Japan confronts new problem of radioactive water at Fukushima nuclear plant

By Hiromi Kumagai26 December 2015 (Asahi Shimbun) – Tokyo Electric Power Co. has unexpectedly been forced to deal with an increasingly large amount radioactive water accumulating at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant after seaside walls to block the flow of groundwater were constructed in October. TEPCO completed the walls on Oct. 26 […]

Australia’s carbon emissions jump in 2015 – ‘There can be no new coal mines anywhere in the world’

By Latika Bourke28 December 2015 (Stock & Land) – Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions increased by nearly 1 per cent in 2015, a federal government report quietly released in the lead-up to Christmas showed. The Climate Council said the increase showed Australia urgently needed to transition to renewables and justified calls for a worldwide moratorium on […]

Record El Niño and climate change drive extreme weather – ‘It is probably the most powerful in the last 100 years’

By Marlowe Hood 28 December 2015 PARIS (AFP) – Deadly extreme weather on at least five continents is driven in large part by a record-breaking El Niño, but climate change is a likely booster too, experts said Monday. The 2015-16 El Niño, they added, is the strongest ever measured. “It is probably the most powerful […]

Graph of the Day: Australia carbon dioxide emissions, projected to 2020

22 December 2015 (Department of the Environment) – Figure 5 shows domestic emissions by sector. The key changes expected in emissions by sector to 2019–20 are: expected growth in Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) production will result in emissions from this subsector increasing by over 27 Mt CO2-e. This represents around three quarters of the expected […]

50 doomiest images of 2015

Drought, forest fires, and rapidly declining oceans; floods, pollution, and  mass wildlife mortality: 2015 had it all, as the global phase transitions to unfavorable biogeochemical states accelerated. This year’s photos showed oceans on their way to a euxinic Canfield state, as toxic algae blooms and dead zones appeared globally. And there were lots of photos […]

Photo gallery: Worst natural disasters of 2015

22 December 2015 (MSN) – 2015 saw some extreme weather stories — from drought in California to floods in Chennai. Let’s take a look at some of the worst weather disasters from 2015. [more] Worst natural disasters of 2015 Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,flood,drought,hurricane,wildfire,forest fire,California,India,heatwave,pollution,Mexico

Graph of the Day: Total U.S. debt balance and debt composition, 2003-2015

19 November 2015 (Federal Reserve Bank of New York) – Aggregate household debt balances increased in the third quarter of 2015. As of 30 September 2015, total household indebtedness was $12.07 trillion, a $212 billion increase from the second quarter of 2015. Overall household debt remains 5% below its 2008Q3 peak of $12.68 trillion. Mortgage […]

Scarred riverbeds and dead pistachio trees in a parched Iran – ‘I have bought myself another 15 years. After that, this place, like everything else here, is done for.’

By Thomas Erdbrink18 December 2015 POUZE KHOON, Iran (The New York Times) – The early-morning sun meagerly brightened the gloom of this sad township, a collection of empty, crumbling houses along a highway through the dusty desert landscape in southeastern Iran. Until a decade or so ago, Amin Shoul would come here every year to […]

Graph of the Day: World oil production, 2002-2015

By Ron Patterson21 December 2015 (Peak Oil Barrel) – I follow the JODI World Oil Database primarily because it is now four months ahead of the EIA international data base. I make some adjustments however. I use the OPEC MOMR “secondary sources” for all OPEC data where JODI also uses the MOMR but uses their […]

Scientists say climate change could cause a ‘massive’ tree die-off in the U.S. Southwest

By Chris Mooney21 December 2015 (Washington Post) – In a troubling new study just out in Nature Climate Change, a group of researchers says that a warming climate could trigger a “massive” dieoff of coniferous trees, such as junipers and piñon pines, in the U.S. southwest sometime this century. The study is based on both […]

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