The insatiable demand of the global building boom has unleashed an illegal market in sand. Gangs are now stealing pristine beaches to order and paradise islands are being dredged and sold to the construction industry Paradise is a beach, we are told. Pristine white or coral pink. We leaf through brochures in search of perfect sand. There is a Paradise Beach on Barbados, and in … Continue reading The sands they are disappearing…
The Kilauea eruption has wiped out rare sites and whole ecosystems. As the island mourns a tragedy, it also accepts the brutal cycle of nature by Breena Kerr In Puna, the area of Hawaii island that’s been hardest hit by the Kilauea volcano eruption, those who lived nearest to the lava flows watched the forest around their homes begin to die first. They said the fruit trees, flowers … Continue reading Going, going, gone: lava progress
Open Humanities Press Critical Climate Change Series Editors: Tom Cohen and Claire Colebrook The era of climate change involves the mutation of systems beyond 20th century anthropomorphic models and has stood, until recently, outside representation or address. Understood in a broad and critical sense, climate change concerns material agencies that impact on biomass and energy, erased borders and microbial invention, geological and nanographic time, and … Continue reading In Catastrophic Times…
New York Times At Risk in a Big Quake: 40 of San Francisco’s Top High Rises A report by the U.S. Geological Survey includes a list of buildings that are potentially vulnerable to a large quake. Some of San Francisco’s most prominent high rises are on the list. One Embarcadero Center and Two Embarcadero Center in San Francisco. Both are steel-frame buildings, constructed at a … Continue reading San Francisco under the big one…
Motherboard: What the law says about staking a claim to that hot new stuff. Sarah Emerson Jun 4 2018, 3:00pm Lava meets the ocean. Image: Flickr/Kurt Johnson Hawaii is among the smallest states in America, but that doesn’t mean the archipelago isn’t growing over time. The Big Island’s volcanic eruption this month, for instance, covered 2,400 acres of existing land with new lava. More could … Continue reading Who Owns the New Land Created By a Volcano in Hawaii?
By Jori Finkel June 3, 2018 LOS ANGELES — There is no cracking of earth or buckling of concrete, but a small fault line is shaking up the Hammer Museum here. This one, an artistic interpretation made of red resin sticks, is snaking from a museum gallery out to the terrace. “Faultline” (2018) begins underneath a giant sculpture of bright red plastic sunglasses that could symbolize … Continue reading NYTimes Art Review: Hammer Museum on the Apocalypse
Dozens of species have seen their numbers decline, in some cases by two-thirds, because insects they feed on have disappeared Agence France-Presse Wed 21 Mar 2018 00.50 GM Bird populations across the French countryside have fallen by a third over the last decade and a half, researchers have said. Dozens of species have seen their numbers decline, in some cases by two-thirds, the scientists said in … Continue reading the Guardian: ‘Catastrophe’ as France’s bird population collapses due to pesticides
Archaeologists working at Pompeii say they have found the remains of a man who survived the initial explosion of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 — but was crushed by a massive rock as he attempted to flee a deadly cloud of gases, ash and rock. The skeleton’s remains are in what the Pompeii archaeological site calls a “dramatic position” — with a large rectangular stone … Continue reading NPR new excavation at Pompeii–
By JEFFREY KLUGER November 20, 2017 There is no natural disaster sneakier than an earthquake. Hurricanes can be predicted and tracked weeks in advance, and even tornados, monsoons and blizzards at least have seasons. But earthquakes strike entirely without warning. Now, however, a new study suggests that we may want to brace for a surge of quakes in the year ahead, and the reason for the danger is … Continue reading Time: Scientists Predict 2018 Will Be a Bad Year for Earthquakes
r-lab marvels and catastrophes 