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Archive for December, 2015
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...
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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...
Aerial views of El Niño flooding in Argentina
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 27th, 2015
Guardian: Footage shows Goya city flooded by the overflow of the Paraná river in Argentina on Saturday. More than 100,000 people have had to evacuate from their homes in the bordering areas of Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina due to severe flooding in the wake of heavy summer rains brought on by El Niño
A year of extremes: severe snow storms, drought and floods ravaged US in 2015
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 27th, 2015
Guardian: 2015 has been the warmest year, globally, on record, with the lower 48 states of the US experiencing their balmiest autumn ever measured.
This kind of exceptional heat provided an appropriate setting for the Paris climate summit, where 196 nations agreed to curb greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the sort of dangerous climate change that contributes to floods, drought and damaging sea level rises.
But the past year has also seen a number of severe natural disasters, climate change-fueled or...
China province to probe all waste sites after landslide disaster
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 27th, 2015
Reuters: China's southern province of Guangdong, one of the country's biggest industrial bases, will check all construction waste sites in the wake of a deadly landslide to ensure none are in dangerous locations or poorly managed, state media said on Sunday.
The Dec. 20 landslide in the Guangdong boom town of Shenzhen buried more than 30 buildings in an industrial park and has left around 70 people missing, with only a handful of bodies found so far.
The central government on Friday labeled the landslide...