View Larger Rapid Greenland melt alarms scientists
This month, over a rapid four day period, the ice sheet that covers Greenland melted more than it ever has in the last 30 years, NASA reported. Find out why scientists are alarmed on the Lean Forward blog.
(Photo credit: AFP/Getty Images/NASA)
Should alarm you even if you’re not a scientist.
Now this is some clever recycling. A once-abandoned Wal-Mart was turned into an enormous, beautiful library by McAllen, Texas.
The city coughed up $5 million for the 15-acre property in 2006, when Walmart announced it would shutter the store in favor of a new “Supercenter” nearby.
Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, a Minneapolis architecture firm, was hired to renovate the structure, turning the 124,500-square-foot space into the country’s largest — and most chic — single-story library.
People on rooftops, in trees, waiting for rescue. Officials under-prepared for this type of disaster.
Flash floods caused by torrential rain have swept the southern Russian Krasnodar region, killing 134 people, officials say.
The floods, the worst there in living memory, struck at night, reportedly without warning.
TV pictures showed people scrambling onto their rooftops to escape.
President Vladimir Putin has flown to the region, where he will hold emergency talks with officials in the worst-hit town of Krymsk.
Most of those who died were in the Krymsk area but nine deaths were reported in the Black Sea resort of Gelendzhik with a further two in the port town of Novorossiysk.
Emergency teams have been sent from Moscow by plane and helicopter.
Crude oil shipments from Novorossiysk have been suspended.
Russian TV showed thousands of houses in the region nearly completely submerged.
A young humpback whale died of starvation while entangled in a ghost fishing net. It washed ashore near Vancouver, Canada a few days ago and locals held a funeral for the animal. Officials are trying to identify who owned the lost fishing net. You can see the tail ripped up by the net. Full story and video.
Meanwhile, Canada’s ultra-conservative government is destroying endangered species act and dozens of environmental laws nearly every week with sneaky, backdoor amendments and secret legislation.
How? Regulatory capture. Canadian officials have successfully been bought by oil companies. In exchange, politicians are gutting environmental laws to help oil companies drill more pollutive wells faster and deeper with little to no regulatory oversight.
Follow climate adaptation.
View Larger How much did your t-shirt harm the planet? Well, here you go. Over 700 gallons of water are used in the manufacturing of ONE t-shirt.
(Source: ecouterre.com)
And if every American reused a t-shirt we’d save 1 million pounds of CO2? Wow.
Canada sells out to oil industry. Environmentalists are livid. New regulations will be approved to loosen Canadian environmental laws to assist oil companies to drill oil and build thousands of miles of new pipelines.
Btw, this type of malfeasance is called regulatory capture.
Hundreds of environmental and activist groups in Canada shut down their websites for a day on Monday to protest Canadian government policies that will make it easier to build pipelines to transport oil from Alberta’s vast tar sands.
The groups - joined by U.S.-based groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council - say the Conservative government is also trying to silence opponents of the pipelines from the tar sands, the world’s third-biggest oil reserve and the subject of much environmental concern.
The Conservatives, determined to make Canada what they call an energy superpower, want to speed up reviews of resource development projects, cut back laws that protect fish habitats, strip key veto powers from the federal energy regulator, and give the government the final say on approving major pipelines.
Easy to watch group of influential professors (especially Michael Mann) discuss climate change denial to a group of white people.
Panel: Confronting the Climate Disinformation Campaign
from Sustainability Now Radio:
Here is the video for the free presentation given on April 30, 2012 on Penn State’s University Park Campus. Penn State professors Michael Mann, Donald Brown, Janet Swim and Rick Schuhmann, and graduate student Peter Buckland spoke Monday evening at “Changing the Moral Climate on Climate Change,” a talk that focused on climate change denial. Mann is director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center and part of the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Susannah Barsom, with the university’s Center for Sustainability, moderated the event, which included a question and answer session.
(Source: plantedcity)
View Larger Following a dramatic rescue and nearly two years of rehabilitation these bottleneck dolphins are ready for release. Tom and Misha were rescued by wildlife charity Born Free after spending six years in a small, filthy pool in Hisaronu, Turkey. The dolphins are now fit and healthy and hunting their own food. Picture: Born Free / Rex Features
