Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Russia declares fire emergencies

By SOPHIA KISHKOVSKYPublished: August 2, 2010 MOSCOW — President Dmitri A. Medvedev on Monday declared a state of emergency in seven regions as forest and peat bog fires raged across Russia, killing dozens and leaving thousands homeless in a heat wave that has badly hurt Moscow and many other parts of the country. Moscow was […]

Some say effects of Deepwater Horizon spill will be felt for years to come – Dispersants helped bacteria digest oil

By Ben Raines, Press-RegisterSunday, August 01, 2010, 5:24 AM MOBILE, Ala. — Now that BP’s damaged Gulf well appears under control, scientists are struggling to answer two questions: How much oil ended up in the Gulf, and what will be the long-term effects? Federal estimates of the flow rate from the Deepwater Horizon well covered […]

Climatologist sees disastrous weather in future

By CARL HARTMAN, For The Associated Press Mon Aug 2, 6:53 am ET The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes From a Climate-Changed Planet (Harper, $25.99), by Heidi Cullen: Climatologist Heidi Cullen was taken aback at her lecture on the prospects for global warming when a member of the audience […]

Shark slaughter a global catastrophe

The Daily Telegraph July 21, 2010 12:00AM THEIR bodies rotting on the floor of a Japanese dock, hundreds of sharks have been slaughtered for just one thing – their fins. Moving slowly up and down the rows of the dead, Japanese workers on a dock in the Japanese city of Kesen-numa hack off the fins […]

Garbage islands threaten Three Gorges Dam

Official: Trash is two feet deep, so compacted people can walk on it Reuters8/2/2010 4:39:11 AM ET BEIJING — Thousands of tons of garbage washed down by recent torrential rain are threatening to jam the locks of China’s massive Three Gorges Dam, and is in places so thick people can stand on it, state media […]

Gulf of Mexico recovery depends on marsh grass survival

By David A. FahrentholdWashington Post / August 2, 2010 ON TAMBOUR BAY, La. — In the next act of the drama of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, two of the most important heroes don’t look like heroes. They are just thin green stalks, sticking out of blackened patches of grass. They are cordgrass and […]

Logging crisis puts Madagascar forests on UNESCO Danger List

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com August 01, 2010 UNESCO’s World Heritage committee has added Madagascar’s unique tropical forests to its Danger List of threatened ecosystems. The move comes following a drawn-out illegal logging crisis that has seen loggers and traders infiltrating the island-nation’s national parks for rosewood. Bushmeat hunting of lemurs and other rare species also […]

Photo Gallery: Drowning in Oil

A worker attempts to rescue his co-worker from drowning in an oil slick while attempting to fix an underwater pump during oil spill clean-up operations at Dalian’s Port in China’s Liaoning province July 20, 2010. REUTERS/Jiang He/Greenpeace Slideshow: Drowning in oil  Dalian oil spill is all cleaned up Technorati Tags: oil production,oil spill,pollution,China,Asia

Photo Gallery: Russia Fires

Smoke from the fires has swept as far as Moscow, cloaking the city in a veil of smog, 30 July 2010. BBC In pictures: Russia fires A burnt-out car sits in front of a destroyed house in the village of Mokhovoye, some 130 kilometers from Moscow on July 31, 2010. Hundreds of thousands of firefighters, […]

Graph of the Day: Temperatures in the Lower 48 States, 1901–2009

This figure shows how average temperatures in the lower 48 states have changed since 1901. Surface data come from land-based weather stations, while satellite measurements cover the lower troposphere, which is the lowest level of the Earth’s atmosphere (see diagram on p. 20). “UAH” and “RSS” represent two different methods of analyzing the original satellite […]

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