By Rhett A. Butler10 April 2014 (mongabay.com) – Forest clearing within areas zoned for timber, logging, oil palm, and mining accounted for nearly 45 percent of deforestation in Indonesia between 2000 and 2010, finds a new study that examined forest loss within industrial concessions. The research, published in the journal Conservation Letters, used a combination […]
Estimated annual offtake rates for Friday/Sunday bushmeat market days at the Daobly market in the Ivorian town of Taï along the Cavally River. The annual offtake was calculated by doubling the average of the observed Friday offtake, and doubling again to account for the similar volume of primates traded at Sunday markets. This value was […]
By CJ Werleman9 April 2014 (AlterNet) – If America needed a reminder that it is fast becoming a second-rate nation, and that every economic policy of the Republican Party is wrongheaded, it got one this week with the release of the Social Progress Index (SPI). Harvard business professor Michael E. Porter, who earlier developed the […]
By Jeff Spross 9 April 2014 (Climate Progress) – USDA choice-grade beef hit a record $5.28 in February, according to the LA Times, and drought is the culprit. Years of sometimes record-setting dry spells have punished the western and southern United States recently, cutting down crops like hay and corn that serve as cattle feed. […]
3 April 2014 (FAO) – The FAO Food Price Index is a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities. It consists of the average of five commodity group price indices, weighted with the average export shares of each of the groups for 2002-2004. » The FAO Food Price […]
By Joe Romm 9 April 2014 (Climate Progress) – The good news is the video of episode one of Showtime’s climate series, Years Of Living Dangerously, has been getting great reviews in The New York Times and elsewhere. The bad news is the Times has published an error-riddled hit-job op-ed on the series that is […]
Geneva, 24 March 2014 (WMO) – Preliminary analyses indicate that the global average sea level reached a new record high in March. Some regions of the globe are experiencing greater sea-level rise than others (some are even experiencing declining sea levels) due to local variations in currents, land movements and ocean warming. The region of […]
By Ashley Yeager 31 March 2014 (Science News) – About 252 million years ago an estimated 96 percent of all species were wiped from Earth, and now scientists have a new suspect in the killing — methane-belching microbes. The archaea Methanosarcina got faster at making methane by acquiring a gene from another microbe and […]
30 March 2014 (IPCC) – The Final Draft Report, dated 28 October 2013, of the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability was accepted but not approved in detail by the 10th Session of Working Group II and the 38th Session of the IPCC on […]
Geneva, 24 March 2014 (WMO) – Temperatures in South America were dominated by hot conditions in most parts of the continent, except for some limited areas in southern Brazil and the north-central and western parts of South America, which had near to colder than average temperatures. A warm October–December period – including the hottest December […]
