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It hasn’t rained this much in England in 248 years
Posted by Grist: Sarah Laskow on February 13th, 2014
Grist: England is known as a rainy place. But the incredible spate of storms and flooding that have knocked out parts of the rail system, turn the lights off, washed away part of the coast, and depressed the hell out of penguins are not normal. According to ClimateWire, the Met office, which covers U.K. climate and weather, reported this week that it hasn’t been this rainy since the 1700s:
"For England and Wales this was one of, if not the most, exceptional periods of winter rainfall in at least 248...
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The Great Lakes may be drying up
Posted by Grist: Sarah Laskow on February 4th, 2014
Grist: On Earth, cycles are the norm. Tides, carbon, water, life - they ebb and flow. Change, by itself, isn`t necessarily strange. What is strange is when cycles are broken.
In other words, it`s not strange on its own that the level of the Great Lakes is dropping. It is strange that, when the lakes` levels normally change over a 13 year cycle, they`ve now been going down for 16 years straight. That`s 10 more than they should have been dropping for.
LiveScience:
Water levels have been declining...
Keystone XL could crush endangered fox cubs in their own dens
Posted by Grist: Sarah Laskow on September 27th, 2013
Grist: Contrary to popular belief, environmentalists aren`t totally unconnected with reality. We realize, for instance, that we can get people up in arms about cute endangered species, but that no one cares if the Keystone XL pipeline is going to affect the American burying beetle. (Even if they are weird and bright orange and the largest beetle on the continent to collect dead birds, roll them up, and bury them next to their underground beetle nests.)
The burying beetles, though, according to the State...
In this time-lapse video, you can see Texas’ reservoirs disappearing
Posted by Grist: Sarah Laskow on July 30th, 2013
Grist: In 1965, the federal government dammed up a river to create Lake Meredith in Texas. It’s a reservoir that provides drinking water to 11 cities, and locals use it to swim and boat and be outdoors, as well, Next City reports. But it’s been shrinking, as you can see in the video below. The time-lapse begins in 1984, with a full, deep lake, and it ends in 2012 with a stub of water. Why’s the water disappearing? Many reasons, Next City says: One study found that there was no single factor causing the...
The microbeads in your body wash are slowly filling the Great Lakes with plastic
Posted by Grist: Sarah Laskow on June 26th, 2013
Grist: Sigh. You think the world would have caught on by now that plastic is one of the most incidentally destructive inventions the human race has ever come up with. Sure, L.A. just banned plastic bags, which is great. But meanwhile those tiny microbeads - the little bits of plastics in body wash that cosmetics companies invented for no real reason except to have a new thing to sell their customers - are slowly accumulating in the Great Lakes, where fish eat them.
Scientific American reports:
They...