Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

BP declares Deepwater Horizon well to be fully closed

“official time of choke fully closed 2:25 this afternoon (well fully closed)” Starting the Testing Program and Open Thread By Katherine Sayre, Press-RegisterPublished: Thursday, July 15, 2010, 2:51 PM MOBILE, Ala. — A BP official said oil stopped flowing from a well in the Gulf of Mexico at 2:25 p.m. as testing began on a […]

Ecosystem damage to show true cost of Gulf spill

  Paris (AFP) July 13, 2010 – The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster is likely to cost far more than cleanup and compensation for lost income once damage to ecosystems is factored in, a top expert said Tuesday. In an interview coinciding with a UN-sponsored report on the link between business and biodiversity, economist Pavan […]

Mapping the Atlantic Garbage Patch: Expedition counts up to 500,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer

By Marissa Lang, Globe Correspondent July 14, 2010 Researchers from the Sea Education Association have removed tens of thousands of plastic fragments from the Atlantic Ocean over the past six weeks in what many believe is just a small part of a giant collection of debris in the middle of the ocean. In their search […]

Illegal logging declining worldwide, but still ‘major problem’

A new report by the Chatham House finds that illegal logging in tropical forest nations is primarily on the decline, providing evidence that new laws and international efforts on the issue are having a positive impact. According to the report, the total global production of illegal timber has fallen by 22 percent since 2002. Yet […]

Animal autopsies in Gulf yield a mystery

By SHAILA DEWAN Published: Thursday, July 15, 2010 at 5:16 a.m. GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The Kemp’s ridley sea turtle lay belly-up on the metal autopsy table, as pallid as split-pea soup but for the bright orange X spray-painted on its shell, proof that it had been counted as part of the Gulf of Mexico’s continuing […]

Oil hits Louisiana’s largest seabird nesting area

Wildlife Toll Mounts In Gulf As Oil Hits Louisiana’s Largest Seabird Nesting Ground (AP)   Biologists say oil has smeared at least 300-400 pelicans and hundreds of terns in the largest seabird nesting area along the Louisiana coast – marking a sharp and sudden escalation in wildlife harmed by BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The […]

Salty water, parched earth: Vietnam’s Mekong paddies dry up

By Staff WritersQue Dien, Vietnam (AFP) July 14, 2010 The rivers that should nourish his thirsty rice paddies are too salty, and the rains are late this year. Dang Roi does not know if he will be able to salvage anything from this spring’s crop. Vietnam is the world’s second-biggest rice exporter and the Mekong […]

China's wars, rebellions driven by climate: study

Decadal means of temperature of (a) the whole of China, (b) frequencies of droughts, (c) floods, (d) internal wars, (e) external aggression wars, (f) all wars, (g) locust plagues and (h) rice price in China during AD 10–1990. Dynastic periods are defined by following Chen (1939) as: A, Han (206 BC–AD 220); B, Three Kingdoms […]

BP freezes work on relief well and temporary cap for Gulf oil spill

  The Associated Press Published: Wednesday, July 14, 2010, 10:03 AM BP froze activity on two key projects Wednesday meant to choke off the flow of oil billowing from its broken well in the Gulf of Mexico after days of moving confidently toward controlling the crisis. The development was a stunning setback after the oil […]

Sea levels rising in parts of Indian Ocean

Contact: Weiqing HanWeiqing.Han@colorado.edu303-735-3079University of Colorado at Boulder Newly detected rising sea levels in parts of the Indian Ocean, including the coastlines of the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, Sri Lanka, Sumatra and Java, appear to be at least partly a result of human-induced increases of atmospheric greenhouse gases, says a study led by the […]

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