Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Virginia peninsula in 'dire straits' because of global warming

By David Macaulay 247-783810:18 PM EST, February 15, 2010 HAMPTON — Sobering evidence of how storms will have an increasingly devastating effect on the Peninsula as the century progresses is outlined in a new model by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. “This is an important issue for us to get moving on,” Eric Walberg, […]

Lost ‘ghost' traps keep catching lobsters; Maine lobstermen lose 100,000 to 200,000 traps per year

Associated PressUpdated: 11/27/2009 07:27:52 AM EST, Friday, Nov. 27 PORTLAND (AP) — Beneath the cold ocean waters off the coast of Maine, the nation’s lobster breadbasket, lie hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of old wire lobster “ghost traps.” Lost over the years to storms, boats — even the knives of fishermen who’ve cut them from […]

Cold snap killing Florida's coral reefs

By Staff WritersMiami (AFP) Feb 15, 2010 Miami (AFP) Feb 15, 2010 – The polar snap enveloping much of the United States in record cold has been killing off coral reefs in the normally balmy warm waters off the Florida Keys, experts said Monday. The unusually chilly weather so far this year has seen sea […]

Carp invasion ‘catastrophic’ for Illinois river towns

While lawmakers and the White House ratchet up efforts to keep Asian carp out of Lake Michigan, boating and fishing communities along the Illinois River are under siege. By Joel Hood, TRIBUNE REPORTER, jhood@tribune.com   February 14, 2010 SPRING VALLEY, Ill. – — While Midwest lawmakers and the White House ratchet up efforts to keep Asian […]

Free trade, loss of support systems cripple food production in Africa

ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2010) — Despite good intentions, the push to privatize government functions and insistence upon “free trade” that is too often unfair has caused declining food production, increased poverty and a hunger crisis for millions of people in many African nations, researchers conclude in a new study. Market reforms that began in the […]

Fog has declined in past century along California's redwood coast

ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2010) — California’s coastal fog has decreased significantly over the past 100 years, potentially endangering coast redwood trees dependent on cool, humid summers, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, scientists. It is unclear whether this is part of a natural cycle of the result of human activity, but […]

Torrential rains bring relief to dry Australia lakes

By ERIK JENSENFebruary 16, 2010 LAKE GEORGE, north-east of Canberra, has water in it for the first time since 2002. Lake Woytchugga, near Wilcannia, is looking like a water body for the first time in a decade. And in Sydney last week’s rain gave the city’s catchment its highest inflow since 2007. ”The rain’s been […]

Zimbabwe security forces poached 200 endangered rhinos in two years

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.comFebruary 14, 2010 Last week the secretary of the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), Willem Wijnstekers, announced that security forces in Zimbabwe had poached approximately 200 rhinos in a two year period. He did not say how many elephants were poached by security forces. The revelation means that […]

Undersides of Greenland glaciers melted by warmer ocean

By Shanta Barley, 18:00 14 February 2010  Water warmed by climate change is taking giant bites out of the underbellies of Greenland’s glaciers. As much as 75 per cent of the ice lost by the glaciers is melted by ocean warmth. “There’s an entrenched view in the public community that glaciers only lose ice when […]

Rate of ocean acidification the fastest in 65 million years

Press release issued 14 February 2010 A new model, capable of assessing the rate at which the oceans are acidifying, suggests that changes in the carbonate chemistry of the deep ocean may exceed anything seen in the past 65 million years. The model also predicts much higher rates of environmental change at the ocean’s surface […]

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