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joshsternberg:

WSJ reports Yahoo board has approved a $1.1 billion deal — in cash — to purchase Tumblr. 

Ugggg…

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shortformblog:

Good Doom news everyone. Something is probably going to happen that you may not like. Whatever it is will get announced this coming Monday.

Shortformblog editors spelled “good” incorrectly.

Yahoo! is in talks to purchase Tumblr for estimated $1bn

ideatrotter:

New climate report has grim predictions

A new report says that much of the world’s plant and animal life could be decimated by the effects of climate change over the next century. Worldwide levels of carbon dioxide are the highest they’ve been in almost two million years.

Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, Amazonia and Australia would lose the most species of plants and animals. And a major loss of plant species is projected in North Africa, Central Asia and South-eastern Europe.

Brutal.

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Starbucks tiny-mini-rant P1

1. This advertisement was on my G+ page. It’s called “The Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino.” How, how, how does it have four types of caramel? FOUR!
2. Who drinks this stuff? I feel so detached from reality right now. Like, what type of person is this targeting?

UNBELIEVABLE ›

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inothernews:

DEEP CUT  The Kennecott Copper Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah sits quiet after a landslide on April 11, 2013.  The mine owner has suspended operations inside one of the world’s deepest open pits as geologists assess a landslide the company says it anticipated for months.  (Photo: Ravell Call / The Deseret News via AP / NBC News)

Holy shit.

You are not going to believe this, but mining public lands is governed by the brutal Mining Act of 1872. This act requires developers to mine certain public lands. (Seriously, it is an abhorrent law and Democrats wont touch it. See here). The law mandates that mining be the highest use of any conceivable land development uses - above roads, electricity, environmental, conservation, even water protection.

Worse, unlike drilling for oil, no royalties are due to the U.S. government for any minerals or metals found (including gold, diamonds, uranium, copper, etc.) A royalty is essentially a fee on every gallon of oil found in the ground. The fee per gallon is paid into the U.S. Treasury, and used to manage permitting and environmental impacts from drilling. In fact, oil royalties are the second highest amount of money collected by the Federal Government (second only to your federal income taxes!). Mining companies are exempt from royalties! I swear this is true!

It gets even worse. This particular mine is run by a foreign mining firm called Rio Tinto, based in the UK. They mine the copper and keep all the money - almost none of it stays in American hands. They pay no royalties, do not have to restore the land, pollute American air, lands, aquifers, and rivers (albeit via EPA permits). Brilliant!

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Rare Chinese Porpoises Dive Toward Extinction. Above, A Carcass of a Rare Yangtze Finless Porpoise.

“There are just 1,000 individual Yangtze finless porpoises left in the wild, according to a new report. That’s less than half of what a similar survey of the porpoises found six years ago.

The rapidly dwindling numbers have conservationists worried that the species could vanish from the wild as early as 2025.

“The species is moving fast toward its extinction,” said Wang Ding, head of the expedition to count the porpoises and a professor at the Institute of Hydrobiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Yangtze finless porpoises, the only freshwater finless porpoise in the world, live mainly in the Yangtze River and China’s Dongting and Poyang lakes. They are threatened by shrinking food resources and man-made disturbances like shipping traffic.

The expedition, which took place over 44 days last fall, comes after a similar trek along the Yangtze in 2007 failed to find any surviving Baiji dolphins, a close relative of the finless porpoise that was subsequently declared functionally extinct.

The new report showed that some finless porpoises are splintering off into relatively isolated groups, which could hurt their ability to reproduce. The scientists also noted that more of the animals seemed to be flocking to wharf and port areas, perhaps to look for food.

”

Via LiveScience

In recent years, keeping the world’s coffee drinkers supplied has become increasingly difficult: The spread of a deadly fungus that has been linked to global warming and rising global temperatures in the tropical countries where coffee grows has researchers scrambling to create new varieties of coffee plants that can keep pace with these new threats without reducing quality.

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roomthily:

ice fractures on the Beaufort Sea

via Earth Observatory

laughingsquid:

People Reacting to Guy Fieri’s Restaurant Opening in Brooklyn

Hilarious. “Factory farm to table”

∞  03/27/13 at 01:01pm via

110 notes

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Snow Storm of Doom update.

Phoenix Arizona’s pyramid of complexities looks shakier than most because it stands squarely in the crosshairs of climate change. The area, like much of the rest of the American Southwest, is already hot and dry; it’s getting ever hotter and drier, and is increasingly battered by powerful storms. Sandy and Katrina previewed how coastal cities can expect to fare as seas rise and storms strengthen.

Phoenix pulls back the curtain on the future of inland empires. If you want a taste of the brutal new climate to come, the place to look is where that climate is already harsh, and growing more so — the aptly named Valley of the Sun.

Overpopulation ›