Climate change eradicating Arctic’s oldest ice – ‘What was once a refuge for older ice has become a graveyard’

By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News 5 October 2011 The Arctic’s oldest, thickest sea ice — much of which used to survive the year’s warmest months — had all but disappeared by the end of this summer’s near-record meltdown, according to new U.S. analyses that vividly show how the circumpolar region is being transformed by warmer […]

Arctic ice shelves have lost half of their size in six years

By IAN AUSTEN28 September 2011 Canada’s Arctic ice shelves, formations that date back thousands of years, have been almost halved in size over the last six years, Canadian researchers said on Tuesday. Researchers at Carleton University in Ottawa, who regularly analyze satellite images from the region, also found that a major portion of the ice […]

Editorial: Oil spill in the Gulf was slow-motion suicide in rush for more

By Bill Cato, Special to The Birmingham News 18 September 2011 […] We punched a hole in the Earth, and poison gushed from it. The fine folks at BP droned on about caps, junk shots and relief wells. They told us they were responsible and they would fix this problem. They bought full-page advertisements in […]

Native New England cottontail rabbits disappearing

By Zach Howard; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Barbara Goldberg17 September 2011 CONWAY, Massachusetts (Reuters) – The New England cottontail rabbit, in sharp decline for decades throughout the Northeast, is on the verge of disappearing from several states, with the reason somewhat a mystery, wildlife experts say. The once-prolific breeder, already no longer found in […]

Scientists rescuing minnows from Texas river as drought threatens their ability to reproduce

FORT WORTH, Texas, September 16 (AP) — Wading through a muddy river bed to reach shallow pools of water, wildlife biologists scooped up hundreds of minnows Friday in one of the first rescues of fish threatened by the state’s worst drought in decades. The scientists collected smalleye shiners and sharpnose shiners from the Brazos River […]

Report: BP made ‘critical mistakes’ leading to Deepwater Horizon oil spill

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 14 (AP) — A key federal report into what caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history was being readied for release as early as today amid revelations that BP made critical mistakes on the well and failed to tell its partners and the U.S. government when it realized it. An […]

Rare joy as endangered mahogany glider survives Cyclone Yasi to become mother

By Brian Williams, The Courier-Mail13 September 2011 HERE’S evidence you do not have to be big and tough to survive everything Mother Nature can throw at you. This endangered mahogany glider survived February’s devastating Cyclone Yasi at Cardwell in north Queensland. With little cover in her tree-top home, she made it through weeks of rain […]

Big damage in Papua New Guinea: New film documents how industrial logging destroys lives

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com August 29, 2011 In one scene a young man, perhaps not long ago a boy, named Douglas stands shirtless and in shorts as he runs a chainsaw into a massive tropical tree. Prior to this we have already heard from an official how employees operating chainsaws must have a bevy of […]

Graph of the Day: Change in Ocean pH, Preindustrial–2100 CE

The pH of ocean waters has decreased by about 0.1 since preindustrial times. Each tenth of a pH point represents a tenfold change in acidity. Living corals begin to die off in acidic waters, and the calcium carbonate shells of mollusks, including some commercial shellfish, become weak, resulting in higher rates of mortality. Thirsty for […]

Polar bear shot dead by BP guard in Alaska

By Richard Hall27 August 2011 British Petroleum has again drawn the ire of environmentalists after a security guard at one of its Alaskan oil fields shot dead a polar bear, an animal listed as threatened with extinction. A BP spokesman said the security guard shot the bear on 3 August after it approached employee housing. […]

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