Archive for the 'extinction' Category
Humans Are Like Yeast, Chesapeake Edition
As any homebrewer knows, yeast eats sugar and excretes carbon dioxide and alcohol. Then the yeast dies, essentially drowning in its own shit.
Human beings have a similar tendency, and you can see it at work in Maryland, where the crabbing industry may be dead for good:
Crabs have thrived in the bottom muck of the Chesapeake [...]
We Are SO Going to Die
North Pole Could be Ice-Free This Summer
There is no land at the North Pole, but as long as anyone has looked, it has remained a giant block of ice year-round. Scientists have been watching Arctic sea ice melt more and more each year. But each summer in recent years, the amount of ice [...]
Worried? Who’s Worried?
Generation X glum on retirement prospects: survey:
More than two-thirds of Americans aged 27 to 42 don’t think they will ever be able to stop working, according to a survey published jointly on Monday by Scottrade and BetterInvesting.
In contrast, 64 percent of respondents aged 55 to 64 said they could retire and not worry, even though [...]
Water, Water. Where?
US Could See Water Shortage
When people talk about the problems associated with global warming, the conversation tends to focus on stronger storms, rising sea levels, and the loss of coastal cities. But one problem that seems to me to get short shrift is the impact on our water supply.
When weather patterns change in such [...]
Hitting the Fan
Ice-free Arctic could be here in 23 years
The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and levels of sea ice in the region now stand at a record low, scientists said last night. Experts said they were “stunned” by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big as [...]
Bees: Closer to Home
The disappearance of the bees hits New Jersey
Jean-Claude Tassot felt the sunshine spilling over his shoulders. It was unseasonably warm for January — a good day, he decided, to check his honeybees. So Tassot jumped in his truck and rumbled over the back roads of Morris County to the first of the eight farms where [...]
Getting What We Deserve
In the past few days, I’ve seen a few more articles on the rapidly disappearing bee population.
From a kos diary:
Albert Einstein once predicted that if bees were to disappear, man would follow only a few years later.
That hypothesis could soon be put to the test.
Now in Spain, hundreds of thousands of colonies have been lost [...]
Too Little, Too Late
Back in the 1990s, I spent about a year as a door-to-door canvasser for Greenpeace. soliciting memberships and money. Back then, there was still a LOT of debate about global warming and human responsibility for the problem, but one phrase stood out for me: the “make it or break it decade”.
This is how scientists [...]
This Will Be Bad.
A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination.
Researchers are scrambling to find the cause of the ailment, called Colony Collapse Disorder.
Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some affected [...]
