Human-made fires pollute air with ozone half a world away

By Cody Sullivan27 January 2016 (Eos) – Ozone, a common air pollutant and greenhouse gas, harms lungs and plants and has contributed almost as much as methane to global warming since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Now researchers are reporting new evidence that local-scale slash and burn farming techniques, cooking fires, and wildfires can […]

Scientists: ‘Doomsday Clock’ reflects grave threat to world – ‘Unless we change the way we think, humanity remains in serious danger’

By Sudhin Thanawala26 January 2016 STANFORD, California (AP) – Rising tension between Russia and the U.S., North Korea’s recent nuclear test and a lack of aggressive steps to address climate change are putting the world under grave threat, scientists behind a “Doomsday Clock” that measures the likelihood of a global cataclysm said Tuesday. The Bulletin […]

Climate deniers attack NASA scientist dying of cancer

By Katie Herzog20 January 2016 (Grist) – Readers of The New York Times were treated to a deeply touching essay this week by Piers Sellers, a NASA astronaut and climate scientist who was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. […] And yet, it took no time at all for the climate change deniers to […]

Stop emissions! A climate scientist argues that it should no longer be acceptable to dump carbon dioxide in the sky

By Ken Caldeira25 January 2016 (Technology Review) – Many years ago, I protested at the gates of a nuclear power plant. For a long time, I believed it would be easy to get energy from biomass, wind, and solar. Small is beautiful. Distributed power, not centralized. I wish I could still believe that. My thinking […]

Why we’ve been hugely underestimating the overfishing of the oceans

By Chelsea Harvey 19 January 2016 (Washington Post) – The state of the world’s fish stocks may be in worse shape than official reports indicate, according to new data — a possibility with worrying consequences for both international food security and marine ecosystems. A study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications suggests that the […]

South Africa reports small decrease in rhino poaching, but across Africa 2015 worst year on record – ‘Continent-wide the scale of the rhino poaching crisis is spreading’

Johannesburg, South Africa, 21 January 2016 (Traffic.org) – South Africa today announced the official number of rhinos illegally killed in the country during 2015. The figure of 1,175 represents a slight drop on the 1,215 record total in 2014, but overall rhino poaching figures for Africa total a record high for the continent. “While a […]

Fish stocks dwindle in Cambodia’s Tonlé Sap lake – ‘If there are no more fish, we’ll have to send people from the community to the city’

By Sam Jones1 December 2015 Tonlé Sap lake (Guardian) – Out past the floating villages, the daytrippers and the mangrove arcades, the brown waters of the Tahas river open into a vast, dull green lake fringed by forest and a seemingly endless horizon. Silhouetted by a sinking afternoon sun, distant figures fish from small boats […]

In Greenland, a climate change mystery with clues written in water and stone

By Ari Daniel24 January 2016 (PRI) – The breakfast on the edge of Greenland’s massive ice sheet is ordinary — granola, yogurt, bread and jam. Everything else here is anything but. “You’d pay a million bucks for a view like this,” says Gordon Hamilton, from the University of Maine by way of Scotland. “Pretty nice […]

Will the Fourth Industrial Revolution improve the state of the world? World Economic Forum meeting ends

By Judith Magyar22 January 2016 (SAP Community Network) – Emerging technologies such as 3D printing and genetic engineering offer a lot of promise, but can also be double-edged swords. They can help make our lives easier, safer and healthier, but there is also potential to build weapons or dangerously modify organisms. Developments like these raise […]

World discovers a $1 trillion ocean as Arctic sea ice vanishes – ‘These changes are like nothing we have seen. We don’t have anything to compare with in history.’

By Eric Roston22 January 2016 (Bloomberg) – As chairman of investments at Guggenheim Partners, Scott Minerd thought he had a realistic view on how big an economic challenge climate change poses. Then, at a Hoover Institution conference almost three years ago, he met former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz. Minerd recalled him saying: “Scott, […]

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