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Not just California: Droughts extend across Americas
Posted by NBC: Miguel Llanos on October 12th, 2014
NBC: Say “drought” and Americans are likely to think California, but the Golden State is hardly alone when looking across the Western Hemisphere: A dry spell has killed cattle and wiped out crops in Central America, parts of Colombia have seen rioting over scarce water, and southern Brazil is facing its worst dry spell in 50 years. In the U.S., the few who have taken notice of this wider water scarcity include a former director of the U.S. Geological Survey. Now editor-in-chief of the journal Science,...
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Climate Blues: How Environmentalists Chill Out in Warming World
Posted by NBC: Miguel Llanos on May 24th, 2014
NBC: Studies warning of an Antarctic ice sheet collapse. A wildfire season that could shatter records. Shellfish eaten away by oceans turned more acidic due to greenhouse gases. U.N. and U.S. reports stating that climate change is advancing more quickly.
Everyone gets down about their work from time to time, but for environmentalists, they can sometimes quite literally be dealing with the end of the world as we know it. For some, the answer is obvious: work harder. For others, it's about accepting...
Antarctica, Greenland ice definitely melting into sea, and speeding up, experts warn
Posted by NBC: Miguel Llanos on November 30th, 2012
NBC: What had been a blurry picture about polar ice -- especially how it impacts sea levels -- just got a whole lot clearer as experts on Thursday published a peer-reviewed study they say puts to rest the debate over whether the poles added to, or subtracted from, sea level rise over the last two decades.
"This improved certainty allows us to say definitively that both Antarctica and Greenland have been losing ice," lead author Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds in Britain, told reporters....
Sea level rose 60 percent faster than UN projections, study finds
Posted by NBC: Miguel Llanos on November 28th, 2012
NBC: Projections for sea level rise in coming decades could be too conservative, experts warned Wednesday, saying they found that the rise over the last two decades is much more than predicted by the U.N. scientific body tracking climate signals.
In a peer-reviewed study, the experts said satellite data show sea levels rose by 3.2 millimeters (0.1 inch) a year from 1993 to 2011 -- 60 percent faster than the 2 mm annual rise projected by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for that...
Experts: Melting permafrost being ignored at climate talks
Posted by NBC: Miguel Llanos on November 27th, 2012
NBC: All the back and forth over climate change negotiations hasn't dealt with a looming problem: melting permafrost could account for more than a third of all warming emissions by 2100, experts warned Tuesday, and yet nations haven't factored it into reduction targets.
"Permafrost is one of the keys to the planet's future because it contains large stores of frozen organic matter that, if thawed and released into the atmosphere, would amplify current global warming," U.N. Environment Program Director...
2 convicted of massive asbestos dumping
Posted by NBC: Miguel Llanos on October 18th, 2012
NBC: Where to dump 60 million pounds of demolition debris, much of it containing asbestos? How about an upstate New York farm that also has wetlands and runs along a river? That act led to the conviction this week of two men who now face years in prison and hefty fines.
A jury on Tuesday found Cross Nicastro, owner of the 28-acre farm on the Mohawk River in Frankfort, and Dominick Mazza, owner of a waste management company, guilty of violating the Clean Water Act.
The debris came from New Jersey...
‘Warmest year’ looking more likely for US in 2012
Posted by NBC: Miguel Llanos on October 9th, 2012
NBC: With less than three months left this year, it's looking increasingly likely that 2012 will go down as the warmest year on record in the continental United States.
January-September was already the warmest first nine months, according to temperature data released Tuesday by the National Climatic Data Center.
Moreover, six of eight scenarios charted by the center have 2012 ending warmer than any other year in records that go back to 1895. The only scenarios where that would not happen are if...
Arctic sea ice reaches new low, shattering record set just 3 weeks ago
Posted by NBC: Miguel Llanos on September 19th, 2012
NBC: New sea ice is finally starting to form again in the Arctic, scientists reported Wednesday, but not before reaching another record low last Sunday.
"We are now in uncharted territory," Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said in a statement announcing the record low of 1.32 million square miles -- nearly half the average extent from 1979 to 2010. The extent has been tracked by satellite since 1979.
"While we've long known that as the planet warms up, changes would...
Starving polar bears a sign of warming Arctic
Posted by NBC: Miguel Llanos on September 13th, 2012
NBC: Wildlife biologist Ian Bullock is a seasoned visitor to the Arctic, but even he was surprised by what he saw last month: a thin female polar bear, shadowed by her cub, trying to challenge a much bigger, stronger male for food.
It wasn't much of a challenge, but it showed just how desperate she was, Bullock told NBC News on returning from his 10th straight summer cruise to the Arctic.
That desperation, he feels, stems from the fact that the Arctic's summer sea ice -- which polar bears using...
Concord, Mass., bans sale of plastic water bottles
Posted by NBC: Miguel Llanos on September 7th, 2012
NBC: Bans on plastic bags have taken root in communities across the country, but banning the sale of water in plastic bottles? The town of Concord, Mass., is in line to be the first in the nation to do just that, now that the state's attorney general has signed off. The bottled water industry, for its part, is considering a lawsuit.
Championed by an 84-year-old resident during a three-year battle, the law bans the sale of single-serving PET water bottles of one liter or less starting on Jan. 1 in Concord,...