EcocentricFood
Hot enough for you? If you live in one of the more than 15 states that were suffering under a heat advisory or excessive heat warning on Tuesday, I’m going to guess the answer is yes, God, please make it all stop. The oppressively high temperatures that gripped much of the U.S. during June—the hottest month on record worldwide, …
EcocentricPolitics
This afternoon, after Speaker Nancy Pelosi called them back from their six-week summer break, members of the House of Representatives passed an emergency $26 billion spending bill to prevent the layoff of 300,000 teachers, police and other civil servants from layoffs due to state cutbacks. The bill passed
EcocentricOil
BP’s compensation claims process for Gulf residents and businesses affected by the oil spill has had some serious problems. Residents are saying that the company has been slow to pay, that the forms disappear into a bureaucratic void, and that the criteria of who qualifies and who doesn’t is anything but clear. For journalists covering …
EcocentricOil
[google-spreadsheet-form]
EcocentricInvasive Species
As fish go, silver carp—one of several species that fall under the general term Asian carp—have a lot going for them. They are voracious feeders, they can grow to more than 40 lbs. and their bony bodies mean few Americans want to eat them, so they can escape the overfished fate of their more filletable cousins. But they do have …
EcocentricHealth
Crossposted from TIME’s Wellness blog, because I find flu fascinating:
So sayeth the World Health Organization (WHO)—and they should know, since they were the ones who declared a full, phase six-level pandemic a little more than a year ago. Now it’s done—this morning WHO head Dr. Margaret Chan announced that the group’s
…
EcocentricEcocentric
They haven’t gotten anywhere near the attention they deserve, but the floods that have struck much of Asia over the past couple of weeks may be the biggest humanitarian disaster in recent memory—bigger even than the earthquake that hit Haiti in January and the 2004 Asian tsunami. Both of those catastrophes killed far more, but the …
EcocentricEcocentric
Scientists have been puzzled about a strange disease that began attacking bats in New York state in 2006. The bats would suddenly awaken from hibernation in midwinter, their faces covered in a white fungus. Already weakened, they struggle to find food and die in large numbers. Called white-nose syndrome (WNS), the disease has spread …
EcocentricEcocentric
Positive feedback cycles—they’re what keeps climatologists up at night. The term describes the way that certain ecological responses to a warming climate can further accelerate warming, creating a feedback cycle that can spiral out of control. Take the billions and billions of tons of methane buried beneath the Arctic permafrost. …
EcocentricOil
More good news on the oil spill front: around 9 A.M. today, BP began pouring cement into the well in the final phase of its static kill procedure. BP had earlier pumped 2,300 barrels of heavy drilling mud into the well—enough to equalize pressure in the reservoir and achieve a static situation, preventing any additional oil from …
