Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

NASA’s turtle egg rescue from Gulf oil spill is deemed a success

By Marcia Dunn, AP aerospace writerWednesday, September 08, 2010, 3:54 PM The unprecedented turtle rescue effort at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is winding down. A total of 278 sea turtle nests were trucked to the space center from the Gulf Coast from the end of June until mid-August. Wildlife officials organized the relocation because of […]

Louisiana authorities report oil sightings from Gulf of Mexico spill

Times-Picayune Staff Tuesday, September 07, 2010, 4:47 PM  Here is a list, released by Louisiana emergency officials, of areas where oil was sighted recently. The list is not a comprehensive tally of areas affected by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Plaquemines Parish Thursday Oil sheen in Blind Bay, a half mile north of Southeast […]

Gulf oxygen levels are lower, but not deadly, in wake of spill, researchers report

By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-PicayuneWednesday, September 08, 2010, 6:00 AM The biodegradation of oil in plumes within 60 miles of the failed BP Macondo oil well have caused levels of dissolved oxygen in deep water of the Gulf of Mexico to drop by as much as 20 percent, but no oxygen-void dead zones have been […]

Greenland, West Antarctic ice caps melting at half the speed previously estimated

By News StaffSeptember 6th 2010 01:00 AM The Greenland and West Antarctic ice caps are melting at half the speed previously predicted, shows a team from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft, The Netherlands) and SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research in Nature Geoscience. The melting of the ice caps has […]

Graph of the Day: US Top Ten Percent Income Share, 1917-2008

By Timothy NoahPosted Friday, Sept. 3, 2010, at 3:06 PM ET In 1915, a statistician at the University of Wisconsin named Willford I. King published The Wealth and Income of the People of the United States, the most comprehensive study of its kind to date. The United States was displacing Great Britain as the world’s […]

Access to clean water down due to urbanisation

  Stockholm (AFP) Sept 7, 2010 – Global efforts to improve access to drinking water have been hampered by rapid urbanisation, with the proportion of people in urban areas with access actually declining, according to UN figures presented at a conference in Stockholm this week. “In cities, there are today more people suffering from a […]

Officials poisoned Illinois river against advice of scientist

By Dan Egan of the Journal Sentinel Sept. 8, 2010 Chicago — The pioneer of controversial “environmental” DNA tests that indicated Asian carp were getting closer to Lake Michigan testified Tuesday that he warned Illinois and federal officials not to waste $1.5 million poisoning a river just south of Chicago last spring, but he was […]

Climate change disrupting synchronization between flowers and bees

By Tom Spears, The Ottawa Citizen September 7, 2010 OTTAWA — Common plants in eastern Ontario from blueberries to roses to apple trees are already in danger of not being able to pollinate because of a bee shortage, new Canadian research suggests. A long-term University of Toronto study on bees and pollination shows evidence that […]

Frustration grips parts of flood-ravaged Pakistan, supply convoy looted

VOA News08 September 2010 More angry flood victims in southern Pakistan have turned against the country’s government, looting a convoy loaded with supplies. Residents brandishing long sticks and chanting “shame on the government” ripped supplies out of a vehicle loaded with food Wednesday in the city of Sukkur in Sindh province. One man said they […]

Eastern North Pacific basking shark a ‘species of concern’ as population fails to recover

ScienceDaily (Sep. 8, 2010) — NOAA’s Fisheries Service has designated the eastern North Pacific basking shark, a “species of concern” because it has suffered a dramatic decline in population despite decreasing fishing pressure. The label “species of concern” may be given to a species when there are concerns regarding the population status. The eastern Pacific […]

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