global warming

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Rodent Attacks Demolish Spanish Crops

As 750M voles enjoy the all-day buffet, farmers resort to their wits

(Newser) - As many as 750 million voles have descended on farmland in central Spain, and with government response slow, farmers are taking matters into their own hands. The reason the number of rodents has exploded over the past few months is unclear, the Christian Science Monitor reports, but a likely explanation...

Straw Goes Green
Straw
Goes
Green

Straw Goes Green

Eco-friendly building material branches out beyond fairy tales

(Newser) - The newest surprise climate-saving tool is straw walls, and the Big Bad Wolf may have underestimated the First Little Pig’s shelter, the Washington Post reports. Instead of drywall or insulation, contractors stack the farm waste around buildings’ skeletons and then coat it with plaster. The eco-friendly result looks like...

Heat Wave Claims 49 Lives
Heat Wave Claims 49 Lives

Heat Wave Claims 49 Lives

Triple-digit temperatures take toll in Midwest, Southeast

(Newser) - The heat wave sweeping across the Midwest and Southeast has claimed at least 49 lives over the past week. Officials in Alabama and Memphis reported the 10 most recent deaths on Saturday, mostly elderly citizens. The weather forecast for next week predicts some relief from the triple digit-temperatures that has...

Global Warming Protesters B-r-r All on Glacier

(Newser) - Hundreds of naked people bared all on a Swiss glacier to protest global warming yesterday. The arresting demonstration was photographed by New York artist Spencer Tunick, known for his photos of nude gatherings, as temperatures hovered around 50 degrees.

Deserts Eat Up China's Usable Land
Deserts Eat
Up China's Usable Land

Deserts Eat Up China's Usable Land

In arid provinces, farms and families feel pinch of policy gone awry

(Newser) - With China's deserts spreading another 950 square miles each year, the government is evicting families and replanting farms to stem the tide, the Christian Science Monitor reports from Gansu province. With 20% of the world's population but 7% of its arable land, China's decades-old problem has worsened due to overfarming,...

Italian Grapes Make Early Debut
Italian Grapes Make Early Debut

Italian Grapes Make Early Debut

Spooks Wine Country

(Newser) - This year's grape harvest in Italy will be unlike any one in living memory—for starters because it's happening in August. Because of sky-high temperatures and scanty rainfall, grapes are ripening three to four weeks ahead of normal schedules. Some grape growers blame it on global warming, but scientists warn...

Washington: 'Do As I Say, Not As I Do'

Bush asks others to cut back emissions as US bankrolls high-emission projects

(Newser) - While Bush asks others to reduce emissions, Washington is promising to pay for a state-of-the-art oil refinery in India that will pump out 9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. The Los Angeles Times says that this is only some of the smoke covering Washington’s tracks, as...

Danes Join Scramble for Arctic
Danes Join Scramble for Arctic

Danes Join Scramble for Arctic

Denmark to launch expedition to Arctic to defend territorial claims

(Newser) - A Danish expedition is set to head for the Arctic tomorrow, joining the scramble to claim polar territories. A team of 40 scientists and massive icebreakers are heading north to prove that a 2,000-kilometer underwater mountain range stretching to the pole is an extension of Greenland, and accordingly belongs...

10-Year Model Predicts Record Temperatures

Global warming to surge in 2009, new study says

(Newser) - A new 10-year model of climate change forecasts several years of record temperatures between 2009 to 2014, the BBC reports. Most global warming predictions see significant climate changes over a century; the new model, developed by British meteorologists using present-day observations, offers shorter-term predictions of event such as El Nino...

Frozen DNA Survives After 8 Million Years

Microorganisms from Antarctica look like Martian data

(Newser) - Scientists have nixed the notion that glaciers are lifeless blocks of ice by thawing chunks containing Antarctic organisms and watching them successfully divide on their own, the Los Angeles Times reports. The study suggests that these microorganisms, ranging from 100,000 to 8 million years old, could yield DNA and...

Climate Change Deniers Still Impeding Progress

Americans lost in haze of contradictory information

(Newser) - Scientists thought they'd convinced the world it was getting warmer, but a powerful, flush campaign of cynics is still successfully sowing doubt, Newsweek reports—and hobbling efforts to stave off disaster. From its humble beginnings ridiculing any warming, the "denial machine" has picked up funding from big oil and...

Destroy Earth: 10 Easy Methods
Destroy Earth: 10 Easy Methods

Destroy Earth: 10 Easy Methods

Get your evil on with these surefire ways to obliterate the planet

(Newser) - Destroying life on earth is one thing; obliterating the planet entirely is quite another. Bring out your inner supervillain with any of these 10 strategies.
  1. Hurl the earth into the sun.
  2. Release a Von Neumann machine beneath the earth's crust.
  3. Smash something large (such as Mars) into the earth.
  4. Eject
...

Heatwaves Double Over 100 Years
Heatwaves Double Over 100 Years

Heatwaves Double Over 100 Years

Number of 'extremely hot days' have tripled, Euro study shows

(Newser) - The duration of heatwaves in Western Europe has doubled and the frequency of extremely hot days has nearly tripled since 1880, according to a study released yesterday. Periods of sweltering weather last an average of 3 days now compared to 1.5  in 1880, a shift that forebodes a higher...

Smog Cloud Menaces Asia
Smog Cloud Menaces Asia

Smog Cloud Menaces Asia

Asian Brown Cloud is melting Himalayan glaciers

(Newser) - An enormous cloud of smog over southern Asia threatens 2 billion people with flooding and drought, a new study shows. The "Asian Brown Cloud" is melting Himalayan glaciers, the Times of London reports, and the resulting floods will menace heavily populated downstream areas. And the cloud's driving up temperatures...

Sub Crew Plants Russian Flag
Sub Crew Plants Russian Flag

Sub Crew Plants Russian Flag

Expedition reaches North Pole seabed in quest to get jump on turf battle

(Newser) - A Russian expedition reached the North Pole today and symbolically called dibs on the Arctic in the race to secure the oil-rich territory. Explorers sank a titanium Russian flag into what the team leader called the "yellowish mud" of the sea floor 3 miles deep, which a spokesman likened...

Ethanol More Mean Than Green
Ethanol More Mean Than Green

Ethanol More Mean Than Green

How biofuel steals from the hungry and hurts the environment

(Newser) - Far from the solution to America’s energy crisis, corn ethanol is “one if the great political boondoggles of our time,” Rolling Stone says in a scathing broadside. The “dangerous” and “delusional” hype over the corn biofuel raises the price of food for the needy because...

Panel Links Global Warming to Hurricane Surge

Study backs UN Panel's conclusion that humans are driving dangerous trend

(Newser) - Rising sea temperatures caused by global warming are causing a surge in the number of hurricanes and tropical storms, a new study confirms. The research, which examined the pattern of storms from the last 100 years, buffers a UN panel's conclusion earlier this year that humans are "more likely...

Euro Heat Wave Kills Hundreds
Euro Heat Wave Kills Hundreds

Euro Heat Wave Kills Hundreds

Most victims are elderly; Hungary hit hardest

(Newser) - More than 500 people have died in the last week in the heat wave gripping central Europe. Most of the victims lived in Hungary, with some casualties reported in nearby Romania, the BBC reports. The elderly have been hardest hit. Temperatures in some areas have reached 107 degrees; the intense...

UK Floods Linked to Warming
UK Floods Linked to Warming

UK Floods Linked to Warming

(Newser) - Central Britain is under water after record rains, and scientists are now saying that the heavy downfall is caused by man-made global warming. Britain's sodden summer, with swollen rivers, thousand homeless and water plants failing, has been caused by a southward shift of the jet stream. Not unprecedented, the Independent...

Meat Can be Tough on the Environment

Steaks do more damage than driving; cow farts also a problem

(Newser) - Four average-sized steaks generate as much greenhouse gas as an ordinary car traveling for 3 hours at 50mph. The meat also chews up 169 megajoules of energy, enough to light a 100-watt bulb for 20 days. These were among the findings of Japanese scientists investigating the effects of beef production...

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