2 September 2016 (UN) – The United Nations refugee agency today flagged that while the number of deaths of refugees seeking safety via the Turkey-Greece route into Europe has fallen dramatically, the use of the North Africa-Italy route has remained constant – with the latter experiencing an increase in the number of deaths, making 2016 […]
COLLEGE PARK, Maryland, 31 August 2016 (UMD) – Following the arrival of early agricultural crops from southwest Asia, ancient European societies experienced a series of population booms followed by a collapse that historical scientists are still working to explain. New research from the University of Maryland published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of […]
[Translation by Bing Translator.] 4 August 2016 (El Búho) – The situation is worrying in high altitude areas, due to enduring low temperatures. There are 300,000 hectares of natural pastures that have been damaged, which were intended to feed Alpaca livestock in these areas, and 18,735 head of cattle have died as a result of […]
By Jan Rocha29 August 2016 SÃO PAULO (Climate News Network) – China’s fast-rising population and its burgeoning economy make steep demands on natural resources, so steep that Beijing is searching constantly for supplies from overseas. And it wants to obtain them, naturally, as cheaply as it can. Now in prospect is China’s trans-Amazon railway – […]
By David McKenzie and Ingrid Formanek 31 August 2016 Linyanti Swamp, Botswana (CNN) – Scanning Botswana’s remote Linyanti swamp from the low flying chopper, elephant ecologist Mike Chase can’t hide the anxiety and dread as he sees what he has seen too many times before. “I don’t think anybody in the world has seen the number […]
By Dennis Thompson29 August 2016 (HealthDay News) – Pediatricians are encountering more parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated, mainly because they don’t see the point of vaccines, a U.S. survey found. In the survey, conducted in 2013, about 87 percent of pediatricians said they had encountered vaccine refusals, an increase from the 75 […]
By Timothy Brown23 August 2016 (Yale) – A new Yale-led study published in the journal Nature Communications sheds light on the surprising role that haze in China plays in promoting the urban heat island effect [UHI], a process whereby city centers tend to be significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas. Scientists have always suspected that […]
29 August 2016 (AFP) – The human impact on Earth’s chemistry and climate has cut short the 11,700-year-old geological epoch known as the Holocene and ushered in a new one, scientists said Monday. The Anthropocene, or “new age of man,” would start from the mid-20th century if their recommendation—submitted Monday to the International Geological Congress […]
[cf. Our leaders thought fracking would save our climate – ‘Methane emissions are substantially higher than we’ve understood’] By Zeke Hausfather23 August 2016 (Yale Climate Connections) – For the past century, coal has been king, providing the majority of U.S. energy for electricity generation. But a combination of new federal and state environmental policies and […]
By Andrew H. MacDougall22 August 2016 (Nature Geoscience) – Between 17,500 and 14,500 years ago, a period sometimes referred to as the Mystery Interval1, atmospheric CO2 concentrations began their post-glacial rise from about 190 ppm in glacial times to approximately 270 ppm by the beginning of the Holocene. The rise in CO2 during the Mystery […]