West Africa may even reach 1,000 deaths from Ebola this weekend. That’s just a guess, but not a bad guess, considering the Olympic record of this hemorrhagic virus. At the beginning of July nearly 500 people had died from the disease; two weeks later, the numbers had increased by 20%,; and the most recent confirmed figure,
There are the good wildfires, and there are the bad. Unfortunately, the latter often overwhelm the beneficial ones. We’ll go on with stories from San Diego in a minute—it’s a long story of an actually short time—but here’s a word about the bright side first. Whoopi Goldberg had a thought that’s worth repeating: When you
In “9 Facts About Factory Farming That Will Break Your Heart,” The Huffington Post yesterday announced a shocking “fact” that over 82% of U.S. dairies use tail docking. Instant reaction: horror. Wouldn’t cutting off tails not only hurt the cattle, but also embolden disease-carrying flies around them? (It does.) However, the US Department of Agriculture
Fifty years ago, the drugstore giant CVS/Caremark came into being. Also 50 years ago, Surgeon General Luther Terry released the first federal government report linking smoking with disease. Today, the events have coalesced: CVS, one of the nation’s top retail pharmacy chains (Walgreen is #1, in number of retail stores; CVS, in overall sales), has
The last major section from the EPA’s new Climate Change Indicators in the US report is society and ecosystems. Below are key summary points. Clear changes in growing seasons, bird migration leaf growth and blooming dates have occurred and the trends suggest that they will continue. Heat-related deaths show much more variability, despite clear heating trends,
The Humane Society of the United States, with the declared support of two congressmen, is pushing a new bill that would outlaw the trade of primates across state lines. The action comes a day after a chimpanzee owner stabbed her pet as it attacked a woman in Connecticut. [social_buttons] Representatives Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Mark
[social_buttons] A groundbreaking study has proved that man-made light sources can change natural light cycles, triggering abnormal animal behavior that often leads to injury and even death. The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, confirms that polarized light pollution can cause confusion in creatures that rely on light ‘cues’ to
It’s not only the Gulf of Mexico that’s suffering from “dead zones” caused by excess nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus used as fertilizers. Marine dead zones are spreading in the Baltic sea, and that could cause the entire ecosystem to collapse for lack of oxygen. Dire warnings from Lasse Gustavsson, Swedish head of the
It’s not even summer on the calendar yet, and the temperature has already topped 100 degrees on several occasions in New York City. According to the Centers for Disease Control, global warming leads to more heat emergency days. In addition to the discomfort, increased need for air conditioning that strains the electrical grid in any
