Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Amazon River water stolen and bottled abroad

  By Stephen Messenger, Porto Alegre, Brazil on 02.8.10 A recently published report is exposing some shocking exploitation of the Amazon’s natural resources–and this times it’s water being stolen. Where is this water headed? According to the report, “tankers are quietly removing water” to be bottled and sold in Europe and the Middle East. This […]

Image of the Day: Shrimp Trawlers and Sediment Trails

By CORNELIA DEANPublished: May 15, 2007 Scientists have known for years that when fishing trawlers drag nets and gear across the ocean bottom they trap or kill almost all the fish, mollusks and other creatures they encounter. And the dragging destroys underwater features like reefs, turning the bottom to mud. Now, scientists have used satellite […]

Oceans reveal further impacts of climate change

  By Staff WritersBirmingham AL (SPX) Feb 05, 2010 The increasing acidity of the world’s oceans – and that acidity’s growing threat to marine species – are definitive proof that the atmospheric carbon dioxide that is causing climate change is also negatively affecting the marine environment, says world-renowned Antarctic marine biologist Jim McClintock, Ph.D., professor […]

Tuna Commission is mismanaging Atlantic albacore into extinction

Posted by Barry on February 1, 2010 Atlantic albacore tuna have long paddled in the shadow of their bigger, more expensive, and more endangered cousins, Atlantic bluefin tuna. Now, “the forgotten tuna” is finally getting some respect, but for all the wrong reasons. Speaking at the Seafood Choices Alliance’s Seafood Summit in Paris last weekend, […]

German government report: global ocean protection measures have failed

By Axel Bojanowski Thousands of tons of trash are thrown into the sea each year, endangering humans and wildlife. A classified German government report obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE indicates that efforts by the United Nations and the European Union to clean up our oceans have failed entirely. Since the world’s oceans are so massive, few […]

Drought in SW Australia linked to snowfall in Antarctica

By Staff WritersParis (AFP) Feb 7, 2010 A drought that has gripped the southwestern corner of Australia since the 1970s is linked with higher snowfall in East Antarctica, a phenomenon that may be rooted in global warming, scientists reported on Sunday. Researchers Tas van Ommen and Vin Morgan of the Australian Antarctic Division said that […]

Graph of the Day: Arctic Sea Ice Melt and Freeze Trends, 1979-2007

The icy cap over Earth’s North Pole reaches its summer minimum in September and its winter maximum in late February or early March. Satellite observations since 1979 have shown that amount of ice that survives the summer is getting smaller; declines have been especially dramatic in the past decade. Recently, scientists from NASA and the […]

‘Top End’ of Australia too dry to become food bowl

  By Michael PerrySYDNEYSun Feb 7, 2010 11:27pm EST SYDNEY (Reuters) – The dream of turning Australia’s tropical north into a major food bowl to replace drought-stricken southern farmlands and feed a future Asia has been shattered by a new report released on Monday. Despite a billion of liters of annual rain, the equivalent of […]

Loss of species hits economy; new U.N. goals needed

By Alister Doyle, Environment CorrespondentOSLOFri Feb 5, 2010 1:31pm EST OSLO (Reuters) – Losses of animal and plant species are an increasing economic threat and the world needs new goals for protecting nature after failing to achieve a 2010 U.N. target of slowing extinctions, experts said Friday. Losses of biodiversity “have increasingly dangerous consequences for […]

Fewer than 50 wild tigers left in China, South China Tiger probably extinct

  By Ben BlanchardBEIJINGMon Feb 8, 2010 3:57am EST BEIJING (Reuters) – China has an estimated 50 or fewer tigers left living in the wild, but efforts to stabilize one population in the bleak northeast are starting to pay off, a conservationist said on Monday. Tigers once roamed huge swathes of China, right up to […]

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