Leading scientists on Thursday called on the upcoming Rio Summit to grapple with environmental ills that they said pointed to “a humanitarian emergency on a global scale.”
In a “State of the Planet” declaration issued after a four-day conference, the scientists said Earth was now facing unprecedented challenges, from water stress, pollution and species loss to spiralling demands for food.
Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 5% [?]
Two decades after the United Nations established the Framework Convention on Climate Change in order to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system,” the Arctic shows the first signs of a dangerous climate change. A team of researchers led by CSIC assures so in an article recently published in Nature Climate Change.
Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 4% [?]
..A reactor at the San Onofre nuclear power plant near San Diego has been shut down after a radiation leak which was not big enough to cause public harm, the US atomic safety agency said Wednesday.
Radioactive gas escaped from a pipe in a building located next to the reactor on Tuesday evening, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said.
Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 4% [?]
Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Tuesday announced a 2.6-billion-dollar program to help victims of a record drought, including food and water handouts, as rural victims protested in the capital.
The “unprecedented sum would attend to a catastrophic situation in Mexico,” Calderon said during a public act. The aim “is that no family is without water or food due to this drought.”
Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 3% [?]
At least 85 dolphins have beached themselves in a shallow inlet of a US nature reserve at Cape Cod, officials said Tuesday, adding that the cause of the mass strandings remained a mystery.
A spokesman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare said the huge number of beached mammals over the last two weeks, with most of them dying, was close to the amount usually recorded in the course of a year.
Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 3% [?]
Last year broke records for extreme weather in the United States, with 14 events each causing at least a billion dollars in damage, US authorities said on Thursday.
Also, 2011 marked 35 years in a row that global temperatures have been warmer than average, according to data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 3% [?]
Global uncertainty on how to deal with the threats of nuclear weapons and climate change have forced the “Doomsday clock” one minute closer to midnight, leading international scientists said Tuesday.
“It is now five minutes to midnight,” said Allison Macfarlan, chair of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which created the Doomsday clock in 1947 as a barometer of how close the world is to an apocalyptic end.
Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 2% [?]
Canada became the first country to formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, saying the pact on cutting carbon emissions was preventing the world from effectively tackling climate change.
“We are invoking Canada’s legal right to formally withdraw from Kyoto,” Environment Minister Peter Kent said following a marathon UN climate conference in South Africa, at which nations agreed to a new roadmap for worldwide action.
Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 2% [?]
Video Report:Two minute video that ‘shows how the Earth’s temperature has risen 1C since the 1950s’. Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 3% [?]
DURBAN, South Africa (Reuters) – The United States denied on Thursday it was trying to delay a new global climate deal until 2020, saying it supported an EU proposal that aims to chart a path to a more ambitious pact to fight climate change.
Delegates from almost 200 countries have until Friday to decide whether to commit to signing up to an internationally binding climate deal by 2015 at the latest.
Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 2% [?]
As the Arctic warms, greenhouse gases will be released from thawing permafrost faster and at significantly higher levels than previous estimates, according to survey results from 41 international scientists published in the Nov. 30 issue of the journal Nature.
Permafrost thaw will release approximately the same amount of carbon as deforestation, say the authors, but the effect on climate will be 2.5 times bigger because emissions include methane, which has a greater effect on warming than carbon dioxide.
Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 2% [?]
“Supervolcano: Eruption” (Roc), by Harry Turtledove: The master of the alternate history novel delivers a terrifying future of the United States that seems within the realm of possibility in “Supervolcano: Eruption.”
Yellowstone National Park draws millions each year to see its bubbling pots and spouting geysers. Yellowstone’s caldera, a broad, craterlike basin of a volcano, formed by an explosion or by the collapse of the cone, has erupted several times since the North American continent drifted over the hot spot.
Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 4% [?]
..On the US political stage, skepticism and denial of climate change are as popular as ever, and experts say that world talks which opened Monday in Durban, South Africa are unlikely to turn the tide.
But while a binding deal on harmful carbon output remains elusive by the world’s second biggest polluter after China, some small signs of progress have emerged at the state and individual levels.
Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 2% [?]
Elephants do not like bees. Indeed just the sound of an angry bee is enough to make whole herds of mighty elephants flee in fear.
Now African scientist Lucy King has been awarded one of the United Nations’ top environmental prizes for using that knowledge in work which could help ensure the elephants’ survival.
Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 2% [?]
In reviewing seismic activity around the world as reported by the U.S.G.S. prior to writing this article the author also noted the number of earth quakes worldwide in the 5.0 to 5.9 range over the past ten years have nearly doubled, while in the 6.0 to 6.9 range have largely remained unchanged.
Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 2% [?]
After a five-year delay, an Earth-observing satellite will be launched to test new technologies aimed at improving weather forecasts and monitoring climate change.
The $1.5 billion NASA mission comes in a year of weather extremes from the Midwest tornado outbreak to the Southwest wildfires to hurricane-caused flooding in New England.
Read More / Watch Video »
Popularity: 2% [?]
Video Report: Dozens of shattered communities in Japan are facing the difficult decision on whether to rebuild or relocate one [...]
Video Report: Flood levels around the New South Wales city of Wagga Wagga have begun falling, but residents have been [...]
Video Report:Thousands of residents remain isolated by floodwaters along the New South Wales north coast as the threat moves inland.About [...]
Video Report:Aerial views show the destruction left behind by typhoon Washi after it lashed the southern Philippines, killing over 250 [...]
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck and Luke Morton requires Flash Player 9 or better.
