motherjones:

Extreme weather will drive up food prices and supercharge world hunger in the next two decades… unless we act fast on climate change.

discoverynews:

Mutant Crabs Showing Up in the Gulf

BP’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may be related to the eyeless shrimp, clawless crabs and other deformed animals now found in the Gulf, reported Al Jazeera. Fishers and marine biologists believe tremendous amounts of highly toxic chemicals may have had a negative effect on creatures that are constantly bathed in them, contrary to what BP asserts.

Al Jazeera quoted numerous fisherman who had pulled warped crustaceans from the waters where nearly 5 million barrels of oils spewed forth after the 2010 explosion that cost 11 mens’ lives on the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

• “I’ve seen the brown shrimp catch drop by two-thirds, and so far the white shrimp have been wiped out,” Keath Ladner, a seafood processor in Hancock County, Mississippi told Al Jazeera. “The shrimp are immune compromised. We are finding shrimp with tumors on their heads, and are seeing this everyday.”
• Tracy Kuhns and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Barataria, Louisiana, found eyeless shrimp and: “We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don’t have their usual spikes … they look like they’ve been burned off by chemicals.”
• “We also seeing eyeless fish, and fish lacking even eye-sockets, and fish with lesions, fish without covers over their gills, and others with large pink masses hanging off their eyes and gills,” Darla Rooks, a lifelong fisherperson from Port Sulfur, Louisiana said.

keep reading

file under things you should not be eating

laughingsquid:

Why Do Cats Purr?

shortformblog:

Stephen Hawking turns 70, misses his own birthday speech: Hawking, one of many famous people (Elvis, David Bowie, Kim Jong-Un) to have a birthday today, was recovering from an infection, but pre-recorded the speech ahead of time. He’s turning 70, despite doctors predicting he wouldn’t pass 25. source

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futurejournalismproject:

CIA Rejects Freedom of Information Act Request for Climate Data

Via Secrecy News:

When the Central Intelligence Agency established a Center on Climate Change and National Security in 2009, it drew fierce opposition from congressional Republicans who disputed the need for an intelligence initiative on this topic. But now there is a different, and possibly better, reason to doubt the value of the Center: It has adopted an extreme view of classification policy which holds that everything the Center does is a national security secret.

Last week, the CIA categorically denied (pdf) a request under the Freedom of Information Act for a copy of any Center studies or reports concerning the impacts of global warming.

“We completed a thorough search for records responsive to your request and located material that we determined is currently and properly classified and must be denied in its entirety…,” wrote CIA’s Susan Viscuso to requester Jeffrey Richelson, an intelligence historian affiliated with the National Security Archive.

With some effort, one can imagine records related to climate change that would be properly classified. Such records might, for example, include information that was derived from classified collection methods or sources that could be compromised by their disclosure. Or perhaps such records might present analysis reflecting imminent threats to national security that would be exacerbated rather than corrected by publicizing them.

But that’s not what CIA said. Rather, it said that all of the Center’s work is classified and there is not even a single study, or a single passage in a single study, that could be released without damage to national security. That’s a familiar song, and it became tiresome long ago.

Image: Global Temperature Trends via NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory.

climateadaptation:

Great example how science becomes life saving environmental policy. This fantastically produced piece shows the history of how the Antarctic Ozone Hole was discovered by a graduate student, then reported in a few newspapers. Chemicals dumped into the environment were the cause.

The public picked up the story of the Ozone Hole and got really, really worried that corporations were putting too much pollution into the air. They formed partnerships with environmental groups, universities, and certain governments, and lobbied other world leaders to help fill in the Ozone Hole.

Eventually, leaders agreed on the Montreal Protocol - a system of cap and trade that limited the amounts of pollution companies could dump into the environment. A must watch for budding environmentalists, policies wonks, and science-types.

Today, the Montreal Protocol loosely serves as the model for cap-and-trade system of the Kyoto Protocol, European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, California’s AB 32, and many other systems around the world.

Today is the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer. Take a deep breath.

Have a look at the UNDEP’s ozone website for more information.

excellent video

scandalattheparkade:

whiporwill:

Michelle Bachmann completely misses the point about CO2 emissions

never have i wanted so much to punch a politician 

I can almost hear the point whooshing over her head.

(via fatherthug)