US contact: Terese Rosenthal, Tel.: +1 609 243 4339 12 July 2011 An exceptional accumulation of very severe natural catastrophes makes 2011 the highest-ever loss year on record, even after the first half-year. Already, the approx. US$ 265bn in economic losses up to the end of June easily exceeds the total figure for 2005, previously […]
By EVAN SCHWARTEN30 July 2011 (AAP) – SOME day it’ll be one of those things old timers boast about to cyclone-wary newcomers. “You think this is bad? You should have seen Yasi,” they’ll say. But that kind of bravado is still some way off. Six months after experiencing the biggest cyclone in a century, the […]
By RACHEL TOUNE2 August 2011 MISSION Beach’s iconic Dunk and Bedarra Island resorts will be put up for sale after their owners announced they had abandoned attempts to rebuild following devastation suffered in Cyclone Yasi. Hideaway Resorts, the resorts’ parent company, said the extent of the damage made it unfeasible to attempt a complete refurbishment […]
ScienceDaily (July 14, 2011) — Dramatic climate swings behind both last year’s Pakistan flooding and this year’s Queensland floods in Australia are likely to continue as the world gets warmer, scientists predict. Researchers at the Universities of Oxford and Leeds have discovered that the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the sloshing of the warmest waters […]
By John Carey29 June 2011 Editor’s note: This article is the second of a three-part series by John Carey. Part 1, posted on June 28, is “Storm Warning: Extreme Weather Is a Product of Climate Change“. Part 3, “Our Extreme Future: Predicting and Coping with the Effects of a Changing Climate” was posted on June […]
By Peter Huck27 June 2011 This month, as the US reeled from some very nasty weather – floods in Mississippi, drought in Texas, tornadoes in the Midwest – the New York Times got right down to brass tacks: given damage to property, crops and lost business, how much would insurers have to fork out? Ten […]
BY TAKASHI SUGIMOTO, STAFF WRITER31 May 2011 Water levels in the basement of the No. 1 reactor building at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant increased dramatically on May 29 and 30, raising fears of radioactive water leaking from the site. The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), said the water level […]
By Dahr Jamil 02 Mar 2011 San Salvador – “We have a very clear position,” El Salvador’s Minister of Environment, Herman Chavez, told Al Jazeera at his office in San Salvador, the capital. “The President of El Salvador, last year on July 20th, in an extraordinary meeting of presidents that was convened here in San […]
By Stephanie Pappas25 March 2011 According to just over half of Americans, God is in control of everything that happens on Earth. But slightly fewer are willing to blame an omnipotent power for natural disasters such as Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. A new poll finds that 56 percent of Americans agree or mostly agree that […]
By JOHN M. BRODERMarch 10, 2011 A report commissioned by the United States Navy concludes that climate change will pose profound challenges for the sea service in coming decades, including a need to secure Arctic shipping lanes, prepare for more frequent humanitarian missions and protect coastal installations from rising seas. The 15-month study, conducted by […]
