Photo gallery: Building toward disaster – Aerial photographs from 1933 to 2014 show how development contributed to deadliest landslide event in U.S. history

Reporters: Ken Armstrong, Justin Mayo, Mike Baker and Jim BrunnerInteractive: Thomas WilburnGraphics: Mark NowlinEditor: Beth KaimanJuly 2014 (Seattle Times) – The decades preceding the deadly landslide near Oso reflect a shifting landscape with one human constant: Even as warnings mounted, people kept moving in. This interactive graphic tells that story, starting in 1887. Thirteen aerial […]

Glaciologist: If we release a small fraction of Arctic carbon, ‘We’re fucked’

By Brian Merchant1 August 2014 (Vice) – This week, scientists made a disturbing discovery in the Arctic Ocean: They saw “vast methane plumes escaping from the seafloor,” as the Stockholm University put it in a release disclosing the observations. The plume of methane—a potent greenhouse gas that traps heat more powerfully than carbon dioxide, the […]

Scientists raise questions about the doomsday scenario that made one Pacific island leader spend millions on new land

By Christopher Pala21 August 2014 (The Atlantic) – Mikarite Temari, the mayor of Christmas Island, Kiribati’s largest atoll, rolled his eyes and shook his head as I read off my laptop in his office what his president, Anote Tong, had said during a visit to New York. “According to the science and the projections,” Tong, […]

Welcome to the Age of Denial – ‘Today, it is politically effective, and socially acceptable, to deny scientific fact’

By ADAM FRANK21 August 2013 ROCHESTER (The New York Times) – IN 1982, polls showed that 44 percent of Americans believed God had created human beings in their present form. Thirty years later, the fraction of the population who are creationists is 46 percent. In 1989, when “climate change” had just entered the public lexicon, […]

Greenland ice loss doubles from late 2000s – Greenland and Antarctica together are losing 500 cubic kilometers of ice each year – ‘To us, that’s an incredible number’

By Jonathan Amos20 August 2014  (BBC News) – A new assessment from Europe’s CryoSat spacecraft shows Greenland to be losing about 375 cu km of ice each year. Added to the discharges coming from Antarctica, it means Earth’s two big ice sheets are now dumping roughly 500 cu km of ice in the oceans annually. […]

Search and rescue effort underway on outskirts of Hiroshima city, after rain-soaked hillsides give way – Japan landslides have increased by 64 percent over previous decade

Tokyo, 20 August 2014 (Associated Press) – At least six people were confirmed dead and 22 were missing after rain-soaked hills in the outskirts of Hiroshima gave way early on Wednesday in several landslides. Video footage from the Japanese national broadcaster NHK showed suburban homes in the western Japanese city surrounded by streams of mud […]

Brendan Montague: I crashed a climate change denial conference in Las Vegas

By Brendan Montague 22 July 2014 (Vice) – I’ve been researching the climate denial industry for almost three years and the best way to gather information about this incredibly small yet influential clique is to hang out with them. I attended their 2012 conference of the Heartland Institute, an oil and tobacco funded free market […]

Global warming already having profound impacts on lakes in Europe – ‘Cyanobacteria like it hot, which is part of the reason why we’re seeing more toxic algae blooms’

By Lisa Borre 21 July 2014 (National Geographic) – For perspective on how climate change is affecting lakes, those of us here in the U.S. can just look across the pond, where scientists and the agencies involved in meeting the European Union’s Water Framework Directive have amassed an impressive body of research on the topic. […]

Graph of the Day: Mass balance of 30 reference glaciers, 1980-2012

By Mauri S. Pelto19 July 2014 (Glacier Cnange) – The World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) record of mass balance and terminus behavior (WGMS, 2013) provides a global index for alpine glacier behavior. Mass balance was -638 mm in 2012, negative for the 22nd consecutive year. Preliminary data for 2013 from Austria, Canada, Nepal, New Zealand, […]

16-foot waves measured in Arctic Ocean where once there was only ice

By Jane J. Lee30 July 2014 (National Geographic) – Sixteen-foot waves are buffeting an area of the Arctic Ocean that until recently was permanently covered in sea ice—another sign of a warming climate, scientists say. Because wave action breaks up sea ice, allowing more sunlight to warm the ocean, it can trigger a cycle that […]

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