Nevada’s Lake Mead hits record low water level after 14 years of severe drought

By Victoria Cavaliere; Editing by Sandra Maler24 April 2015 (Reuters) – Nevada’s Lake Mead, the largest capacity reservoir in the United States, is on track to drop to its lowest water level in recorded history on Sunday as its source, the Colorado River, suffers from 14 years of severe drought, experts said on Friday. The […]

California drought drives an ‘explosive,’ longer wildfire season – ‘Since 2000 we’ve been seeing larger and more damaging fires’

By Linda Carroll25 April 2015 (NBC News) – There was a time when fire season in California started around May and went through September. Now, thanks to a drought that’s stretching into its fourth year, the state seems to have become a year-round tinderbox. The long running drought has “created explosive fire conditions,” said Mike […]

Scientists convinced of tie between earthquakes and drilling – ‘The picture is very clear’

By Alicia Chang, Tim Talley, Donna Bryson, and Jon Fahey23 April 2015 LOS ANGELES (AP) – With the evidence coming in from one study after another, scientists are now more certain than ever that oil and gas drilling is causing hundreds upon hundreds of earthquakes across the U.S. So far, the quakes have been mostly […]

Gallup poll: Conservative Republicans alone on timing of global warming – 40 percent say global warming will never happen

By Andrew Dugan22 April 2015 WASHINGTON, D.C. (Gallup) – While notable majorities of all other political party/ideology groups say the effects of global warming will happen within their lifetime, fewer than four in 10 conservative Republicans (37%) agree, a sign of that political identity’s strident skepticism on this issue. Conservative Republicans not only decisively reject […]

Image of the Day: Satellite view of Siberia smoke crossing the Pacific Ocean to North America, 18 April 2015

By Adam Voiland18 April 2015 (NASA) – In a reminder of the interconnectedenss of our atmosphere, smoke that originated in Siberia had reached the West Coast of North America when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) captured this image on April 18, 2015. The smoke likely came from wildfires burning in the steppe of southern […]

Smoke from massive Siberia wildfires turns sunsets fiery red in U.S. Pacific Northwest

By Scott Sistek   19 Apr 2015 (KOMO News) – The scenes have almost felt like they’re out of Hollywood imagination — brilliant red sunrises and sunsets the last couple of days around Western Washington. Why so red? It’s a byproduct of the massive wildfires that recently burned a large area in Siberia. The atmospheric winds […]

Parts of San Joaquin Valley sinking a foot per year as farmers deplete groundwater – Water level in underground aquifer near town of Stratford has dropped eighty feet in three years

18 April 2015 (NBC News) – Tony Azevedo’s a third-generation farmer in California’s Central Valley. For decades, his family has grown cantaloupes. This year, he won’t — and he’ll leave a third of his 11,500-acre farm fallow. “This field would have been cantaloupes, had we had the water,” he explained, pointing to some of his […]

Climate censorship gains steam in Republican-controlled states – ‘This is a situation that George Orwell would have recognized’

By Katherine Bagley16 April 2015 (Tribune News Service) – While plenty of people found humor in the recent news that officials in Florida and Wisconsin are censoring state workers’ ability to talk about, much less work on, climate change, other states are not necessarily laughing. In fact, several political and environmental experts told InsideClimate News […]

A guide to California’s water crisis – and why it’s so hard to fix

By Brad Plumer 10 April 2015 (Vox) – California saw this drought coming. Even if people in the state didn’t know it would be this bad — now the worst in recorded history — they’ve known that dry years are inevitable and had all sorts of ideas for how to deal with them. But for […]

Pacific sardine industry shutdown as species collapses – ‘The population isn’t replacing itself’

By Kelly House10 April 2015 (The Oregonian) – Updated at 6:55 p.m. on 13 April 2015: The council has canceled the upcoming season. Pacific coast sardines are facing a population collapse so severe that Oregon’s multimillion-dollar sardine industry almost certainly will be shut down this summer. Anticipating fishermen will pursue anchovies instead, ocean conservationists are […]

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