Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

U.S. beekeepers have seen ‘50 percent or better’ hive losses since fall

By Adrian HigginsMonday, March 15, 2010 …More than three years after beekeepers starting seeing the sudden disappearance of hive populations, scientists have yet to find the cause — let alone the fix — for a condition called colony collapse disorder (CCD). Meanwhile, the commercial beekeeping industry is struggling to provide pollination services to the nations’ […]

Impossible to clean all of Tennessee coal ash spill

By Scott BarkerPosted March 14, 2010 at midnight Federal regulators say it’s technologically impossible to remove all the coal ash from the Emory River and an undetermined amount will remain after the cleanup of the Kingston ash spill is complete. According to a memorandum written by Leo Francendese, who oversees the emergency cleanup operation for […]

Invasive moth threatens California vineyards

Invasion of pest prompts plant quarantineVITICULTUREMarch 12, 2010|By Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer A huge swath of Wine Country, including vineyards where some of the world’s best grapes are grown, was quarantined this week after an invasive moth was discovered. The European grapevine moth has already destroyed at least one vineyard’s harvest and damaged other […]

Graph of the Day: Mean Sea Surface Temperature for the Australia Region, 1960-2009

Sea surface temperatures around Australia have increased by about 0.4°C in the past 50 years. State of the Climate [pdf] Technorati Tags: Australia,global warming,climate change,ocean,coral

Floods from Queensland isolate villages in New South Wales

March 16, 2010 – 6:21AM (AAP) — Floods from Queensland have entered northern NSW, cutting off roads and isolating farms and small communities. Following torrential rain that deluged southern parts of Queensland in late February and early March, the State Emergency Service (SES) is warning residents in the Weilmoringle and Goodooga communities, in Brewarrina Shire, […]

Largest seabirds in the world threatened by ‘hundreds of thousands’ of fishing hooks

By ANDREW DARBY IN HOBARTMarch 15, 2010 – 4:52PM To save Australia’s biggest seabirds, first go to the South Atlantic. Albatrosses, which breed on Australian islands, specifically Tasmanian islands in Bass Strait and the sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island, face greater peril off South America than they do at “home”. The challenge of saving these birds from […]

Tigers ‘now literally on the verge of extinction’

By Richard BlackEnvironment correspondent, BBC News website Governments need to crack down on illegal tiger trading if the big cats are to be saved, the UN has warned. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meeting in Doha, Qatar heard that tiger numbers are continuing to fall. Organised crime rings are playing an […]

Climate change ‘makes birds shrink’ in North America

Songbirds on the US east coast are becoming smaller, a trend thought to be driven by climate changes.  By Matt WalkerEditor, Earth News Songbirds in the US are getting smaller, and climate change is suspected as the cause. A study of almost half a million birds, belonging to over 100 species, shows that many are […]

2,000 rally against toxic haze in Russian town

Writing by Conor Humphries; Editing by Jon Hemming MOSCOW (Reuters) – Some 2,000 people protested against the release of what they said were toxic fumes in a small town on Russia’s Pacific coast Sunday, one of a series of unusually large protests across the country in recent months. Russians traditionally shy away from public protests […]

In Victoria, cruise ships spew three times more sulfur dioxide than previous estimates

By Andrew MacLeod, Today, TheTyee.ca Cruise ship tourists milling about the streets of Victoria are more likely to encounter inviting smiles than frowns. But many residents worry about air pollution from the big vessels — and a newly available study appears to confirm those fears, tripling the previous official estimate of local toxic sulphur dioxide […]

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