RSS Feed
Archive for December 27th, 2015
The Guardian view on the UK floods: they will be back
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 27th, 2015
Guardian: The floods return, bringing with them the increasingly familiar pictures of distress: the debris of scoured-out houses, and the empty phrases of a hollow politician. “Unprecedented”; “whatever is needed”: Mr Cameron seems to have forgotten that he promised us “whatever it takes” two years ago. Clearly, it took rather more than he was then prepared to give. This time, the army has been sent in to reinforce his rhetoric. At least the floodwater is an enemy that will certainly have retreated in a week...
Posted in 
Flood-hit northern England told to expect further rainfall
Posted by Guardian: Caroline Davies on December 27th, 2015
Guardian: Heavy rain is expected to hit flooded northern England again this week, accompanied by gales, according to forecasters.
The Met Office has issued a yellow rain warning for parts of North and West Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Greater Manchester, where Boxing Day floods affected the cities of Leeds, York and Manchester, and rivers in Pennine towns rose up to 1.5m (5ft) above their previous peak in some places.
Up to 40mm of rain could fall, rising to 80mm on higher ground, forecasters said. The...
No end in sight as repair work on California’s sinking land costs billions
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 27th, 2015
Associated Press: A canal that delivers vital water supplies from northern California to southern California is sinking in places. So are stretches of a riverbed undergoing historic restoration. On farms, well casings pop up like mushrooms as the ground around them drops. Four years of drought and heavy reliance on pumping of groundwater have made the land sink faster than ever up and down the Central Valley, requiring repairs to infrastructure that experts say are costing billions of dollars. This slow motion land...
British Army Is Deployed as Flooding Submerges Northern England
Posted by New York Times: Stephen Castle on December 27th, 2015
New York Times: The British Army stepped in on Sunday to help evacuate hundreds of people from waterlogged homes across the country, as swollen rivers and heavy rainfall brought misery to parts of the north and unleashed a spate of political recriminations.
Accustomed to heavy rainfall, Britain has been hit several times by flooding recently, but the effects of the latest episode have spread beyond rural areas, leaving parts of York, Leeds and Manchester submerged.
Threatened by its two rising rivers, York...
UK floods and extreme global weather linked to El Niño and climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 27th, 2015
Guardian: From some of the worst floods ever known in Britain, to record-breaking temperatures over the Christmas holiday in the US and and forest fires in Australia, the link between the tumultuous weather events experienced around the world in the last few weeks is likely to be down to the natural phenomenon known as El Niño making the effects of man-made climate change worse, say atmospheric scientists.
El Niño occurs every seven to eight years and is caused by unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean....
Is there such a thing as wilderness anymore?
Posted by Mother Nature Network: Jaymi Heimbuch on December 27th, 2015
Mother Nature Network: Recently I sat down with a book that within a chapter or two had me reanalyzing that every opinion I hold about what nature is, what wilderness is and what we can, can't, should and shouldn't do to our planet. This book is "Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man" by Jason Mark.
To most conservationists, there's nothing more sacred than wilderness and no act more honorable than to preserve and protect it. But what exactly is wilderness? Is there a way to use it...
Dengue fever cases in Hawaii spike over holidays
Posted by CNN: Greg Botelho on December 27th, 2015
CNN: President Barack Obama and his family are welcome visitors this holiday season to Hawaii.
Dengue fever, not so much.
Cases of the mosquito-borne disease continue to climb in the island state, whose health department reported 180 cases as of Christmas Eve.
That figure include 172 people who got dengue between September 11 and December 13 but are no longer infectious. Another eight people got the disease since then and may be infectious, according to the Hawaii health department.
It all...
Drought deepens South Africa’s malaise
Posted by New York Times: Norimitsu Onishi on December 27th, 2015
New York Times: Under a midmorning sun that augured punishing heat later in the day, a handful of cows stood still inside a small pen, their ribs protruding. Too weak to reach the nearest grassy field some miles away, some munched on tall grass that their owner had cut from a strip of land along the highway, in a desperate attempt to save his cattle from the drought afflicting the land.
The owner, T. J. Koee — a former miner and a full-time cattle farmer for the past 16 years — listed the drought’s toll this...
Cameron: northern England flooding ‘incredibly serious situation’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 27th, 2015
Guardian: British prime minister David Cameron says on Sunday that emergency services were dealing with “an incredibly serious situation” as they tackle flooding in the north of England. Speaking in his home constituency of Witney in Oxfordshire, Cameron said more military resources were being deployed to help people who have been forced to abandon their homes. The counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire have been the worst affected by the adverse weather
The innovators: US scientists harness the power of evaporating water
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 27th, 2015
Guardian: A small Lego device on the shelf of professor Ozgur Sahin’s office at Columbia University could open up the possibility of another form of renewable energy, and one that is much cheaper than solar and wind. Sahin has used the simple gadget to prove that evaporating water can be used to generate power, which could eventually lead to energy being generated from still reservoirs. At the centre of the research by Sahin and his team in New York are spores of common soil bacteria that expand, much like...