By James Fallows25 July 2011 The Chart That Should Accompany All Discussions of the Debt Ceiling It’s this one, from yesterday’s New York Times. Click for a more detailed view, though it’s pretty clear as is. It’s based on data from the Congressional Budget Office and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Its significance […]
By Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent, www.guardian.co.uk28 July 2011 It was seen as one of the most distressing effects of climate change ever recorded: polar bears dying of exhaustion after being stranded between melting patches of Arctic sea ice. But now the government scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a […]
July 27 (CBC News) – Fish kills on two P.E.I. salmon-spawning rivers have been “catastrophic,” says a UPEI scientist. Mike van den Heuvel, a toxicologist with the Canadian Rivers Institute, says most Islanders are unaware of just how serious the fish kills on western P.E.I. have been. “The fish kills are particularly catastrophic. There are […]
NYT Editorial27 July 2011 For centuries, the whitebark pine, Pinus albicaulis, has grown on hundreds of thousands of acres across the West. It is a keystone species of an entire ecosystem — one now seriously at risk. Most of the whitebark pines in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks are dead. It has been declared an […]
By Michon Scott, based on The New Climate Normals by Jennifer FreemanJuly 6, 2011 In July 2011, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center updated the U.S. Climate Normals: three-decade averages of weather observations, including temperature. The new annual normal temperatures for the United States reflect a warming world. Following procedures set by the World Meteorological Organization, […]
By Joe Romm 27 Jul 2011 One way to tell if a nationwide heat wave is truly record-breaking is, well, to look at the total number of records that it breaks. Even better is to compare the high records with the low records, since we have very good historical data and analysis on that — […]
By Brian Merchant11 July 2011 Brooklyn, New York – Unruly herbicides are making headlines again: A couple weeks ago, it was the fact that the world’s top-selling weedkiller was causing birth defects. This time, it looks like the brand new herbicide Imprelis, manufactured by the chemical giant DuPont and okayed for use by the EPA, […]
By Steve Campbell, sfcampbell@star-telegram.com, 817-390-798124 July 2011 The ferocious Texas drought is clobbering crops, thinning out cattle herds, decimating wildlife, and drying up streams and reservoirs, but it’s also wreaking havoc deep underground, where the state’s aquifers are dropping at a precipitous rate, experts say. The dip in groundwater levels is forcing many rural homeowners […]
MEDIA CONTACT: James Leonard, 209-228-440625 July 2011 MERCED — An increase in wildfires due to climate change could rapidly and profoundly alter the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, according to a new study authored by environmental engineering and geography Professor Anthony Westerling of the University of California, Merced. The study by Westerling and his colleagues — which […]
By Darryl Fears24 July 2011 A giant underwater “dead zone” in the Chesapeake Bay is growing at an alarming rate because of unusually high nutrient pollution levels this year, according to Virginia and Maryland officials. They said the expanding area of oxygen-starved water is on track to become the bay’s largest ever. This year’s Chesapeake […]
