Climate Change Will Mean More Malnourished Children
Food prices will more than double and the number of malnourished children spiral if climate change is not checked and developing countries are not helped to adapt their farming, food and water experts warned on Tuesday at the UN climate talks in Doha. As the UK energy secretary, Ed Davey, and ministers from 194 countriesarrived for the high-level … Read More
How Safe Are America’s 2.5 Million Miles of Pipelines?
At 6:11 p.m. on September 6, 2010, San Bruno, California 911 received an urgent call. A gas station had just exploded and a fire with flames reaching 300 feet was raging through the neighborhood. The explosion was so large that residents suspected an airplane crash. But the real culprit was found underground: a ruptured pipeline spewing natural gas… Read More
Report: Coal Plants Smothering Communities of Color
Coal plants place a disproportionate burden on poor and largely minority communities, exposing residents to high levels of pollutants that affect public health, according to a new report led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).… Read More
Avian Malaria in Alaska: The Climate Change Connection
A team of biologists has just announced the first documented case of bird-to-bird malaria transmission in Alaska. Writing in the journal PLOS ONE, they’ve shown that this frequently fatal illness, normally associated with the tropics and temperate areas, may be expanding its range. Since avian malaria doesn’t affect humans, said co-author Ravinder … Read More
Coral Reefs of the Caribbean Facing Collapse
Caribbean coral reefs — which make up one of the world's most colorful, vivid and productive ecosystems — are on the verge of collapse, with less than 10% of the reef area showing live coral cover. With so little growth left, the reefs are in danger of utter devastation unless urgent action is taken, conservationists warned. They said the drastic … Read More
Raging Fire Season Highlights Human Cost of Firefighting
Earlier this month, a 20-year-old digging a fire line in the Idaho mountains was killed by a falling tree, making her the 12th person to die in forest firefighting operations around the country this year. When I attended her funeral a few days later, nearly 300 of her fellow U.S. Forest Service firefighters lined up outside Moscow, Idaho’s, Church … Read More
Climate is Ripe for Deadly West Nile Virus Attack on Texas
Texas dodged one major bullet this year: the crushing drought that seared the Lone Star State in 2011 shifted its sights northward in 2012, frying the nation’s agricultural midland but leaving Texas at least a little wetter than it was last summer. But that little bit of extra moisture has put Texas in the crosshairs of another climate-related … Read More
City Temps May Soar From Urbanization, Global Warming
According to a paper just published in Nature Climate Change, the combination of global warming and urbanization could drive local temperatures up by a whopping 7°F by 2050 in some parts of the U.S. — some two or three times higher than the effects of global warming alone.… Read More
