15 July 2018 (Desdemona Despair) – It’s well known that human population is increasing relentlessly, with no peak in sight for at least the next century. Various projections estimate that the population will be somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to twelve billion by the year 2100 (cf. New projection shows human population could reach […]
By Dr. Minqi Li 28 June 2018(Peak Oil Barrel) – This figure compares the historical world economic growth rates and the primary energy consumption growth rates from 1991 to 2017. The primary energy consumption growth rate has an intercept of -0.012 at zero economic growth rate and a slope of 0.914. That is, primary energy […]
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, 19 June 2018 (Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy) – Billions of people in thousands of cities around the world will be at risk from climate-related heatwaves, drought, flooding, food shortages, blackouts and social inequality by mid-century without bold and urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Fortunately, cities […]
By Scott W. Allard 3 June 2018 (Business Insider) – In the US, the geography of poverty is shifting.According to a May report from the Pew Research Center, since 2000, suburban counties have experienced sharper increases in poverty than urban or rural counties.This is consistent with research across the U.S. over the past decade – […]
By Damian Carrington 21 May 2018 (The Guardian) – Humankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth by a groundbreaking new assessment of all life on the planet. The world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things, according to the study. Yet since […]
By Roberto Samora and Ana Mano; editing by Grant McCool 24 May 2018 SAO PAULO (Reuters) – A severe drought has compromised Brazil’s second corn, the country’s largest crop of the cereal, which is now expected to be 10 million tonnes lower than last season, consultancy Agroconsult said on Thursday. The firm, which is leading […]
By Kat J. McAlpine 21 May 2018 (Vector) – Over-prescribing has long been thought to increase antibiotic resistance in bacteria. But could much bigger environmental pressures be at play?While studying the role of climate on the distribution of antibiotic resistance across the geography of the U.S., a multidisciplinary team of epidemiologists from Boston Children’s Hospital […]
By Simon Denyer and Annie Gowen 18 April 2018 (The Washington Post) – Nothing like this has happened in human history. A combination of cultural preferences, government decree and modern medical technology in the world’s two largest countries has created a gender imbalance on a continental scale. Men outnumber women by 70 million in China […]
By Scott Schrage 19 April 2018 (University of Nebraska–Lincoln) – Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and other recent human relatives may have begun hunting large mammal species down to size — by way of extinction — at least 90,000 years earlier than previously thought, says a new study published in the journal Science.Elephant-dwarfing wooly mammoths, elephant-sized ground […]
By Patrick Barkham 26 April 2018 (The Guardian) – “We’re doomed,” says Mayer Hillman with such a beaming smile that it takes a moment for the words to sink in. “The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There […]