Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

100,000 kids without food in Pakistan floods face death

By MARGIE MASON (AP) 20 September 2010 SUKKUR, Pakistan — Suhani Bunglani fans flies away from her two baby girls as one sleeps motionless while the other stares without blinking at the roof of their tent, her empty belly bulging beneath a green flowered shirt. Their newborn sister already died on the ground inside this […]

Serengeti road imperils vast herds

‘Keystone’ wildebeests will be cut off from dry season food, UBC prof says CBC NewsFriday, September 17, 2010 | 3:00 PM ET A proposed road through Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park will lead to the collapse of an ecosystem celebrated for its vast herds of wildebeest and zebra, scientists warn. “The road will cause an environmental […]

Chesapeake Bay progress uneven, study shows

Data suggest sewage upgrades working, farm runoff controls aren’t By Timothy B. Wheeler, The Baltimore Sun September 15, 2010 A new study shows some Chesapeake Bay rivers have gotten cleaner over the past three decades, while others are getting worse. The analysis, released Wednesday by the U.S. Geological Survey, suggests costly upgrades of sewage plants […]

Natural gas from ruptured Gulf well remained trapped in deep waters

By PAUL VOOSEN of GreenwireSeptember 17, 2010 Perhaps it should have been called the Gulf of Mexico gas spill. A vast majority of the natural gas that billowed out of BP PLC’s failed well in the Gulf this summer did not escape to the surface and atmosphere. Instead, the gas — including its main component, […]

Guilty pleasures: Zardoz

And you, poor creatures.Who conjured you out of the clay?Is God in show business too? Arthur Frayne, Zardoz 19 September 2010 (Desdemona Despair) – One of Desdemona’s guilty pleasures is Zardoz, the much-maligned 1974 film by John Boorman. Desdemona was going to add a comment to last week’s NPR post, but it ballooned into this […]

At least 258 Alabama residents have reported suspected oil-related health issues

By Casandra Andrews, Press-Register Friday, September 17, 2010, 4:30 PM     MOBILE, Alabama — The number of residents reporting oil-related health affects from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill continues to rise in coastal Alabama. At least 258 people have gone to local emergency rooms, clinics and urgent care centers since May 14 complaining of ailments […]

Millions of flood-hit Pakistanis still without shelter: IOM

ISLAMABAD (AFP) — More than 80 percent of the millions of Pakistanis left homeless by the country’s worst floods are still without shelter, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Friday. The United Nations is to launch a fresh appeal for funds on Friday to help victims of the catastrophe which left some 10 million […]

BP oil spill: Disaster by numbers

The scale of the BP oil spill can be hard to take in. Now, five months on, these shocking figures reveal the extent of the devastation. Compiled by Alice-Azania Jarvis14 September 2010 11 platform workers were killed when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded on 20 April. Their bodies have never been found, despite a […]

Chevron faces tens of billions in clean-up costs – Potential death toll estimated to be 10,000 in Ecuador rainforest

Contact: Karen Hinton at 703-798-3109 or Karen@hintoncommunications.com  17 September 2010 Lago Agrio, Ecuador (September 17) – A group of highly respected American technical and medical experts, using conservative assumptions, have concluded that it could cost Chevron up to tens of billions of dollars to clean up oil waste discharged into Ecuador’s rainforest and compensate local […]

Graph of the Day: Status of Polar Bear Populations, March 2010

29 August 2010 (PBSG) – A status table was first discussed and published at the 11th meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) in Copenhagen in 1993. The present table was discussed and concluded upon in Copenhagen in 2009, and some small updates on the comments was done in March 2010. Summary of polar […]

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