By Ed Cara14 November 2015 (Medical Daily) – Americans are still getting fatter, a new CDC report finds. The battle of the bulge is still a losing one, according to a new report released this November by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The report, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics […]
11 November 2015 (Met Office) – Global annual average surface temperature in 2015 is looking set to reach 1°C above the pre-industrial average (as represented by the 1850-1900 reference period) for the first time, according to the HadCRUT4 dataset produced by the Met Office and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. […]
GENEVA, 9 November 2015 (WMO) – The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached yet another new record high in 2014, continuing a relentless rise which is fuelling climate change and will make the planet more dangerous and inhospitable for future generations. The World Meteorological Organization’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin says that between 1990 and […]
By Tom Phillips, with additional reporting by Luna Lin8 November 2015 BEIJING (The Guardian) – Residents of north-eastern China donned gas masks and locked themselves indoors on Sunday after their homes were enveloped by some of the worst levels of smog on record. Levels of PM2.5, a tiny airborne particulate linked to cancer and heart […]
[cf. Peak Coal in China? Not so fast –Des] By Tom Phillips, with additional reporting by Luna Lin 4 November 2015 (Beijing) – China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, has been dramatically underreporting the amount of coal it consumes each year, it has been claimed ahead of key climate talks in Paris. Official Chinese data, […]
By Hannah Waters8 October 2015 (Audobon) – The winter of 2011 was a bad one for seabirds nesting at Midway Atoll, a remote spread of islands in the central Pacific. First, two big storms, hit, in January and February, causing large waves to flood the islands. Then in March the islands were washed over by […]
By David F. Ruccio5 November 2015 (Real-World Economics Review) – We already knew that the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed over the past three decades. But the usual response was that they are gaming the system, claiming disabilities that “lend themselves to subjective manipulation” and being encouraged to do so by […]
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, 19 October 2015 (AFP) – International efforts to douse raging Indonesia fires will fail and Southeast Asia could face several more weeks of choking smoke until the rainy season starts, Malaysia’s environment minister warned on Monday, October 19. Facing growing pressure, Indonesia earlier this month agreed to accept international help after failing […]
By Chris Mooney 29 October 2015 (Washington Post) – A new scientific study says that rapidly warming waters off the New England coast have had a severe consequence — the collapse of a cod fishery that saw too many catches even as overall cod numbers declined due to warmer seas. It’s just the latest in […]
By David L. Chandler26 October 2015 (MIT News) – Within this century, parts of the Persian Gulf region could be hit with unprecedented events of deadly heat as a result of climate change, according to a study of high-resolution climate models. The research reveals details of a business-as-usual scenario for greenhouse gas emissions, but also […]