Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Pakistan: The night the river roared in ‘like a demon’

By NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD of ClimateWirePublished: October 12, 2010 The first in a four-part series on Pakistan’s flood disaster. NOWSHERA, Pakistan — “Allah was angry with us when the rain came.” Sumaira Bibi unhesitatingly leans on theology to explain what happened here on the night of July 29, when her world was drowned. Her husband was […]

All water life in Hungary’s Marcal river is dead: official

By Staff WritersBudapest (AFP) Oct 7, 2010 The entire ecosystem of a small river in Hungary which is situated in the area affected by a deadly toxic mud spill, has been destroyed, a disaster relief chief said Thursday. “The entire ecosystem of the Marcal river has been destroyed, because the very high alkaline levels have […]

Food stamp recipients at record 41.8 million Americans in July 2010

By Alan Bjerga; editing by Steve Stroth Oct 5, 2010 1:46 PM PT The number of Americans receiving food stamps rose to a record 41.8 million in July as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government said. Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 18 percent from a […]

Video: Chevron toxic waste pits in Ecuador rainforest

Monday, October 11, 2010 A couple of months ago, I traveled with my Amazon Watch colleagues Mitch and Kevin into the Ecuadorian Amazon, where we met up with our friend Donald, an activist with the Amazon Defense Coalition. In this video, Mitch and Donald illustrate Chevron’s toxic legacy in Ecuador, in the form of one […]

Huge parts of world are drying up: Land evapotranspiration taking unexpected turn

ScienceDaily (Oct. 11, 2010) — The soils in large areas of the Southern Hemisphere, including major portions of Australia, Africa and South America, have been drying up in the past decade, a group of researchers conclude in the first major study to ever examine “evapotranspiration” on a global basis. Most climate models have suggested that […]

Pakistan: Highway to nowhere

By Aftab Bukhari, The Express TribuneOctober 11th, 2010. JACOBABAD: Floodwater might be receding from most areas in the province but the Sindh-Balochistan National Highway still stands flooded. Two months ago a massive breach developed in the Tori Bund and water rushed towards Jacobabad district, flooding almost 80 per cent of it. When the flood got […]

£19 billion to dismantle North Sea oil rigs

BBC5 October 2010 The cost of dismantling North Sea oil and gas platforms is forecast to reach £19bn over the next 30 years. A new report by industry specialists said there were about 260 platforms to be decommissioned. Consultants Deloittes and Douglas-Westwood said the work presented “big opportunities” for those in the industry. They estimate […]

Graph of the Day: Agricultural Output in Russia, 2006-2010

By Geoff RileyThursday, August 26, 2010 This BBC news article explains how extreme weather conditions in Russia this summer is hitting GDP growth.  The Russian economy has always been sensitive to changes in the world prices of commodities such as oil and gas (two major exports). In this sense, Russia is more exposed than the […]

Vanishing world of the last Arctic hunters

By Stephen Leonard12:36 PM Saturday Oct 9, 2010 Melting sea ice threatens the way of life of Greenland’s Inughuit people, who hunt whale and seal by kayak and dog sled. Living in the most northern permanently inhabited settlements in the world, the Inughuit people, or Polar Eskimos as they are often known, have eked out […]

Crop failures set to increase under climate change

  Contact: Hannah Isom, h.isom@leeds.ac.ukUniversity of Leeds 7 Oct 2010(University of Leeds) Large-scale crop failures like the one that caused the recent Russian wheat crisis are likely to become more common under climate change due to an increased frequency of extreme weather events, a new study shows. However, the worst effects of these events on […]

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