By Stefan Nicola and Tino Andresen20 August 2012 Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government says RWE AG’s new power plant that can supply 3.4 million homes aids her plan to exit nuclear energy and switch to cleaner forms of generation. It’s fired with coal. The startup of the 2,200-megawatt station near Cologne last week shows how Europe’s […]
[Indeed; we could be headed for something much worse. –Des] By Chuck Raasch, USA TODAY19 August 2012 The severe drought that has hit the Farm Belt does not immediately threaten to create another Dust Bowl or widespread crop failure, thanks to rapid innovations in the past 20 years in seed quality, planting practices and farming […]
Caption by Michon Scott19 August 2012 Intense wildfires in California and Idaho sent smoke eastward across the United States in mid-August 2012. Smoke affected air quality as far away as the Great Lakes Region, and some of the thickest smoke stretched from the Dakotas to Texas. Wildfire smoke is a combination of gases and aerosols—tiny […]
OMAHA, Nebraska, 19 August 2012 (AP) – It’s hard to tell what frustrates Todd Eggerling more – the weather or Congress. Searing temperatures and drought scorched Eggerling’s land in southeast Nebraska, leaving little grass to feed his 100 cattle. Then Congress left for a five-week break without agreeing on aid to help ranchers through one […]
Caption by Mike Carlowicz17 August 2012 July 2012 was the hottest month on record for the contiguous (lower 48) United States, according to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It turns out that the month was pretty warm globally as well, lining up as the fourth warmest […]
By Alister Doyle17 August 2012 Downpours and heat waves caused by climate change could disrupt food supplies from the fields to the supermarkets, raising the risk of more price spikes such as this year’s leap triggered by drought in the United States. Food security experts working on a chapter in a U.N. overview of global […]
By Jeremy Hsu, InnovationNewsDaily Senior Writer, LiveScience.com 14 August 2012 Rising seas threaten to drown island countries such as the Maldives and Kiribati in the era of global warming — a dire scenario that has forced leaders to plan for floating cities or consider moving their entire populations to neighboring countries. Most countries won’t need […]
By Maria-José Viñas, NASA Earth Science News Team 9 August 2012 An unusually strong storm formed off the coast of Alaska on August 5 and tracked into the center of the Arctic Ocean, where it slowly dissipated over the next several days. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color […]
NANNING, 18 August 2012 (Xinhua) – Typhoon Kai-Tak had affected more than 1.26 million people in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, leaving one dead and two missing, local authorities said Saturday. As of 4:30 p.m., 1.2615 million people had been reported affected in 26 counties of six cities, and 68,600 people had been relocated […]
By Farron Cousins13 August 12 With the selection of Wisconsin Republican Representative Paul Ryan has his running mate, Mitt Romney has effectively pushed his campaign into the climate change denying fringe. While Romney hasn’t been considered a friend of the environment since he began running for national office, his tendency towards flip-flopping made some of […]
