Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Video: Russia mobilizes Army to fight deadly fires

Associated PressJuly 30, 2010 Vast sections of Russia were under a state of emergency Friday as more than 10,000 firefighters fought to save villages and forests from being reduced to ash and ember during the country’s hottest summer on record. Video: Russia Mobilizes Army to Fight Deadly Fires Technorati Tags: forest fire,wildfire,Asia,drought,heat wave,global warming,climate change

Jellyfish bloom off South Carolina coast

By Glenn Smith, The Post and CourierSaturday, July 31, 2010 FOLLY BEACH — Tom Borum was trying to beat the heat with a cool dip in the Atlantic when –Zaappp!– a nasty little sting hit him right in the calf. Borum heard his fiancee cry out. Something zinged her beneath the waves as well, leaving […]

Pakistan flood death toll rises to more than 1,100 people, ‘whole villages’ destroyed in heavy rains

By Meredith Kolodner, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERSunday, August 1st 2010, 10:50 AM More than 1,100 people are dead after record-breaking rains and devastating floods swept Pakistan, officials said Sunday. The death toll could rise as another 27,000 people are still trapped by surging waters, and disease threatens survivors in rescue camps. “Whole villages have washed […]

Wildfires spread across Russia’s West – Patriarch calls for Russians to pray for rain

By Katie Cassidy, Sky News OnlineSunday August 01, 2010 Firefighters in Russia are struggling to contain blazes sweeping across large swathes of the country. More than 214,000 acres of woodland and peat bog are burning and all of the army’s 300 firetrucks have been deployed to help local units. “There are thousands of small smouldering […]

Fears for Britain’s trees after Asian beetle discovered

  Press AssociationFriday, 30 July 2010 Scientists are on the lookout for an Asian beetle that could ravage British trees after one was found last week, the Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera) said today. The Citrus Longhorn Beetle was found at a school in Langham, near Oakham, Rutland, Leicestershire, last week. The beetle, occasionally […]

After drought, Australia farmers now face a plague of locusts

By DEBRA JOPSONJuly 30, 2010 Peter Hammond cradles the tiny white eggs in his hand that could ruin his 2200-hectare sheep and cattle property near Lake Cowal when they hatch in spring. ”When you squash them, they create moisture, so you know that they’re actually alive, that there’s grasshoppers in them,” he said. Farmers are […]

UN: Russian fires are ‘world disaster’

UPDATE: Desdemona failed to notice that this story is from 1998 and thanks readers for the QA. BBCOctober 10, 1998 The scale of the damage caused by recent forest fires in Russia’s Far East amounts to a world-wide ecological disaster, a United Nations team has said. The Russian news agency, Itar-Tass, said the team was […]

US expert: China oil spill far bigger than stated

By CARA ANNA, Associated Press Writer, and AP researcher Yu BingJuly 30, 2010 BEIJING — China’s worst known oil spill is dozens of times larger than the government has reported – bigger than the famous Exxon Valdez spill two decades ago – and some of the oil was dumped deliberately to avoid further disaster, an […]

Graph of the Day: Size of US Wildfires, 1983-2008

Data on wildland fires in the United States show that the number of acres burned per fire has increased since the 1980s. In the western United States, both the frequency of large wildfires and the length of the fire season have increased substantially in recent decades, due primarily to earlier spring snowmelt and higher spring […]

Photo gallery: Beyond Reasonable Drought

Beyond Reasonable Drought is a Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House travelling exhibition in association with the MAP Group — Many Australian Photographers. It features images by some of Australia’s best photographers, documenting the impact of the drought on the land, people and psyche of rural and urban Australia. Beyond Reasonable Drought Technorati […]

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