“Freak” dust storms in northern India kill at least 100 people – “Dust storms are usually not this intense nor do these systems cover such a large area”

By Michael Safi 3 May 2018 DELHI (The Guardian) – Severe dust storms across northern India have killed more than 100 people, destroyed homes and left hundreds without electricity.Billowing clouds of thick dust and sand frequently blow across the region during the dry season, but the death toll from this week’s storms has been unusually […]

Global warming will hit poorer countries first – “Population expansion will place more people in locations where emergent changes to future heat extremes are exceptionally severe”

By Quirin Schiermeier 20 April 2018 (Nature) – Nations such as Bangladesh and Egypt have long known that they will suffer more from climate change than will richer countries, but now researchers have devised a stark way to quantify the inequalities of future threats. A map of “equivalent impacts”, revealed at the annual meeting of […]

Graph of the Day: Transformation of the biosphere over 8000 years

12 September 2017 (UNCCD) – There is broad evidence to suggest that direct human alteration of terrestrial ecosystems by hunting, foraging, land clearing, agriculture, and other activities started about 12,000 years ago. Sometimes referred to as the “Neolithic Revolution,” agriculture slowly began to transform societies and the way in which people lived; traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles […]

Why have we done so little to tackle climate change? “In the end I did nothing just the same. And the same went for most everyone I knew.”

By Meara Sharma 6 April 2018 (The Washington Post) – A decade ago, the environmental philosopher Timothy Morton invented a new word: hyperobject. It describes something so “massively distributed in time and space relative to humans” that it eludes our understanding. The best example of a hyperobject is climate change. Its scale confounds our perception. […]

China is massively betting on coal outside its borders, even as investment falls globally

By Huileng Tan 6 April 2018 (CNBC) – Once globally vilified for extensive air pollution due to heavy coal usage, China now talks a big game about its environmental efforts after the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate pact.But, beyond its borders, the country has been the world’s biggest investor in coal power.”Chinese banks’ and […]

Blackout in Puerto Rico is now the second largest on record worldwide

12 April 2018 (Rhodium Group) – Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico more than six months ago, devastating the island’s economy and the electrical grid. Efforts to restore full electricity service continue. As of the beginning of this week, more than 100,000 Puerto Ricans were still without power. What was already the largest blackout […]

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry says moving from fossil fuels to renewables is “immoral”

By Joe Romm 8 March 2018 (ThinkProgress) – Energy Secretary Rick Perry said on Wednesday that it was “immoral” to help poor nations shift off of fossil fuels.“Look those people in the eyes that are starving and tell them you can’t have electricity,” said Perry in remarks after his big speech to the oil and […]

Summer arrives early in India, weather bureau forecasts intense heat in 2018 – “The maximum and minimum temperatures in February were about 3 degrees C above normal”

By Rinchen Norbu Wangchuk 1 March 2018 (The Better India) – Even though the month of March has just begun, parts of this country are already experiencing a taste of what promises to be a scorching summer. On Wednesday, the Indian Meteorological Department warned the districts of Raigad, Ratnagiri, and Mumbai in Maharashtra that the […]

India’s air pollution crisis risks becoming humanitarian catastrophe

By Siobhan Heanue 23 Feb 2018 (ABC News) – Before heading off on a foreign assignment, journalists take a course about working in hostile environments — learning about things like trauma first aid, weapons effects, and how to survive earthquakes, floods, and civil unrest.It’s all pretty useful training. And heading off to live and work […]

Tropical forest fragmentation nearing “critical point”, study finds – “Near the critical point, dramatic effects are to be expected even in the case of relatively minor deforestation”

14 February 2018 (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research) – Tropical forests around the world play a key role in the global carbon cycle and harbour more than half of the species worldwide. However, increases in land use during the past decades caused unprecedented losses of tropical forest. Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research […]

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