Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Global warming could create 150 million 'climate refugees' by 2050

Environmental Justice Foundation report says 10% of the global population is at risk of forced displacement due to climate change By John Vidal in Barcelona, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 November 2009 00.05 GMT Global warming will force up to 150 million “climate refugees” to move to other countries in the next 40 years, a new report […]

Study finds vital peatlands neglected

By Gerard Wynn BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) – Draining and burning of the world’s peat bogs accounts for about 5.5 percent of global carbon emissions but are currently excluded from governments’ climate targets and U.N. talks, a study found on Wednesday. Peat stores around twice as much carbon as all the world’s trees, but compared with […]

Timor Sea oil rig blaze snuffed but ecosystem damage done

PERTH, Australia, November 3, 2009 (ENS) – PTTEP Australasia today confirmed it has killed a leaking oil well and stopped the main fire at the Montara well head platform and surrounding the West Atlas drilling rig in the Timor Sea off Australia’s north west Kimberley coast. Now the focus turns to investigating the cause of […]

Taiwan coral reefs need 100 years to recover

Taipei (AFP) Nov 3, 2009 – Coral reefs off Taiwan will need up to 100 years to recover from Typhoon Morakot, which lashed the island in early August killing more than 600 people, a scientist said Tuesday. Latest research shows the reefs, near volcanic Orchid Island southeast of Taiwan, have sustained even worse damage than […]

UNEP: Kenya’s Mau Forest under siege

The Mau Complex forms the largest closed-canopy forest ecosystem of Kenya, as large as the forests of Mt. Kenya and the Aberdare combined.  It is the single most important water catchment in Rift Valley and western Kenya. Through the ecological services provided by its forests, the Mau Complex is a natural asset of national importance […]

Graph of the Day: Office, Mall and Lodging Investment, 1959-2009

From Calculated Risk: Here is a graph of office, mall and lodging investment through Q3 2009 based on the underlying detail data released by the BEA … This graph shows investment in offices, lodging and malls as a percent of GDP. The recent boom in lodging investment has been stunning. Lodging investment peaked at 0.32% […]

Quarter of Zimbabwe's rhinos killed by poachers in three years

HARARE: Zimbabwe has lost about 200 rhinoceroses — a quarter of its total population — to rampant poaching over the last three years as security and the economy deteriorated, state media reported on Tuesday. The southern African country has been badly damaged by an economic crisis, which critics blame on President Robert Mugabe’s seizure of […]

Illegal wells lower Yemen water table by 60 feet per year

By ROBERT F. WORTHPublished: October 31, 2009 JAHILIYA, Yemen — More than half of this country’s scarce water is used to feed an addiction. Even as drought kills off Yemen’s crops, farmers in villages like this one are turning increasingly to a thirsty plant called qat, the leaves of which are chewed every day by […]

Kenya's heart stops pumping

By James Morgan, BBC News, Kenya At the edges of Kenya’s Lake Nakuru, Paul Opiyo picks up a dead flamingo and warns some eager tourists not to touch it, just in case. He points down to his feet – the brown earth is speckled with brittle white feather shafts. “We should be underwater, standing here,” […]

Kenya: Panic in Mau as eviction nears

Nairobi — With exactly a week to go before a deadline for those settled in a section of the Mau Forest complex expires, thousands of anxious settlers are grappling with the inevitability of eviction. A two-pronged plan in the past week has cleared any doubts on the government’s determination to get the settlers out and […]

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