Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Graph of the Day: Mediterranean Sea Surface Temperature, 1990-2008

Global climatic changes may affect Mediterranean water by increasing sea level and changing the distribution of surface and deep water salinity and temperature. Rising sea level would destroy parts of protective sand belt along Mediterranean coast especially of the Egyptian delta coast which have elevations less than two meters above sea level. In addition to […]

Eroding Alaska village appeals lawsuit's dismissal, blames corporations for climate change

By RACHEL D’ORO | 01/28/10 07:04 PM | AP ANCHORAGE, Alaska — One of Alaska’s most eroded villages wants to revive a lawsuit that claims greenhouse gasses from oil, power and coal companies are to blame for the climate change endangering the tiny community. The city of Kivalina and a federally recognized tribe, the Alaska […]

Evicted Mau forest settlers lose harvest as rangers set fire to houses

By NATION CorrespondentsPosted Monday, January 25 2010 at 20:00 Kenya Forestry Service guards burnt 10 houses belonging to settlers evicted from Mau after they went back to the forest to harvest their maize. One of the houses was full of maize when the guards struck on Saturday evening. The families, which had been camping at […]

Brown pelican migration disrupted, birds starving

By STEVEN DUBOIS Associated Press WriterPosted: 01/26/2010 05:51:24 PM PSTUpdated: 01/26/2010 05:51:25 PM PST PORTLAND, Ore.—California brown pelicans are begging for food on the Oregon coast rather than migrating south to breeding grounds. An estimated 1,000 brown pelicans have remained on the state’s coast, an unheard of number at a time of year when they […]

Graph of the Day: Arctic Melt Season Length, 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 […]

Will it be possible to feed nine billion people sustainably?

  By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com January 28, 2010 Sometime around 2050 researchers estimate that the global population will level-out at nine billion people, adding over two billion more people to the planet. Since, one billion of the world’s population (more than one in seven) are currently going hungry—the largest number in all of history—scientists are […]

Nile Delta agriculture falls prey to climate change

By Staff WritersRosetta, Egypt (AFP) Jan 28, 2010 The Nile Delta, Egypt’s bread basket since antiquity, is being turned into a salty wasteland by rising seawaters, forcing some farmers off their lands and others to import sand in a desperate bid to turn back the tide. Experts warn that global warming will have a major […]

China's Cabinet says pollution situation still serious

By Ben Blanchard, BEIJINGWed Jan 27, 2010 9:39am EST BEIJING (Reuters) – China still faces a serious threat from pollution despite recent government efforts to clean up, the Cabinet said on Wednesday, adding the country would step up investment in environmentally friendly industries. While noting some progress at closing outdated factories, cleaning up dirty rivers […]

Patagonia mountains rise as glaciers retreat ‘faster now than they have ever retreated formerly’

Rise tied to warming and receding glaciers By Larry O’Hanlonupdated 12:49 p.m. PT, Wed., Jan. 27, 2010 Mountains along the southernmost swath of South America are growing taller at a record rate, say researchers, who attribute the growth to the accelerating loss of glaciers there. The new GPS-based measurements from Patagonia’s southern ice field show […]

With climate change, birds are taking off for migration sooner, but not reaching destinations earlier

  Migrating birds can and do keep their travel dates flexible, a new study published online on January 28th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, reveals. But in the case of pied flycatchers, at least, an earlier takeoff hasn’t necessarily translated into an earlier arrival at their destination. It appears the problem is travel […]

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