires are among the worst the country has seen […]
7 February 2017 (The Siberian Times) – A small motorboat stalks a herd of reindeer as they cross the Khatanga River in the far north of Siberia. In a barbaric act, poachers use axes and cleavers to cut the antlers from the helpless animals as they swim in the cold Arctic waters. Often, the frontal […]
By Maad al-Zikry, Maggie Michael, and Ahmed al-Haj28 January 2017 ADEN, Yemen (Associated Press) – After reaching Yemen’s shores in a packed migrant boat, the young Ethiopian coffee farmer was plunged into a living hell. The smugglers wanted thousands of dollars in ransom from the migrants, and they used him as an example of what […]
By Gavin Schmidt9 February 2017 (RealClimate) – I have mostly been sitting back and watching the John Bates story go through the predictable news-cycle of almost all supposed ‘scandalous’ science stories. The patterns are very familiar – an initial claim of imperfection spiced up with insinuations of misconduct, coordination with a breathless hyping of the […]
