Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Greenland ice cap melting faster than ever

Satellite observations and a state-of-the art regional atmospheric model have independently confirmed that the Greenland ice sheet is loosing mass at an accelerating rate, reports a new study in Science. This mass loss is equally distributed between increased iceberg production, driven by acceleration of Greenland’s fast-flowing outlet glaciers, and increased meltwater production at the ice […]

Record-high U.S. temps outpace record lows: study

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In another sign of a warming planet, there were twice as many record-high temperatures in the United States as record lows over the last decade, climate scientists reported on Thursday. This does not mean there are no record lows, just that there are fewer of them, said […]

Poorest town in Illinois has 46% unemployment rate

By Mike Parker   PEMBROKE, Ill. (CBS) ― Imagine a community so deep in the hole, the government has fired the police force and closed two of three elementary schools. It’s happened in Pembroke, a little town of some 3,000 in eastern Kankakee County near the Indiana border. It’s a town where these days, many folks […]

Experts fear Uganda population explosion

By James Odongo AT 36, he appears worn out and twice his age. Sunrise comes when he has already made several turns in the garden yet the labour force from his 18 children is not enough to produce enough food for his expanding family. It is pathetic but Barnabas Okipi, a peasant in Soroti, symbolises […]

More settlers leave Mau forest

Eviction of settlers from the Mau forest entered the second day Thursday with over 200 families voluntarily leaving the forest and camping at Kapkembu area at the outskirts of the forest. The families, which did not have title deeds, moved to make shift houses for fear of forceful evictions. At the same time a section […]

Catastrophe likely if rapid extinctions continue: UN

  By TOM ARUP ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENTNovember 13, 2009 AUSTRALIA and the world must make prevention of the rapid rate of species extinction a political priority or face an environmental catastrophe, the head of an international biodiversity convention has warned. In an interview with the Herald, the executive secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological […]

Graph of the Day: Response of Nitrogen Emissions and Soil Respiration to Increasing Temperature

Laboratory measurements of the response of reactive N gas emissions and soil respiration to changes in soil temperature in (A) dry soil from beneath L. tridentata, (B) dry soil from plant interspaces, and (C) wetted soil from beneath L. tridentata. In arid environments such as deserts, nitrogen is often the most limiting nutrient for biological […]

Kenya: Mau forest settlers troop out as security forces arrive

By Mark Agutu and George Sayagie 11 November 2009 Nairobi — The flow of illegal settlers out of Mau Forest started on Wednesday, a day after the government deployed security officers ready to evict them. The settlers, frightened by the show of force and a history of brutal evictions, appealed to the government to give […]

Total fire ban declared in New South Wales as mercury soars

A total fire ban has been declared for regions of NSW expected to swelter with 40 degree celsius heat on Thursday. The southeast of the state is prohibited from lighting, maintaining or using open fires on Thursday, following the ban from the NSW Rural Fire Service. Temperatures are expected to soar between the mid-30s to […]

Shangba, China’s village of death

By Suzanne Kanehl Just south of Liangqiao, in southern China’s Guangdong province is the small village of Shangba. On the surface, this community of roughly 3,300 appears to be a tranquil, rural village comprised of sugar cane fields and plentiful rice paddies. When a closer look is taken, the people of Shangba have been living […]

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