Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Britain’s salmon at risk from ocean acidification

By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent 7:00AM GMT 03 Dec 2010 The species rely on tiny shellfish when they go out to sea and feed before returning to rivers like the Tay in Scotland or the Test in Hampshire. However these sea snails are in danger from ocean acidification. A United Nations report by the University […]

Seattle Coho salmon run a fraction of normal

By Michelle Esteban Dec 2, 2010 at 5:10 PM PST ISSAQUAH, Wash. — More than 30,000 local Coho salmon have mysteriously disappeared. They didn’t return to the Ballard Locks or local hatcheries, and local fish specialists can’t figure out what happened. This year’s Coho salmon run is so low that the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery has […]

BBC video: Russia permafrost melt – ‘We have no opportunity to stop it’

Russian scientists travel to Siberia to measure output of methane from permafrost lakes. BBC goes along. “It’s taking place now, and we are too late, to my mind, for decision making. This process has started, and we have no opportunity to stop it. We have only a time to delay it, to make the results […]

World running out of new places to fish: study

By Allan Dowd; editing by Peter GallowayThu Dec 2, 2010 5:50pm EST VANCOUVER (Reuters) – The world’s fishing industry is fast running out of new ocean fishing grounds to exploit as it depletes existing areas through unsustainable harvesting practices, according to a study published Thursday. Expansion into unexploited fishing grounds allowed global catches to increase […]

Will dumping mining waste in peatlands help mitigate climate change?

www.mongabay.comDecember 02, 2010 Indonesia’s national climate change strategy document includes text suggesting that dumping mining waste in peatlands could be used as an approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. According to Indonesia’s National Council on Climate Change, degradation of peatlands accounted for 41 percent of Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2005, making the sector the […]

Latin America suffers intense and deadly rainy season

BOGOTA, Colombia, November 30, 2010 (ENS) – The government of Colombia has declared a state of national catastrophe due to the intense rains that have inundated much of the country, causing more than 160 deaths and affecting more than 1.4 million people. This declaration, which applies to 28 of Colombia’s 32 departments, allows the country […]

Deep-water dive reveals spilled oil on Gulf floor

  By Richard HarrisNovember 29, 2010 When the BP oil well blew out earlier this year, the 4 million barrels that flowed into the sea didn’t simply vanish. There’s growing evidence that a good portion of it sunk to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, where some of it remains. To get to the […]

2010 to be among three warmest years, U.N. says

By Alister Doyle and Timothy Gardner; editing by Philip BarbaraThu Dec 2, 2010 1:02pm EST CANCUN, Mexico (Reuters) – This year is on course to be among the top three warmest since records began in 1850, and the past decade was the warmest, in a new sign of man-made climate change, the United Nations said […]

Desdemona at 2: The Environmentalist’s Paradox

Of the many important results published during Desdemona’s second year of blogging, one stood out: a BioScience paper titled “Untangling the Environmentalist’s Paradox: Why Is Human Well-being Increasing as Ecosystem Services Degrade?” This question is central to the Desdemona Thesis.  Essentially, the authors of this paper (Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne, et al.) challenge us to reconcile the […]

Andes: Water conflicts, growing deserts, shrinking rivers, extreme temperatures, and spreading diseases

By John Vidal, www.guardian.co.uk Friday 26 November 2010 16.52 GMT Last month I went on an extraordinary, epic journey through the Andes mountains of Peru and Ecuador. The aim was to record the stories of the largely hidden people on the frontline of climate change, and see how communities and governments are trying to adapt. […]

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