Tea Party blocks pact to restore a U.S. West Coast river

By WILLIAM YARDLEY18 July 2012 KLAMATH FALLS, Oregon – Almost since the Bureau of Reclamation first began plumbing the Klamath River in 1906, creating a vast and fertile farming region out of arid southeastern Oregon and northeastern California, people have fought over what the river provides: water for farming, water to preserve one of the […]

Corn-crop damage from U.S. drought poised to worsen

By David Wilson19 July 2012 Corn is due for more damage from a drought that has produced the worst U.S. growing conditions in almost a quarter century, according to David Driscoll, a Citigroup Inc. analyst. The CHART OF THE DAY displays the percentage of the corn crop in good to excellent condition, according to data […]

Graph of the Day: Satellite View of Crop Damage in Midwest U.S. Caused by Drought, 10 July 2012

Caption by Adam Voiland17 July 2012 Farmers across the United States hoped for rain in July 2012 as a drought of historic proportions parched key commodity crops, including corn, soybeans, and wheat. On July 11, the United States Department of Agriculture announced that more than 1,000 counties in 26 states qualified as natural disaster areas—the […]

U.S. drought of 2012 rivals Dust Bowl

By Nick Wiltgen16 July 2012 The 2012 drought disaster is now the largest in over 50 years, and among the ten largest of the past century, according to a new report released by the National Climatic Data Center today. As The Weather Channel reported in an exclusive preview of the report Sunday, data computed from […]

Third landslide hits Kootenays

By C. Reynolds, creynolds@vancouversun.com 18 July 2012 Heavy rains caused mudslides and severe flooding in the West Kootenays on Tuesday, leading to evacuations and the temporary closure of Highway 3A in both directions just north of Castlegar. Set off by a thunderstorm, the slides occurred in the hamlet of Thrums late Tuesday afternoon. Mud, water […]

Midwest U.S. ranchers cull cattle as drought shrivels crops, pasture – No relief for weeks – ‘I have never seen anything like this’

By Carey Gillam, with additional reporting by Michael Hirtzer and Karl Plume in Chicago; Editing by K.T. Arasu, John Picinich, and Sofina Mirza-Reid13 July 2012 CENTERVILLE, Iowa (Reuters) – Ranchers are rushing to sell off some of their cattle as the worst drought in nearly 25 years dries up pastures, thins hay supplies, and sends […]

‘Peak oil’ a certainty, just as was ‘peak cod’

By PETER ALLEN 18 July 2012 Paul Schneidereit’s July 10 column “Humans’ love affair with fossil fuels won’t end anytime soon” slammed soothsayers who supposedly predicted doom because we would run out of oil. One such soothsayer was King Hubbert, a geophysicist who worked for Shell Oil and the U.S. Geological Survey. In 1956, he […]

Graph of the Day: Years to Recover U.S. Employment Rate to Pre-2008 Level

Each month, The Hamilton Project examines the “jobs gap,” which is the number of jobs that the U.S. economy needs to create in order to return to pre-recession employment levels while also absorbing the people who enter the labor force each month. This chart shows how the jobs gap has evolved since the start of […]

Study finds multiple stressors killed Northern Gulf of Mexico bottlenose dolphins in 2011

By LESLIE KAUFMAN20 July 2012 Unusually cold water in the Gulf of Mexico combined with damage to the food web from the BP oil spill probably caused the premature deaths of hundreds of dolphins in the region, a new report concludes. The study, published in the journal PLoS One, suggests that a perfect storm of […]

U.S. drought could go through October – ‘We don’t have a reason for saying it’s going to improve’

By Deborah Zabarenko; Editing by Dale Hudson and Cynthia Osterman19 July 2012 WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Hotter-than-normal temperatures are expected through October over most of the contiguous 48 U.S. states, with below-average precipitation for Midwest areas already hit by the worst drought in a half century, government forecasters said on Thursday. Experts at the National Oceanic […]

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