Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Big oil firms accused of human-rights abuses in Burma

By VIVIENNE WALTWed Jul 7, 2:15 am ET To the list of Big Oil companies with p.r. problems add two more: Chevron and French energy giant Total. In a report published on Monday, the NGO EarthRights International accuses the firms of being implicated in human-rights violations in Burma, claiming that soldiers guarding Chevron and Total’s […]

Europe’s assault on Western Sahara

The theft of fish from Western Saharan waters should be damned by the European commission, not encouraged By David Cronin, www.guardian.co.uk 10 July 2010 16.00 BST There is one surefire way of allowing the internet to damage your sanity: spend too much time reading politicians’ blogs. Take a recent post from Maria Damanaki, whose career […]

Clyde ecosystem ‘in meltdown’

By DEBORAH ANDERSON12 Jul 2010 The Firth of Clyde has been so heavily fished it risks being emptied of almost all sea life, according to a new report. Researchers at the University of York have set alarm bells ringing with a warning that the Clyde has become “an ecosystem in meltdown.” Once known for its […]

Ethiopia seeks to reassure Egypt over Nile waters

  Addis Ababa (AFP) July 8, 2010 – Ethiopia has reassured Egypt that a new pact it signed with four other countries on the sharing of water from the River Nile will not harm Egypt. Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda in May signed the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework meant to replace a 1959 accord […]

Graph of the Day: Rate of Temperature Change in the United States, 1901–2008

This figure shows how average air temperatures have changed in different parts of the United States since the early 20th century (since 1901 for the lower 48 states, 1905 for Hawaii, and 1918 for Alaska). Some parts of the United States have experienced more warming than others. The North, the West, and Alaska have seen […]

1.8M acres of Alaska drilling leases go up for bid

By DAN JOLING (AP) – 10 July 2010  ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Interior Department is offering oil and gas leases on 1.8 million acres of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve while promising to protect critical migratory bird and caribou habitat. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Friday that the Bureau of Land Management will offer 190 tracts, […]

Image of the Day: Overnight collapse of Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier in Greenland

NASA-funded researchers monitoring Greenland’s Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier report that a 7 square kilometer (2.7 square mile) section of the glacier broke up on July 6 and 7, as shown in the image above. The calving front – where the ice sheet meets the ocean – retreated nearly 1.5 kilometers (a mile) in one day and […]

Multiple heat waves cap Earth’s warming trend — Record highs outpace record lows

Climatewire, July 9th, 2010 — This time, the heat is really on. From Boston to Washington, D.C., temperatures have soared to 100 degrees or more in recent days, stressing electrical grids, scrambling rail transportation and prompting the swift creation of cooling centers for those who lack air conditioning. Central Canada, portions of the Middle East […]

Pliocene Arctic was 10°C warmer than today, with similar atmospheric CO2

By Jeff Hecht 09 July 2010 12:20 With carbon dioxide levels close to our own, the Arctic of the Pliocene epoch may have warmed much more than previously thought – and the modern Arctic could go the same way. Ashley Ballantyne at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and colleagues analysed 4-million-year-old Pliocene peat samples from […]

Thousands of undiscovered plant species face extinction

ScienceDaily (July 7, 2010) — Faced with threats such as habitat loss and climate change, thousands of rare flowering plant species worldwide may become extinct before scientists can even discover them, according to a paper published today by a trio of American and British researchers in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. “Scientists […]

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