HANOI, Vietnam, 17 March 2016 (AP) – Vietnam’s southern Mekong Delta, the country’s main rice growing region, is experiencing the worst drought and saline intrusion in recent history that has affected more than half a million people, officials said Thursday. The drought could result in the loss of up to 1 million tons of rice, […]
By Soutik Biswas 27 March 2016 (BBC News) – On 11 March 2016, panic struck engineers at a giant power station on the banks of the Ganges river in West Bengal state. Readings showed that the water level in the canal connecting the river to the plant was going down rapidly. Water is used to […]
[See Desdemona’s coverage of this story: Jairo.] 29 March 2016 (AFP) – A Costa Rican court has sentenced four men to decades in prison for the 2013 murder of an environmentalist and the rape of four western female volunteers who were with him. The judgment capped a nine-week retrial of seven men accused of killing […]
By Helena Horton29 March 2016 (The Telegraph) – The heartbreaking effect of human waste was discovered when a post-mortem was conducted on 13 beached sperm whales. The plastic we discard into the ocean often makes its way into the mouths and stomachs of sea creatures. A post-mortem of the creatures, found ashore near the town […]
By Erik Ortiz27 March 2016 (NBC News) – A single bald eagle found dead in southern Delaware last Saturday didn’t raise red flags for state wildlife officials. But then a few hours later and a mile away, a startling scene unfolded: Eight bald eagles — distressed and disoriented — were discovered on the ground, barely […]
By Peter McCutcheon28 March 2016 (ABC News) – An aerial survey of the northern Great Barrier Reef has shown that 95 per cent of the reefs are now severely bleached — far worse than previously thought. Professor Terry Hughes, a coral reef expert based at James Cook University in Townsville who led the survey team, […]
BOULDER, Colorado, 28 March 2016 (NSIDC) – Arctic sea ice was at a record low maximum extent for the second straight year, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA. “I’ve never seen such a warm, crazy winter in the Arctic,” said NSIDC director Mark Serreze. “The heat […]
28 March 2016 (Rabett Run) – Last week I was asked by my Rotary Club to give opening comments before a guest speaker from Lockheed Martin talked about new technology developments, so I decided to talk about water and technology. To set the stage, we’re having an unusually average water year in California. The story […]
By Jim Galasyn27 March 2016 (Desdemona Despair) – The Global Footprint Network has published their latest ecological footprint analysis for the world and for individual nations. Not surprisingly, the ecological footprint of human civilization continues to rise at a steady rate of about 235 million global hectares per year. Over the period from 1961 to […]
By Lydia Saad and Jeffrey M. Jones16 March 2016 PRINCETON, N.J. (Gallup) – Americans are taking global warming more seriously than at any time in the past eight years, according to several measures in Gallup’s annual environment poll. Most emblematic is the rise in their stated concern about the issue. Sixty-four percent of U.S. adults […]