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By Robbie COREY-BOULET Agence France-Presse ABOARD FSO SAFER, Yemen (AFP) — When an alarm sounded on the decaying oil tanker off Yemen’s coast, signaling a leak in its engine room, Hussein Nasser quickly sprang into action. Working around the clock for days, he and the half dozen other people on board the FSO Safer fashioned makeshift iron strips to patch a burst pipe, before divers arrived to install a permanent steel plate to keep seawater […]
NEW DELHI, July 12, 2023 (AFP) – Days of relentless monsoon rains have killed at least 66 people in India, government officials said Wednesday, with dozens of foreign tourists stranded in the Himalayas after floods severed road connections. Flooding and landslides are common and cause widespread devastation during India’s treacherous monsoon season, but experts say climate change is increasing their frequency and severity. Torrential downpours have washed away vehicles, demolished buildings and torn down bridges […]
PARIS, July 12, 2023 (AFP) – Over the past 20 years huge swathes of the world’s oceans have changed colour, displaying a subtle greening towards the tropics that researchers say points to the effect of climate change on life in the world’s seas. In the new research published on Wednesday, scientists said they had detected shifts in colours across more than half of the world’s oceans — an expanse bigger than Earth’s total land area. […]
HOUSTON, July 10, 2023 (AFP) – On the afternoon of July 4, as Americans were celebrating the country’s independence with elaborate fireworks displays, a prisoner named Joseph Martire passed out in his cell in Texas, amid the excessive heat that has been swamping much of the southern United States in recent days. In concrete, brick and metal penitentiaries, industrial fans churn warm vapor without really cooling the air. And with no air conditioning in most […]
GENEVA, July 10, 2023 (AFP) – Switzerland said Monday it experienced its hottest year on record in 2022, with its cherished Alpine glaciers melting at three times the rate previously considered extreme. The record heat had a negative effect on the landlocked European nation’s lakes, rivers, forests and agriculture, the environment ministry said in its climate overview for the year. “For Switzerland, 2022 was the hottest year in history,” it said in a statement. “The […]
BRIESKOW-FINKENHEERD, Germany, July 8, 2023 (AFP) – Fisherman Henry Schneider stopped work for several months after a toxic algae bloom hit the Oder river last August, decimating his catch. Schneider, 43, whose family has made its living from the river for over a century, finally took up his activities again in May. But fears of a repeat are growing, as global warming adds to the toxic mix of pollution putting the delicate ecosystem under pressure. […]
BRASÍLIA, Brazil (AFP) — Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon fell by one-third in the first six months of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s administration compared to the same period of last year, the government said Thursday. The 33.6 percent drop is based on satellite images captured by the National Institute of Space Research, which said that from January through June a total of 2,649 square kilometers (1,020 square miles) of rainforest were felled. That’s […]
By Carlos MANDUJANO Agence France-Presse PUERTO AYORA , Ecuador (AFP) — Unusually warm for this time of year, the waters of the Pacific signal hard times for the reptilian inhabitants of Ecuador’s iconic Galapagos Islands. The balmy temperature is the first symptom of a new cycle of the El Niño weather phenomenon that periodically pronounces a sentence of starvation on the archipelago’s marine iguanas. Experts fear this El Niño could be one of the most […]
GENEVA, July 4, 2023 (AFP) – The United Nations on Tuesday warned the world to prepare for the effects of El Nino, saying the weather phenomenon which triggers higher global temperatures is set to persist throughout 2023. El Nino is a naturally occurring climate pattern typically associated with increased heat worldwide, as well as drought in some parts of the world and heavy rains elsewhere. The phenomenon occurs on average every two to seven years, […]
PARIS, July 4, 2023 (AFP) – The risks of harvest failures in multiple global breadbaskets have been underestimated, according to a study Tuesday that researchers said should be a “wake up call” about the threat climate change poses to our food systems. Food production is both a key source of planet-warming emissions and highly exposed to the effects of climate change, with climate and crop models used to figure out just what the impacts could […]
CHICAGO, June 28, 2023 (AFP) – Smoke from Canada’s worst-ever wildfires was severely impacting air quality Wednesday across Ontario and at least 15 US states, with monitors warning that over one hundred million people face potentially unhealthy conditions. Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland recorded some of the worst air quality in the United States, with residents told to stay inside or limit outdoor activity as smoke blanketed huge swaths of the country just weeks after communities […]
PARIS, June 27, 2023 (AFP) – Earth lost an area of carbon-absorbing rainforest larger than Switzerland or the Netherlands in 2022, most of it destroyed to make way for cattle and commodity crops, an analysis of satellite data released Tuesday revealed. That is nearly a football pitch of mature tropical trees felled or burned every five seconds, night and day, and 10 percent more than the year before, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI). […]
