North America – Page 41 – Desdemona Despair

Package of ivermectin paste for deworming horses. One dose treats a horse with a body weight up to 1,250 pounds. In August 2021, poison centers across unvaccinated America saw huge increases in poisoning calls for ivermectin. Photo: Tractor Supply Company / Med-Pharmex

August 26, 2021

Texas sees 550 percent spike in poison calls for horse and cow dewormer, despite FDA warning – “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

By William Joy 25 August 2021 BURLESON, Texas (WFAA) – Inside 731 Farm Store in Burleson, Matt Meredith has taped up a warning from the FDA about ivermectin. “Not for human consumption. It says it on the bottle,” Meredith said. “It’s for deworming cattle, deworming horses.” Many people have started taking it to treat or […]

Dickson Public Works personnel check the flooding on Old Pond Lane following record rainfall, Saturday, 21 August 2021, in Dickson, Tennessee. Heavy flooding in several Middle Tennessee counties on Saturday prompted water rescues, road closures, and communications disruptions, with several people reported missing. Flash flood warnings were in effect for Dickson, Houston and Montgomery and Stewart counties on Saturday evening. Photo: Josie Norris / The Tennessean / AP

August 22, 2021

At least 22 dead and 50 missing in catastrophic Tennessee flash floods – “Some of them described it as a tidal wave”

By Michael Levenson 21 August 2021 (The New York Times) – At least 22 people were killed and 50 others remained missing on Sunday after catastrophic flash floods swept through Middle Tennessee, the authorities said. Rob Edwards, the chief deputy of the Humphreys County Sheriff’s Office, confirmed the numbers of dead and missing on Sunday […]

Flood gates on Trump’s border wall blown open by monsoon rains near San Bernardino Ranch in Arizona on 16 July 2021. Much of the West is suffering through a deep megadrought, but the monsoon rains that have swept across parts of the Southwest this summer have doused the southern half of Arizona with record-setting rains. Douglas has seen nearly double its average monsoon season rainfall so far, including a blast that came through on Monday and unleashed flooding on the Arizona-Sonora border. The National Weather Service data shows 2.15 inches (5.5 centimeters) of rain fell, which in turn funneled into washes and drove flooding. Photo: Fernando Sobrazo

August 22, 2021

Trump’s border wall torn apart by Arizona monsoon rains – “It’s not often that an ecologist can actually put a time stamp on the day that the evolutionary history of an area was sealed off”

By Brian Kahn 22 August 2021 (Gizmodo) – It turns out ignoring bedrock environmental laws may not have been the best choice for a multibillion-dollar construction project. Photos show former President Donald Trump’s border wall in deep disrepair after summer monsoon rains literally blew floodgates off their hinges. The damage took place near San Bernardino Ranch, a […]

Dead oysters in a commercial oyster bed that were killed by the record heat wave in British Columbia in 2021. When Judy Hicks headed to the beach on 2 July 2021, she discovered that many of her oysters had cracked-open shells, indicating they’d died during the heat wave. From 25 June 2021 to 1 July 2021, during B.C.’s unprecedented “heat dome” that caused hundreds of human fatalities, record-breaking temperatures are estimated to have killed more than one billion sea animals. Photo: Judy Hicks / The Tyee

August 22, 2021

BC’s shellfish farmers struggle after record heatwave decimates oysters – “I have been in this industry for 36 years, and I have never seen a mortality rate like this”

By Vaishnavi Dandekar 5 Aug 2021 (The Tyee) – Judy Hicks, a commercial shellfish grower in Okeover Inlet, B.C., started her day early on July 2. Weather forecasts had predicted that temperatures would reach the mid-20s that day — after hitting the mid-to-high 30s earlier that week — and Hicks wanted to avoid the heat. […]

Aerial view of Lake Oroville, seen through a thick haze of smoke from California wildfires, on 20 August 2021. Lake Oroville has a surface area of 15,000 acres but is facing the worst crisis in its 52-year history. Photo: Action News Now

August 22, 2021

California mega-drought reduces Lake Oroville reservoir to historically low level – Hydroelectric plant shuts down – “We’re in uncharted territory”

OROVILLE, California, 20 August 2021 (Action News Now) – The reach of the drought emergency has a shocking look at as Lake Oroville drains to dirt. With a surface area of just over 15,000 acres – Lake Oroville provides water and electricity and impacts the local economy as recreation is big on this lake. California’s […]

Projections of annual counts of high-tide flooding (HTF) days for the NOAA Intermediate Sea Level Rise (SLR) scenario. The NOAA minor flooding threshold is used for Honolulu, San Diego and St. Petersburg. The NOAA moderate flooding threshold is used for Boston to highlight a threshold that is not yet routinely exceeded, which is not the case for the Boston minor threshold. The 50th percentile from the ensemble of projections (blue line) and the 10th–90th percentile range (blue shading, with the 90th percentile highlighted in orange) show increasing numbers of HTF days per year. The year of inflection (YOI, open black circle) for each projection corresponds to abrupt increases in the frequency of HTF days, which are highlighted by comparing the projected increases (Δ) over two adjacent ten-year periods (dashed and solid black lines). Graphic: Thompson, et al., 2021 / Nature Climate Change

August 16, 2021

Sunny-day flooding is about to become more than a nuisance – “What’s scary about this paper is the idea of the inflection point. Can we adapt fast enough to keep pace?”

By Jim Morrison 2 August 2021 (WIRED) – During the summer of 2017, the tide rose to historic heights again and again in Honolulu, higher than at any time in the 112 years that records had been kept. Philip Thompson, director of the Sea Level Center at the University of Hawaii, wanted to know why. […]

Smoke and flames from the Dixie fire are seen from Wolf Creek Road west of Greenville, California, 4 August 2021. Photo: InciWeb

August 8, 2021

Dixie Fire grows to second largest in California history – “We need to acknowledge, just straight up, these are climate-induced wildfires”

By Tim Stelloh 8 August 2021 (NBC News) – The Dixie Fire became the second largest wildfire in California history Sunday as thousands of residents remained under evacuation orders and more than 10,000 buildings stood in the blaze’s path. The fire, which began July 14 and leveled much of the historic Sierra Nevada town of Greenville […]

A water bottle is placed at a small vigil for Sebastian Francisco Perez as the community gathers to remember him at Ernst Nursery and Farm in Saint Paul, Oregon on Saturday, 3 July 2021. Mr. Perez was found unresponsive in a field around 3:30 p.m. on 26 June 2021, during the record heatwave, according to the St. Paul Fire District. OSHA has opened investigations into Ernst Nursery and Farms and Brother Farm Labor Contractor, who provided workers to the nursery. Photo: Brian Hayes / Statesman Journal / Imagn

August 8, 2021

Regulators refuse to step in as U.S. workers languish in extreme heat

By Ariel Wittenberg and Zack Colman 8 August 2021 (POLITICO) – When it gets so hot that the hallucinations start, and her eyes hurt and her spit begins to foam, construction worker Sharon Medina disappears behind a wall of co-workers to sneak a sip of water. She discovered the hard way not to complain to […]

“Insert Human Sacrifice” Copyright © 2021 James P. Galasyn. Historical image of Moloch is from the Mary Evans Picture Library.

August 7, 2021

Moloch: first of the new technogenic viruses

7 August 2021 (Desdemona Despair) – The SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) virus is widely understood to be the most recent virus to have jumped the species barrier to humans[1]. In this post, I propose the idea that COVID-19 is the first virus to jump the platform barrier also, from natural biology to human technology. COVID-19 exists now […]

Cars and homes destroyed by the Dixie Fire line central Greenville on Thursday, 5 August 2021, in Plumas County, California. Photo: Noah Berger / AP Photo

August 6, 2021

Wildfire explodes to third-largest in California history – “We’re seeing truly frightening fire behavior. We really are in uncharted territory.”

By Daisy Nguyen and Noah Berger 6 August 2021 GREENVILLE, California (AP) – A Northern California wildfire that is now the third-largest in state history had burned for weeks, mostly in remote wildland areas with few people, before it roared through the little mountain community of Greenville, driven by shifting winds and bone-dry vegetation. Eva […]